Tag Archives: steinway

27 Pianos in an 1100-Square-Foot House

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to tell you the story of how we had 27 pianos in an 1100-square-foot house. It’s actually the story of how I got into selling pianos. It all begins with how I started teaching piano.

I started teaching piano when I was still in high school.

I assisted my father, Morton Estrin, with his teaching, as my sister did before me. It was my part-time job throughout my conservatory years. Teaching has always been a mainstay. People would call me for lessons, and the first question I would always ask was, Do you have a piano? If they didn’t, I would tell them, honestly, you’re better off with a piano and no lessons than lessons and no piano. So I was turning away students right and left, and I couldn’t really afford to do that. We were kind of struggling financially. I was driving my Pinto all over the county and beyond! This was in southern Indiana since I graduated from Indiana University in Bloomington.

Eventually, I bought a big old upright and moved it myself.

I ended up moving hundreds of those big, tall uprights. Thank goodness I lifted correctly and fortunately, never hurt my back. So the next time somebody called for lessons, I asked if they had a piano, and they said no. I said that I had one they could try out. And sure enough, they bought the piano! I got another student, and everything was good. So I was bold and bought two more. But my piano technician came in and told me that the bass bridges on both pianos were cracked. I always checked out the pianos. I would look at the hammers and the soundboards, but I never thought of taking out the kickboard. Sure enough, the bass bridges were cracked on both pianos! My technician said he didn’t do that kind of work, but he recommended another tuner. So I called them up, and they came over. I didn’t really have the money to fix it. So I asked if there was any way he could do the work, and then when I sold the pianos, I could pay him and split the profit. And he was nice enough to agree to that. So we did that. Sure enough, both pianos sold, and they both made a profit. So I realized that this was something we could scale (pun intended!).

Before we knew it, we had five pianos, then seven pianos, and we topped out at 27 pianos!

We had a walk-out basement. I also had my recording studio down there. I’ve always been into music technology. We had a lot of the pianos upstairs because, among those pianos, six of them were grand pianos! We had two young children at the time. Eventually, we topped out at 27 pianos in an 1100-square-foot house! That’s right. This is real. It’s not just clickbait. We actually did that. Since that time, we’ve always had pianos in our home. And we still do right here in the Waterloo Arts District. This beautiful historical building was originally built in the 1860s, if you can believe it. We have two showrooms down here, and we live on the two levels above. Down in the basement, we have our ping-pong table. We play almost every night! The other half of our pianos are up the street at Treelawn Music Hall, where they have a phenomenal jazz program in a small venue and a large music hall where they have a 9-foot concert grand Steinway we sold them. We have our pianos there in what used to be a bowling alley. So we literally live with these pianos, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Now my teaching is all online, and it’s a joy. Teaching and pianos, along with performing and recording technology, have been the mainstays since my high school days. Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

The Greatest Challenge of Moving to Cleveland


Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today, I’m going to tell you what the greatest challenge has been with moving to Cleveland. Believe it or not, it’s finding enough great piano technicians! We started LivingPianos.com as the world’s First Online Piano Store in Orange County, California, in 2006, doing over 80% of our business out of the area. We were in one of the most expensive places in the country. And we lamented that we had to spend so much money to do business there when we were selling most of our business out of the area.

My sister, Coren Estrin Mino, is also a pianist.

She graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Music years ago, and she settled here. She’s a pianist and a teacher. So I’m no stranger to Cleveland. But think of the arduous task of moving our store with dozens of pianos. We had a recording studio. We even had an Airbnb we rented out. Not to mention our home. Moving was a huge undertaking, but it has been incredibly worthwhile!

We loved Southern California.

We were 20 minutes away from Laguna Beach. We have friends there who we loved to visit. But coming home, if it was after 2:00 pm, we would be stuck in rush hour traffic. We had to plan our whole day around the traffic. I don’t miss that. Of course, the weather in Cleveland cannot compare to Southern California. But there are a lot of great things about Cleveland.

Cleveland is a great place to live!

We’ve got the second-largest playhouse district in the country! The real blessing is having the Cleveland Orchestra 10 minutes away. There’s a necklace of metroparks around the city, and we are 10 minutes from the lake. So spread the word! If there’s anybody you know who works on pianos who would like a new life in a place that has a rich cultural history, Cleveland is the place. And it’s very affordable to live here. Come join our team of great technicians! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

Why You Must Accept Your Limitations

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about why you must accept your limitations. I don’t want to bring you down. As a matter of fact, it’s quite the opposite! Anybody who’s accomplished anything great, it’s because they accept their own limitations. You look at people who are masters at any craft or art, and you think everything must just come easily to them. What you don’t see is the hard work that goes into it. I can’t tell you how many times I have students who think they’re the only ones for whom piano is so hard. It’s actually really hard for everyone!

Different things are difficult for different people.

Some people excel at some things, and some people excel at other things. But the key to being able to accomplish anything is to accept where you’re at and what it takes to advance. And it takes way more than you think it does. This goes for everything. When you see a beautiful painting that’s absolutely photorealistic, you’re in awe of the quality of the work. You can’t imagine how it’s done. You might think the artist is just a genius and it comes naturally to them. But if you lived with that person, and watched them work, you’d realize the countless hours they spent working and crafting that painting to look like that. It doesn’t just happen. They accepted what it took to create that masterpiece. The same is true in your piano practice.

The learning process takes time and dedication.

It’s very easy to dismiss things and think, “I should be able to get this. Why can’t I get this?”. It’s because you’re human! I have a video that hasn’t come out yet. The editing has been mind-bogglingly difficult because I wanted to put the score in the whole video. I sat down for a while one day and practiced a piece that I had very briefly studied years and years ago. I just showed how I practice. It’s a Mozart fantasie, and there’s a fast section in there. I practiced just that part of it. It’s about a 40-minute practice session. I knew it was too long for anybody to watch.
So I have parts going in fast-motion. It shows how long I take to learn something—to really get it under my fingers and into my head. Just because I can play all this music from memory doesn’t mean that it just comes easily to me, It’s a meticulous process.

You can see for yourself how I learn a new piece of music!

I have a video I did years ago. I flipped open the Chopin Mazurkas randomly, found a mazurka I’d never even heard before, and started memorizing it. You can watch that here. You’ll see what it takes. So don’t beat yourself up! Accept that this is what it takes. Then you decide if it’s worth the effort or not. But to think that it should come easily—you’re not going to get anywhere with that type of thinking. You’ll just get frustrated, and you’ll think less of yourself. Just accept your limitations, and from there, you can accomplish almost anything! That’s the message for today. I hope it’s inspiring for you and not discouraging. Let me know in the comments here at LivingPianos.com and on YouTube! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

5 Ways to Develop Your Sight-Reading

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to give you five ways to develop your sight-reading skills. Have you ever watched somebody who’s a good sight-reader play a piece of music they’ve never seen before, and it almost sounds like a performance, and wished you could do that? There are countless reasons why sight-reading is a joy if you can do it. In high school, I was a pretty advanced player, but my sight-reading was at an elementary level. I have a video about that. But today I’m going to give you practical tips that you can use to develop your sight-reading skills.

1. Choose pieces that are at your reading level.

I know it can be tempting. You hear a piece of music, and you want to play it so badly. So you try to read through it, and it’s such a struggle that it’s discouraging. More than that, you can’t really get a feel for the piece because you’re stopping and starting so many times. Accept the level that you are at and read pieces at that level. If you read enough of them, you will gain from the experience. Over time, you will grow and be able to read more complex scores.

TIPS FOR IMPROVING YOUR SIGHT-READING – SIGHT-READING PART 2

2. Play slowly enough.

You want to hear the piece the way it’s meant to be heard. Maybe the beginning isn’t that hard for you, so you take it at a comfortable tempo. But then you’re slowing down, speeding up, and stopping, and you really don’t get a feel for the piece. If you play slowly enough, it’s much more valuable. Even though it might seem frustrating at first, you will gain much more from the experience.

3. Have some pieces that are reading pieces.

I don’t know how many of you are like I was, but I used to memorize all my pieces. When it came to sight-reading, I just couldn’t do it. Well, an answer to that is to have some pieces that are reading pieces. Maybe there are pieces that you can’t really sight-read. You can read parts of it, but other parts are a struggle. Take those pieces and work on the parts you can’t read. Go through them, practicing hands separately, taking little phrases at a time, and get those sections so that you can read through them. You make it a reading piece that you never memorize. You always read it. You use the score, and you gain the confidence to be able to play the piece with the music. This is incredibly important if you ever want to play chamber music, because you’re not going to memorize every single thing that you want to read.

4. Look at groups of notes.

When you’re reading English, you’re not looking at letters; you’re looking at words. It’s the same thing with music. You don’t look at each individual note. You look at chords and clusters of notes, and you grab the meaning of the notes so you understand the essential structure. Instead of just painstakingly looking at each note, try to recognize patterns and intervals so you can grab groups of notes.

IMPROVE YOUR SIGHT-READING BY LOOKING AT CHUNKS OF MUSIC

5. Play with other musicians.

This is the most important tip of all, and this was my epiphany with reading. This is the way you truly learn to become a good sight-reader. Why? When you’re playing by yourself, when you miss something, it’s only natural to stop and make corrections. You’re programmed to do that in your practice. It’s almost impossible to keep going when you’re missing notes. But when you’re playing with other people, you have no choice but to keep going. So you learn to make that connection among the three aspects of what you see, what you hear, and what you feel.

THE 3 ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF SIGHT-READING

If you have any other tips for sight-reading that aren’t covered here, please leave them in the comments for other people. I know this is such an important subject for people. We all want to be better readers, and anything that helps is welcome. Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

How Your Room Can Affect Your Piano: A Tale of Two Pianos

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how a room can affect your piano. This is an incredible story that I would love to share with you. My sister is also a pianist, and a couple of years ago, we were playing a two-piano concert together. At that time, my sister lived in the Cleveland area, where she still lives. But we were in Southern California. So we didn’t get to rehearse together until she came to California.

At the time, I had two spectacularly great Baldwin SF-10 seven-foot pianos.

While they were both great pianos, there was one that was clearly the better instrument. One of them was a high-gloss black. The other one was satin black. The high-gloss piano was a magical instrument. The other one was very good, but that high-gloss black was my go-to instrument. I loved playing that piano. Since she was coming and we wanted to rehearse in advance of the concert that was going to be at the nearby Bowers Museum, I decided to go ahead and move the two pianos into our recording studio, which was right next door. Here’s where it gets really interesting.

After the pianos were moved, I sat down with them, and I couldn’t believe it, but they switched!

The great piano was now the satin SF-10! The high-gloss one was good but didn’t have the same character and warmth as the other one. It was the same two pianos, but in two different rooms. One was clearly the better piano in one room, but as soon as they went to the other room, because of the different acoustics, it was exactly the opposite. They were both still fine pianos, beautifully regulated, nicely voiced, and in tune. But one was so much nicer and warmer, and it was the opposite of what it was before. So how does this impact you?

Where you place your piano in your home can make a tremendous difference in how it sounds and even how it feels.

Did you know that a piano with a brighter sound can feel like it has an easier action? Sometimes a piano can have a heavy action, and yet it doesn’t feel heavy because it has a bright sound. The opposite can also be true. Sometimes a piano has normal action weight, but if it’s voiced on the warm side, you have to work more to get the tone out, so it feels heavy. Room acoustics can play the same tricks on you—these psychoacoustic effects. You can try treating your room, and that can actually make a big difference. You could put a rug under your piano or hang curtains to deaden the sound. Or to liven up a room, you could put a flat piece of wood or even plexiglass under your piano to get the sound from underneath the piano to reflect out because half the sound of a piano comes out from the bottom.

Think about the challenge of trying to buy a piano.

Going from showroom to showroom, or even within one store, going from room to room, how do you know what these pianos really sound like? It’s like the situation I described—how these two pianos swapped. Which one was the great one, and which one was the good one. There is no easy answer to this question, but it’s something to be aware of.

Think about what room to put your piano in, how to treat the room, and where to place the piano in the room.

I’ll give you one more example. I was once in a recording studio with a vaulted ceiling. There was a piano in the room, and we tried moving the piano around. My natural inclination was to put the piano where the ceiling was low so it would project into the room. But it’s exactly the opposite! Putting the piano in the high ceiling part of the room and projecting into the lower part, in that case, sounded much better. So there’s a lot to consider. Acoustics is both a science and an art. The acoustics of a room have a tremendous effect on the sound of your piano. Share your experiences with pianos and acoustics! Have you ever moved your piano and noticed a change in the sound or feel of the instrument? Let us know in the comments here at LivingPianos.com and on YouTube! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

Can You Play at 208 on the Metronome?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m asking: Can you play at 208 on the metronome? Metronomes have all kinds of speeds, typically starting at 40 and going to 208. There are metronome applications that you can put on your phone where any number can be selected. But there’s a reason why these numbers exist in the first place. I’m going to show you that to begin with, and then I’m going to explain some things about the metronome that you probably don’t know.

The slowest speed on most metronomes is 40, and the fastest is 208.

Any speed slower than 40 would be very difficult to follow because it wouldn’t feel like a pulse anymore. Any speed faster than 208 would be very hard to follow as well. Now, how to set a metronome is a whole other issue. Metronomes have guides on them for how to set the tempo showing the range of speeds for Adagio, Andante, Allegro, etc. I’m going to show you how farcical that whole idea is by demonstrating it for you. I’m going to play the famous Mozart C-major Sonata K. 545. I’m going to set the metronome at 208. Can I play this piece at 208!? Watch the video to see for yourself!

It depends on what note value you assign the ticks.

I let the metronome tick sixteenth notes. It wasn’t fast at all! On the flip side, I set the metronome on 40 and let the ticks equal whole notes. That is a very fast tempo! With a beat that slow, trying to feel the pulse is difficult. So really, you must choose the note value that makes the most sense.

You don’t need accented beats on your metronome.

All the metronome apps have accented beats, and it’s really unnecessary for most purposes. The reason why I don’t like that, aside from it being completely unnecessary, is that when you’re practicing with the metronome, you have to wait for that first beat. You can’t just go in on the next beat. If you were playing a slow piece in six, it would take up a lot of time waiting for the first beat. So a simple quartz metronome is your best bet. The other problem with many digital metronomes is that they have every numeric value. You don’t need every single number. If you’re going from 116 to 117, it’s an infinitesimally small increment. 116 to 120, which is what a metronome has, makes more sense. So you should find a metronome or metronome application that has the true numbers of a traditional metronome, not every number.

So yes, you can play at 208 on the metronome!

You can play at 208, but it depends on what note value you select. You must select a note value that makes sense. In that Mozart, for example, 208 was ridiculous. Having the 16th note tick doesn’t make sense. So what would make sense? I think having quarter notes tick at about 132 would be fine. That would be more reasonable. You could perhaps have it at half that speed and have half notes ticking. So those are a couple of reasonable subdivisions of the beat that make sense. But sometimes it can help to put the metronome on a faster speed to make sure everything is quantized correctly. Or you might take a very slow speed so you get the feel of the pulse where you want to have a little bit more freedom within the beat for rubato. And I recommend ignoring the tempo indications on your metronome because it really depends on the note value you have ticking. I hope this is helpful for you! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com