I think I've been learning all my life how to practice, and I think I do it better than I used to do it, and I think I'll probably do it better in five years.

Few pianists know their instrument the way that Garrick Olson does.

One of the most legendary living pianists today, his immense musical wisdom is inspiring not just in his concerts and recordings, but in his teaching as well.

Because very often people give up from difficult things because it's not convenient, it doesn't feel good, it's not easy, it doesn't go well.

Learn to do what doesn't go easily, because in learning all that you're going to learn a lot of basic principles.

Principles that will serve you for the rest of your life and everything else you play.

Today this master of the piano is going to give us ten specific technical tips from his lessons on tone-based premium on works by Chopin, Brahms, and Rachmaninoff.

These are tips that you can already start using right now in your practicing.

It's just like in the gym, if you want to press 100 pounds, you don't start with 100 pounds, you start with 20 and see how you can build up your muscles and learn good form.

Whereas if you just try harder, you can actually damage yourself.

Same thing with piano playing, where you have to use your small muscles.

To watch the full version of all these lessons and much, much more content by Olsen and many other pianists, be sure to check out Tone-Based Premium, the platform that makes videos like this possible.

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Just you wait, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Irma Volpe, one of my other teachers, always said, only we pianists are afraid of a distance that big, but we do get afraid of it.

Sometimes if it's a jump, which I was afraid of when I was young in the Chopin First Concerto.

Because that leap of the 10th, has to be free, it can't be.

And I smudged or something, and Irma said, it's really not that far.

If you just play it as an octave, it's quite easy.

Then just leave out the top note, and then the bottom note.

But in other words, and I have a big hand, I can even do it like that.

But the gesture of the music is not uh-uh, it's a...

You want that freedom, that balletic grace to it.

When you're on a black note, and you have to hit it with your thumb, I don't know if you can see it there, I actually open the thumb so that you have more flat surface to hit on.

It's a lot more secure.

And same thing with the fifth finger, I don't hit with the tip, I hit with the side.

So you have less likelihood of missing.

Same thing in Beethoven's Appassionata at the climax of the first movement.

It's actually much easier with the thumb, but not this way, just with the side of your hand.

Position, because then you don't have to, I've seen people too worried and playing wrong notes and so on.

Part of piano playing is percussion, and you have to learn how to be really secure.

Besides, it looks good.

Whenever you have ba-bum, it's not bum-bum, it's ba-bum.

It's a gesture.

It's like bouncing the ball.

Or in the Schumann Concerto, it's not, because as they used to joke at Juilliard, nobody's going to buy a ticket to hear that.

You need to practice it as a single gesture, with freedom, but don't aim for the downbeat, aim for the upbeat.

That's where you need to put an accent, because if you are firm there, in the middle of it of accent, the downbeat will get an accent anyway, you don't ...

You see, I'm going for the first note.

If I go for the second note, it sounds uncoordinated and effortful.

By the time you get to much more difficult pieces, such as the Wilde Jagd Transcendental Study of Liszt, where you're playing ...

If you're playing ...

You're going to get stuck, so each one of those is ...

It's that relaxation response I've spoken about in other places.

We've all missed this one.

It also occurs at a moment, you know something's very difficult, it's very intense, the hand is busy.

It's very busy.

Oh, gosh.

So, okay, how to do it.

I think too many people go too fast when they start, including me, when I was younger.

You want to go from the first note and show how spectacular you are.

Make sure we hear ...

Let that happen, and then ...

Let the rest go.

In other words, don't ...

Now, most people play 1-5-2-3-5-1-5-1-5, which is very fine.

The opening and closing of the hand is very important.

The moment you get up to the five, don't leave your thumb down there, so you have to jump.

Let it get lazy and move up here, so that you're actually a little bit ahead of yourself with the thumb.

Or, you can do my fingering, which is similar to the one I just gave you for the soft spot. 1-5-1-2-4, and then 1-5-1-5.

I don't know why, it's more secure for me.

It works better for me.

Good luck with that.

The last thing you can control is when the key goes down and the hammer clicks up and hits the string and the sound happens.

You're not in control anymore.

Once again, and since you have the advantage of the pedal, you're free to go have a cup of coffee if you like, but it's going to stay there for you.

It doesn't help to put all of your emotion into your body and hold onto the piano, because no matter what I do, once that's happened, but once you've hit that, you need what I'm now notorious for calling the relaxation response.

You need incredibly sharp attack, and you need your tension and your focus in the attack, but not in between, because obviously you can't play this piece if you do that.

You know, I could play this without changing my hand position very much, because I'm within an octave, but look at all that jumping, and you want to hear a steady stream of notes.

You can't hear, obviously, I mean, that's ridiculous.

It's not only a study of expansion of the hand, it's a study of contraction, which isn't so obvious, because we pianists see in blocks, physical blocks of notes, we see the four chord, which is repeated, so we see this big stretch, and our first instinct is to try to accommodate the stretch.

You can't play this piece without also accommodating the contraction.

At the very least, when you hit the fifth finger, you have to at least be back where you're starting.

So, okay, we've got one note.

Well, that's very nice.

So we've got one note, piano and slow.

Now, I've got a very big hand, but look, my second finger is now on the G, and I have to get to the C, so I have to do something with my fourth finger, so I have to stretch it out a little bit.

In stretching it out, rather than stretching it out in a stressed way, look how it's trembling from stress, and I'm a pretty strong pianist, but it doesn't work.

You actually have to let your hand go, you have to let that thumb go, and move your hand up there.

So you almost get the second one just by moving your fourth finger to the C.

Not literally, but you sort of get it.

Same thing with this.

I mean, look, there's my fifth finger all stretched to hit the E, and it's trembling because it's under great stress.

The tendons don't like it, the ligaments don't like it.

So I'd have to move my hand up to get up there.

Oh, I've played that note.

Now, this is interesting.

How am I going to get from four to five, and then back to one?

Well, if I just open the hand again, the fourth finger will come up, and then I'm in a position to do the whole thing over again.

Now, I promise you, that's not the way I'm thinking while I'm playing this piece.

When I was very young and played it anyway pretty well, that's not what I knew, but I've sort of learned it later.

In other words, it's an art of applied movement.

You have to figure out each one at a time.

So I'll go through it slowly.

I'm doing exaggerated movements.

Okay, now I'm playing kind of slow and kind of weak.

Then now you can add your strength as you practice.

You can do it however you like.

If you want to do more with your fingers, it's fine, as long as you...

You can be tense, but you have to get out of the tension.

Or you could add wrist and arm weight.

And then, once you've got that pretty covered, you can actually start adding speed.

Listen to the diminuendo of the piano, but let the note not just go...

Stop.

To now...

Off.

I held it until the beginning of the rest, and even on a diminuendo box like this, you can hear it.

It also tells you, as the artist or the public, as your listener, that it's not...

We haven't stopped.

You almost lean forward naturally.

Not because you want to lean forward, the music continues.

The music tells you what to do expressively, either with your body or with your hands or your tone.

Man, the next bar is just very impressive.

It has 128 notes in it.

Just like this...

There, it's 128, or 132 actually.

They're quite easy.

But remember that once you hit a note, that's the last thing you can do with it.

So rather than thinking of it...

It's much easier to think of it as...

And so, once you're on the first one, get off it.

And with the help of the pedal, you're there.

So you're sort of jumping off of only every other one, because if you think of it as...

You're going to be a mess by the end of that bar.

Very often I hear...

Well, I'm exaggerating, but I think you've probably heard something like that before.

But you lose an awful lot of music, and how are you going to get sempre piu mosso for the next until bar 63?

For example, at the top of this thing...

He does something which later Brahms would do.

He writes two meters in one bar.

He writes 1-2-3-4-5-6-1-2-3-4-5-6-1-2-3-4-5-6, and in the right hand he writes 1-2-3-4-1.

And they have a war with each other.

And if you're just rattling really fast, it only sounds like impressive piano playing.

But if you actually feel the tension, because it's not too fast...

There's kind of a war going on, and even though I'm not as fast as some people, there's so much activity.

And then when it really opens up with the pure arpeggios, when he gives up on that rhythmic fight...

You've really got some vast, vast, vast sweep, whereas if you've just been rattling along for a whole page, it's still very impressive, I must say.

There's a famous saying at conservatories worldwide, starting at the Juilliard School where I went, but I'm sure they are all the same, that you'll have the talented young at age 17, let's say.

If you listen through the door or open it when this guy's practicing, he's practicing octaves by the day, by the night.

The next guy isn't such a piano jock, but he's got a really beautiful, sensuous sound and deep musical feeling.

You open his practice room door, he'll be practicing slow movements.

What should really happen is the opposite, because you should go towards the areas where you're not as strong, but it doesn't feel good, especially when you're young.

So, you've got to figure that one out for yourself.

Who are you and what are you better at and what are you worse at?

So, you know, if you're really great at Preludes and Fugues by Bach and Beethoven Sonatas and you really feel at sea with Debussy, work on Debussy for a while and vice versa.

You won't lose what you're good at, but we all are just weak humans and we tend to like to be in our comfort zone too, so this is all part of the wisdom of life and the folly of trying to get better, or the success of trying to get better.

Thanks so much for joining us today, and remember that the full version of these lessons, as well as content from many more fabulous pianists, is available on ToneBase Premium.

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