Spinning Song: Artistry

Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman,

and in this lesson we're going to learn techniques for playing "Spinning Song" by Ellmenreich with artistry.

Let's come to the piano to get started.

One of the most common mistakes I see

with "Spinning Song", is pianists want to play this loud because it's such a fun song.

The problem with playing this forte right off the bat is it takes away from the excitement of these

accents, and it takes away from the excitement of the crescendos and the fortes that will come later.

So really pay careful attention to Ellmenreich and his dynamics.

He marks this piano.

Remember,

Piano can be exciting too. It's like

creeping down the stairs when you want to check your presents on Christmas day or something.

You know, it's a quiet excitement, and when you're piano like that,

those accents will pop out so much more effectively.

If you're already forte,

You know, then the accent has no meaning and no excitement because all the other notes around it are already loud.

So the softer you can make your piano, the more exciting

your accents can sound.

Hear how that pops out when I'm playing piano?

And then here start really soft so you can have a really exciting crescendo.

Notice that by starting soft,

it makes that climax much more exciting and then gets softer again.

So those two accents can be even more exciting.

Start soft again.

And then we're back to piano.

Remember, softer softs makes your louds and accents more exciting.

Also, really important to the artistry of this entire piece is having a really crisp, clean, staccato sound.

So a really important tip for that is keeping your fingers close to the keys and a really flexible wrist.

Think of coming up on each key. Up, up, up, up...

So pause the video and I'd like you to work on the A section of "Spinning Song", this first page,

and work really carefully on dynamics, bringing your piano super soft so those accents can pop

and your crescendos can really go somewhere.

Pause to work on that, and then press play to go on.

Now, let's check out the B section.

In the B section the key artistic principle I want you to think a lot about is voicing.

Voicing is the art of bringing out the melody extra loud so it can be heard clearly and keeping the accompaniment really soft.

So which hand has the melody here in the B section?

If you said the left hand, you're correct.

Now, how do we get the left hand to play loudly and the right hand softly?

I've shown you this trick before, but let's review it. I want you to play the left hand fortissimo,

and the right hand I don't want you to even play, just touch the keys like this.

Okay, pause if you'd like to try this.

Left hand fortissimo, right hand just touching.

Then the next step is to let the left hand still play fortissimo, but the right hand's now just barely going to play but pianissimo.

See, I'm barely playing the right hand. Left hand is playing fortissimo. Pause if you'd like to try that, and don't be frustrated if it's really hard at first. This is a really hard skill at first, but so important for pianists to learn.

So pause to give that a try if you like, and then the next step

is to let the left hand play a little more normally.

I like to think of maybe if the dynamics say piano,

maybe I'll actually make my left hand mezzo piano so one notch up,

but my right hand is going to be one notch down. My right hand will still be pianissimo and this is more the final

effect that we're going for.

The thing I don't want to ever hear is:

That right hand, when it's loud, is so ugly.

Make that right hand as soft as you possibly can and those tricks I just showed you with the fortissimo and then just ghost playing.

Just touching, that's a really good tool to train that skill.

So, pause the video and work on that for a little bit,

and get that voicing going using any of those tricks that I just showed you and then press play to go on.

Now let's talk briefly about the phrasing of these little, short, two measure phrases.

You'll notice the first note has a tenuto mark over it, which means to bring that note out.

And then remember that it's very customary in music at the end of a phrase marked by that

slur mark or phrase mark.

The last note of a phrase is usually the gentlest.

The softest.

Thin ...