Piano Lessons- Music Theory Lessons

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s question is: What is the most important finger for playing the piano? Of course, all of your fingers are important, and they each play a vital role. Imagine playing the piano with less than ten fingers. It would be really hard! It’s hard enough with all ten fingers. But there’s one finger that really is pivotal for playing the piano. Not only that, but it is arguably the most important finger that you have for everything.

The most important finger is the thumb.

Why are the thumbs so important? Naturally, being able to grasp objects with the thumb, because it’s opposing the other fingers, is incredibly important. And it’s in no small part how civilization developed. Our thumbs enable us to utilize tools. The thumb gives you control. In piano playing, there are three aspects that make the thumb vitally important. The thumb is your strongest finger. The third finger is pretty darn strong, but not like the thumb. Instead of having three bones like your other fingers, the thumb only has two. And it has a unique set of tendons and muscles.

How does this impact piano playing?

First of all, when playing scales, arpeggios, or any passages that go up and down the keyboard, because the thumb has the flexibility of being able to oppose the other fingers, you can use the thumb to cross other fingers. It can go under the hand to reach for the next note. Imagine trying to play scales without your thumbs. It’s really hard because crossing over fingers without using the thumb is awkward. Sometimes you have to do that when you’re playing counterpoint. You might have to hold a note with your thumb while other notes are being played on top. If the thumb is already engaged in playing a note, it can be necessary to cross with different fingers.

The thumb is vitally important for playing octaves and other larger intervals.

Unless you have very large hands, you probably can’t play an octave with your other fingers. Even if you had an extra finger like your other fingers instead of a unique finger like the thumb, you wouldn’t be able to get the control and power of the thumb. It’s the magic of the arch! You can get the power of the arch of the whole hand with the thumb. It’s the power of the arch that gives you control when playing octaves as well as chords. This enables you to get the balance you want. You utilize the rocking of the hand from the left to the right to balance the tone from one side of the hand to the other side. You can get a certain amount of that with your other fingers, but because the thumb has unique musculature, it enables you to achieve superior control. So when you’re playing octaves, for example, you can get the balance you want by how you distribute the weight of the hand. That’s also what enables rapid, powerful octaves.

That’s the power of the thumb!

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today, I’m going to talk about the difference between playing Bach and Mozart. They are two great composers. You hear their music all the time. Many pianists play both composers. There are some fundamental differences in the approach to playing Bach versus Mozart, which we’re going to discuss today.

The fundamentals come down to two criteria: the period styles and the instrument that they wrote for.

Bach lived from 1685 to 1750. Interestingly, he never wrote for the piano. Did he ever play the piano? Well, yes, there are records of him having played a very early incarnation of what was a piano. What distinguished the piano from other keyboard instruments of the age was the fact that the piano could play loud and soft, which is how it derived its name, the fortepiano or pianoforte which was later shortened to, the piano. Bach never specifically wrote for the piano. In fact, he never wrote for any particular keyboard instrument other than the organ. All of his keyboard music, other than his organ music, was written simply for clavier, which means, “keyboard”.

What instrument did Bach play?

Bach played the clavichord. It was his favorite keyboard instrument because of its expressiveness. On the clavichord, the key mechanism would be in contact with the string to impart vibrato and other expressive elements that the harpsichord could not do. Yet the harpsichord was the most popular keyboard instrument in performance because of its robust tone. The clavichord was so quiet that it really wasn’t a performance instrument. So we can presume that most of Bach’s music was performed primarily on the harpsichord. And the harpsichord, as I said, didn’t have dynamics. You could push the keys with great energy or push them lightly, and you would get the same volume. And this is key to the type of music written for the instrument: contrapuntal music, music with intertwining melodies. The harpsichord had a strident sound that cut through, which worked very well with chamber music. The clarity of tone allowed the counterpoint to come through.

Mozart was born in 1756 and lived only 35 years.

During Mozart’s life, the fortepiano had developed somewhat and gained popularity. So Mozart did write for the piano, although he played both the harpsichord and the piano. But his music took advantage of the fact that you could play loud and soft, so different parts could be played dynamically with the two hands.

Let’s talk a bit about the stylistic differences between Bach and Mozart.

Bach lived during the Baroque era, which is noted for its counterpoint. I keep using that word. What does it mean? It means that you have separate lines of music intertwining with one another, so you get music where everything has equal importance between the hands and the different lines. All of the lines have equal prominence. Bach wrote using counterpoint. Contrast that with Mozart, where you clearly have melody and harmony. For example, in his famous C major, K 545 Sonata, you have a melody in the right hand and broken chords in the left hand. There’s not much going on in the left hand, but you have a beautiful melody in the right hand. So you have a clear melody against harmony. This is in no small part because the instrument itself was capable of playing different dynamics in different registers.

As the instrument became more capable, the musical form evolved.

The form had evolved from counterpoint, the interweaving of different lines, like a tapestry of music, to more structured music with different sections. The sonata allegro form, with its exposition, development and recapitulation, was very structured formal music where different sections were clearly delineated, rather than the intertwining of different lines in the Baroque era. That’s why the performance practices are so dramatically different. In a fugue, you want to clearly show the counterpoint and the important lines of subjects, the opening motif of a fugue. For example, you want to hear a clear delineation whenever the opening statement of a fugue returns. Whereas in a sonata movement, you want to show the themes that come back at strategic places within the movement. The structure is of paramount importance. You can hear the melody clearly in one hand and the accompaniment in the other hand. It’s the delineation of the structure of the work that makes the performance alive and digestible for an audience. Where, in the case of Bach, it’s the counterpoint and bringing out subjects strategically in fugues or inventions so the listener can make sense of the cacophony that could result if those subjects were not delineated clearly. Whenever the subject recurs, you bring it out so that the listener can make sense of the complex score, and you can bring clarity to the counterpoint. Whereas in Mozart, it’s the delineation of each macro section within the work that must be clear to the listener so the overall structure of the music can be appreciated.

While Mozart did write for the piano, it wasn’t like a modern piano.

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today, I’m going to tell you how three plus three equals five. You probably clicked on this because you thought it was either a mistake or that I’d lost my mind. Well, believe it or not, it’s neither of those things! I’m going to show you how three plus three equals five in certain circumstances.

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s question is: Why are Steinways so expensive? Did you know that even a baby grand Steinway is over $80,000? Concert grands are over $200,000! What could possibly make pianos so expensive when you can get other baby grands for around $10,000? Is it all marketing? Well, here’s the truth. And everything I’m going to tell you today doesn’t just apply to Steinway. It applies to other American pianos, like Mason and Hamlin, as well as European pianos such as Blüthner, Bechstein, Fazioli in Italy, Bösendorfer in Austria, and even hand-built pianos from Yamaha and Shigeru Kawai in Japan.

Hand-built pianos have many different technologies.

In the case of Steinway, American pianos, and many European pianos, the way the plates are manufactured is a much more time-consuming task. Instead of using a simple vacuum mold process, which is quick and precise, they do it the old-school way of wet sand casting. The benefit is that the metal is denser. It takes a long time to cure the metal, so it’s much more labor-intensive and time-consuming. There’s also the choice of wood. It’s much more expensive to find fine hardwoods. Sourcing the finest soundboard material, which is the heart and soul of your piano, is no easy task. They search the world over for woods that have very fine grain, which is noted for the vibrancy and sustain of the sound. The craftsmanship of these instruments requires a great deal of handwork. All pianos require handwork, but when you’re talking about hand-built pianos, the meticulousness that it takes to craft these instruments is on a higher level. It can take a year to make each piano!

Hand-built pianos are not mass-produced.

You have companies like Pearl River, which is the number one piano producer in the world by volume. They make over 100,000 pianos a year! Contrast that with Steinway, who makes maybe ,2500 pianos a year. You can see how the economy of scale enters into this equation. So is there anything you can do to be able to get a piano of that quality and not have to pay such a fortune? I have another video about this. You can check out how you can get a Steinway for less money if that’s something you’re interested in. Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s question is: How can you afford a Steinway? If you’ve seen some of my previous videos, you know that a new baby grand Steinway costs over $80,000. So you might think it’s just insurmountable to be able to buy a Steinway. Well, I’ve got some good news for you, as well as some tips on how you can get a great piano without necessarily breaking the bank.

Be aware that there are other great pianos in the world.

Steinway owns the concert market, with over 97% of concert pianists playing Steinway because it is the de facto piano that’s available worldwide in concert halls. So most touring artists play Steinways, unless they can travel with their own pianos. But there are many other great piano brands, such as Bechstein, Bösendorfer, Blüthner, Fazioli, Mason & Hamlin and quite a few others. So, there are many other great pianos you might want to consider. While many of these pianos cost as much as Steinway, or even more, dealers will sometimes discount some of these other brands. Steinway holds their price much firmer because they can. There are only a limited number of them in the world, and they’re highly sought after.

The used market is a gold mine if you can find the right instrument.

Years ago, there were hundreds of American piano companies. Many of them made great pianos, and you can get them for a fraction of what they’re worth. For example, Baldwin was in the concert market, and Baldwins cost as much as Steinways when they were new. But in the used market, you can get a great Baldwin for far less than a Steinway and have a great piano. But let’s get back to Steinway.

You have your heart set on Steinway, and only Steinway will do. How can you possibly afford one?

Once again, the used market is your best option, but you have to be very careful. In fact, Steinway doesn’t even let many people put the Steinway name on the front of rebuilt or refinished pianos. Make sure you find someone who actually plays so they know what the piano feels like, what it sounds like, and if it’s really going to be a Steinway-quality piano. Just having the name on the front isn’t enough.

Another important thing is when you buy a piano.

There are certain times when the prices are just lower. For example, at Living Pianos, on Memorial Day, we drop our prices. Some of our pianos are less than half the usual sale prices, which are already a fraction of the cost of new pianos. We do this to clear out inventory and go on a buying spree in the summer. So you can sometimes get phenomenal deals on Steinways and other pianos if you buy at the right time.

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to tell you how to create beautiful melodies. And what melody is more beautiful than Clair de Lune by Debussy? I’m going to show you how to approach this piece, but this will apply to almost any melodic music you play. There are countless techniques you can employ on Clair de Lune, but today I’m going to show you something I learned from many years of living with my wife, Florence Estrin, who is a magnificent flutist. The way she uses the air in order to capture the phrase and to have a melodic line that carries the listener is something that I’ve literally lived with for decades. I want to share it with you because it translates to piano playing.

Having experience with a wind instrument, singing, or even a bowed instrument can be enlightening for a pianist.

After all, you’re playing a percussion instrument and trying to get a melodic line is a great challenge. You can better understand what’s involved playing a melody on an instrument that’s capable of a sustained line. So I’m going to play Clair de Lune for you now, just the beginning part, and then I’m going to explain what I’m doing to create this beautiful singing quality to the melody.

Watch the video to hear the demonstration!

Clair de Lune is such a gorgeous piece. Being in rhythm on this is vital to capturing the mood. The worst mistake you can make with Clair de Lune is to take too slow a tempo and not holding the long notes long enough. The rhythm is not what you might think it is. If you count it, try to count with the very slow dotted quarter notes as the beat since the beat is divided into three eighth notes most of the time, but sometimes Debussy writes two eighth notes to the dotted quarter note. What I’m going to talk about today is creating a flowing line. It’s not just about giving more energy to higher notes, just like you would naturally do with your breath when you’re singing or playing a wind instrument. It’s also about elongating those top notes just a little bit. It’s like how you use a little bit more air on higher notes if you were playing it on the flute and giving a little bit more time on those notes. I hate to use the word time because it really isn’t a rhythmic technique as much as it is filling up the sound, akin to the air on a wind instrument or when singing.

Without doing this, you don’t get the same feeling of serenity.

Take a little bit more time with those long notes. It’s very subtle because if it’s done too much, it would create rhythmic distortion, which would ruin the melodic line. But instead, it’s visualizing in your mind the sound that would be created if this was played on a flute or was an aria sung by a great singer to get that flowing line. You want to fill up those high notes, like you would naturally do if you sang such a melody.

Try this with all the melodic music you play!

I want you to try this, and not just with Clair de Lune. It’s not just about getting louder towards the higher notes, but making sure you ride over the crest of the phrase. Enjoy those high notes a little bit longer so that they can live on and give a nice expansiveness to your musical line. Let me know in the comments how this resonates with you! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I have a really interesting story for you about how a Pinto blew up my teaching. This is not only an interesting story, but for any of you people out there who have ever thought about having a career or even a side hustle teaching the piano, there will be useful information for you. I’m going to give you a lot of pointers because I have a background in teaching going back literally generations.

My father, Morton Estrin, was a great concert pianist and teacher.

He taught my sister and me until we both went off to conservatory after high school. And in fact, both of us got our teaching career started by learning how to teach the piano from our father and assisting him in his teaching when we were still in high school. All throughout my college years in conservatory, my side hustle was teaching the piano as well as accompanying. So I was no stranger to teaching.

Have Pinto, will travel!

When I graduated from the Indiana University School of Music in Bloomington, Indiana, I very quickly amassed many students. I did this by offering to travel to people’s homes for lessons and advertising wherever I could to get students. Back then, it was classified ads because it was before the internet offered that possibility. No matter where people were located, I would go there .I would figure out how much more I’d have to charge for the amount of time it would take me to drive there.

I went all over the county.

No place was off-limits. I would just charge accordingly. My schedule back then was crazy because I would figure out the exact amount of time it would take to go from one student to the next. So one student might have a lesson starting at 3:15, and the next one might start at 3:55. It was all these odd times. Now, if a student was not able to make the lesson, it would be a disaster because I’d be stuck in the middle of nowhere! Sometimes it was really cold, and that car didn’t have the best heat. The other thing was that back then there were no smartphones with GPS. In some areas, there were no street signs! When it was dark, it was almost impossible to figure out where you were going. Worse yet, if for some reason I had to call a student, I’d have to find a payphone!

My mission was to figure out how to get students to come to me.

I figured the best way to do that was to have a really good piano to entice them. It also added a lot of validity when people walked into my studio and saw a beautiful, brand new Baldwin baby grand piano. We also always looked for houses with a separate entrance to a room so that students didn’t have to march through the whole house and there’d be some privacy. My wife Florence is also a musician, a flutist, so we always looked for houses with two rooms with separate entrances to each one. This was always a huge challenge! But you would be surprised at how many places we found that had two separate entrances that didn’t go through the whole house where she could do her teaching and I could do my teaching without disturbing each other.

If you want to get into teaching, you might consider driving to people’s homes.

Why is this so advantageous? Can’t you just teach at a music store or studio? The problem with that is that many studios now, at least in Southern California, get 50% or more of the money in studio fees! So you go to teach lessons, and the people who own the business that you’re teaching at are making more than you are for the actual teaching! You can make far more money if you’re willing to travel. Plus, people really appreciate the convenience of having you come to their homes. Once you develop enough students and have a following, seek out a place where you can make your own teaching studio. If you have a good instrument, and perhaps recording capabilities, it could be a viable place for people to come to for the benefits they get from studying with you.

I hope this is helpful for any of you who are interested in teaching!

By the way, I teach piano pedagogy. I have a deep background in teaching teachers. I was so lucky to have been taught how to teach by my father from the time I was in high school, and I’m happy to help any of you out there who would like to teach piano. Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about triads. What is a triad? A triad is the most basic chord that exists in music. I’m going to break it down for you, so you’ll have a keen understanding of what a triad is. Simply put:

A triad is a chord containing three notes arranged in thirds.

What is a third? Scales are built diatonically. That means interval of seconds. So each note of a scale is a second apart. If you skip a note in a scale, you have a third. Anytime you skip a note in a scale, it’s a third. In fact, anytime you go from one letter and skip a letter and go to another letter, that is some type of third. Fortunately, there are only two types of thirds that are used in triads. And by the way, there are only two types of thirds that are used in the vast majority of chords. Believe it or not, even sophisticated chords can all be broken down to some type of thirds.

In triads, you have two types of thirds: major thirds and minor thirds.

To make things easy for you, I’m going to explain what they are in the simplest possible terms. Once again, they’re always two letters that are separated by another letter. A major third is a total of four half-steps. So if you start on middle C and count up by four half-steps to E, that is a major third. It’s very simple. A minor third is smaller. It’s only three half-steps. So once again, start on middle C, but this time count up by three half-steps to E-flat. That’s a minor third. That’s basically those are the building blocks of Western harmony, in a nutshell. You can actually figure out just about all chords by simply arranging the notes in thirds. Sometimes they are inverted. I’m going to get to that in a little bit. But first, let’s get to the basics.

You have four possible arrangements.

As I said, a triad contains three notes arranged in thirds. So you have a root, a third, and a fifth. So you have two sets of thirds. If you have a major third on the bottom and a minor third on top, that is called a major triad, for example, C – E – G. If you reverse it and have a minor third on the bottom and a major third on the top, that is a minor triad which would be C – E-flat – G. Could you call the middle note, D-sharp? No. Why? Because all chords are spelled in thirds skipping letters between each note of the triad.

If you have two minor thirds, that’s a diminished triad. Why is it called a diminished triad? Because the fifth has become diminished. Instead of the perfect fifth, which is the fifth note of the scale, C to G, it’s now a half-step smaller C to G-flat. So the triad is spelled, C – E-flat – G – flat. The diminished triad has two minor thirds. Finally, two major thirds is an augmented triad because the fifth has become augmented, C to G-sharp. It has become larger by a half-step. The augmented triad is spelled C – E – G-sharp.

Now here’s where it gets interesting.

If you had, for example, a C-sharp major triad, once again, a major third on the bottom and a minor third on top, you start on C-sharp and go up by four half-steps. What is that note? Is that F? Well, it can’t be F because triads are built in thirds. Thirds must skip every other letter. So it has to be an E-sharp. Why would it be spelled that way? Isn’t that confusing? Quite the opposite. If you saw this written C-sharp, E-sharp, G-sharp in your score, it would look like a triad. If you saw C sharp, F, A-flat, or something of that nature, it wouldn’t look like a chord anymore. You wouldn’t recognize it as a chord. When it’s written correctly, you just see all the notes thirds apart, and it clicks that it is a triad.

You can figure out any major, minor, diminished, or augmented triad using this method.

Just remember they always must skip letters, and there are four combinations. To recap, a major triad has a major third on the bottom and a minor third on the top. Switch it up, and you get a minor triad, with the minor third on the bottom and the major third on top. Two minor thirds make a diminished triad. Two major thirds make an augmented triad. Triads are always spelled in thirds.

Keep in mind that triads are not always in root position.

That means that the root of the chord isn’t always on the bottom. So if you had a C-major triad and the E was on the bottom and the C was on top, this is still a C-major triad. How do you know this? You take the letters and arrange them in thirds, and that’s how you find the root of the chord. Understanding this will help you figure out harmonies, learn music, read more effectively, and improvise. All of this is great practice for you! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today, I’m going to talk about Steinway. What happened to Steinway? I’m going to give you 20 true or false statements, so get your pencil and paper ready! But first, I’m going to give a brief history of this venerable piano company. Of course, you all know Steinway, but I’m going to tell you some things you maybe don’t know about the company.

In 1850, Henry Steinweg, a German immigrant, witnessed a show put on by P.T. Barnum, and it featured a Chickering piano.

Chickering was a piano company going back to the 1820s in the United States. The show inspired him so much that they could barely drag him off the stage. A few years later, in 1853, he founded Steinway & Sons in New York, and the company remained under family ownership for generations. In 1880, Steinway opened a second factory in Hamburg, Germany. In 1931, the accelerated action was introduced, a new technology that caught the attention of many pianists. In 1936, Steinway introduced their patented diaphragmatic soundboard, which was a way of tapering the soundboard to produce the distinctive Steinway sound. Finally, in 1972, corporate ownership happened with CBS purchasing Steinway & Sons.

In 1992, Steinway introduced the Boston Piano brand. This is an OEM piano, designed by Steinway and produced in Japan by Kawai, with many Steinway elements—not the Steinway piano design, but many elements that Steinway specified in the pianos produced by Kawai in Japan. In 1995, Steinway merged with Selmer Industries, the makers of woodwind and brass instruments. Then, in 2001, Steinway introduced their Essex piano, made by Young Chang. But a few years later, in 2004, Young Chang suffered a bankruptcy. So in 2006, they started having the Essex produced in China by the world’s largest piano manufacturer, Pearl River, which is where they’re still made today.

In 2015, Steinway introduced Spirio, a player system that is only available in pianos that are built by Steinway and only in new Steinway pianos. This system introduced many innovative technologies. They took old recordings and digitized them so you can have your piano play Rubinstein when he was young, or things of that nature. And then, in 2019, they added a record function to Spirio.

Now get ready for the true or false statements!

A lot of these may be difficult, particularly this first one. And this is a very provocative statement:

1. Steinway makes a Mickey Mouse piano.

That sounds like blasphemy, doesn’t it? And some of you may wonder what I’m talking about here. Is it possibly true that Steinway makes a Mickey Mouse piano? This is TRUE This is a specially designed Steinway, and it is hand painted.

If you’ve got $375,000, you can get one of these ultra-limited edition Steinways for yourself. This isn’t the only limited edition Steinway they have, but it’s one of the more amusing ones. They have all sorts of different designer pianos that have extraordinarily high price tags. When you consider that even an entry-level Steinway baby grand is over $80,000, you can see how these limited runs would be expensive.

2. Steinway has stopped producing their accelerated action.

This has been something many people look for in Steinways. Is it possible they stopped producing their accelerated action? This is TRUE! Why would they stop making the accelerated action, which so many people like? Well, a lot of it comes down to the fact that Steinway has made every effort to make the pianos that are made in Hamburg similar to the pianos that are made in New York. For example, for many decades, they had the 5′ 10 1/2″ grand piano Model L made in New York and the exact same size Model O made in Hamburg. Well, they discontinued the L, so the O is now made in both factories. Also, a few years ago, they reintroduced the Model A in New York. For decades, the A was only made in Hamburg. So they have made improvements in their action and felt the accelerated action is no longer necessary. Pianists and technicians, I’d love to hear from all of you in the comments. How do you feel about the discontinuation of the accelerated action?

3. Steinway stopped making the 1098 studio piano.

This is TRUE. You can no longer buy a Steinway studio piano. They do not make any studio pianos.

4. Steinway is discontinuing all uprights made in New York.

This is TRUE. The K-52, the full-size upright, will no longer be made in New York. The only upright piano available from Steinway will be the K-132, manufactured in Hamburg, Germany.

5. Steinway has stopped making the Model S baby grand.

At 5′ 1″, the Model S is almost as expensive as the 5′ 7″ Model M, which is one of their most popular models. People have been saying that Steinway is no longer making the Model S. Is this true? This one is FALSE. The S is still in production, just as before. My personal piano is a Model S that my grandfather got for my father in the 1930s. We rebuilt it a number of years ago, and it’s still going strong! It’s a wonderful little baby grand.

6. Steinway moved their rebuilding off-site to Iowa.

Is this possible? They’ve always done their rebuilding in their New York factory. Did they really move their rebuilding to Iowa? This is TRUE. They are doing all of their rebuilds in Iowa. They ship their pin blocks and sound boards. In fact, that’s the only place where sound boards and pin blocks made by Steinway are available other than on new Steinway pianos made in New York and Hamburg.

7. Steinway refinishes their pianos in New Jersey.

This is actually partially true, but I have to say this is FALSE. There is a facility in New Jersey where they ship very few pianos for refinishing if they have extremely intricate woodwork. Think about the nightmare of logistics involved if they had all their pianos refinished in New Jersey! At first, I thought maybe this was true because I had heard this rumor. I thought maybe environmental laws in New York prohibited the new polyester high-gloss finishes that Steinway is offering. But no, this is false. Only a select few pianos are actually refinished in New Jersey.

8. Steinway is going public.

This is actually FALSE. There were murmurs about this, but they withdrew their SEC filing recently. They may still go public in the future. It could happen. But as of right now, there are no immediate plans for going public. I know a lot of people would like to invest in Steinway. It’s one of the strongest brand names out there.

9. Half of Steinways made in New York have Spirio systems.

This is actually TRUE. Half of the New York pianos have Spirio systems in them, and they’re selling them like hotcakes! It’s actually helped them tremendously to increase their sales.

10. Spirio is available on all Steinway models.

When you hear that half of their pianos have these systems, this sounds very plausible. But this is FALSE. The spirio is only available on the Model M, Model B, and the Model D concert grands. And yet half the total number of pianos they sell have Spirio systems. So a lot of B’s, M’s, and D’s have Spirio systems in them.

11. Spirio adds $20,000 to the cost of a piano.

This is FALSE. It actually adds $29,000 to the cost of new Steinways! Can you imagine? So if you want it, the only way you can get it is on a new Steinway.

12. For $29,000, you get a piano that records and plays back.

This is FALSE. If you want to be able to record as well as playback, it adds $48,000 to the price of a Steinway! So the least expensive recording Spirio Steinway, the 5′ 7″ Model M, will set you back $124,800 now in 2024.

13. Spirio-Cast plays live on other Spirio pianos.

This is TRUE! Somebody can play a Spirio in one place, and other Spirios can play that performance at the same time. You can have Lang Lang or Yuja Wang play your piano! That’s what Spirio is all about. That’s why people pay the big bucks to get it. Since there are so many Steinway artists out there, being able to have a library of Steinway artists is a big selling point for the Spirio system.

14. Steinway owns Renner.

Renner is the company that makes the action that’s available on Bösendorfer, Fazioli, Petrof, and so many other pianos. This is actually TRUE. Steinway bought Renner a few years ago. They’ve been using Renner actions on their Hamburg Steinways for years.

15. Hamburg and New York Steinways have the same hammers.

This is actually FALSE. There are unique hammers that are only available on New York Steinways, giving them a different sound from the Hamburg Steinways.

16. Steinway no longer makes their keyframes the way they traditionally have made them.

This is TRUE. They’re using what they say is a sturdier construction. Some technicians might find it a little harder to work on because it’s a heavier build, but they say that these are going to be more robust. So indeed, the keyframes are not made the same way they have always made them.

17. Steinway has sped up its manufacturing to meet demand.

According to Steinway, this is FALSE. They have added more workers to try to keep up with demand, but it still takes just as long to produce their pianos. It can take up to a year to produce a Steinway piano! There’s a lot involved in building pianos.

18. It is illegal to buy a Steinway decal.

This is actually TRUE. Steinway has made it illegal to buy their decals. So if you have a Steinway piano that you’ve had rebuilt and refinished, you might not be able to get a decal if your piano has been refinished unless you use all Steinway parts. But the catch is, you can’t buy Steinway pin blocks or soundboards. So if you rebuild your Steinway, you can’t buy the decals like you can for virtually every other piano brand in the world. Why does Steinway do this? Well, Steinway says it’s because they want to assure that anything that says Steinway on the front has the high quality associated with their name, so it doesn’t tarnish their reputation. Some people say it’s because used Steinways are actually the biggest competition Steinway has, because if somebody wants a Steinway, they’re probably not going to buy a Yamaha, Kawai, or any other piano. They want a Steinway. So they’re probably going to seek out a used Steinway if they can’t afford a new one. Who knows what the truth is. It could be elements of both.

19. 90% of concert artists play Steinway pianos.

This is actually FALSE. Over 97% of concert artists play Steinways! Why is this? Is Steinway that much better than every other piano brand? There are so many great piano companies. But the fact of the matter is, one by one, all the piano companies supporting the concert market have dropped out. The last holdout up until near the end of the 20th century was Baldwin. Baldwin had a good share of the concert market. But think of the daunting task of having concert grands ready in virtually every major city in the world. Even Yamaha tried to do that in the late 90s but couldn’t swing it. It was just too much of a burden to have these pianos prepped and ready for the concert stage in every major city. So any touring concert pianist really has no choice. They have to go with Steinway if they want to have pianos to play on in concerts all around the world.

20. The most expensive Steinway costs a million dollars.

A Steinway concert grand costs over $200,000. Are there any models that cost $1 million? Well, this is a misleading question because the answer is FALSE. The most expensive Steinway costs $2.5 million! What piano could possibly command $2.5 million? Well, this is the rare hand-painted Pictures at an Exhibition piano, named after the famous piece by Mussorgsky.

All of the movements of this magnificent work are painted on this one-of-a-kind piano that is just unbelievably intricate in its painting.

How well did you do with these 20 true or false questions?

Let us know in the comments here at LivingPianos.com how well you did with these 20 true or false questions! How many did you get right? How many of them surprised you? Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.