Piano Lessons- Music Theory Lessons

I’m Robert Estrin, and today we have an intriguing question: Why can’t you buy a piano online? You might think it’s odd coming from me, given that Living Pianos was the world’s first online piano store, started in 2006. However, for the most part, you really can’t buy a piano online. Let me explain.

Practical Challenges

First, there are practical challenges. How do you ship a piano if you buy one online? If you live in Florida and buy a piano from California, how do you get it there? Who will tune it? These practicalities are significant, but there’s more to it.

Protected Territories in the Piano Industry

The piano industry still operates on an old business model of protected territories. This means you can’t shop for pianos the same way you shop for other items online. For most products, you can easily compare prices and buy from the cheapest source. But with pianos, the agreement between manufacturers, distributors, and dealers limits sales to specific geographical areas.

Unique Aspects of Pianos

Every piano is unique, which adds another layer of complexity. The agreements between manufacturers and dealers mean that dealers can only sell within their designated areas. If you visit a store, they can sell to you, but they can’t quote prices over the phone for out-of-area customers.

Exceptions and Loopholes

There are exceptions. Some large dealers skirt the rules and sell out of their designated areas. If caught, they may have to pay a commission to the local dealer. However, as long as the dealer is significant enough, manufacturers often look the other way.

The Living Pianos Model

Living Pianos has based its business model on selling used pianos. Nobody can restrict the sale of used pianos across the country. High-end brands like Steinway, Mason & Hamlin, and Bechstein are often worth the cost of shipping, making this model feasible. We provide high-quality videos and photos so you know what you’re getting. Experienced pianists are always welcome to visit and try the pianos.

Digital Pianos

Digital pianos are another exception. They can be shipped easily, but some digital pianos fall under the same protected territories as acoustic pianos. There are two categories: MI (Musical Instruments) sold in places like Guitar Center and Sweetwater, and home units with protected territories.

Your Thoughts?

What do you think about protected territories in the piano industry? Is it good to protect dealers who invest in inventory, or should you be able to shop anywhere for the best price? Let’s get a discussion going at LivingPianos.com. We primarily sell used pianos and abide by all rules for new pianos, ensuring the survival of the piano business.

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today we have an important topic: How to avoid destroying your piano. While we’ve discussed many things you should do for your piano, today we’ll focus on what to avoid. Some of these tips are common sense, but others might surprise you.

Avoid Hot Air Vents

Placing your grand piano over a hot air vent or near one can cause significant damage in just a few months. The dry air can warp and crack the soundboard, making the piano a total loss unless you opt for expensive repairs. Always ensure that your piano is not in the path of a hot air vent.

Stable Temperature and Humidity

Maintaining a stable environment is crucial for your piano. Extreme temperature swings can affect tuning stability, while high humidity can cause rust and corrosion. Conversely, very low humidity can dry out the pin block and felt parts, leading to a noisy action and other issues. Aim for 45-50% humidity, and use a hygrometer to monitor the levels. Consider using a room humidifier or a piano lifesaver system to keep conditions stable.

Protect from Sunlight

Sunlight can bleach your piano’s finish in a matter of months. It can also affect tuning stability if it shines directly on the soundboard. Even if you use window treatments to block UV light, it can still damage your piano. So protect your piano from direct sunlight to keep the finish looking new.

Regular Tuning

Pianos that haven’t been tuned for years will require multiple tunings to stabilize. Similar to changing the oil in your car, regular maintenance is essential. Neglecting this can lead to pitch issues and unstable tuning.

Avoid Furniture Polish

Using furniture polish on your piano can cause wax build-up that requires professional removal. For satin finishes, use a soft microfiber or cotton cloth. For high gloss finishes, a microfiber cloth with a bit of Windex works well.

Reshape Piano Hammers

Piano hammers can become grooved and hardened over time, leading to a harsh tone. They need to be reshaped periodically, but this should be done by an experienced technician to avoid damage.

Don’t Tune with Pliers

Using pliers to tune your piano can strip the tuning pins, causing severe damage. Invest in a proper tuning wrench or hammer, available on Amazon, and avoid makeshift tools.

Avoid Wood Stoves

Wood stoves can severely dry out a room, damaging your piano’s finish and internal components. If you must have a wood stove in the same room, use a humidifier to add moisture back into the air.

Beach Environments

Living near the beach can expose your piano to high humidity, leading to rust and corrosion. Use a string cover to protect the strings from excessive humidity if you can’t keep windows closed.

Use Correct Parts

Replacing piano parts with incorrect ones, like using Steinway hammers on a non-Steinway piano, can severely affect the instrument’s performance. Always consult an experienced piano technician for the right parts.

Ivory Key Maintenance

Closing the fallboard over ivory keys can cause them to yellow. Keep the fallboard open to maintain the bright, white appearance of the keys. Dusting the keys regularly is sufficient to keep them clean.

Conclusion

These tips will help you maintain your piano in optimal condition. If you enjoyed these tips, consider subscribing to LivingPianos.com for more articles and resources.

Introduction

We are about to explore alternatives to Steinway and Yamaha pianos. Most people are familiar with these two brands, and perhaps the piano they grew up with. However, there are hundreds of piano companies around the world, and today, I’ll introduce you to some fantastic alternatives. At the end, I’ll reveal the most logical alternatives to Steinway and Yamaha.

Exploring the Great Alternatives

Bosendorfer
Let’s start with Bosendorfer, an Austrian company dating back to 1828. They are renowned for their 9 ½ -foot Imperial Concert Grand, which boasts 97 keys extending to very low notes. These pianos are exquisitely crafted, maintaining traditional elements from the 1800s, including visible seams in the rim instead of the continuous rim found on all other modern pianos, and the use of spruce in the rim, which contributes to their unique, bell-like tone.

Fazioli
Fazioli, a relatively new Italian company founded in 1981, produces beautifully crafted pianos. Many competition winners choose Fazioli pianos for their outstanding quality. They even have a piano over ten feet long, offering a truly remarkable sound.

German Masterpieces
Germany is home to several top-tier piano companies, including Bechstein, Bluthner, and Sauter. These pianos are meticulously crafted in limited numbers, preserving the high standards set in the 1800s. Steingraeber & Söhne is another excellent German manufacturer, offering unique features like the sordino pedal for a muted sound and the Mozart rail for a historical touch experience. They also provide carbon fiber soundboards for enhanced tuning stability and consistent sound quality.

Asian Excellence

Several Asian-owned companies continue to produce high-quality pianos both in Asia and their original factories in Germany. Brands like Grotrian, Schimmel, and Seiler still produce top-tier pianos in Germany while offering more affordable models made in Asia. Petrof, from the Czech Republic, also deserves mention for their exceptional pianos still owned by the original Petrof family since the 1800’s.

Alternatives to Yamaha
There are numerous Asian piano companies, primarily in China, that you might not have heard of. Two standouts are Hailun and Pearl River. Pearl River is the largest piano manufacturer in the world, producing over 100,000 pianos annually. Korean companies like Samick and Young Chang also produce well made pianos in Korea, China and Indonesia. Some familiar names like Baldwin, Kohler & Campbell, and Steinberg are now produced in Asia and offer high quality Asian production pianos.

The Most Obvious Alternatives
Kawai

For those considering Yamaha, Kawai is the natural alternative. They feature innovations such as ABS carbon action parts and exclusive carbon jacks. As one of the largest piano companies globally, Kawai offers a range of digital, hybrid, upright, and grand pianos, as well as a limited number of hand-built pianos (using the Shigeru Kawai name) similar to Yamaha’s lineup. Some people prefer Kawai for its slightly warmer sound, while others choose Yamaha for its brighter tone (although pianos can be voiced brighter or warmer). Both brands produce well-crafted pianos, making it a matter of personal preference.

Mason & Hamlin
When it comes to alternatives to Steinway, Mason & Hamlin stands out as the only other top-tier American piano company still in production since the 1800s. These pianos, handcrafted outside Boston, feature innovations like thicker rims for soundboard support and the their patented Tension Resonator System for exceptional durability and sound quality. Their state-of-the-art Wessel Nickel & Gross actions, using composite materials, offer a responsive and consistent feel.

Conclusion
There are many hand-built pianos available today, especially from Germany and other parts of Europe, as well as great American pianos from Mason & Hamlin. If you’re shopping for a Yamaha, don’t forget to consider Kawai. Both brands have served the same market for over a century, providing excellent instruments. There are also a plethora of well made Asian production pianos from many companies with Asian as well as American and German names. If you have any other piano brand suggestions, leave them in the comments on LivingPianos.com and YouTube.

Introduction

Welcome to LivingPianos.com! Today, we’re diving into a crucial subject: the importance of granular practice. This technique is an incredibly productive tool for musicians, and I’ll demonstrate its effectiveness using a simple piece by Schumann and a more complex piece by Liszt. By breaking music down into granular elements, you can save a tremendous amount of practice time.

Starting with Schumann

Let’s begin by exploring the opening bars of Schumann’s “Scenes from Childhood: The Poet Speaks.” This beautiful chorale writing may tempt you to play it through a few times to absorb it. However, as you progress, the difficulty of fully absorbing the music can compound. Breaking it down to its essential elements can make this process much more manageable.

Breaking It Down

The obvious first step is to play hands separately. But you can go even further! By breaking the music down to the granular level, you not only save time but also gain a deeper understanding of the piece.

For instance, learn just the melody first. It’s tuneful and memorable, making it easy to grasp. The alto line, although simple, requires attention to detail. Play and memorize it separately to understand its structure fully.

When you combine the parts, concentrate on both the melody and the alto line. This method also applies to the left-hand parts. By understanding each line independently, you transform chords into individual musical lines, similar to how an orchestra functions.

A More Complex Example: Liszt

Now, let’s move to a more complex example with Liszt’s “Mephisto Waltz.” I started learning this piece recently and applied granular practice to memorize it efficiently.

Understanding the Complexity

Consider a challenging section in the piece. The right hand might have a repeating chromatic pattern, while the left hand presents a more intricate structure. For example, you can break down the left hand by playing the lower line first, followed by the chords. This method reveals the simplicity beneath the complexity, making it easier to understand and remember.

Putting It Together

Once you understand each part individually, putting them together becomes straightforward. Naturally, you can do the same thing with the right hand. Don’t just play the complete part, break it down even further by playing individual lines in each hand to fully understand the composition. Analyzing the music beforehand this way helps you learn it faster and more thoroughly. By breaking down music into its most essential elements, you can dramatically increase your practice productivity.

Conclusion

Welcome to LivingPianos.com. Today we’re going to talk about how no piano is above the law. I’m going to give you the Ten Commitments of Living Pianos. This is important information for anyone thinking about getting a piano or already owns one. Let’s start with the fact that some pianos, of course, need new parts. Some of our pianos are completely rebuilt and it takes a year or more to rebuild everything. However, no matter the piano, there are ten things that absolutely must be checked:

Tuning

Number one, we have tuning. This is much more involved than you might think. A brand new or newly rebuilt piano requires many tunings to become stable. All of our pianos here at Living Pianos are tuned multiple times to get them stable. Additionally, after the piano acclimates to your home, we send a high-level piano technician to do another fine tuning to ensure everything plays beautifully for you.

Regulation

Action regulation is even more involved. When you push down a key, dozens of parts must work in perfect harmony and synchronicity. Each key has several adjustments that must be meticulously calibrated for optimal performance and evenness throughout the entire piano. This is an arduous task that combines both art and science.

Voicing

Voicing refers to the sound of each note, not the mechanics. Every hammer must be precisely shaped, and its contact with the strings must be exact. The hardness of each hammer also affects the tone, ensuring a beautiful, rich sound that is not too bright or too mellow. Evenness from note to note is crucial, and we spend a considerable amount of time achieving this.

Damper Regulation

You want to get a clean release of chords where all notes end simultaneously without buzzing or noise. This requires damper regulation. Dampers on most keys of the piano need meticulous adjustment to function correctly.

Sustain PedalMiddle Pedal

The middle pedal, or sostenuto pedal, although rarely used, must be functional. It’s crucial for some 20th-century music, and we ensure it works as well as the other pedals.

Soft Pedal Voicing

The soft pedal, or una corda pedal, changes the color of the sound. It must be adjusted to shift the action the right amount. When you push the pedal, the keys move to the right and left, so the hammers strike the strings from a different part. This part of the hammer must be voiced differently to achieve the desired tonal shift.

Inside Cleaning

Pianos collect dirt and dust, especially if not completely rebuilt. Professional cleaning is necessary, including underneath the strings and soundboard. Light corrosion on strings must be cleaned, as any gunk inhibits free vibration of the sound.

Furniture Touch-Up

The piano’s finish needs to look beautiful. Many of our pianos are refinished to look new. Often, a finish just needs refreshing, or minor blemishes need touch-up to maintain the piano’s aesthetic appeal.

Brass Polishing

The brass needs to be polished, and in the case of silver pianos, sometimes re-plated. This ensures that the piano looks as beautiful as it sounds and plays.

These are the Ten Commitments you get from Living Pianos with all our pianos. Use this checklist for any piano you’re considering. These are vital parts of your piano, and at Living Pianos, we rebuild and replace any parts to a high standard to ensure beautiful performance.

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to talk about sound design. I know many of you are pianists, but this is definitely worth your while. I’m going to show you something you’re already familiar with, but you may not realize the depth with which this type of music or sound is so involved in your lives all the time.

Historical Background

Instruments have been around for hundreds of years, with the symphony orchestra culminating in the late 19th century. So, what else could be possible? In the 1940s, a French man named Pierre Schaeffer came up with musique concrète. He used turntables, which is interesting because disc jockeys use turntables to create whole new soundscapes today! Schaeffer took sounds, manipulated them, and used tape recorders to gather sounds and mold them into compositions.

This was the infancy of what we’re discussing today. Music synthesizers entered into the equation soon after. In the late 1950s, RCA had their music synthesizer. I remember growing up, my father had a record of the RCA music synthesizer. You can probably find it on YouTube with all kinds of squeaks and weird sounds. At the end of it, they attempted to create a little jazz combo, and I was very taken with it as a kid.

It was Robert Moog’s synthesizer in the 1960s that really caught attention. Wendy Carlos’s famous album, Switched on Bach, took the works of Bach and orchestrated them using the Moog synthesizer. The Moog synthesizer was monophonic, playing one only note at a time. Carlos painstakingly recorded at half speed to get everything perfect, overdubbing all the parts to create different timbres, and brought Bach’s works to life in a new way.

Sound Design in Film

Sound design is most prevalent as a backdrop for video and film. Going back to the infancy of music for film, silent films used ragtime-type music to follow the action. Improvised music for silent films is a lost art, but a few people like Michael Mortilla in Los Angeles has kept it alive. https://www.midilifecrisis.com/

As time went on, film music started to become almost like sound design, even with traditional instruments. For example, Bernard Herrmann, a fantastic film composer, created music for Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. There’s a particularly terrifying scene where the music doesn’t sound like music but is incredibly effective. High-piercing strings create tension in a way that symphonic scores hadn’t been used before.

The Impact of Sound Design

John Williams’s scores, like Jaws, use simple musical motifs to create tension. The two-note motif in Jaws is a perfect example of how minimalistic sound design can be highly effective.

Sound design can subtly shift moods, creating emotions without the audience even realizing it. It’s an art form that can stand alone as music because of the emotion it conveys.

Conclusion

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The question today is: Is playing practicing? Many of you who have watched my videos know that I have drawn a red line that should not be crossed. You have to know whether you are playing or practicing. And yet here I have this question: Is playing practicing? There’s actually a nuanced answer to this question. While it is absolutely essential that you know whether you’re playing through your music or practicing your music, there are times when you want to practice performing, whether it’s a public performance that you’re preparing for or you just want to run through things for friends to see how they go. But what we’re going to talk about today is something entirely different.

Playing can be practicing!

For example, when you play a performance, whether it’s a formal recital or just playing for friends, particularly if you record the event, going back and listening to what you did while taking note of what went well, what things maybe you need to work on, and insights you may have gained during the performance that you’d like to explore further, can be an invaluable experience. In that case, playing is practicing.

What is practicing?

Aside from the physiological aspect of strengthening your hands and learning how to negotiate passages, finger work, and chords, practicing is really a mental activity. Anything that involves a thought process about playing is practicing. So that’s an example where playing is practicing. How could you use this to your advantage? There are actually many ways. I talked about practicing performing. How do you do this? In your practice, there are two complete extremes. During a performance, no matter what, the show must go on. You have to keep going! Nobody wants to hear you stop and correct something when you’re playing for them. In a live performance, this could be a disaster. But even when you’re playing informally for family or friends, it ruins the whole experience for them. But in practice, you want to stop whenever there is an error to correct it and solidify it.

When is playing practicing? How do you achieve this?

It’s just as I described before. You do a practice run-through of a piece, and you don’t stop. Make it like a performance. You can even record it. It doesn’t need to be a great recording. You just want to have something you can listen back to with the score. Maybe circle trouble spots in the score. Take notes as you listen. This can be an incredible experience for strengthening your performance. And indeed, this is an aspect where playing can be practicing. But normally, remember that red line. Practicing is on one side, and playing is on the other. And they are diametrically opposed. In playing, you want to keep going no matter what to maintain the continuity of the performance. In practice, you generally want to stop to make corrections and solidify. Double check the score, work through the passage, connecting it with the previous passage, getting that secure, then going back to the beginning and seeing if you can pass all of the trouble spots. So that’s the lesson for today! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store.

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to answer a question from a viewer: What is the most common note in music? In the English language, E is the most prevalent letter. Is there a note that is the most common note in music?

There are two things to consider.

First, we need to ask: what kind of note? It could be the pitch of the note or the type of note rhythmically. The first one I’m going to cover is the type of note because it’s so simple. There’s whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, 8th notes, 16th notes, 32nd notes, 64th notes, and it goes all the way up to 128th notes. Each of these can be triplets as well. This is so easy because the most popular time signature is 4/4 time. It’s so common that it’s referred to as common time! What does it mean? It means there are four beats in a measure, and the quarter note gets one beat. So yes, the quarter note is the most popular and most common note in music.

Pitch is a little bit more complicated.

Let’s consider a few aspects. First of all, of course, A is not only the first letter of the alphabet, it’s also the note that an orchestra tunes to. So there’s a great significance to that note, naturally. And then we can talk about different groups of instruments and what notes are really intrinsic to them. On stringed instruments, E is a very popular note. Think about the guitar. I don’t play guitar, but there are two chords I can play on a guitar: E major and E minor. In fact, the highest and lowest strings on a guitar are both E’s, so E is really common. The lowest note on a bass is also an E. All string instruments have E’s on them, as well as A’s. So there’s a case to be made for E.

For wind instruments, flat keys are really common.

For example, the trumpet is pitched in B-flat. So is clarinet, generally. Of course, there is earlier period music where the pitches of the instruments were not set yet. Saxophones are usually E-flat or B-flat, and trombones are B-flat. So flat keys are very common as well. So where does that leave us with all of this?

There’s one note that, as a pianist, you look at all the time.

That note is C. Middle C is right in the middle of your keyboard. It’s all over the place! C is the highest note and one of the lowest notes on the piano. And when you play all white keys, you’re playing a C-major scale. So C is really common. But there’s more to it than that.

I mentioned all these transposing instruments. That is, when a trumpet plays C, a B-flat comes out. So even though the instrument is pitched to B-flat, their score, written in C, comes out in B-flat. So it presupposes C as the standard, from which all the other transpositions are derived. It’s the same with a clarinet in B-flat. It plays in C, but it comes out in B-flat. For the French horn, all the repertoire before the horn had valves was written in C. The horns themselves would be tuned with a series of extra pipes called crooks. That is what would change the pitch of the instrument. The modern French horn is pitched in F, yet the parts may be written in many different keys like, E-flat, D, or others, but the part’s are always written in C. So C is the standard pitch. When a conductor looks at a score, all the transposing instruments are in C for the conductor, and they must figure out the absolute pitch relative to the transposition of the various instruments.

I’ve got to say that C is the most common note in music!