Secrets of the Pianists’ Art

  1. Glissando
  • with either hand, keeping it relatively firm (clenched), place four well-rounded fingers with all four nails evenly touching the white keys
  • run either hand up and down the keyboard over 2 or 3 octaves silently
  • repeat this noiseless glissando, depressing the lowest (ascending) or highest (descending) notes thus achieving a painless pianissimo glissando
  • the deeper the depression the greater the dynamic
  • this can also work with the black keys
  • and at any tempo
  • some situations improve by performing the first and/or last glissando notes with the other hand 
  1. Balance within chords
  • to bring out a particular note within a chord, anticipate by a millisecond with an acciaccatura
  1. Separate hands 
  • practise one hand only (particularly left) using ten fingers, especially useful for accompanying leaps
  1. Awkward passages
  • these can often improve by playing them backwards (also by transposing to other keys and at varied registers) and to train the ear, using 10 fingers instead of 5
  1. finger substitution
  • to help finding our way around the keyboard without having to remove eyes from the score
  • to help a true legato
  1. misleading barlines
  • take no account of the music! a similar situation to lines on a map or globe taking no account of topography
  • only useful for reference

various thoughts from 2017

I began this site in 2017, and now, more than eight years later, it feels like the right moment to pause, take stock, and look back on what has been a deeply creative journey. I have been genuinely delighted by the interest it has attracted, with visitors from over 80 countries around the world.

It also seems the right time to add a short footnote explaining some of my more personal thoughts on editing modern piano music. When I look back through my old printed scores, I am always struck by how many markings feel unnecessary — cluttering the page and, at times, obscuring the music itself. I was also reminded of how often the notation was tightly “squeezed,” no doubt a legacy of the high cost of paper.

With today’s paperless possibilities, I felt free to rethink this approach. I now use fewer staves per page, allow the music more space to breathe, and give careful thought to page turns, so that the performer’s experience remains as natural as possible.

I have also chosen to remove some barlines, using dashed barlines instead to suggest phrase lengths, showing only the minimum number of rests, and occasionally clarifying time and key signatures. My own ideas on fingering and the distribution of material between the hands are offered in the hope that they may be useful to future generations of students.

I tend to avoid long phrasing slurs, which are often no more than a general indication of legato. Clefs have been examined with particular care, and I frequently use smaller note sizes for accompanying figuration. Diamond-headed notes indicate material that may be omitted, while blank noteheads show passages to be taken by the other hand.

By allowing more space on the page, I can include up to three staves and limit the layout to a maximum of five systems per page—always with clarity and musical intention in mind.

free scores

Since October 2017 pianopracticaleditions.com has published free scores for the study and rehearsal of Ravel’s complete keyboard works. The project launched in London over 20 years ago, has finally come to fruition with the final piece on the list — La Valse.

Pianists and musicians can now enjoy a new, evaluative edition of this great composer’s œuvre, completely revamped with thought-provoking and updated layout; using the latest digital music notation technology, PPE audaciously offers radical solutions to the challenging pianistic problems posed by these great works.

  • using different size noteheads
  • hand disposition redistributed to make passages easier to perform, or more persuasive
  • some modification of both key and time signatures
  • suggestions for sostenuto pedal use
  • more space for staves and taking notes
  • maximum attention for the positioning of page turns
  • set out by a professional pianist

It was observed that many major piano work editions need a thorough reappraisal and that pianists and teachers might appreciate a fresh look at the layout together with some pertinent ways to solve musical and technical problems. Designed to work in conjunction with traditional scores, PPE was created by Ray Alston to promote practical and innovative rehearsal texts of challenging piano music, the very antithesis of urtext, expressing ideas which have been developed over a number of years. They try to eliminate textual inaccuracies, with new reasoning in the presentation of printed music for advanced pianists; often radical and controversial, they might also have been called Piano Interpretive Editions in that they are unlike the traditional texts to which we are used. They are free to download and work well with tablets.

Inevitably, by including tricks of the trade, there will be some minor “alterations” of the score, the adding or elimination of an octave, a slight tweaking of the accompaniment, using the pedals in novel ways — craft secrets in recreating music from the “dots”. Important changes of notation and spelling have been inserted, always rigorously adhering to the spirit of the composer’s original intentions.

The Franco-Polish pianist, Vlado Perlemuter and his assistant, Marcelle Heuclin taught Ray to be innovative in the use of fingering and hand disposition to better serve the music. At the Paris Conservatoire these distinguished pedagogues were in a constant quest for intelligent fingering and this was one of the most fascinating and practical aspects of their teaching. Searching for the best finger and hand distribution was not only to facilitate the performance of a technically difficult passage but to underline the musical shape of a phrase, or to produce a more effective sound, and Ray is always grateful to have studied with them for their original and pianistic wisdom.

Although the sostenuto pedal had been patented by Steinway as early as 1874, it was only available on grand pianos and the most expensive uprights, and the editor suspects that publishers and composers of the time were loth to exclude music-buying patrons, use of this rare device possibly dissuading them from buying the score. However, in conjunction with the sustaining pedal it can be used with great orchestral effect as so much of the music of Ravel and the “impressionists” demands a bass “pedal point”.

A Music Theorist’s Perspective on These Editions

I teach an online music theory and composition course, and I’ve recently started using your Piano Practical Editions in class. Today, I gave an impromptu analysis of Debussy’s Des Pas sur la Neige (Centenary Edition, 2018), and I wanted to thank you — your edition made an enormous difference.

The clarity of the layout made the piece’s harmonic structure immediately visible. My students could easily see how the contrasting sections (D minor vs. Eb minor) supported and reharmonized the primary sonority. Your flexible staff system — temporarily dropping or adding staves as needed — highlighted registral and voice-leading changes in a way that standard editions often obscure.

What really struck me was how the visual design resembled the spirit of a Schenkerian graph. While there’s no reduction of notes, the visual simplification functions similarly: it clears away clutter and guides the eye toward deeper structural relationships.

I also appreciated how your engraving avoids the usual “four-bars-per-line, five-lines-per-page” box format. Instead, the systems feel like organic musical phrases — grouped by logic, not by page geometry. This subtle shift made it dramatically easier for my students (and for me) to analyze the music in real time. I’ve realized that I actually prefer reading multiple ledger lines on a single staff rather than using a bulky grand staff—even though bass clef comes naturally to me—perhaps because it keeps my eyes moving laterally across the page.

If you’re open to it, I’d love to have your blessing to continue using your editions in my class when available. They’ve proven to be an invaluable tool for both performance insight and theoretical analysis.

Thank you again for such thoughtful and elegant work.

Steve Steele

12 July 2025

https://www.stevesteele.com/

a happy pianist — comments about Ondine

Thank you so much for your warm-hearted  generosity in making these piano practical editions freely available.  You have helped me overcome a huge mental block and achieve a lifelong desire – to play Ravel’s Ondine.  I’m a good amateur pianist and had no fear or difficulty about tackling Debussy’s Reflets dans L’Eau but I always thought Ondine was out of my league. Your edition made me realise that trying to read the Durand edition was as great, if not greater, a barrier to learning it than the technical demands of the piece. Your helpful edition has “opened magic casements upon faery lands forlorn” and led me into a ravishing new sound world and a new level of playing that I didn’t think possible. I am very happy and very grateful.