Get in a Gershwin groove with Peter Dugan, host of NPR’s From The Top! Gershwin’s three preludes strike a great balance: they’re simple enough for amateurs to play, but also glitzy enough to wow an audience.

Dugan’s lesson on the first prelude tackles every aspect of how to play Gershwin with authentic style: how articulation and dynamics help make the rhythm pop; how to naturally play with a vibrant pulse; fingering to make it easy and punchy to play; tips on leaps and hand crossings; how to toss your hand at gestures instead of aiming for fiddly perfection; and most importantly, how to forge an authentic connection with the audience. He also includes tips on how to get in the right frame of mind by improvising a prelude to the prelude!

Saunter through this sultry prelude with Peter Dugan, host of NPR’s From The Top. Gershwin’s Prelude No. 2 is like a blues lullaby on a hot summer night, and Dugan shows you how to play it with an unforced, unassuming flow.

Dugan’s advice covers all the essentials: how to approach the wide stretches; smoky half-pedaling for the right amount of chromatic haze; lazy but not exaggerated phrasing; varying each verse of the 12-bar blues. He reveals how accents, articulation, rhythm work together to give the right jazzy feel.

Tackle Gershwin’s zesty Prelude No. 3 with help from Peter Dugan, host of NPR’s From The Top. The lesson features tips on all aspects of the piece, including: how to keep the momentum with crisp and strict rhythm, punctuating with the right accents and “ghosted” beats; choosing fingerings that keep the melody snappy and give extra zing to big gestures; contrasting the articulation between sparkly and swooning, often by pulling the fingers for extra bite; how best to emphasize the arrivals and transitions; learning the harmony behind the colorful, chromatic scales; and how to approach the tricky octave section at the end by getting extra “location data” from your fingertips.