Playing Multiple Voices on Piano

There is a lot of confusion as to what we mean when we refer to a 'voice'. Perhaps you are under the impression that the piano as a whole is equivalent to one voice. However, you would be mistaken.

The voice doesn't refer specifically to an instrument so much as it does to part of a piece of music, and if you are learning or performing a piece of music without recognising potential voices then you are not necessarily doing so to the best of your or the piece's capability.

Let's investigate...

What is a Voice?

The voice is an overall part of the music that gives a different texture to the rest of it.

To better understand how it might work, consider the idea that - most of the time - different voices play different durations of notes or different rhythms.

It is important, therefore, to not fall into the trap of assuming that a triad chord is three separate voices. It can be considered the same. Harmony alone does not create the voice. However, if a fourth note is vamping crotchets underneath - for example - a semibreve triad chord, we now have two voices i.e. two different things happening together.

These can happen in the same hand. The minimum number of voices you can have whilst playing hands together is, of course, two! The most basic example of this would be if you were playing one note at a time in each hand.

But if we now assume that our aforementioned example of the semibreve triad chord and crotchets were to happen in the left hand, we now have two voices in the left hand and one voice in the right - three voices.

And what's to stop lingering notes singing out above vamped notes or chords in the right hand in addition? Another voice in the right hand. Two in the right. Now it's a four voice piece!

If you are ever struggling to identify voices, one of the best things to think about is how a piece of music would be orchestrated.

Which notes or group of notes would be performed on, for example, a flute? A violin / violins? Cellos?

How many instruments could pick out notes in the piano arrangement?

Identifying Voices

For my example - and the inspiration for this post as I was playing this earlier this morning - I am going to reference Robert Schumann's spectacular second Romance ('Romanze II' from '3 Romanzen').

Take a look below and see if you can identify how many voices are in the right hand of the first couple of bars ('Rechte Hand' is German for right hand!)

The answer is - two!

However, it's a little bit more complex to assume that it's two purely because it's written over two staves. If you used that technique to get to your answer, well done on getting the correct answer - but unfortunately your reasoning is flawed and just happened to be right this time!

Take a look in the left hand (the third stave, on the bottom).

How many voices can you see here?

The answer, again, is two!

Pay close attention to the stem directions. Yes, the whole thing is kept moving largely as semiquavers if you look at the bottom, but the stem directions going up on certain notes implies that these notes are to 'sing above' The notes that descend arpeggio-like from them.

This exact same principle can be applied to the right hand as well, but it does beg the question - why would the right hand be written across two staves? The notes don't go significantly lower enough to justify that bass clef, after all.

The answer is because here the composer (or, at the very least, transcriber) has picked out our main focal notes for us. Yes, we would be able to do that ourself to an extend because we can identify them as separate voices away from the semiquavers on the top stave, however having them clearly separated allows for the performer - especially in the early stages of reading the music - to clearly pick out which notes ought to be made something of.

If this were a song, you can consider that the notes on that middle stave would be the vocal line.

How to Distinguish Voices

Now we know how to identify the voices, but we need to know how to distinguish them.

Continuing with Schumann's piece above, we are given a dynamic marking of 'p' (piano - i.e. softly) in both hands. However, we as performers - particularly when it comes to music from Schumann's era (romantic) must be wary of taking dynamic markings too literally. The overall dynamic needs to be gentle, therefore, but things need to stand out;

Split the Dynamic

This is the easiest and most natural thing to do. Given that the middle stave, we have established, is our lead line, we want to ensure that we give a touch more velocity to the notes to make them ring out.

However, there are two things that may make this a little tricker that ordinarily would be the case:

• Our right hand thumb is our main finger for the job here, and the natural instinct would be for dynamic to flow from left to right. Bearing in mind that the thumb is on the bottom playing the melody, whilst the rest of the fingers actually rise above the note, it does require a little attention to ensure that you play the top notes much, much softer - especially if you struggle to get a good velocity from your thumb. Obviously it can be achieved with practice, but it needs to be recognised early on in the learning process so you don't learn it one way and have to unlearn it!

• The more dominant voice in the left hand should be - by the same logic - the top notes. Given that these notes are merely a third below the right hand's main voice, playing at a similar velocity could mean that the top note merges in and creates a not-unpleasant harmony, but one that disguises the melody. Practising getting a softer but still fairly prominent dynamic in the left hand will reap great benefits for a piece like this. However - not as an alternative - but as an extra technique you could adopt to further separate the two, you could try the following technique;

Splay the Notes

Approach with caution! This isn't something you necessarily want to apply to every single group of two notes here, as it may start to get a bit tedious on the ear and may even interrupt the flow of the music at times.

It is exactly as it sounds - create a rapid ascent upwards between the notes so that the ear is tricked into taking note of the last note you play (in this case, our lead line) and tuning into that one!

It's a lovely technique and it works well in a piece like this that is performed quite slowly. However, you should try to focus more on dynamic and use splaying and arpeggiation as carefully plotted colourful techniques to add your own take on a performance, rather than as a means to enhance a melody or a part that should already be there.

Recognise the Note Value

This is one that I have been known to mention quite a lot. It is true - particularly of pieces in the Romantic era - that you can express much with the pedal. However, because the pedal can do so much of the holding on for you, it can lead your fingers to being lazy.

In a piece such as this Schumann Romance, for example, you may be tempted to just play semiquavers entirely throughout and use the pedal to create the sustain.

Minimise the pedal use!

Learn to perform a piece of music as close as its transcription as you can, as when it is written in voices then it will really enhance them. Once you are ready to incorporate pedal, will find that you need less because you are holding on the important notes yourself and any additional sustain you wish to add to your performance can be worked on afterwards.

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SUCCESS - 'Keyboard Sonata in D Minor' by Scarlatti

You may have seen my previous blog post on the subject matter - not but one week ago - in which I was so so so close to perfecting this piece.

Well, I feel that as far as my current standards will allow (although I am always striving for improvement) I have.

Purists may wince slightly at my rendition of a Baroque piece in that I added a handful of pauses and rits across the music so as to live up to my strengths, as sadly my fingers aren't quite as agile as they once were and need at least to be teased of a break every now and then. However, this keyboard sonata - whilst, as ever, with room for improvement - can finally be heard performed properly in its entirety by me here:

So, what steps did I need to add to create such a performance? -

Get the Bad Performances Out of My System

This was by no means a first take, although in my defence it didn't take as many as it could have done. I think I probably had about fifteen minutes worth. Maybe twenty. Granted, even if I'd have reached the end of each the piece for each take then that would add to a lot of takes, being a reasonably short piece, but it made me consciously aware of things I needed to do each time.

As always, I found myself becoming more and more stressed which inevitably led to more and more mistakes. And guess what? This take you see is the result of just a five minute break following the peak of my frustration. Not only did I feel calmer anyway, but evidently it reflected in my performance.

(It was practising this piece that inspired this blog about the trouble with recording!)

Sustain Pedal

Being a Baroque piece of music, there is no pedal marking on the music and it is debatable as to whether or not you ought to incorporate at all (I wrote a blog on pedalling where I referenced Baroque music - have a read!).

Being rapid passages - especially with the majority of them being consecutive notes - pedalling would have made this all a tad muddy in my opinion, so I opted against it.

EXCEPT for at the end of each 'movement' (the ends of page 1 and 2, both of which are repeated).

This allowed for me to take a pause whilst ringing out the last note prior to immediately going back into the repeated / new passage at speed. It's doable without the pedal, but I would either have had to:

• embrace a pause of silence

• hold the note on manually and then jump quickly to my new position

Neither of these options sounded quite as desirable to me!

Rit.

The romantic in me coming through (not literally - I'm referring, of course to the Romantic era musically). I added a little more rise and fall in the tempo, such as the aforementioned ends of passages.

However, I also did this at the very beginning for the first two bars. It allowed my fingers to settle into a more rapid passage and also perform the introductory bars evenly as playing evenly was something I was struggling to do at speed. It is, of course, something I can still work on, but for this performance I think it works just fine.

Controlled Trills

Every rendition I've heard of this has quite intense trilling, and it isn't one that I particularly enjoy listening to, let alone performing. I prefer the much more deliberate sounding root-up-down-up-down approach, which allows the finger to breathe for a slight nanosecond before its next trick (usually a rapid semiquaver passage, so the breathing time is extra vital for my precious fingers!).

Head Movement

In the second movement, there is a repeat of the theme from the first movement. However, the left hand jumps from a quaver bass note quite low down to vamped quavers in the rest of the bar two octaves higher. The first instance of this passage is at 1:21 (as this movement is repeated, remember!).

Naturally, going slow was one important practice technique here. But also, working on my head movement so I could know exactly where and when to look lower down to best aim those notes. There is a lot of instinct in piano playing that many professionals streets ahead of myself would be able to employ whereby they wouldn't even need to look. However, for me, because there is nothing relative in the two octave jump (such as the previous bar working down the the first note), I need to look.

Fortunately, the right hand is not only a direct repeat of the first movement that by this time was well practiced, but it is also very scale based. This means that it is of lesser importance that I look at the right hand as that should be able to do its thing without being watched. And it did!

Embrace the Repeats

I can't for the life of me fathom what it is, but if I do a perfect take of the first page which then repeats, I get more nervous about doing it again. Why? I can do it, clearly. Maybe I thought it was a fluke and I feel it at least now needs to live up to it if not be better?

I had to shift my mentality somewhat - which is rather hard, not going to lie - to realise that actually the repeats are a good thing. If you've done them once you can do them again. It's not difficult and it's not cause for concern. If anything, Scarlatti has given a substantial length of music for half the practice time because of the repeats.

Still, it's done now and I do enjoy playing it!

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Committing Music to Memory

If you've been following my practice journals recently, you'll know that I am getting quite well along with at least two pieces that I haven't yet published. For me, the final stages of learning a piece of music is the committing it to memory.

I must, therefore, kick off this blog by first stating that committing music to memory is an optional move. As I stated on a previous blog, there is no judgement for those that prefer to or have to use music each time they perform a piece. However, there are advantages to taking this extra step;

Aside from not having to worry about page turns in extremely rapid passages (because page turns are never anywhere convenient!), you can perform music much more confidently without being distracted by other things...such as the music itself! (I'm not going to spend the whole blog post repeating what I put in the aforementioned link, but little things like watching the keyboard at a time you normally watch the music or vice versa can be distracting!).

So, the question remains - how do you commit to memory?

Read on...

Chunk it up!

Unless you are trying to memorise a spectacularly short piece, you won't do yourself any favours by just endlessly playing through the piece of music. You need to give yourself a reasonable phrase (or few phrases) to crack on with.

Consider the logicality of what you are performing. If you are trying to remember two bars littered with rapid movement, accidentals, unusual fingering etc., maybe just focus on those two bars. But if you are focusing on ten bars and all (or even most) of them have a logical movement (such as a repeated left hand bass) then it can be more beneficial - not to mention quicker - to focus on the whole passage.

Our memories work best when they are given 'information' that they can process as a result of either familiarity or - not a million miles difference - relating to something else which we are familiar with. Therefore it is essential to pick out bits that don't seem to have any natural movement and consider them as your problem bars, never forgetting to put them into context to ensure the whole piece flows.

Frame of Mind

The play and repeat style is very good, but it won't do much good if you're not in the right mindset in the first place.

What are you playing?

How do your hands feel in this position?

Where do they move to?

If you have ever read a book you'll no doubt be familiar how easy it is to read a paragraph, a page or even more and then be able to tell - literally nothing about what it's about. If the concentration isn't there you can't recall it. You need to focus on what you're doing in the first instance, and if you're not in a position to do so then it's not the right time to consider committing to memory just yet.

You Don't Know What You Don't Know

The importance of not always performing with the music was stressed in that same previous blog post, but regardless it's worth mentioning again that at this time - when we are committing to memory - it is vital to keep playing without.

Don't have the music on the stand in front of you. Put it away and refer to it only when you need to. If you reach a stumbling point, try to recall as best you can, for if you take the initiative and call upon some knowledge that's already there then you are far more likely to remember it than just quickly refreshing the brain by glimpsing in the book.

It can be so tempting to have the music there as a safety net, but in terms of committing to memory it won't do you any favours in the long run. It will exercise the brain's recall more and - besides - you will overlook bits you genuinely don't know because you'll be 'filling the gap' quite nicely by reading it, not memorising it.

Repeat Problem Passages

Naturally this is one of those things that may come into piano practice anyway, however it is worth bearing in mind. Problem passages are those that won't stick, and you need to be able to be fairly confident with them prior to trying to memorise them. If you can't play them with the music fairly fluidly, make sure you get to that stage first.

Then if there are any stumbling blocks, ask yourself why there is a stumbling block. The most likely answer is that you just need to reiterate it a few times to get the fingers working - particularly on their own as now they don't have the reassurance of the music. Once you have that, make sure that you practice it within a couple of bars either side to trap it in a nice, consistent performance, and you're good to continue.

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