Living Pianos

Hi, I’m Robert Estrin and this is LivingPianos.com. The subject today is about having a pulse in your music. Your music must have a pulse or it dies! Now that’s an intense statement, but it’s true. Sometimes you listen to seasoned concert artists who become so self-indulgent in their playing that they lose the beat of the music. It really loses its whole energy and purpose when you don’t have the pulse to guide everything and hold on to the structure.

This happens oftentimes in slow pieces.

People think they’re playing very expressively by having so much freedom. A great example of this is in Clair de Lune of Debussy. You might hear somebody start really slowly, but then they lose the pulse! You’re left with this wishy washy wandering sound that isn’t anchored in the music anymore. There’s nothing about it that is implied in the score. Debussy wrote this piece, and it has a beauty that is revealed when the real rhythm is played. The secret then is figuring out what note value the pulse is. If you look through the score, you’ll see eighth notes, since it’s in 9/8 time. So if you have eighth notes ticking, it becomes very difficult because you have tuplets. So you have to fit in two notes to 3 ticks of the metronome which is very difficult.

The pulse needs to be slower.

In the case of Clair de Lune, the pulse is actually the dotted quarter note! When you get down to a reasonable pulse rate, you can feel the music. It’s the same tempo, but with a pulse only ticking on the dotted quarter notes instead of on every eighth note. You have this nice, relaxed pulse. Within that framework there’s so much freedom! You feel the pulse. Then you have the liberty to nuance the notes within that pulse of the larger beat. That is the secret.

Sometimes you can have a pulse so slow that it gives you tremendous freedom.

For example, in Chopin’s Nocturne in B-flat Minor. Play it at a tempo of 90 to the quarter note, and you’ll see how constrained it feels having to fit the notes into that many pulses. This pulse is pretty darn fast! It’s not very relaxing. It sounds very regimented and robotic by quantizing everything to that exact beat. Because it’s not really the beat. The beat should be felt as the unit of six eighth notes. If you take the metronome down to 30 (on a metronome application on your phone), you have a tick for the dotted half note. It’s very slow, but there’s a pulse there. There is a freedom that you have in your playing when you have a slower pulse. Rachmaninoff said, “The larger the phrase, the greater the musician.” And I believe that the slower the pulse, the more control you have. It’s easier to maintain tempo. This is true of everything, particularly fast movements. If you try to play a fast movement while you’re thinking of every eighth or sixteenth note, maintaining tempo is difficult.

Now, for initially getting the music under your fingers, having the pulse on the faster note can be beneficial. It helps you to be absolutely sure of the rhythm and that you’re playing honestly. Playing this way is actually very instructive. But once you have the piece moving more, thinking the longer beat as the pulse can give you freedom within the beat and makes it easier to maintain your tempo. Try it for yourself with your music and let me know how it works! I hope this has been helpful for you! Thanks again 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

Why Your Music Must Have a Pulse

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to tell you about five used pianos you should buy. There are so many different pianos out there that you should buy if you possibly can. There are some amazing instruments, but it’s all about condition. That is the big challenge with any used piano. That’s the caveat going into this. What are some instruments that you should look for? A lot of it depends upon what you’re after.

If you want a solid workhorse upright, there’s always the dependable Yamaha U1.

The good thing about the U1 is that they’re so popular that there are tons of used ones out there. Not only that, but the Japanese tend not to like used pianos very much. There’s a whole cottage industry of people who refurbish them and ship them to the United States to be sold in the used market. These are sometimes referred to as gray market pianos, which you can read about here:

It’s true that an older U1 might not have the same sound and quality as a newer one. It depends upon how much it’s been played, how much wear, the degree of restoration, and many other factors. But since there are so many of them out there, you could probably go to a number of piano stores and find used U1s. Technicians know how to work on them. They are dependable pianos. It’s easy to go with a good Yamaha if you’re looking for a mid-range upright that’s going to do the job for you without breaking the bank.

I’m a real lover of Baldwin pianos.

I grew up with Baldwin pianos. My father, Morton Estrin, was a Baldwin artist. We had Baldwin Grands in our home. In fact, my sister has my father’s seven foot Baldwin, which we restored for her. And I have his Steinway here, which is a whole other story we’re going to get to next. Baldwin, particularly the Artist Series Baldwins, represent tremendous value. Baldwin suffered a bankruptcy in the early 2000s. There was some quality decline towards the end. Worse than that, now there are Chinese pianos bearing the Baldwin name. It has cheapened the brand. Because of that, you can get a piano that’s on a top-tier level for closer to a mid-range price. Once again, it’s all about the condition and which particular years the pianos were manufactured. There are some deals on Artist Series Baldwins that are worth your attention.

Steinway pianos can be a tremendous investment if they’re rebuilt well.

There are a lot of people who just do what I call cosmetic rebuilds because there are so many people looking for Steinways. The smallest baby grand Steinway costs over $80,000 new! So obviously to get a used one in good condition for less than that can be a tremendous investment. So that’s a great used piano to look for. They are very popular. There are a lot of good used Steinways out there. But there also are a lot of questionable used Steinways out there. Once again, if you have questions, you can always hire a piano technician to check the piano for you.

I mentioned Baldwin and Steinway, I must also mention Mason and Hamlin.

Mason & Hamlin still build pianos outside of Boston. You can sometimes find deals on older Mason and Hamlin pianos. Again, some years were better than others, and condition is of paramount importance. But Mason & Hamlins are built so tough that they tend to last longer than a lot of other pianos. They have the tension resonator bracing underneath which supports the soundboard and the rim of the piano. So a lot of older Mason and Hamlins still have a lot of potential, as long as the worn parts are replaced.

One of the great uprights of all time were Baldwin Hamiltons.

The Baldwin Hamilton used to be the most popular upright in America. In fact, that was a piano I grew up with! My father bought my sister and me a Baldwin Hamilton as our practice piano. They were workhorse pianos. They were in schools and churches and homes. You can still find some of them out there. The furniture style isn’t quite as modern as pianos today. Often, they are in oak or other lighter woods. They are kind of industrial, but they were great practice pianos. If you find one that isn’t worn out, and if the furniture doesn’t bother you, it could be a tremendous piano to get.

Those are five pianos that are worth looking for on the used market.

I mentioned those five pianos, but honestly, any American made piano that’s not worn out, that has been well cared for, could be worth your while. Whether it’s a Knabe, a Chickering or a host of other brands, the methodology of many of these pianos is very similar to what Steinway and Mason & Hamlin make today. But because some of these brands are lesser known, you can get them for so much less money. If they’re not in bad shape, they could be worth putting some money into to get them on a high level. They can last a very long time.

What about other Asian pianos?

Asian pianos tend to not age as gracefully. More than that, let’s say you want to rebuild the action on a low end Chinese piano, for example. Well, maybe that piano only costs $10,000 new. Are you going to spend $5,000 to rebuild the action? It’s kind of questionable. However, sometimes you can find Asian pianos, whether they’re made in Indonesia, Korea, China, or even a Japanese piano that sat in somebody’s home as a furniture piece, rarely played, and everything’s in good shape. It probably needs tuning, regulation, lubrication, and a host of refinements. But maybe it’ll cost you less than $1,000 to do the work on it. If the piano has never been played, you can have a perfectly good instrument for a fraction of what it costs new. So you can’t leave out Asian pianos completely, as long as they don’t need much work. They can be worthwhile for you for the right price!

If you have questions about specific pianos that you’re looking at, you’re welcome to email me Robert@LivingPianos.com. I hope this has been helpful for you! Thanks again 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

5 Used Pianos You Should Buy

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about whether you should look at your hands when you play from memory on the piano. This is a really insightful question that someone asked me recently. There are two distinctly different ways of playing the piano. One is playing from memory and the other is reading the music.

When playing with the music, you should strive to keep your eyes on the score the entire time.

You only want to have brief glances at the keys. When you do look at the keys, it must be just your eyes moving. If you play the piano and you are looking at the music ,you can’t look away. You can’t read what you’re not looking at! When playing from the score, you absolutely must keep your eyes on the music.

What About Playing From Memory?

Oftentimes I have students memorize music. At the very first lesson I show my students how to memorize. This is something that almost nobody ever teaches. You think it’s magic that pianists could assimilate all this music. Are pianists some kind of geniuses? No. You just have to know how to memorize. You have to take little chunks of music and build the whole composition bit by bit. When you hear somebody play, it seems like a miracle. But really, if you see what’s behind the curtain, it’s just a lot of little steps that go into it.

I have my students play from memory. The first time they do it, a lot of times they’ll be looking up into space. I always tell them to look at their hands. One of the reasons to memorize music is so that you can look at your hands! When you have leaps, how are you supposed to land in the right place without looking at your hands? Having said that, there are some blind pianists who defy all reason bouncing all over the keyboard. They don’t rely upon looking. That’s great for them. But for everyone else, you have your eyes to utilize so you might as well take advantage!

Looking at your hands is another way to reinforce your memory.

By looking at your hands you see the connections of the keys. You know where to look if there are leaps. A lot of times what you want to do when you’re playing the piano is look at your thumbs rather than the extreme outside fingers. The thumbs can line up everything and they’re close together. When you have leaps, you tend to want to look at the inner part of your hand. That’s one little tip for you.

Does this mean that you should never try to play without looking?

No. The time for that is when you memorize a piece of music. That doesn’t mean you’re done with the score. Far from it. It’s exactly the opposite! The way I learn music, and the way I teach my students to learn music is to read through it a couple of times the first day, then get down to work and start memorizing. The first thing you do is memorize your music, instead of the last thing. Then what do you do? You go back to the score and reinforce the memory by reading the score and keeping your eyes on the music. That’s the time for not looking at your hands. Read from the score to see all the little details that maybe you didn’t catch the first time. Maybe you forgot where a slur ends or a crescendo begins, or the voicing of a chord. You have to constantly go back and reinforce your memory.

Interestingly, you can play the piano without any instrument or anything visual at all.

I have a video about playing the piano from your mind. You can just sit in a chair and play through your music mentally, thinking through every nuance of sound and touch. That is the ultimate practice. You can try it with a piece you know really well. You want to make sure you reinforce that memory. There is no better practice. You don’t have the benefit of finger memory. You don’t have the keyboard to look at or the sound to go by. It’s all in your head. Interestingly, there have been tests of people playing the piano while having their brains scanned. Then they get people to think about playing the piano while doing the same brain scan on the same people. There is zero difference in the brain whether you are playing the piano or thinking about playing the piano. Now, what does this reveal? It tells you that you can practice away from the piano effectively and get all the benefits. You can reinforce the score just using your mind.

How Do You Play the Piano with Your Mind?

I hope this has been enlightening for you! Thanks again 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

Should You Look at Your Hands When You Play From Memory on the Piano?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to talk about the best and worst pianos to buy. This is a big subject, so where do we begin? I’ll start with the worst pianos to buy, then I’ll go to the best pianos to buy so we can end on a happy note!

What are the worst pianos to buy?

Upright pianos have all different heights. Go back far enough, and they were really tall. They got shorter and shorter over time. There were a whole breed of pianos referred to as spinet pianos. Spinet pianos are no longer made, but they were popular because they were very small and inexpensive. In the 1970s, you could get a brand new Kimball Whitney spinet for a few hundred dollars! Can you imagine? So they were popular for that reason. This was before digital pianos existed. So if somebody wanted something really inexpensive, a spinet was an option.

What’s so bad about spinets?

Let’s break it down. Why is the sound so anemic on a spinet? The piano is so short, the strings don’t have much length. Everything in the low register is really lacking. There isn’t much richness even in the high register because the soundboard is so small. Worse than that, in order to fit the action into such a small case, it didn’t have a full length key to reach the back of the action. So the keys were very short, and there were connecting rods to the rest of the action. This is called an indirect blow action, or a drop action. If you open a spinet at the top you can see the keys end right at the end of the fallboard. There are rods connecting the keys to the rest of the action. So they’re not as responsive. They’re also easier to play, which may be a benefit to some people who have hand problems. But generally, it’s not going to prepare a serious pianist to play other pianos. The repetition is also really slow. There are some spinets that are better than others. The Baldwin Acrosonic was the best of that breed. So that’s one kind of piano that generally you want to avoid.

Sometimes a big old upright can be an absolutely glorious instrument.

In fact, you can get a bigger sound out of a tall upright than some smaller baby grands. Old uprights have long string length and big sound boards. They’re formidable, wonderful instruments. But the problem is, most of them were made over a hundred years ago! What you don’t want is to buy an old upright piano just because it looks pretty, because it might need $15,000 or $20,000 worth of work. This is no joke. These pianos get worn out. If the strings are old and rusty and the felt, hammers, and other action parts are worn out, you can get into hundreds of hours of work trying to restore one of these instruments. When you’re all done, you’d be lucky to sell it for a few thousand dollars, because they’re not as popular anymore.

Occasionally you’ll find an old upright that has already been restored. And if that’s the case, it can be a wonderful experience to have an instrument like this. But I wouldn’t buy one to restore. You can find free uprights, mostly the big, tall, old uprights, on websites like PianoAdoption.com. If you look at enough of them, maybe you’ll find one that doesn’t need everything. But generally, if you’re looking for a quality instrument and it seems like a good deal, check with your piano technician before you commit to it.

What are the best pianos to buy?

So now let’s get to some of the pianos that are worthwhile, and that would be restored American pianos or late model American pianos. Steinway and Mason and Hamlin are the only American piano brands left today. But if you go back to the 1970s, and even into the 1980’s, there were a number of piano manufacturers still making high quality pianos in the United States. Some of these instruments may still have good life left in them. More than that, the methodology of these instruments like Chickering, Knabe, and Baldwin was very similar to Steinway and Mason and Hamlin, which are priced astronomically high today. People are not aware of these other brands as much. Because of that they could represent phenomenal value. These pianos could be worth putting some money into if they’re structurally sound, because they are hand-built, top tier pianos. So it can be worthwhile checking out some of those instruments.

What about Asian pianos?

Older Asian pianos that need work should be avoided. These pianos are inexpensive to begin with, so you don’t want to put a bunch of money into them. Perhaps a late model Asian piano can offer good value if they have been well maintained.

So that’s the long and short of it. American pianos are of such high quality that looking for those in the used market can be worthwhile. Even if you have to put a little bit of work into them, they can be worthwhile to get an instrument of a really high caliber. I hope this has been helpful for you! Thanks again 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

The Best and Worst Pianos to Buy

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how to get free sheet music. On the Internet you can get almost everything for free, from movies and TV shows, to books, and yes, sheet music! Of course, there’s a price you pay for something that’s free, which is not knowing the validity of the score. You don’t know the integrity of anything you get for free. However, sometimes it’s nice to have a variety to choose from. If you just want to check out some sheet music, maybe a free music site is just what you’re looking for.

There are a lot of different websites that have a smattering of free music. But the best place is a website called IMSLP.org.

IMSLP is an incredible resource of not just sheet music but also recordings. When you first go to the site it may seem a bit confusing. As soon as you click on something, it tells you you can pay for a subscription, or you can wait 10 seconds for your download. Then you’ll see all the recordings first. But once you figure out how the site works, it’s a treasure trove.

Fair warning, a lot of it is junk.

With some stuff you’re immediately going to see tattered, old, unauthoritative editions. But if you spend the time, there are nuggets of gold in there. If you just want to see two or three different editions of the same piece, it’s a great resource. You’re not going to buy two or three different copies of sheet music, but this allows you to have a reference.

Another option is VirtualSheetMusic.com.

Many of you may have noticed that I co-brand many of my videos with the VirtualSheetMusic.com logo. VirtualSheetMusic.com is not all free, but for a very small subscription fee you get the benefit of integrity of the scores. It’s also very convenient. You can download music right to your iPad or print out the music There are all kinds of technologies to make it easy with automated page turning, and all sorts of cool stuff. So if you’re looking for just free music, check out IMSLP.org, but if you want something more trustworthy and convenient, check out VirtualSheetMusic.com. Thanks again 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

How to Get Free Sheet Music

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The question today is about how much you should mark up your piano music. There are a lot of reasons to write on your score. Maybe you missed something in your music and you want to circle it, or you need to put fingering in. After a while your whole score could be marked up making it difficult to see the notes!

I have an interesting story about this.

Years ago, when I was at the Manhattan School of Music, I had a friend who was a piano major. She had the Henle edition of the Beethoven sonatas, which are very authoritative and expensive. I was helping her with a particular Beethoven sonata. She opened up the score of this incredibly expensive, thick volume of Beethoven. She turned to the sonata she was working on with her teacher, and it was marked up with several different colors of ink! There were so many markings, you absolutely could not see the score anymore! Things were circled, and there were big blotches of red, green, and blue ink on the score. Can you imagine the injustice of this? Her teacher destroyed her score! There’s no way you could possibly see the notes and Beethoven’s markings anymore. That’s an extreme example of what to avoid.

Only use pencil in your scores.

When I tell my students to mark something on the score I first ask, “Do you have a pencil handy?” That’s rule number one. My father used to have this really cool mechanical pencil. I haven’t seen anything like it that exists anymore. It was a pencil that had four different colored leads in it. He could mark scores with red, green, blue and black. It was such a great way for him to mark scores in a coherent fashion. Yet because it was pencil, the markings could be erased. Why is this so important? Let’s say early on you didn’t see a flat in the key signature, so you put the flat in front of the note. Then maybe later there was something else in that same measure, like a fingering or a phrase marking you missed. You can start making so many circles and marks that before you know it, it doesn’t get your attention anymore.

You want to be able to erase marks you no longer need, and only have the ones that are pertinent.

At a later stage of learning a piece of music, you might want to record it to see what kind of shape it’s in. In doing so, when listening back to the recording, you might want to gently circle the places you want to review. But maybe the mistakes were just one-offs. Maybe you just wanted to reference them after listening to the recording. Your markings are not always something you want to call to attention every single time you’re looking at the score. Fingering is a really critical example. You may work out a fingering and think it’s good. But later, when you’re playing the piece up to tempo, you realize that fingering isn’t going to work at all. As long as it’s in pencil, you can erase it and put new fingerings in. So that’s the most important thing.

Retain the clarity of your score.

Use a pencil! Don’t obliterate your score with too many markings. Erase the markings you no longer need so you have clarity of the actual score. After all, the score is what you need to see and digest. You don’t want to obscure it with too many markings. I’m interested in how you deal with markings in your scores. What do you find helpful? Let me know 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.

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

How Much Should You Mark Up Your Score?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to talk about the differences between baby grands and grand pianos. You might just think one’s bigger than the other. That is an intelligent observation. But really, there are 3 fundamental differences between baby grand and grand pianos. I’m going to break it down for you today.

The 3 basic differences are: String Length, Soundboard Area, and Action Geometry.

Let’s talk about each one of these aspects and the significance of them. Then you can determine what might be the right piano for you. Baby grands are typically around five feet long. That’s measured from the edge of the key slip to the farthest part of the lid. Whereas grand pianos are more like six feet in length. These are only approximate measurements. Some baby grand pianos may be 5′ 1″ or 5′ 4″. Grand pianos can be 6’3″, 6’4″, even 6’6″. When you get to 7-feet, that’s considered a semi-concert grand, which is another class of piano.

What’s the difference between a baby grand and a grand piano in regards to string length?

The physics of sound is such that a doubling of frequencies creates an octave. When something vibrates twice as fast, it creates an octave higher in pitch. Therefore, something twice as big will produce sound an octave lower. If you think about how short the top strings of a piano are, if you went doubling each octave, you would have a piano that stretches out way farther than your room! So how do they compensate for that? Even on a 9-foot concert grand piano, the strings aren’t nearly long enough in the bass to be twice as long for every octave in the treble. It’s compensated for by making the strings fatter in the bass. You notice the copper wound strings in the bass get thicker and thicker. Even the steel wound strings have different gauges from the top going down, getting progressively thicker. This way the piano doesn’t have to be ridiculously long in order to have the range of pitch that it has. The sound created by thicker strings that aren’t as long, have many strong overtones. Overtones, or color tones, exist in all vibrating objects that create pitched sounds, whether it’s a piano, or a bell, or anything that produces a pitched sound. If you blow through a seashell and create a pitch, it has overtones in it! That’s what gives the vibrancy of tone, and the differences in sound from one instrument to another.

The shorter a piano is, the stronger the overtones are and the less fundamental frequency you have.

When you’re playing a low note, particularly on a small piano, you’re actually getting more overtones than fundamental pitch. I remember as a kid I used to love to play with tape recorders. One time I recorded the lowest note of the piano. Then I played it back three or four times as fast. It sounded almost like a chord! The overtones are so strong. This makes it very difficult to tune smaller pianos, because the overtones can conflict with fundamental frequencies of higher notes. The purity of the sound is one benefit to having longer strings. And the longer a piano is, the truer the fundamental tones are, and the overtones are less prominent. So that’s one aspect of the sound of a larger piano. That’s a benefit because of string length.

The larger the soundboard, the richer the sound.

Sound systems that have bigger speakers tend to have more bass and a richer sound. It’s very difficult to get good bass out of small speakers. There are some technologies that can come close with baffles and tubing and subwoofers. But with just one diaphragm, like a piano soundboard, a bigger one is going to have a richer sound overall. Also, the placement of the bridges on the soundboard can be more centralized when you don’t have to cram everything into such a tight space as in a baby grand. The scaling of the piano design on a larger piano can be such that you can get better vibration of the whole soundboard from any of the registers. You get a more even sound from top to bottom on a larger grand piano than on a baby grand. So those are two sonic benefits of grand pianos.

What about the action?

Earlier, I mentioned action geometry. On a small piano, in order to fit everything into a small space, and to have the strike point in the right place, that is the point of the string where the hammer hits, the keys must be shorter. Not the part of the keys you see, but the part that is behind the fallboard. So when you’re playing on a baby grand, your fingers are very close to the central pivot point. Therefore, the key travel is far shallower, particularly when playing black keys, as well as white keys close to the fallboard. Whereas on a grand piano, these parts of the keys move much more, giving you better control with your hands on the keys when you’re not playing on the edge of the keys. This makes it easier to control with soft playing in particular.

So those are some of the benefits of grand pianos compared to baby grands.

These benefits multiply as you get to semi-concert and concert grand pianos. A 9-foot concert grand is the ultimate piano in terms of scale design, with the way the strings get larger and longer from the treble to the bass, as well as the placement of the bridges on a larger soundboard, and the action geometry giving you such an even feel, even when playing close to the fallboard. It is the ultimate playing and sonic experience! However, another aspect of piano size is that generally, larger pianos produce more volume. So this is another consideration for you. I hope this has been helpful for you! Thanks again 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

Baby Grand VS Grand Pianos: What’s the Difference?

Hi, I’m Robert Estrin and this is LivingPianos.com. The subject today is about a way to not have commercials on YouTube. You just want to watch a video and you have to endure these commercials all the time. This week one of my fans contacted me and said they love watching my videos, but the commercials are driving them nuts!

There is a way to not have any commercials on YouTube. It’s called, “YouTube Premium”.

YouTube Premium is a paid program which also includes YouTube Music. YouTube music has a comprehensive library of almost any music that has ever been recorded which you can listen to anytime, anywhere on any device. I have subscribed for years. I think the $11.99/month is worth it just for YouTube Music! I haven’t seen a commercial on YouTube for years either. You can try it out for a month for free here to see how you like it: https://www.youtube.com/premium

The best part is by subscribing to YouTube premium, you also get YouTube music.

YouTube Music is a treasure trove of almost every recording you could imagine which you can listen to it anywhere, any time from your computer to your phone, to your iPad. I’m not paid for this. This is not a sponsored commercial. but my time is valuable as I’m sure yours is. So try it out for a week and see how you like it! If you like it, you’ll never have to watch a commercial on YouTube again! Thanks again 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

How to Avoid Commercials on YouTube

Welcome to Living Pianos. The subject today is about what college piano sales are all about. You’ve probably seen them at your local college or university, and then the next year they have them again. And you wonder how they have so many pianos to sell! Also, you wonder, if these are college pianos, what kind of condition could they possibly be in. (We’ve all seen school pianos!) Well, I’m going to tell you what these sales are all about so you can determine if it’s something of interest to you so you can decide if you’d like to investigate them for yourself.

This is a very common practice. They are events held at colleges, universities and also in conjunction with arts organizations. The way they work is with an arrangement among a piano dealer, a piano manufacturer, a finance company, and an institution, typically a school. The arrangement is made to loan several new pianos (perhaps 6-8 pianos) for a year at no charge. In exchange, the institution agrees to open up their facility (and more importantly their mailing list) to have a limited time piano sale which is marketed with tens of thousands of dollars of advertising. The piano store then engages piano movers to move dozens of other pianos from the piano store into the school, performance venue, or other facility for the sale.

If you research this online, “What is a College Piano Sale”, you will find a lot of opinions on this practice.

These sales are generally held in conjunction with Yamaha, Steinway, or Kawai. If it is a Yamaha event, there will be mostly Yamaha pianos there. If there is a specific model of Yamaha piano you are after, it can be a good place to get a decent price on the piano without the hassle of negotiation which is typical in new piano stores. However, the expense of moving the pianos in and out, along with the heavy promotional costs precludes spectacular deals at these events. It is also not a place where you have much time to try out instruments. They try to create a buying frenzy by limiting time, and fostering an urgency for a buying decision before the pianos are sold (even though most of them go back to the store after the sale is over).

So remember: if you are looking for a new piano, and know what you want, a college sale can be a good way to go. But for narrowing down what you want, you are better off shopping around first. Let us know your experiences on LivingPianos.com and YouTube! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
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