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You seem to have a tendency, in many situations, to leave the keys very quickly, as if burnt. Even when you have no intention of staccato, you play something as if it were, and use the pedal. Striking the keys quickly, pulling them up and away, and then sitting back to listen to your big chord is visually impressive, but in the long run is a rather bad habit if you want to develop any sort of control over your timbre. Don't be afraid to let your hands stay where they are once you've played that big fermata chord--completely relaxed. It might sound obvious, but it's very much worth keeping in mind that once the hammer has struck, any tension you might have in your hand, any extra pushing down of the keys, or heightening of the wrist (something I see quite a bit), has no effect whatsoever. So with good technique any part of your hand should be completely relaxed the moment it has done what it was supposed to do.
What I was hinting at earlier, with playing stuff as if it were staccato, is very important. It's very tempting to rely on the pedal's ability to turn a short note into a long one, or a non legato phrase into a legato one, but try to acquire the habit of always playing legato when you want to play legato, and hold notes that you want to hold, even if you have the pedal there to help you. Of course, that's not always possible: a legato line consisting of octaves or chords often can't be played perfectly legato without the pedal... but that's no excuse to play it staccato. Hold those octaves for as long as you can before you have to move to the next note, find a fingering that allows you to connect the most important lines of the chord progression. Or, more applicable here perhaps, if you want a chord to be held, hold it for as long as you can with your fingers. In very many cases here, you leave it way earlier than there is any need for it, so this is just a habit to get rid of. Practice without the pedal. You could argue that once you use the pedal there's no audible difference between a note "played" short and one played long. And technically of course there isn't. But there's a big psychological difference, and that difference can be transfered into your actual touch. Trust me, it makes a difference.
From another perspective, that habit of using the pedal as an aid (for lengthening notes or playing legato) also tends to result in a kind of "automatic" pedal usage, where you apply the pedal to all sorts of situations where it may or may not be necessary, without really thinking about it. More than a "lengthening device", the pedal is really a timbre-changing device. There's a big tonal difference between a chord with pedal and a chord without pedal. Avoiding the "automatic" pedaling, and constantly making your own choices about whether you want this tone or that one, means you get one more tool in your timbral expression toolbox, and that's awesome.
And, uh... that's what I mostly thought about, even though watching a video and posting on a forum definitely isn't my preferred way of doing this.
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May 11 2008, 6:54 PM
Pretty simple. Also, I'm going to hope that you're not another one of those people who just come around looking for compliments on their work: you'll find yourself in tough company for that kind of constantly-optimistic feedback around here. 
Linear Mode
