How to make your melody as beautiful as possible (in 3 steps)

the best piano teacher that I ever had used to always say that the difference between a good pianist and a great pianist came down to just one thing voicing in other words the ability to play a Melody beautifully in this tutorial I'm going to share three steps that you can take to play your Melody as beautifully as possible and we're going to go through a real example because I'm not just going to give you these steps and then leave you to do it on your own if you stay tuned till the end of the video I'm also going to show you exactly how to master these steps in your practice so that you can truly make your Melody sound as beautifully as possible starting today going through these three steps is also going to help you play your Melody with more accuracy and more flow hey piano people I'm Ashley from Ashley Young music studio where I'm all about teaching you how to practice smarter not harder let's Dive In step one to playing your Melody as beautifully as possible is to know your Melody well now the way that you're going to do this is to sing along with it which sounds simple but let me actually show you how to do it let's look at the Moonlight Sonata we are going to talk about measure five where the melody actually starts and the Moonlight Sonata is an interesting piece because the way it actually starts this is not our Melody but most people that play the Moonlight Sonata think that these three notes in the right hand that are so repetitive are the melody and so often times people get really confused when it comes to knowing how to make the melody beautiful because they're confused about what the melody even is so let's look at measure five and we're going to sing along la la la it doesn't matter if you're a good singer [Music] La okay so you can hear that I sang along with the melody now like I said most people hear this part as the melody so when I sing it I'm forcing myself to stay with that Melody and to sing along with la la la I notice how I'm holding the note la la [Music] la and I'm not getting distracted by the inner notes now often times when I ask people to do this what happens is they start around measure five and they'll sing and then they immediately [Music] sing and that's wrong because this inner part is not actually the melody so when you do this step in your piece you want to make sure that you're really actually singing The Melody and that's it now if you have trouble doing that with everything else that's going on in the piece you can actually just take away everything and just play the melody and just do that as many times as it takes to hear that and then you can put the other hands and the other accent patterns back in and still force yourself to sing along with just the melody now when you're practicing this in your piece you might start at the beginning because generally the beginning is where you're going to be the most familiar with the melody so it's going to be the easiest to do this and so we started right when the Melody comes in at measure five in Moonlight Sonata but we're going to jump around a little bit and we're going to go to a more challenging section now let's go to measure 15 where things get a lot more interesting harmonically so this is what it sounds [Music] like so the melody isn't actually complicated if you look at just the melody it's [Music] just but those are kind of hard notes to sing because they're not really easily found by the ear because they're a little bit dissonant they're really close together so let's do that again without any of the accompaniment without the left [Music] hand and you want to do this in time even if you're just doing the melody so I'm going to kind of like keep time two three so notice that I'm doing it in time so now that I'm a little familiar with the way that that Melody sounds let's add the other voices in and see if I can sing along with it and you can try with me so this is not our Melody there we go and you would do that as many times as it takes for that to feel really comfortable and really easy step two to being able to play your Melody as beautifully as possible is to make sure that you know the volume of every single Melody note and the way that you're going to do this is with Dynamic numbers and I'm going to explain exactly what that means and how to do it but first I also wanted to make sure that you knew that I have a free site reading workshop that you can get access to for free that's going to teach you the three steps that you can take to sight read with more accuracy and flow every single time your fingers touch the keys I'm going to link it in the description and then I will also link it on the end screen of this tutorial and I want you to make sure that you snag a copy so that you can site read with more expression and flow every time let me show you how you do these Dynamic numbers assigning Dynamic numbers is one of my absolute favorite revolutionary practice methods because it basically helps you take Dynamics and make them much less ambiguous it helps you decide exactly and concretely what dynamic every note of your Melody is and it gives you a way to practice it so what we're going to do is basically take a set of numbers we're going to take 1 to 10 and one is going to be the quietest 10 is going to be the loudest and of course we have access to every single Dynamic number in between so if one is the quietest and 10 is the most Forte we can also say like one is here two is here three is here and we can get louder and louder as the numbers go on so what we're going to do is look at the melody notes and assign a specific Dynamic number for every single Melody note okay and this way you are going to know exactly how you are playing the melody notes so let's take a look in measure five we have a g g g and then g g g a g f b e that wasn't totally in time but you get the idea so we have about 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 numbers in one phrase now the Dynamics in this score a panimo so we're going to probably start pretty quiet so maybe I'll like a one one one or let's say 1 1 2 2 2 3 4 5 4 3 2 maybe something like that and when you're going through this step it's actually a little bit of an experiment because you have to come up with a plan and try it out and see if you even like it and you might adjust and tweak as you go and it might take you like three or four times of coming up with different Dynamic numbers to find a shape for the phrase that you really really like now it is easiest when you do this step to work in phrases that's why I'm taking the pickup to measure 5 6 7 8 9 because that's our first little melodic phrase so let's try that again I'm going to start I'm going to see if I can do what I just did so 1 1 2 and then same volume 2 2 3 4 5 4 3 2 I like that shape I'm not counting it correctly the Rhythm wasn't correct so I I would keep doing this until I get it to the point that I really like that shape and then I would say okay I'm writing this in the score this is 1 one 2 2 2 3 4 5 4 3 2 and that is now my shape those are my Dynamics for My Melody and I don't change them from this point forward step three that you can take in order to play your Melody as beautifully as possible is to master the Dynamics this is basically the type of practice that you're going to do in order to take those Dynamic numbers that you assigned and really internal them so that your hands your brain is going to remember them regardless of if you're thinking of them actively as you're playing or not I'm going to show you exactly how to practice this but I also wanted to let you know about my free Facebook Community if you are not already a member there get your booty on over there and join I release more content in the Facebook Community there are members that can answer questions we do Live Events it's such an incredible community and it's supportive and encouraging and if you're not there you're definitely going to want to join because there's a lot of free value in that group I'll link it in the description and after you're done with this tutorial you can go ahead and join now as you work to master the Dynamics really yes there is some element of this it's going to be about your hand and your arm being able to actually play the Dynamics you want but this is really about listening and tuning your ear in to see am I doing the dynamic numbers that I actually decided on so let's try that we decided on one 1 2 okay and I'm going to put the Rhythm back in here so I'm doing it in time so let's try that again 1 1 one 2 see and even just in those three notes I did quiet and then the second one stuck out and then the third one was actually quieter so that wasn't correct so let's try it again 1 one two seeing if I can get that to be really [Music] even good now we're at 2 two [Music] 3 and that second one stood out again so when you get to this point you're going to take your phrase where you assign the dynamic numbers and you're going to break it down into smaller little sections of maybe two or three notes and you're really going to tune your ear in to see am I actually playing what I decided I was going to play and that's why Dynamic numbers are so fantastic because they give you a way to concretely know if you hit the metric or not if you're saying this section is piano and this section is forte that's really ambiguous but Dynamic numbers make it less ambiguous and more concrete so we would practice this until you can do the dynamic numbers and then once you can do the dynamic numbers you're going to do it 8 or 10 or 15 times in a row so that those Dynamic numbers become ingrained in your muscle memory so that even if you're not thinking about them actively your hand still remembers how to do them now once you've gone through the steps in this video if you want to know the next steps that you can do to take the melody now that it's all beautiful and combine it with the accompaniment pattern without messing it all up make sure that you check out this other tutorial that I did where I show you the next steps which is exactly how to take this beautiful Melody and combine it with the accompaniment so that it still sounds as beautiful as possible you can check that video out as well as snag a free copy of that site reading workshop right here on the end screen happy [Music] practicing

Channel: Ashlee Young Piano Studio

Views: 6,111

Keywords: How to Make Your Melody as Beautiful as Possible (in 3 Steps), how to make your melody as beautiful as possible (in 3 steps), How to make your melody as beautiful as possible (in 3 steps), How To Make Your Melody As Beautiful As Possible (In 3 Steps), HOW TO MAKE YOUR MELODY AS BEAUTIFUL AS POSSIBLE (IN 3 STEPS), How to Make Your Melody as Beautiful as Possible (in 3 steps), how to make your melody as beautiful as possible (in 3 steps).

Id: cVssDyJSrsY

Length: 10min 52sec (652 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 23 2024