Skip to main content

[Sue Lee's Piano Technique] A long note is emphasized "by itself"

 [A long note is emphasized "by itself"]





Look for long notes when you're confused about which note is the main note when you're playing a piano melody.




For example, what is the longest note in bar 1 of this score?

It's a quarter note, "E"

E is the most energy-driven sound in this part. If you sing a song, you can easily see that e is the most emphasized.




Similarly, the B, which starts with a pick up bar, is played lightly with a short note, and the energy-driven note becomes a "G" with a total length of two beats.

If you put weight on a wrong short note rather than a long note, the phrase of the song will be broken.





Likewise, what is the most emphasized note in this song??

will be "D" in measure 5, right?

A,B flat,A,D should be played at different weights.





Now, then, is every long note always emphasized? 


No. 

at measure 8, F is the half note. But this part is the end of the phrase, so the sound should be getting softer.

If you cut that part shortly, it would be a very light finish, but by playing it long, it makes it possible to draw like the bow of the string, long and smoothly.




The long note is an important key point in the song.

In addition, a unique rhythm is created by a mixture of long and short phonetics, so how you handle long notes determines the vitality of the music.




However, a long note should not be expressed as an "accent."

Emphasis is not just about the sound coming out individually, but within the "flow" of energy.

You have to get more energy into the long pitch.

The performer should controls this by weight.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

[Sue Lee Piano] Sue Lee(Hyesu Lee)'s Profile

Sue Lee (Hyesu Lee/ Hyesue Lee ) She studied classical piano in South Korea.(B.M/M.M) She studied with leading professors such as Cho Jae-hyuk and Kim Jae-mi. At the time of her academic year, she won the first prize overall and awarded a number of scholarships in addition to the best grades. She wrote a master’s thesis on piano by analyzing Haydn’s piano sonata on the subject of the aesthetics of humor. After learning about music aesthetics, she decided to major in musicology to study music in depth. Currently, she is writing a graduation thesis on American symphonies about WW2 for a master’s degree in musicology. Under Professor Oh Hee-sook, she was an assistant researcher at Seoul National University’s “Korean Creative Opera” for three years. In 2021, she presented an academic forum of the 60th Music Aesthetics Research Association on digital music. Now she continues to study musicology as a full member of the Music Aesthetics Research Association.  While studying musi...

[Sue Lee's Piano Technique] Let's be a Sniper

[Let's be a Sniper] You have to be a "sniper" to play the piano well, to make a clear, precise, neat sound without getting it wrong, weak, shaky, you have t o be a "sniper." Think of the professional snipers that often appear in movies. They control the movement of each body cell at the moment of shooting and think about various things such as wind, weather, and humidity, and hit the target exactly from a distance. Imagine that a laser is being shot at the piano keys.  That point, you have to fit the core correctly.  (The core here is like the inner core of the Earth) Point your fingers and add your weight. It should all be "imagined".  It's the same expression that pianist Lim Dong-hyuk tells you to think of your fingertips as needles. A famous pianist taught me to burn under the keyboard and to the wood floor with his fingers. If my finger doesn't hit the core exactly, it's empty and spread out, so it doesn't make a clear, precise so...

[Sue Lee's Piano Technique] Why I have to practice slowly?

 [Why I have to practice slowly?] There's something that piano teachers usually say a lot. "Practice slowly" ​ ​ Why is that? ​ ​ When we play the piano, there are two main technical problems. 1. When your finger muscles get tight If you hit it quickly, your fingers will get tight without knowing it, and your arms will hurt and your sound will be all gone. ​2. when you hit it with pressure on your fingers. Especially when you make a loud sound, you have to make a loud sound somehow, and there is no time, so without realizing it, you bend your fingers, give it strength, and hit it to make a cracking sound. ​I think more than 95% of the problems that come out when playing fast are these two problems. Let me give you an example. ​Running fast and eating something, is it possible? Why don't you have complicated thoughts when you're late for school or work and you're so busy? Rather, you may have experienced the distraction disappearing when you run fast or do aero...