Every day, the first thing I do when I get up is to go to the piano and play music – often times before I’ve even gotten dressed! After an entire night, there is always fresh music percolating in my head. Sometimes I play music in my dreams. It can be something from my classical repertoire. Other times it is music that comes to me while I am sleeping!
Is it good to play the piano first thing in the morning? I believe there are great benefits to playing when you first arise. Before you have to deal with the myriad tasks that are demanded of you, taking a moment to enjoy the beauty of music starts your day with fresh creativity that stays with you! It also gives you an opportunity to limber up your hands for further play and practice.
In the accompanying video, you will hear an improvisation that I played first thing in the morning. Hope you enjoy it!
This is Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.com Your Online Piano Storeinfo@LivingPianos.com 949-244-3729
Let’s get some historical context to this question. When I was growing up, if we saw a piano tuner come into a home carrying a strobe tuner, and that’s all that was available at that time, well, you knew right away that you had basically an incompetent tuner. Why is this? Because the technology at the time wasn’t accurate enough to take into account so many aspects of tuning a piano, like stretch-tuning.
What is stretch-tuning?
If a piano is mathematically, perfectly in tune, it’s actually out of tune because your ears hear pitches in the high register flat. They have to be stretched. And the strobe tuner just does simple math, so it’s not going to sound right.
The technology has come a long way. Any really experienced tuner knows that you can’t tune a baby grand the same way you would tune a concert grand. In fact, each piano requires a different method of tuning. You may wonder, “Why is that?”
There’s something called overtones. The fundamental pitch, that is the pitch you hear when you strike a note, is only part of the sound, and there are overtones coloring the sound.
And those must also balance and mesh with other notes, so a small piano, for example, may have very strong overtones at a certain register, and those overtones have to sound good with fundamental pitches of higher notes. It’s very complicated.
How can machines possibly take that into account? By having virtual tunings of hundreds of first-class piano technicians, their models are loaded in the software. It’s possible to tune a piano with software like CyberTuner or TuneLab is another one. What they do is, first you punch in the size of the piano. The next thing is really interesting. It has you play all the octaves of the piano, one by one, so it hears where the piano is in pitch.
This is incredibly helpful because it can save vast amounts of time. Normally, if a piano is low in pitch, it takes a couple of passes, of pitch raises, because once you raise the pitch in one section, the other section goes out of tune, so it takes several tunings.
By playing all the notes of the piano, and it knows what size piano, it knows how much to stretch the tuning in different registers of the piano, so that by the time you’re done, it’s decently in tune. It’s pretty incredible technology.
Here’s the thing, though. Many tuners today use technology, but there are also tuners who tune completely by ear, and increasingly, I find that tuners utilize both because ultimately, there are decisions that can be made by a fine tuner, but checking the work and getting suggestions with the technology, nobody can complain about that, right?
If you think that maybe you can just take one of these software programs and be able to tune your piano, realize that not only is an arduous task, tuning a piano, but just setting the tuning pins and the strings so they’re going to hold, you’ve got to tune a lot of pianos in order to get to that point.
So you should have a healthy respect for your piano technician.
I hope this has been helpful for you. Again, I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store info@LivingPianos.com 949-244-3729
Living in Southern California, we are used to almost perfect weather. I remember when first moving to California, the weather broadcast seemed like a joke because every single day it was the same, perfect, “Disneyland” sky! So, the question is how weather affects your music.
There is an element of physiology involved. Naturally, if you suffer from joint problems, cold or wet weather may exacerbate your condition. More than that:
There are studies showing how sunlight can affect your mood through your body’s natural circadian rhythms.
What is so special today is that it is the first day in months that it hasn’t been rainy or at least cloudy here in “sunny” California! So, we are going to hear the impact this has on my music for you in the accompanying video. Hope you enjoy!
This is Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.com Your Online Piano Store info@LivingPianos.com 949-244-3729
Today’s show is intrinsically important for a wide range of people and careers, and it’s applicable to almost everything! The subject is, letting go of the ego in your music. You may wonder what I mean by that? In order to play a public performance, you have to have a great deal of confidence. I’m not talking about preparing a great deal to have the ability to go out in front of people and do your best. That’s important as long as it’s reality-based. Obviously, if you aren’t prepared, and you expect wonderful things to magically happen in performance, then you are somewhat delusional! But having confidence and going out with the right attitude, realizing that no one’s going to get hurt no matter what happens is necessary. Here is where the ego may enter into things.
You must understand that it’s not all about you.
Ultimately, when you perform, you want to be able to let go of how people are thinking and feeling about you, which seems kind of contradictory. You’re in front of people, you’re performing, but this doesn’t apply just for performing.
This relates to composing as well.
You may try composing music you think people want to hear. For example, you hear music that’s popular, that’s getting on a lot of playlists and you’re thinking, “Well maybe I should compose something like that.” This is really not an honest approach. You want to have personal conviction for what you do, and if you let go of the id and just be one with the music you can reach a much deeper level. of expression.
Where this is perhaps most challenging is not in composing where you have time to go over the score again and again and decide to burn it if it’s not an honest expression, or even performing where at least you get a chance to refine the music again and again and have a pretty good idea of what’s going to come out at your performance. But in improvisation where you really let go – that is a time that I find personally is the most intrinsically challenging in order to be honest in expression, because it’s so hard not to have that part looking down on you thinking, “Hey is that cool. Are people going to like that?”
It is necessary to have kind of two brains, the brain that’s doing and the brain that’s watching.
One example of that is at a live performance when you make sure you’re not getting too excited. You’re in front of an audience and things are going great and you’re taking a really fast tempo, possibly faster than you’ve ever taken before. You have to have that other part of yourself looking down in kind of a motherly or a fatherly way saying, “Be careful Bob, don’t get carried away!” keeping things under control even though it’s exciting. There is always that duality. But what I’m talking about is something not about watching over yourself in a caring way, but in an egotistical way, in a way that smacks of, “Am I showing how cool I am? Are those changes sophisticated enough to impress people? I hope people are blown away with my technique. Maybe I should take this section faster so people think I’m great.”
That is dangerous because it alienates the audience.
Audiences don’t care how good you are.
They just want to feel what you’re feeling and if you’re just feeling it’s all about you, then they’re not going to get the sense that you care about them.
On the accompanying video, I’m going to play an improvisation off the cuff with no preconceived notions – totally raw.
I have no idea what it’s going to be, and it is a little scary. It is like being emotionally naked, and I hope I can keep the internal chatter at bay and just give you an honest expression of what I’m feeling wherever it takes me. I don’t know where that will be until I play and get into it. So here we go, and this is all about getting rid of the ego in your music. Let’s see if I can achieve some sense of that here right now for you.
Well you know it’s a funny thing. I play freeform improvisations all the time and it’s so much easier to do them when not being put on the spot. I think I got some nice things there. I wish that everything I played was recorded because I’d love to share them with you! I’ll do more of these for you, because you never know what will come out.
The message today is to let go of the ego, and play from your heart without worrying about how you’re being judged. This goes for everything you do whether it’s writing, painting even talking to people in conversation. It’s not about showing off and showing how great you are – it’s about listening to people and trying to reach people because that’s all we have in this world ultimately, isn’t it? I hope this has been inspiring for you.
This is Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com Your Online Piano Store info@LivingPianos.com 949-244-3729
The organ and piano share a similar keyboard layout. So, you may wonder how easy it is for an organist to play the piano and for pianists to approach the organ. One of the first challenges pianists face playing the organ is being able to play melodies with their feet on the pedals of an organ!
Organist, Roger Chaussee is going to demonstrate playing on our 1927 Steinway model L grand piano. This model L has just been rebuilt with new strings, pinblock, hammers, and other action parts. You will hear Roger first explore the unique sonorities this instrument offers with something that is quite rare:
A Classical Improvisation!
Playing classical improvisations is almost a lost art but is something Roger and I both enjoy doing. You can see the beauty of the refinished cabinet and internals of this piano which look very much like it did nearly a century ago when it was originally manufactured.
One of the challenges of organists approaching the piano is the expressive possibilities of the touch of a piano since organs don’t respond to how hard or soft you depress the keys. Fortunately, Roger began his musical studies on the piano. So, you can enjoy his expressive playing of some original music in the accompanying video.
Pianists often times miss the aid of the sustain pedal when playing the organ.
Fortunately, pianists like myself practice the piano with no pedal a great deal making the transition to organ a bit more seamless. But the many registrations of sound possible on the organ offers a whole other level to explore!
I hope you enjoy this exploration of playing the piano and organ on this Steinway grand piano. Thanks for joining Roger and me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com Your Online Piano Store info@LivingPianos.com 949-244-3729
Hi, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store with a viewer question. Does installing a player system on your piano affect the touch? This is actually a really good question. I’ve never addressed this exact question, even though I have other videos on player systems on pianos.
Well, first some historical context. Going back to the early 20th century when player pianos were really popular, pianos had different accommodations for them. As a matter of fact, many of them had shorter keys and they weren’t exactly the same type of touch on many of the player pianos.
Well, today, the way player pianos are worked is that a slot is cut in the key bed. I know that sounds really scary, and indeed, if somebody doesn’t know what they’re doing, they can destroy a piano. But if it’s an experienced installer, it has absolutely zero effect upon the piano, the way it functions, or the way it plays because here’s the thing, the player mechanism doesn’t actually come in contact with the keys or the action in any way. So, it can’t possibly have any effect whatsoever on the function of the piano or the way it plays, or even the way it sounds when you play it without the player playing.
That’s the good news. So, if you want to be able to hear your piano playing, here’s something else that’s really remarkable, there’s a tremendous library of the original player pianos, the expressive players from over 100 years ago. The great pianists, some of whom made piano rolls even before audio recording was developed. Like do you know there’s Debussy, there’s some horrifically sounding piano recordings made on 78 RPM records of Debussy. But you can listen to Debussy and Gershwin, Rachmaninoff, Paderewski, all on piano rolls, which had been converted digitally.
It seems amazing that you can pick up your iPad or your smartphone and listen to Rachmaninoff play on your piano, his performance. But this is all possible with player technology. The good news is, no, it doesn’t affect how when you play your piano, the piano feels or sounds.
Thanks for the great questions. Again, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com Your Online Piano Store info@LivingPianos.com 949-244-3729
