Tinturin Music Blog

The Holiday Festival on November 12 was a great success! 112 students performed music by Russian composers and competed for gold, silver, and bronze medals.  Five piano students from the Tinturin Music Studio performed at the Festival. Mary Angelique Babiano, Sophia Wong, Cecelia Wong, and Brinley Fisher received gold medals for their performances.  Yen Nguyen received a silver medal.  In addition, Cecelia Wong was one of 8 gold medal winners selected from the entire roster of students to receive a special “Honorable Mention” for her performance of The New Doll by Tchaikovsky.  Congratulations to all these fine students!

With their years of learning and life experience, adult piano students obviously learn differently than children.  This has its challenges as well as benefits.  Adults are generally more goal-oriented than young children, and therefore are looking for quicker results.  Children often don’t know what result to expect, so they are willing to go through the processes as presented by the teacher. With their goal in mind, adult students may encounter a great deal of frustration when the results do not come fast enough. 

I have experienced this myself in the past.  I finally realized that I was fighting myself and my piano, which only served to hold me back.  Once I realized that I needed to exercise more patience, and practice with joy and love, for myself and my piano, I was able to make friends with my piano and together we were able to travel the road to music and progress much further and more easily.  

Your piano gives you constant feedback.  It tells you exactly what you are doing well and what you are missing.  So listen carefully when you practice, and love your piano as your friend.

My father and his brother and sister performed as the famous Compinsky Trio throughout their lives.  My aunt, the pianist, Sara Compinsky was my teacher.  When I was nine years old, she asked me to be her page-turner for their concerts, which I did for the rest of their concertizing career.  I learned valuable lessons in the process, particularly in the field of sight-reading.  Without realizing it at the time, I was developing my sight-reading skills, reading through complex music and fast tempos that I would not have been able to play at that time, but that I could nevertheless keep up with in order to turn the page at just the right time.  I learned to look for rhythmic patterns, bass lines, changes in patterns, and the longer melodic lines, and especially counting from one bar line to the next.

So here is how you can practice sight-reading without practicing:  Listen to recordings and read along with the music.  Start with pieces that you know or are working on.  Then advance to pieces that you don’t know and test your sight-reading skills.  Start with slow moving tempos to make sure you are able to stay with the music.  Watch the rhythmic patterns and count.  Once you can get through the music without losing your place, start watching intervals and sing along with the melody.  The most important thing is to keep looking ahead and keep your eyes moving across the staff. This trains you to keep going and not look back. It is one of the most important skills to learn to be able to sight-read while you play. 

Tinturin Music Studio Student Recital, Spring 2011

Noëlle Tinturin presented sixteen of her piano students in a recital on June 18 at the beautiful First United Methodist Church in Ventura.  They all played memorized solos, and many also performed duets with Noëlle or with another student.  One student, 18-year-old Ethan Renner performed his own original composition for piano, to great acclaim.  Included in the roster of performers was adult student, Gerald Weil, who performed two solo pieces by memory, as well as a duet with his teacher, Noëlle Tinturin.  At the beginning level were several students who got their first performing experience after only a few months of lessons.  All the students performed successfully to an audience of proud parents, family members, and friends.

The annual MTAC-sponsored Southern California Junior Bach Festival was held on April 9 and featured performances of works by Baroque composer, J.S. Bach.  Over 60 students of teachers from the Ventura County branch of the MTAC performed at the branch festival. Fourteen winners were chosen by the judges and were invited to continue on to perform at the regional festival on April 30. Included in the list of winners were two students of Noëlle Tinturin, sisters Sophia and Cecelia Wong, who performed preludes by Bach.  Congratulations to both of them!

The piano’s damper pedal is used to blend and beautify the sound.  If you are an intermediate to advanced level piano student, you should already know correct pedal technique.  But should you always use pedal during practice? 

There is much to be gained by practicing without the use of the pedal.  Instead of focusing on the beauty of the sound, which is more readily achieved with the help of the pedal, focus on clarity and technical precision.  The pedal can easily cover sloppy finger technique.  If you want to acquire clean and accurate technique, practice without pedal.  Hold and conncect the notes with the fingers.  The pedal can easily turn into a crutch and be overused, resulting in a blurry, messy sound.

When you can hear all voices clearly, and can create a legato sound without the use of the pedal, then add the pedal and use it sparingly, and you will have greatly improved the quality of your playing.

Music students typically want to learn a new piece quickly and play it in its finished form as soon as possible.  While this is understandable, you will learn the piece better with more understanding if you will take the time to learn it in many different ways.

Try to expand your approach to the music by practicing sections of it in many different ways.  You can practice using different dynamics, articulation, rhythm, phrasing,  and pedaling (or practice without pedal altogether).  Practice at different tempos (although you may need to practice the faster tempos in very small sections).  Play the melodic line separately.  Play the bass line separately.  Change a broken chord pattern.  You can also adjust your body position by leaning back or forward, turning your head from side to side, or using a more curved or less curved hand position.  You can absorb patterns on the keyboard more readily by playing the same phrase in different octaves.  Practice a run backwards as well as forward to understand the pattern better.

Be creative and try to come up with your own ideas of how you can learn the music in different ways, and try as many as you can think of.

I have been going through many changes over the past few months, so I apologize for not writing in so long.  Today is a new year, and although I don’t really believe in making “New Years Resolutions” any more, because it is so difficult to keep them going for a whole year, or even one month, I do feel that it is a good time to re-set priorities and make new plans. 

Something that I am planning to do this year, starting today, is to revisit and relearn many of my old pieces that I have played in previous years.  It is important to keep up a working repertoire of music that you have polished enough to sit down and play anytime.

Although it can be tedious to stick with a piece until it is performance ready, and then keep playing it after you finally perform it, there are many benefits in doing so.  Last night on Great Performances, 28-year-old pianist, Lang Lang performed the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto #1 with the New York Philharmonic.  The piece is so difficult that when it was first written it was deemed “unplayable.”  Lang Lang first performed this piece at the age of 13, so now, after playing it for 15 years, he plays it effortlessly – he “owns” it. 

Pieces that you have learned and then put away can be revived and played again with greater ease, facility, and musical understanding.  Plus, additional benefits include: 1) Exercising your memory, and the memory areas of the brain, 2) Pieces that you haven’t played in a long time can serve as good sight-reading opportunities – just approach the piece as if you have never played it before and read it!  3) Performance opportunities are available to you when you are prepared with pieces that you can sit down and play at a moment’s notice, and 4) You will gain a sense of accomplishment from retaining the music you have learned.

So having said that, I am now going to go and practice some of my old pieces and play them!  Have a happy and musical New Year!

Last night on “So You Think You Can Dance,” executive producer and choreographer, Nigel Lythgoe made an insightful comment to one of the dancers. “You are not the artist – the choreographer is. You are the artist’s brush. You are the instrument with which they paint,” he said.
Musicians would be wise to take this advice and understand their role in the creation of music. Their first responsibility is to the composer – to be true to the composer’s intentions and what he is aiming to communicate through his music. The performer must first serve the music with a pure and honest interpretation that is in keeping with the composer’s style. Having first considered this, the performer is then free to express himself through the music.

My father, Manuel Compinsky, was a great violinist, pedagogue, and chamber music artist. Of the many things I learned from him about music, performance, and teaching, here are a few.

On Technique: It is important to develop a strong, fast and versatile technique on the instrument. But it should never exist for its own sake. Technique should serve the music and be used only to enhance musical interpretation.

On Fingerings: Fingerings should not be chosen on the basis of physical ease of execution, but should be designed primarily to make the phrasing smooth and musical, and only secondarily to make the notes easier to play.

On Performance: There is no reason to be nervouse about a performance if one is very well prepared. Thorough preparation is the key to a confident, comfortable, and successful performance.

And lastly, give a firm handshake. My father would train his students to give a firm handshake and convey the impression of strength and confidence – even if the student does not yet feel it.