Among our Piano Students, one of the most challenging task to achieve is the so-called “Tone” this is especially recognized as a valuable asset and equally decisive to obtain in any piano tuition.
This technique is mostly approached by intermediate students, when the basics have already covered, such as rhythm, musical notation and the foundation of the Scaramuzza technique, although Maestro Juan Rezzuto likes the idea of giving this approach as early as possible in order for the student to acquire such an important view of the performance on an early stage.
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.
This relates to Juan Rezzuto states about the key trip: “Whenever we produce an attack, we should try and focus on feeling the end of the “key trip”. I define key-trip as the distance the piano key travels between being on standby and in action. The weight should be entirely delivered in each attack; the latter being the basis of any relaxed performance.”
Students should be aware of how the sound is produced, sustained and how it faints. This is a work that raises the awareness of what we call the “key-trip” the whole journey of each sound. Although this means embarking into a long adventure, we are sure will be definitively rewarding with time and patience. Such a level of control is one of the main preeminent undertakings of the piano technique.
We hope this will be useful for your piano playing!