Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Can't make my playing interesting

Italy, wow another land of great food. I love Italian food. I was raised in New Orleans, La, USA. Creole food which is a combination of French, Italian, Negro, Spanish and a few others thrown in with nice spices. I like Creole and Italian first, then Mexican and last Thai. American and English foot is the pits.

I made a new attempt at Return to the Heart, trying to play it less mechanically and more emotionally as many of you suggested.

What do you think?
http://www.4shared.com/audio/DHOa3koN/RTTH.html

Bah. To start, extend the tension using crescendo ending at the dissonances, ritard right before the cadence, tenuto the 4 on the 4-3 appogiaturas and other non chord tones, play the cadence piano.

My tip would be to learn to play a slow and pianissimo piece.

I think your playing sounds very accurate, but not much attention is paid to the phrase having a singing quality. Try playing and singing it as musically as you can, even if you're out of tune, sing it like a great singer. Great singers change up the their rhythms and aren't exactly with the beat. To recreate this on the piano, the LH and RH shouldn't always land together, only at cadences. Also, try not to play all the notes of a chord simultaneously all the time. With each phrase in the melody, find the peak and work your way toward that and away from it with crescendo/decrescendo and also with accelerando/ritardando.

Do lots of listening to lounge-type pianists, they are often great at this.

As far as really catching someone's attention, I would select more upbeat music that they can't really ignore. There's a lot of jazz that is written out that you can learn. Look for Philip Keveren's arrangements, and also Mark Hayes has some great jazzy pieces. Eugenie Rocherolle has a book of boogies and Christopher Norton has several books of very catchy jazz tunes in many different styles. This is one book I own and really enjoy lots of the music in here, plus it comes with a CD so you can hear how it should go:
http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/title/The-Christopher-Norton-Jazz-Preludes-Collection/17263067

Lastly, selecting music that people will recognize will always catch their attention. The more obscure the tune, the more musical the playing has to be to catch attention.

I listened to this piece and I could definitely feel the emotion behind it. The performance was introspective and thoughtful and for that style of playing I think you have done well.

I'm guessing that your friends and relations are interested in music which is more up tempo/lively/dramatic. If your goal is to entertain them you should find out more about what sort of music they like and consider playing something in that style. Don't lose what you already have in the process, I could tell that you had an emotional connection with the piece you recorded. I think it would be good to work on creating the same level of emotional connection with a more lively piece.

Any suggestion?

Search your music collection for such a piece and then find a score for it?

I don't give specific names because YOU must like the piece.

FWIW - I think the music sounds fine.

If your audience is not interested in the music, then the style may not be appealing to them.

If you know the styles/pieces are to their liking but they're still not interested in your playing, consider the possibility that the problem is with the audience, not you or your playing.

Thank you
I have to be honest though, I love all the pieces that I play and still I was the first one that didn't find my playing interesting. Like I was already conscious that my playing was too harsh, too mechanical and not expressive enough.

Listening to my new recording of Return to the Heart I can say it sounds a lot more like "music" compared to other pieces I have recorded in the past.

This guy always succeeds in catching other people interest at his music and yet his patterns and arrangement are very simply, I would say simplied versions of the original piece.
I'd like to be like him

Before you play, think about what you want to convey. Your post describes wanting to play something interesting. However, this is different for everyone. What exactly do you want your audience to feel?

As posted above, even though you want to play for your audience, do not lose yourself. Make sure you are connected to the pieces by a desire to play them. Also, keep in mind if you search, you can find groups to play with and audiences to appreciate your music.

Although there's room to improve and express yourself much more and bring out the melody in the few pieces I've listened to, you're being too hard on yourself. If I were in your audience, I'd be intrigued to keep on listening.

Once you become interested in what you're playing, your piano playing will become interesting. ~ Yoda

Thanks a lot for your words



I have noticed that even people who would otherwise like heavy metal or heavy claim to hate music are captivated by live piano when the pianist is good enough. There's something about live instruments that makes people who otherwise would never listen to that kind of music hypnotized by the sound. Which is why I think people is crazy about videgame music covers for piano.