Yes! You too can instantly improve your piano playing with this one little step that takes very little effort and has the potential to transform your piano playing and take it to a whole new level!
As I write this , I feel like I am channeling some voice over person on an infomercial that goes to air around 3am, but even though I feel like my words may sound cheesy, I actually mean every word I am writing here.
I genuine believe that you can actually transform your piano playing and make yourself sound so much better by adding one simple thing – dynamic shading.
Dynamic shading is really just a musician’s way of saying adding loud bits to your music as well as quiet bits. Some of you might feel like arguing with me by telling me that most people do this. I would argue that it really is only professional musicians that pay attention to the loud parts and the quiet parts. In my years of experience as a piano teacher, I can tell you that most people that play the piano don’t really even attempt to put in dynamic shading.
I find this kind of ironic because the piano, which the full name is a pianoforte is actually a combination of two Italian words: piano means soft (or quiet) and forte means loud. So the whole reason why a piano was called a pianoforte in the first place was because it is capable of achieving a wide range of dynamic shading.
So here’s a short list of some of the dynamics that you can use in your piano playing:
p or piano – soft
f or forte – loud
mp or mezzo piano – moderately soft
mf or mezzo forte – moderately loud
pp or pianissimo – very soft
ff or fortissimo – very loud
You can also have ‘gradually becoming louder’ and ‘gradually becoming softer’ which are often indicated by very elongated ‘greater than’ and ‘less than’ symbols which indicate whether the sound is getting bigger or getting smaller.
All of these above dynamic shading can instantly transform your music, especially if you use a variety of them.
So how do you actually put them in? Well it’s a little of trial and error but usually a lighter touch will give you a softer sound while a heavier striking of the keys will get you a louder sound. To get a very loud sound, you almost have to be aggressive with striking the note. Like so many things, the more you practice the better you will be able to control the volume of sound that you produce and you will become more confident too.
It is important to note that some pieces of music have the dynamics already indicated while other pieces have none, but whatever the situation is, you can always put in whatever dynamics that you think will sound nice.
As stated earlier, you can practice dynamics and really master the art of dynamic shading but it is still possible to be able to get some dynamic variation in your music almost instantly and I guarantee that your piano playing will definitely sound all the better for it.