What is the pianistic tone?

What is the pianistic tone?

Learning how the pianistic tone improves our way of playing the piano

Many of the piano students find challenging to acquire this technique, for many performers take years and even the most skilful piano tutors find it strenuous to transmit to their students.

This concept is very much developed and focused in the UK and proved to a powerful expressive resource to get to the level of expressiveness so cherished to any piano performer.

The Tone is basically how we approach the note and how we release it. Sounds very easy to say, but in the experience at WKMT, we have found this concept is not developed enough.

The concept of “tone” covered elements like the duration of each type of articulation, the quality of the attacks, the release of the keys and the relation of intensity between one note and its surrounding ones The way we approach each note-attack will affect the speed of our performance, its character and most importantly, our way of understanding the whole structure that supports our musical performance.

The very first step to obtaining this skill is starting to be aware of the speed in which we play every note;  we know this appears to be an endless task, but if we just raise our awareness with every note, this will allow our aural sense to widen bit by bit and grant a perception we didn’t think we had in us. As Maestro Juan Rezzuto states: “When we explore the “tone”, we should always refer to how we would sing the melodic line in question. In many ways, this work resembles the everyday work of a singer. We should analyse and feel each detail of the sound. How it starts, how it sustains, how we release the key, and how the sound faints then after. It is a beautiful work, and the results change the way we approach music as a whole.”

Do not miss this interesting article by Juan Rezzuto, published on WKMT Blog, with which you will learn the importance of this concept and how to implement it.