Piano Lessons- Music Theory Lessons

You have undoubtedly heard atonality in spooky movies and other places where notes clash and you hear strange dissonances. Unlike most melodic music which you can sing along, atonal music can be much more challenging to comprehend.

Western music is based upon major and minor scales that form tonal music which is relatively easy to comprehend. Atonal music is based upon tone rows, where all twelve chromatic notes available are arranged in a random pattern, and the entire piece is built upon that.

If you explore this, you will discover all sorts of unusual sounds and clashing harmonies. We will go into more depth on atonality in future videos and I certainly welcome your comments and suggestions on this subject.

This is an incredibly important topic and one that definitely will make an impact on your life. Ultimately it will always be a personal choice which instrument you choose to play but it’s worth examining the pros and cons of particular instruments.

If you have a child who is just starting out in music you might think the best choices would be either violin or piano. This has become conventional wisdom today and I know many people who insist upon either of these two instruments. This is not unfounded because the musical foundation that is laid at a young age with either of these two instruments is very beneficial and they both require a long development period that benefits from starting earlier in life. If you then decide to switch instruments a bit later in life it will be an easier transition – for example if you switch to guitar or a wind instrument the learning period will be much shorter having a solid foundation on piano or violin.

I am definitely biased towards learning piano at a young age. It’s not only because I am a pianist, but it’s arguably the best instrument for understanding music theory because there is such an easy visual representation of everything and the fact that you can play many notes at the same time so easily.

What’s most important though is what engages you and your child musically. If you force someone to study an instrument they have no interest in playing then you are setting them up for failure. It will be hard to get them to practice and eventually there will be a sense of resentment that builds towards that instrument. If you want to play accordion, play it! If your child is adamant about playing a tuba, get them a tuba! If you have a love and passion for something you should go with it.

It takes a long time to develop on any instrument and there is no right or wrong choice. You are better off picking something you have a real connection to rather than something that seems like a safe choice.

If you and your child have no preference and you just want your child to start learning music, I would definitely recommend the piano. With the keyboard in front of them they will be able to visualize their music better and they will develop a better foundation that will allow them to switch instruments more easily if they choose to.

I started learning piano when I was 7. In the fourth grade I began studying the French horn. After the first lesson I immediately took to the instrument and loved it. By the second lesson I came back knowing the whole book! My teacher couldn’t believe it but my first book was so much simpler than the piano music I was learning that I was able to learn incredibly fast. I was leaps and bounds ahead of my classmates because I could already read music and the complexity of piano far outweighed the music for the French horn.

Debussy’s “The Little Shepherd” from his Children’s Corner Suite is one of my favorite pieces. It is simple but very poetic. This question comes from a viewer who wants to know the best way to use the pedal in this piece.

The challenge of the piano is that it doesn’t have the expressiveness on a single note that other instruments have. Or does it? Achieving expressiveness on single notes on the piano is certainly possible if you use the pedals correctly. In this article I’m going to share some secrets on how to achieve this.

The way that a pedal effects the note all depends on when you depress it.

If you depress the pedal before you play the note you will get an echoey sound with a boominess after the initial attack.

If you are striving for a more sustained tone you will want to depress the pedal after the initial attack. This will create a more linear sound which is rounder than pedaling before playing the note as described above.

You can complement this effect with the use of the una corda pedal (soft pedal) which offers a more sustained sound since only 2 of 3 strings are initially hit directly making the attach quieter.

The effects really are subtle and might be hard to hear over your computer unless you have good speakers or headphones. But it truly makes the difference in bringing expressiveness to the music. Try these techniques on your piano and let us know the differences you notice.

The metronome is much maligned by many musicians for its incessant ticking which can be like a form of Chinese water torture! Many teachers are insistent upon using the metronome and students have questioned whether or not they need this ticking box.

The metronome really is one of the two most important tools at your disposal (the other being an audio recorder) and you should be practicing with it regularly – whatever your skill level. Today we are going to discuss three reasons why the metronome is so important as well as some great applications on how to use it.

The first reason why you need the metronome is that nobody has a perfect clock in their brain. When you start to learn a piece of music and you encounter tough sections, you will naturally slow down a bit to compensate for the difficulty. You might think that once you work them out and get things up to speed, there should be no problem. But you may overcompensate and actually play these sections even faster! The only way to be sure is to play with the metronome.

Don’t make the mistake my mother used to make by putting the metronome too fast and trying to keep up with it. She would drive herself crazy with frustration trying to match an impossibly fast speed of the metronome. Find a speed you are comfortable with and work your way up to an appropriate tempo.

The second reason you want to use a metronome is that it provides an essential practice tool for difficult sections of music. Start by playing at a slow speed accurately with comfort. Then, incrementally increase the speed notch by notch gaining confidence at each new tempo until you get the passage mastered up to tempo. This is an indispensable tool for developing a refined technique on your instrument.

The key is to use this technique by zeroing in on specific sections of your music – not the whole piece. It will not take as much time as you think and you will master tough sections of your music much more quickly.

The third reason you want to use a metronome is because it will help you improve as a musician. The pulse is one of the most important aspects of music and developing a consistent beat will make you a better musician. This aids in playing with other musicians with a tight ensemble.

This is a very common question. Many times when people want to sell a piano that has been in the family for a long time, they don’t know where to start. When we receive calls from from people in these types of situations, we always ask them the last time the piano was tuned.

The reason we ask this is because pianos need very regular maintenance. The longer they go without tuning or other work, the more problems they might incur. It’s certainly possible that if a piano sits in the right climate for a long period of time and remains untouched it could need very little work, particularly if has been tuned on a regular basis. For a piano that has been in a home where the temperature and humidity have affected it over the years and the owner neglected to tune it on a regular basis, it can sometimes put undue stress on the instrument trying to get it stable again.

Sometimes pianos can’t be tuned. No matter how many times you try and tune them they will continue to go out of tune or simply can’t be tuned at all. Many times this means the piano has to be rebuilt because there is most likely an issue with the pin block which can’t hold the tuning pins tightly. The pinblock is a multi-laminate piece of hardwood custom shaped to the plate of each piano that sits right below the plate.

In order to replace the pinblock you have to remove the strings and pins and then use a crane to lift the plate out of the piano. Then a custom pinblock must be made for the specific piano – which is a very skilled job. This involves substantial expense and not something you will want to embark upon with just any piano. Rebuilding costs thousands of dollars and is only worthwhile on worthy instruments.

So what do you do with a piano that has loose tuning pins and isn’t worth the rebuilding costs? Luckily there are a few things you can try to see if you can salvage some more life out of the piano. The simplest solution is to tap in the pins a bit further into the pinblock to get more friction. There must be some room between the coils of the strings and the pinblock to allow for tapping. This can sometimes alleviate tuning problems. Other times it can only be a temporary fix depending upon the integrity of the pinblock. This is something that can only be done by an experienced piano technician or irreparable damage can be inflicted upon the piano.

If that doesn’t work you can have the piano restrung with fatter tuning pins. Every time you restring a piano you have to put a little bit larger tuning pins into the pinblock in order to get them to stay securely in place. If the pinblock is in good shape, this can solve the problem in some instances. This is a bit more expensive than tapping the pins down but less costly than rebuilding. If the pinblock has cracks, using larger pins will just enlarge the cracks. Also, there is a limit to how large a tuning pin can be used in a piano.
As a last resort I have heard of people trying super glue in the pins! This isn’t to lock them in place, but to add friction to the tuning pins. I would not recommend this unless you have absolutely nothing to lose because the piano is not worth rebuilding.

Something to keep in mind is that if you have a piano in a humid environment that has pins that are slightly loose, moving the piano to a desert climate can make the pins looser and you may have serious tuning problems.

So depending on your situation there are a number of options for a piano that can’t be tuned. If you have a piano that is valuable like a Steinway, Mason & Hamlin, Bechstein or other high-end piano, then it might be worth rebuilding if other structures of the piano are sound. With low end pianos that can’t hold tuning, you may be better off seeking out another piano.

This is a very broad subject you could devote at least an entire semester to. Books have been written on the subject! The point of this article is not to suggest that one composer is better than the other, but rather to compare the differences in their music.

One important fact is that Beethoven came after Mozart. This means that the foundation of his music was built upon the music of Mozart and composers before him.

This is a very common question I get all the time. Pianos are very temperamental instruments and they need to be cared for fairly well in order to have a long life. That’s why it’s not surprising that popular wisdom has everyone thinking that as soon as you move a piano it has to be tuned. But is this really the case?