There are so many flawless versions …
You might think there is no benefit to the wider world in us recording ourselves playing and then publishing on YouTube or Facebook. Clearly, we amateurs aren’t likely to produce a rendition as faultless as our favourite pianists, however, that doesn’t mean that we aren’t some of the best ambassadors in the world for the music we love. You can check out my YouTube video on this topic here.
Let’s face it, these days, it’s possible to listen to pretty much any piece of music played by pretty much any pianist – both past and present. This is why you might be forgiven for thinking that there’s no value in our publishing the fruits of our labours given the easy availability of such faultless version. However, this is where I think we’re wrong.
For example, whilst there are recordings of, say, Listz’s Consolation No. 3 by Horowitz, Rubinstein, Lang Lang and countless others, the simple fact is that many people in our immediate circle (unless we’re actually surrounded by musicians) are extremely unlikely to ever take the time or trouble to listen to these recordings. Even if they appeared in their news feeds they would probably just ‘swipe right’.
Advantages of amateur pianists
However, we amateur pianists have three essential advantages over the professionals:
Keep it short
First, in our modern world, listening to anything much longer than 3 minutes challenges the expectations of many. I don’t mean this as a disparaging comment either – most of us were brought up to expect music to be served up in bite sized chunks. Believe it or not, the famous Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen almost didn’t see the light of day as the record company bosses insisted it was far too long and nobody would listen (a massive 7 minutes). For we amateurs, until we’ve reached great levels of technical prowess, most of the pieces we play are more within the time limits of what non-classical music fans will find approachable.
Keep it simple
Secondly, and some will hate me for saying this, lots of real ‘virtuoso’ piano music really just leaves the uninitiated cold … that’s not to say that they can’t learn to love such things, however, it isn’t the the of thing that will get them into classical piano. Our professional idols have no option other than to demonstrate their technical prowess – their audience expects it and is able to appreciate the beautiful music within it. For we amateurs, most of what we play is far more accessible and often familiar to people. Don’t forget, it’s interesting to note how often world class pianists will choose music from the more accessible repertoire for their encores (even the great Horowitz played pieces such as Traumerai).
Keep it personal
Thirdly, it’s simply the fact that we recorded it ourselves. I doubt anybody in my family would go searching for Lang Lang on YouTube … I even wonder if they’ve ever heard of him. However, if I post something, then they are more likely to listen to it just because its me (and they aren’t listening to see whether or not I play any wrong notes!!).
Reactions from friends
I’ve been posting recordings on my FaceBook page (also called Tommys Piano Corner) and here are some of the reactions I’ve got from friends
Feel free to listen to these recordings (just go to my FaceBook page) … if you’re a pianist you’ll know straight away that they are far from perfect and were my friends to listen to pretty much any concert pianist play them then they would hear a far more impressive version. However, and this is my point, they won’t listen to a concert pianist play them as they’ve no real interest in discovering this type of music.
However, once introduced to some more accessible Classical Music, the chances that they will then take the time to listen to professional concerts start to rise. My sister in law was staying with us over the holidays last year and when she left (after having had to suffer my practicing each day) she made the remark that she was ‘really getting into piano music now’.
Therefore, I strongly urge you all out there to take the time to record the pieces you love … don’t be worried about them being perfect – you’re not sitting an exam – let’s do our part to make listening to the piano as popular as it once was.
Tips on recording yourself
If you want some tips on recording yourself here are a few links to other posts (with associated YouTube Videos. I did a first post on getting a basic recording with your smartphone. If you want better audio, then a SmartPhone microphone is a good possibility. You can also add Equalisation and Reverberation easily enough and then there are ways to improve your visuals that don’t take too much effort. Finally, I also suggested a way of actually editing out any wrong notes.
The full YouTube playlist is available here.
You’ll see that it’s remarkably easy to do and with a little imagination you can get surprisingly good results.
Feel free to share links to your own recordings in the comments either here, on my Facebook page or my YouTube channel … I look forward to watching.
