If I talk to my piano technicians, I could probably tell you more. But I’ve given you a whole lot to think about. So hopefully, you have a piano technician who can take your piano to the next level. Let me know what works for you 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.

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Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to show you how to get a singing sound on the piano. Piano is actually a percussion instrument, yet there are such beautiful melodies that evoke the quality of the human voice, as well as other instruments. In fact, the piano is almost like a whole orchestra, with accompaniment, melody, and many other elements all right under your fingertips!

How can you evoke the quality of the human voice in your melodies?

When playing melodies on the piano, you want to mimic the human voice, or at least a wind instrument, or a string instrument with the continuity of the breath or the bow. On the piano, the notes, as I have stated so many times before, are fading away. We’re battling it all the time as pianists! But you want to get a beautiful, singing sound. So, I’m going to show you one technique today that is incredibly important. I’ve shown you in the past how to use the weight of the arm, transferring the weight smoothly from finger to finger in order to achieve smoothness. The weight of the arm is the analog to the breath, which gives your melodies continuity. Instead of calculating from note to note, you just let the weight of the arm transfer smoothly from note to note. What I want to show today is a technique related to that, which you can use in conjunction with the weight of the arm. But instead of just a rise and fall of each phrase, I’m going to provide a tip for you that works so incredibly well that you will not even believe it!

As notes get higher, you play them louder, and as they get lower, you play them more softly.

When you are singing, naturally, you’re going to get louder as you reach higher notes, and softer as you sing lower notes. It’s very difficult not to achieve this when you’re singing or playing a wind instrument. It comes out that way naturally. So if you want to evoke that sound on the piano, you have to play louder on the high notes and softer on the low notes.

Watch the video to see this technique demonstrated!

To demonstrate this, I will play the complete Burgmüller Pastorale. It’s a rather simple piece, so you can get the concept of this. Listen to how I ignore every aspect other than getting louder when going higher, and softer when playing lower, with very few exceptions. Listen to how splendidly it works to bring out a singing tone! If it works on this simple Burgmüller etude, imagine how splendidly it’ll work on other music. Try it on your Chopin nocturnes and your slow movements of Beethoven sonatas. Let me know what you think about this technique. See how it works for you! I’m really interested, so let me know in the comments at LivingPianos.com and YouTube. Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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Welcome to LivingPianos.com. I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how to get a unique sound out of the piano. It seems like all that’s involved in getting a sound out of the piano is just the speed at which the hammers hit the strings. So how could you possibly get a unique sound? Obviously, singers each have distinctive sounds because the physiology of everyone’s body and vocal chords are unique. With wind instruments, it’s the same thing because the whole vibrating chamber within you is essentially part of the instrument. But the piano is a mechanical contraption. How could you possibly get a unique sound? Yet, if you listen to different pianists, you hear drastically different sounds! You might wonder how this is possible. Well, there’s a lot to this subject.

First let’s talk a little bit about the mechanics of a piano.

I just happen to have an instrument with the action of a nine-foot concert grand piano I use on many of my videos. It’s my second prototype, modular piano system. You see that you push a key and the hammer goes up. Key goes down, hammer goes up. Really the only thing affecting the key once it’s pushed is its speed. It’s the only thing being measured. You might wonder how you can possibly get a unique sound. Is it really possible, the physics of it? The answer is yes! I’m going to explain how this is possible.

First of all, of course the speed has a lot to do with the tone and the loudness. Before we get into the subtleties of pedaling, what about just playing with your hands? Can you really get different qualities of sound just with your hands? For example, if I were to play Bach’s Sarabande Movement from his G Major French Suite no. 5, to see if it’s possible to achieve a different sound playing it with two completely different types of touches, I wonder if you can hear any difference.

See the accompanying video to hear for yourself!

You might have noticed some different shadings of expression. It is possible to play with completely different techniques in order to create different qualities of sound. The first time I just let my fingers be totally relaxed and floppy. I just let them play the attack of the note without any regard to the sustain of the note. You might be thinking it doesn’t make any difference on a piano, but it does! Why it does and how it does is partly due to the fluidities from note to note. You have the analog of the breath by the weight of the arm being transferred smoothly from note to note. That’s one aspect of sound. And secondly, the precise balance between the hands. It can be achieved by having different weights in the two hands and even different weights on the different sides of the hands. So right there, already, you can hear some difference.

The sustain pedal allows for even more expression.

When you add the complexities of what the pedals do on the piano, there are dramatic differences! Of course, if you put the pedal down before you play a note, it’s going to have an echoey sound. In fact, it almost has a little plume right after the initial attack. But if you want to achieve a truly sustained tone, you wouldn’t want to necessarily have that large swell on the attack. You probably would want to increase the sustain of the tone by pedaling just after the initial attack. You do this to capture more sustain, to make the note hold longer so you can create a smooth line instead of a percussive quality of each note. By pushing the pedal down about half a second after playing each note, you can achieve much more sustain. There’s a subtle difference in the tone. The sustain is more full when you put the pedal down after the initial attack. Unlike putting it down before you play the note, which just makes the beginning of it very loud and doesn’t really achieve that continuous quality you want, to mimic the sound of a human voice or a bowed instrument.

Many modern digital pianos will do some of the same things I’m talking about by using physical models of acoustic pianos. But naturally doing this on an acoustic piano is the ideal situation for you. I’m using Pianoteq physical modeling piano software which is not sample based. So you can really get a feel for the sound of the pedals and all the complexities of piano tone.

The una corda pedal can also help to create a sustained tone.

The una corda pedal, or soft pedal, is the one on the left. On a grand piano it shifts the whole action over so the hammers are not striking directly on all three strings. They strike more directly on two of them. You get a warmer tone, because the initial attack is less intense, yet the sympathetic vibration of the three strings is relatively more prevalent. You get a more sustained tone just by using the una corda pedal. It’s not just softer, but the envelope of the sound is different. The initial attack is less and the sustain relative to the attack is greater.

Combining the una corda pedal with the technique I showed you earlier of depressing the sustain pedal just after the initial attack, you can get a very sustained, continuous tone. And that’s just scraping the surface, because you can utilize the pedal in innumerable ways. You can try half-pedaling techniques, where the dampers are just coming a little bit in contact with the strings, just to be able to dampen the tone a little bit to get different tonal colors. There are even ways of fluttering the pedal or just using little bits of pedal here and there to bring out certain notes within a line. So yes, there are ways in which you can get different sounds out of the piano with the pedals as well!

Support the weight of your arms when playing massive chords instead of hitting the keyboard.

When you hit the keyboard, it’s a rather harsh sound. Whereas if you keep your fingers on the surface of the keys, you can precisely depress all of the notes with the same energy. It’s a more musically pleasing sound. You do this to avoid some of the notes being overplayed and harsh while others are underplayed. You don’t have the same control when you are hitting the keyboard from above. Try that on a fine grand piano and you’ll really hear a difference!

Pianists have dramatically different sounds! Ultimately one of the most important components of getting a unique sound out of the piano is how you balance the notes within a chord or the lines within counterpoint. You can achieve a tremendous variety of sound on the very same pieces of music. I often love to listen to a great number of performances of the same piece with great pianists. It’s so enlightening! I encourage you to do the same thing. YouTube is a tremendous resource for that. Look up almost any piece of music and you’ll usually have dozens of different performances from professionals, up and coming pianists, and even students. You’ll hear a great variety of sounds on the piano.

So yes, you can get a unique sound out of the piano! I’ve just shown you many techniques, and there’s even more for you to discover. I’d love to hear your ideas for getting a unique sound out of the piano! Let me know in the comments! Thanks so much 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

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Welcome to www.Livingpianos.com. I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about what Chopin sounds like without the pedal. When I talk about the pedal I’m talking about the sustain pedal. It’s the one on the right that holds all the notes when you put it down. It’s a glorious thing! It makes everything sound better, doesn’t it? And louder too! It helps you to connect what you can’t connect with your fingers.

What is the job of the pedal in music in general, and in Chopin specifically?

The pedal actually has two distinct functions. One is to connect notes you can’t connect with your hands. For example, you will see music where you have a whole note in the lower register and other things going on in the upper register. You can’t possibly hold that whole note because you’ve got other notes to play. Pedal to the rescue! There is no way to hold those notes with your hands. So sometimes music is written in such a way that you depend upon the pedal to play what’s written in the score. But there’s also the tone enhancement that the pedal affords you in your musical performance.

When you play a note with the pedal, you get a different sound than without the pedal.

If you listen to a note with no pedal compared to the same note played with the pedal down, you will hear that it gets more of a reverberant sound with the pedal down. When you depress the pedal the dampers lift off of all the strings so they are free to vibrate sympathetically, enhancing the tone. And indeed, when you depress the pedal it will have an effect upon the tone, the envelope of the sound. That is the shape of the decay. You can enhance the sustain by judiciously using the pedal just at the point at which the tone might be dying away. But that’s a subject for another day.

What does Chopin sound like without the pedal? Of course it depends upon what piece of Chopin. The famous E-flat Nocturne Opus 9 no. 2, for example, doesn’t really have notes you can’t hold in terms of what’s written in the score, but it’s implied to use the pedal.

When I play without the pedal I strive to connect as much as possible with my fingers.

I can’t connect everything I want to with just my fingers. But I try my best so that the pedal can enhance the sound and not be used as a crutch for things that I can connect with my fingers. You want to strive for your playing to be as legato as possible with your fingers before putting the pedal in. Because if you practice it with the pedal right from the get-go, you might not use the ideal fingering in order to connect as much as possible. So you want to connect with your fingers everything you can. Then it becomes obvious where to pedal. And of course, adding the pedal gives you a much more beautiful sound. Plus you can hold the bass notes to get a richer sound and a more linear quality to bass notes, and indeed the inner voices as well. With the pedal, you get the sense of the line instead of just the chords. The bassline has enough sustain from note to note, instead of just being sporadic.

With the Chopin G Minor Ballade indeed, you not only need the pedal to get the sense of the lines, but there are notes you just can’t possibly hold without it. This is the genius of Chopin! It’s amazing that he could conceive of, and write down music that would work so incredibly well with the pedal. Without the pedal it practically sounds like a whole different piece!

So that’s what the pedal adds to Chopin!

There’s a richness to the quality of the sound you get with the pedal. You get sustained harmonies and a linear aspect of all the lines, from the bass all the way to the treble. Not to mention the enhancement of the tone. Because you can use the pedal to get little gradations of tone in the melody to make one note kind of meld into the next by enriching it with sympathetic vibrations that the other strings allow for when you release the dampers with the sustain pedal.

I hope this has been interesting for you! Thanks so much 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

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Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s question is about what makes a pianist’s sound unique. This is a really tough question to answer, but I’m going to do my best!
My wife is a flutist. When she was very young, she studied with some great concert flutists. At one point she heard her teacher play her cheap student level flute. Sure enough, it no longer sounded like a cheap flute. It sounded like this great flutist! With wind instruments, it’s obvious. And it’s most obvious with singers. As soon as you hear a voice, you know who it is.

If you hear Frank Sinatra, there’s no doubt about who you’re listening to.

With piano, it’s much further removed from singing, certainly. It isn’t even like the distinctive sounds of wind and string players. But indeed, there are unique sounds different pianists produce. I grew up idolizing Horowitz and Rubinstein. The whole methodology of their pianistic approach was so drastically different from one another. So, this enters into it. Certainly, physiology has something to do with the sound of the piano as well. A massive man might have a bigger sound compared to a very slight man or woman. But not always. It goes much deeper. How you hear things will affect the way you approach the keyboard, and results in very different sound production.

What are some of those differences? Well, I was trained from a very young age by my father, Morton Estrin, to have the weight of the arms supported by the fingers instead of having limp fingers floating in midair and letting the fingers push down. Now, in very fast passages that’s exactly what you want to do, because you can’t support much weight when you’re going very quickly. But in a slow melody, you certainly want to have a sense of line. And the best way to get that is to use the weight of the arm. Using this method you can produce a fluid line on the piano like a singer. Playing just with the fingers, without supporting with the weight of the arm, results in a less fluid performance. Naturally, how the pedal comes into play also affects the tone tremendously.

There are some pianists who produce such unique sounds that you know who they are instantly!

I find this amazing. With the human voice, you’ve got the whole inside of the body and the vocal cords and the intonation of speech. On a wind instrument, you have the lips and you also have the throat and the vibrations within the chest cavity. There is so much more to identify sound. What do you have with the piano? The tone is produced by hammers hitting strings. How the heck do you achieve a distinct sound? Well, just like I have revealed previously, growing up I had very small, weak fingers, and yet I grew up hearing my father and some of his spectacular students. I always would strive to get that big beautiful sound. In fact, I contorted my body trying to make my spaghetti fingers produce anything close to the sound I heard from my father. But I made it happen in slow music particularly. Fast pieces were a little bit tougher for me having weak fingers, and I didn’t practice a great deal as a young child. But on slow music though, even from the youngest age, I was able to produce the sounds that I heard just from making it happen.

The sound of a pianist comes down to what they hear in their head and achieving that sound.

So that’s the lesson for today. It’s all about the connection of the hands to the ears. And that’s what you want to strive for in your playing so you can express your voice on the piano. I’d love to hear from any of you who have ideas about how to produce a beautiful sound on the piano! There’s a lot more to this subject, and I may produce a whole series about this on my Patreon channel. Thanks to all of you who have subscribed! I’ll see you next time. Again, I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource. Thanks again for joining me.

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Hi, I’m Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.com. Today, I’m going to talk a bit about how you can develop a huge range of tone on your musical instrument. This isn’t just about the piano. This is about all instruments.

I want to start with the original instrument of all time, which is the human voice.

We all have this instrument with us. For millennia it was the only instrument, until people started banging on things and blowing through things. Eventually we invented a whole range of instruments. But it’s really important to remember that it all came from the human voice, and that’s how we express things.

With a wind instrument, or the human voice, how can you develop control?

My wife, Florence Estrin, is a concert flutist. www.florenceflutist.com She has remarkable control in her playing, from the very softest to the loudest, with purity of sound on all notes in all registers. How is such a thing possible? Well, I’ll tell you her secret. Every day, with very few exceptions, she goes through what are called long tones. What are long tones? It’s going through every single note on the flute, one by one, starting as soft as possible with a slow swell to very loud – then a slow swell to very soft, creating a long tone of expression, keeping the pitch the same, which is very difficult on wind instruments. She does this in octaves, making sure the pitch is coherent from octave to octave. She even has a flute that she can take on vacation that’s not so expensive. She can take it out at the hotel at some point, she’ll go through at least a few minutes. Now, why would she go through the pains of long tones on vacation? It’s because with a wind instrument like the flute, the tone production of the lips is so intrinsic to the instrument, that even taking one day off you lose a little bit of that muscle tone. So, it’s not worth taking several days off, because then it takes several days to get back on that high level.

How do you do such a thing on a piano?

On the piano, what we have is the arm weight. How do you utilize the arm weight to get a good tone? Well, if you were to play something on the piano and not use your arm weight, there’s no way to really control your playing. It becomes very calculated. I’ve talked about this before. Sometimes, you have to use the entire arm when you’re playing big chords. For example, the beginning of the Tchaikovsky, B Flat Minor Piano Concerto. If you play those big chords without the arms, you get a harsh sound, compared to playing utilizing the arm weight. What do I mean by the arm weight? By putting your fingers right on the surface of the keys, and then releasing the whole weight of the arms all at once to the bottom of the keybed you can achieve a beautiful sound.

Use arm weight as the analog of the breath.

Now when playing melodic lines, the entire arm doesn’t have to impact each chord or each note. Instead, you lean into the entire line, leaning heavier with more arm weight in the middle of the phrase, creating the line. Just like in speech, it goes up in the middle of the sentence and comes down at the end. Your music has to do that too. You will get a beautiful sound because you have the analog of the breath with the weight of the arm transferring from key to key, rather than playing each note with no weight of the arm, which creates a calculated performance. This is how you develop a huge range of tone on the piano where you don’t get that ugly harshness. You have the support of the arms, much like the support of the breath for a singer or a wind player. It creates that beautiful sound and control.

Thanks so much for joining me. I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store. See you next time!

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