Music - playing expressively

[OurStepsWillAlwaysRhyme]

DD8 has been learning piano for 2 1/2 years and is preparing for her grade 3 next term. One thing she struggles with a little is playing expressively - she can follow directions but finds it harder to really "feel' the music for herself. Are there any good resources to help with this? I appreciate that this is probably what separates natural musicians from the merely competent and it may not be entirely possible to teach it, but I just want to try to help as far as I can. She's pretty good at the technical aspects (she's been trying some grade 4 pieces for fun) so I would like to support her rather than just take the view that she's not a natural.

I think its something that comes with more experience / as they get older. It usually helps to listen to recordings of the pieces and to talk about what she likes on them. Also helpful to imagine she's singing the pieces, where would she breathe and then that can help with phrasing. Dynamics will also go a long way to helping

I would play the pieces on YouTube and get her to dance to them. Feeling the music and expressing it can come for any piece, at any time at any age. She is doing brilliantly. Trying out grade 4 for fun!! She obviously has a love for it so I 100% believe she will find her expression. I would also get her to just play. So not just practice pieces. Throw some cords and notes together. Experiment!!

Disclaimer: I literally know nothing about music and play no instruments... I have a 13 yo DS who just has his initial grade. That's the closest I get to any musical credentials 😂

listen to what she plays - let her record herself and compare what she hears with what she was thinking - how can you make it better , what don’t you like about it

edit to add - you need to know the pieces really well I think - if you take the music away can she carry on for a little ? Being in a rush to move up grades can make it harder

My piano teacher was always trying to make me play expressively or (as she put it) with feeling, and I had no idea what she meant. I was playing the piece note perfect time after time and I was just thinking 'What? How else can I play it?'
The penny didn't drop until I was in my teens, by which time I'd given up anyway.

Being more familiar with the pieces, either by practising or listening so when she plays she can "hear" what it would sound like. It's really getting to a state of flow. That's the best way I can describe it, I was always better at playing expressively than technically perfect.

I was going to say try singing it but dancing is also a good call. I am a fairly good amateur and I think what helped was that my now-main instrument I started in my teens (it's an enormous lump of a thing) having moved up from piano and another more common orchestral instrument. I was much more mature.
I only got to grade 5 on piano and I think that might be why - I was quite young when I started.

My children's piano teacher would get them acting out things, dancing around, singing, exaggerated things. Playing what is written is admirable but is just the start and sounds quite robotic. Think about singing the tune, where do you breathe, where is the emphasis. Enjoy, this will come gradually for some children. The main thing is to enjoy it and practice regularly so the technique is there to support the expression. Going to live performances is great as well. There's loads of proms on TV as well, you could watch some together, eg Saint saen piano concerto with the Scottish chamber orchestra was fab and very different from something Russian. Also they don't need to fake swaying around if that doesn't happen naturally, it doesn't make the music sound better! Enjoy the music journey together!

I was exactly the same. I got to grade 7 but still don't know how to play expressivey.
I have a friend who's around my standard. When she plays my piano it sounds completely different.
I can play my cello or clarinet expressively, but not piano.

Can kids actually play expressively? I think not is telling that the part of the brain that processes prosody in speech develops much later than the part that actually processes words.

i do think it would help for her to hear recordings of the pieces and try to copy though rather than focusing on converting the sheet music to finger movements if you see what I mean

This is a good shout, thank you. She sings in a local choir with a very good teacher, who is definitely quite precise about phrasing and articulation, so that might help quite a bit.

@OurStepsWillAlwaysRhyme Get her to watch a clip of Bill Bailey and his adaptations of tv theme tunes. Match of the Day is particularly fun. 😂

In very, very simple terms, giving ever so slightly more emphasis to the longer notes and being ever so slightly lighter on shorter notes will make most pieces sound a bit more "expressive".

However, this is a very difficult thing to pin down and I honestly think it is something that people either have or they don't. One of my nieces did grade exams, always practicex and got pretty reasonable marks all the way through. Nice accurate playing, sounded nice but her playing always sounded "dead" to me. Her sister would never practice properly did up to grade 3, never got very high marks as she'd never learned pieces / scales etc properly. She stopped doing exams, but would often play easy pieces that she liked. She was very artistic, beautiful painter from the word go. She could play with incredible expression. When she played the piano people listened whether they wanted to or not. She just knew how to link the notes together into a melody and inject emotion and feeling into her music. They both had the same teacher, both had the same teaching, but the way they played reflected their different personalities.

I think I had a natural talent at cello as I got distinction in my exams without trying very hard. However with piano, however much I practised, I'd just scrape a pass.

I remember having a similar issue - maybe she’s not passionate about and doesn’t have much feeling for the type of music she’s playing? Unfortunately with exam pieces there’s little to choose from as it’s a set curriculum. But I really ‘found’ my ability to express myself and feel the music when I started playing music I actually loved. Eg. If she’s a massive Taylor Swift fan, get her a book of TS songs arranged for piano. You’ll find that the feeling will eventually transfer over to music she’s less excited to play as it’ll become almost a learned habit to physically show she’s enjoying it, even if she’s faking it for music she’s less interested in. Unfortunately being expressive and almost ‘putting on a show’ gets you brownie points in exams because being a pianist isn’t simply sound - it’s very visual too.

I used to struggle with this too, it didn’t really click til grade 8! I would get her to listen to her favourite songs (pop, rock, whatever) on YouTube, ideally a big stadium piece - pick something she likes. Bring attention to when the energy of the song peaks in the chorus and she/the crowd wants to sing along really loudly or dance or whatever, or when the song goes quiet and when the momentum is building up again etc. It’s all the same skills for classical music, it just might be easier to relate to with pop music. Get her to pick out when she hears different emotions in the music/lyrics, like sadness, bittersweet, happy, ecstatic etc.

Some songs to pick if you need inspiration - Don’t Look Back in Anger by Oasis, One Fine Day by Elbow (BBC orchestra recording is on YouTube somewhere), and maybe something big by Coldplay like All My Love.

And also get her to listen to recordings of her grade prices by famous players. Get her to look out for when they put more energy in and hold back etc. She could begin by emulating what they do which might sound clunky to begin with, but it will help her feel into the music more until she gets it for herself.

I used to struggle with this too, perhaps partly because of extreme shyness/self consciousness. The worst thing was that it was called 'playing with feeling' and you were supposed to both feel things and express them, neither of which i could do easily, and both of which I was very self-conscious and embarrassed about. I didn't really know what it meant in terms of music, either.

It was easier in orchestra, when the conductor told us things to do that would change the feeling of a piece - slow down here, speed up there, attack the notes here, smoothly there, very soft and gentle here etc. It wasn't us that was having to 'expose' ourselves and our feelings, but we learned the idea that different elements of sound production could change the overal mood/feeling of a passage Sometimes he'd just give analogies of random things that the music should sound like - popcorn, or waves, or whatever, and even without actually telling us what to do, the image in our minds did help produce the right sound. But telling us actually what to do probably helped more to begin with!

So maybe don't tell her it's about 'feelings/expression'. I still don't think I feel much with music, though I do enjoy it very much intellectually, playing/singing especially, but also listening. I don't get carried away with passions the way some listeners do, and don't come away with the same sort of emotional experience that others in orchestra or choir talk about, but I do still appreciate it in a way I can verbalise.

Instead of 'play with expression', which just sounded so overwhelmingly exposing/panicky to someone like me, maybe get her teacher to be very specific with things she could do a various points - when to change tempo, when to change articulation, etc, without it being a big deal that it should come from her in some way, that she should be feeling something or know how to express that in music. Just some explicit instruction to start with; possibly even copying phrases and seeing how similar she can make it to how the teacher/recording does it - then the teacher can show several different ones and she can try them out, see what she likes, etc. But it turns it into a more techical/musical teaching moment that way, gradually learning what the effects sound like and how to make them, rather than some unidentified 'feelings' to express that can just make some children really embarrassed and self-conscious.

The advice to think about dancing or singing is good, especially if she sings in a good choir.

Even just thinking about where you would breathe and where you would phrase off if you were singing the piece helps greatly. Where would you lean on a note or where would you lighten it (e.g.you wouldn’t say or sing “I am singing beautifully” with equal weight to all syllables, you would sing “ I am SINGing BEAUtifully” with a little more stress on the sing than the beau). Where you would breathe, actually breathe - that tends to give an appropriate lightening of touch as you phrase off and just the right space before the next phrase starts.

What I (And my daughter now) also finds help is thinking about what picture/story/mood you want to paint.

That all being said, my teachers also gave me the instructions to how to achieve what they wanted at various points - e.g.marking in a slight holding back or tenuto or attack, or heavier or lighter tough. With my stringed instrument, it would also include exactly where on my bow, I should play or bow speed. Or they would sing/play what they meant. So maybe I learned how to play expressively without knowing I was doing so.

See if you can find some music that is played by a computer - just each note strictly in time with no dynamics.

It sounds robotic.

So playing the expression is the exact opposite.

Music is also the silence between the notes.

I agree with others, it's a difficult thing to teach someone and often comes with experience. I know many people who have got to high grades but still seem to play with very little emotion/expression. They have gone through the exams and can play the pieces they learnt note by note but lack that 'feel'.
As others have suggested, maybe try having her play and listen to other music that she loves and talk about what it is she likes about it, changes in the dynamics etc. She can then use this to help with her grade pieces too.

Only just seen this.

My advice is to get a student to imagine the story or pictures they have in their head when they play the piece. Through their performance, they are conveying the pictures or story to me. It does work because my most recent student just achieved a distinction in his grade 8. He's technically able but not very mature, so the story/picture idea clicked with him. I didn't agree with his interpretation of one of his g8 pieces, but his conviction swayed me, and the examiner's comments were most complimentary.

music teacher here. Right from the beginning, I get pupils to play the tunes in different styles. For example, play it like a frog/snake/elephant, or if you are angry/happy etc.
Later on, I get them to think about what the story of the music is, and how would they tell it if they were speaking? Performing music is like reading a story - you would use different voices for different characters; quiet voice for certain situations, loud voice for others. If you have a story in mind for the piece of music, it really helps with playing expressively.
hope that helps.

Thank you for all the further responses - lots of useful advice! DD has made some great strides since picking some songs she wanted to learn - Circle of Life from the Lion King really hit the spot. Hopefully she can bring some of that enthusiasm to the exam pieces.