El Matador: Artistry

Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman

and in this lesson we're going to explore ways to play "El Matador" by Melody Bober with artistry.

"El Matador" is found in the excellent collection Grand Solos for Piano Book Four, which you can purchase using the link below.

Let's come to the piano to get started.

Remember, artistry means telling an exciting story with your music.

What is the mood of "El Matador"?

Remember an el matador is a bull fighter so this is exciting. It's dangerous.

We want a bold, exciting sound at the beginning.

With lots of accent, energy, and boldness. It's also very important to think about the timing of your damper pedal.

Remember to time the up down of your right foot playing the damper pedal with the left hand.

Up down, up down, up down.

If your foot lifts a little early, here's what you'll get:

Did you hear the gap in the sound?

That gap means I lifted my foot too early. Remember, don't lift until the moment your fingers go down. So fingers go down,

foot comes up.

Up down, up down, up down.

If I lift late,

Could you hear the blur between the two chords?

If you're hearing blur between the notes, then you know that you've lifted too late.

Try to time it so there's no blur and no gap.

Pause the video, and I'd like you to work on just the first four measures with a good bold, exciting sound

with good timing of your damper pedal, and remember in measure four

to slow down a little bit because of the ritardando,

and then do a better job than I just did. A little decrescendo there.

I did better that second time. Going into the fermata we want to pull back the sound to set the stage

for the a tempo in measure five. a tempo means go back to full speed. Back to normal.

Pause to work on measures one through four, then press play to go on.

Let's check out measures five and six now.

I like to use this kind of articulation for the left hand part

with the slur between these first two notes and then a light staccato on these repeated E's. So I think down, up, up,

and a little bit stronger on this first note. Strong, weak, weak, ba, ba, ba.

That makes a really interesting artistic sound as opposed to just going:

Which sounds ugly and boring to me.

Down, up, up.

So even though it's not drawn in the music, remember as an artist you get to make some articulation choices like this.

Let's try to play it with this kind of articulation.

One great way to get this down, up, up, gentle sound on those repeated E's and a nice staccato is by
thinking of a floating, quick lift on those E's. So think down, up, up, down, up, up. Now you try.

Down, up, up, down, up, up, and make those ups as gentle as you can. Strong, weak, weak, strong, weak, weak. Now your turn.

Now let's keep going. So we have measure five. Down, up, up, down, going to six.

Now pause the video and work on just left hand alone. Work on this nice, floating wrist motion and a nice, strong weak, weak.

Work on measures five through eight left hand alone, then press play to go on.

Now for the right-hand part I want to make this an interesting phrase.

Now, Melody Bober tells us mezzo-forte here, marks this as a phrase,

but what she doesn't give us is how to shape each individual note.

Now, in a beautiful, interesting phrase you're not going to play all the notes evenly. They're going to get louder and softer

to make the music kind of dance and come alive.

So maybe as the notes are going up, maybe there will be a little bit of a crescendo.

And then I like to play this first part of these 16th notes louder.

But then as you come to the end of a phrase,

remember, the end of a phrase is a good place to add a decrescendo, so we have a beautiful, gentle ending to our phrase.

See how I played this note louder? It's on beat 1, so it's a good place to emphasize.

And then de-emphasize or decrescendo as you're going to the end of that phrase.

And then even along the way there may be a little bit of rise and fall no composer can show you how to play every single note.

But you're going to use your artistry to try to make that phrase sound interesting.

Notice how I made some notes louder, some softer.

There's a flow to it. A rise and a fall.

Tell an interesting story with your phrase.

Now you try. Can you play these notes with an interesting phrase shape? Try it on your own.

Every time you play, listen

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