Piano Lessons- Music Theory Lessons

Welcome to LivingPianos.com I’m Robert Estrin. The topic today is, “How to Transpose Music to Any Key.” Wouldn’t it be great if you could instantly play in any key? If you play jazz or popular styles of music, a lot of times a singer will come in and say, “I want to do this song, but can we take this in E flat instead of F?”, or something of that nature. How do you do that? It’s not easy! Certainly some types of music are harder to transpose than others. For example, if somebody gave you a Tchaikovsky concerto to transpose it might be difficult because there are so many notes to play. Naturally when you’re working from lead sheets or chord charts it’s a lot easier because you just change the chords. But how do you even do that?

What is the secret to transposition?

Is there a shortcut? Not really, but there are some tips that can help you. If you know your key signatures, and you can think them through, meaning you know the sharps and the flats associated with every single major scale, it makes transposition so much easier. Otherwise, on the piano, you could just go up or down and it would be the simplest thing in the world, transposing a simple chord progression in C major (with all white keys) to other keys. If you could just go up one key and everything would sound the same, it would be great! But it wouldn’t sound the same because black keys would not be in the same position. But, for example, if you know your key signature of D major has an F sharp and a C sharp, you just move your hands over those keys and it would work!

How do you go about learning key signatures?

First of all, you should practice all your major and minor scales and arpeggios. That’s a first step just so you have the technique to physically play them. Then you’ll know what the notes are. So you could start with a simple progression and play it in several different keys. That is going to go a long way toward helping you when you’re transposing music.

How I transpose is a little bit different. It will have value for those of you who are willing to put the time in. I was so fortunate to grow up in a musical household. I studied piano with my father Morton Estrin who not only was a great concert pianist, but a phenomenal teacher. I used to go to his theory classes even years after I’d initially completed them because I’d always learn something new. One of the things I learned from those classes was solfeggio, putting music into syllables, Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti, Do. If you know the solfeggio syllables, you can put them into any key! The combination of being able to hear your music, put it into syllables, and knowing your key signatures makes for instant transposition! However, it’s not so instant to master solfeggio! But, for those of you who are younger students, or people who are serious and want to really master transposition as well as composition, improvisation, and being able to play by ear, there’s no substitute for sight-singing whether you use syllables or not. It’s going to help you immeasurably making the connection between what you hear and what you play.

Try sight-singing!

Here’s the thing about piano: you can push a key down and produce a pitch without first hearing it in your head. This isn’t true with singing. It’s not true for a lot of instruments. I’m also a French horn player. On French horn, you can get so many different notes on the open horn, that you better hear what you are about to produce or it’s going to be very difficult to hit the right notes. So I recommend sight-singing. If you can spend time studying to get fluent with sight-singing, and learn your key signatures, you can put music into any key. It’s a process. There’s no way to do this instantly. There are some little tricks though.

Learn your clefs.

When I was 13 years old, I went to a music and arts camp, Camp Tomoka in the Berkshire mountains. I went to the first music session, and discovered a mishmash of instruments there. I thought there was going to be a band, orchestra, chorus etc. But when I got there, I was put into a room full of all different instruments and there were less than a dozen of us in the entire music program! There weren’t any French horn parts. I had to transpose. Of course, French horn is a transposing instrument and you must learn how to transpose. But I was only 13 years old! I found that if I had something in E-flat horn, which would be a whole step lower, I would just pretend I was in the bass clef. Sometimes I would use the thumb valve to help with transposition since it would change the valve combinations to different points in the scale. There were all kinds of little tricks I would use.

Here is another valuable technique for transposition. If you learn your clefs, not just treble and bass clef, but learn your C clefs, this is a way you can instantly transpose your music as long as you know your key signatures. Because the C clef can make any line middle C. So, if you get comfortable with all your clefs, transposition is a breeze.

These are just some ways to learn to transpose. I wish I could offer a silver bullet that would simplify transposition for you. But, if master your key signatures, and get familiar with all your major and minor scales and arpeggios, then, you are halfway there. That’s our lesson for today. I hope this is helpful for you.

I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store.
Please feel free to contact us with any piano related questions for future videos!

Robert@LivingPianos.com
949-244-3729

Hi, I’m Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.com. The question today is, “What is Music?” I’m going to focus on a defined part of this question because this is obviously a huge topic. If you look it up, the dictionary definition says, “instrumental or vocal writing that comprises of melody, harmony, textures, things of that nature”. Obviously, that is music. But the question I got from a viewer is, are nature sounds music? Are industrial sounds music? And it got me thinking, this is a really good question! So what defines music?

Is Silence Music?

John Cage has a famous piece entitled, 4′ 33″ which is silence for exactly four minutes and thirty-three seconds. But how can silence be music? Silence is an integral part of music! Just like space, you can’t have matter without space. The same is true with music. Without the space between the notes, you don’t have anything. So yes, silence is intrinsically a part of music. So, can industrial sounds be music? If you look back to the 1930s, that’s when musique concrète originated in France. Musique concrète utilized recordings of nature and other sounds into musical compositions. So yes, nature sounds can be music, and indeed industrial sounds can be also.

Throughout history, music imitates civilization.

That’s why today you hear so much music that sounds like a factory. 20th Century music evolved to incorporate more percussive and in some ways harsh, ugly sounds because we hear that all the time – the sounds of the city, the screeching subway cars, traffic, car horns and all the rest of it. We are immersed in that soundscape and art imitates life. Go back centuries and you find the Pastoral Symphony of Beethoven as well as other similarly themed works. So yes, we can still enjoy those sounds. But there’s another aspect to this, which is the technologies of the instruments that enable producing different sounds.

As technology improves, musical possibilities expand.

The French horn imitates the human voice. Blowing through a horn is very much like singing. But what about today with computer generated music; what is that about? It’s obviously going to produce sounds that couldn’t be produced with the human voice. In medieval times or the Renaissance, music could never have been imagined to encompass the kind of sounds that a piano can create! So our technology is the piano itself. And of course, the development of the symphony orchestra. The sounds and the textures that are possible with a modern symphony orchestra couldn’t have been imagined earlier. To some extent, it’s a give and take. There’s an imitation of life and its civilization, the sounds we hear around us from nature, and manmade things. But there’s also the sounds of the instruments that can imitate that. It goes back and forth! Today, we’re in a computer age and our instruments are capable of sounds that only machines can make. The piano is the epitome and the culmination of 19th century technology. What will be the culmination of 21st century technology? Only time will tell.

That’s a simple answer for you. All sounds can be incorporated into music even though the sounds themselves aren’t necessarily music. I have sat outside and listened to the sound of birds, and naturally there are many compositions based upon birdsong, but are bird songs in and of themselves music? Are nature sounds music, or industrial sounds music? I think if you’re just listening to it, technically no, because music is created by humans. Though it certainly can be musical. Music is being created by machines now. They haven’t gotten brilliant yet, but they’re becoming pretty capable. But that’s a subject for another video!

Thanks for the great questions! I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store.

Robert@LivingPianos.com
949-244-3729

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is, “The Importance of Quiet in Music.” There are many aspects to this question. It’s important to be able to have a dynamic range in your playing. In fact, there’s no better way to draw in an audience than to come down very quiet. But what I’m talking about is the importance of the audience being quiet, and that’s the subject!

Play quietly to summon silence

Something that I like to do if an audience is making noise, ruffling their feet, talking, or doing things that are distracting, is to play quietly. You might think you would want to play louder to overcome the noise, but the opposite is true. If you come down in volume, the audience has to be quiet! They might even shush the person making the noise. Because they want to hear the performance! Talking during a musical performance is so annoying to everybody around, particularly if the music gets quiet. The problem is, we live in a world where music is so pervasive. There’s music playing almost everywhere. So, people are used to talking through music. It’s not only recorded music, even when there’s live music in restaurants and other places, people often talk through it.

Have respect for your neighbors at concerts.

When people who are not familiar with Classical performances go to concerts, they think it’s okay to talk. Worse yet, some people will have a piece of candy. They think somehow, if they open it slowly enough, nobody will notice. They know it’s making noise, so they’re nervous about it. They take an excruciatingly long time to get that candy open, while driving everybody around them nuts. It’s best to wait until after the performance is over to indulge in sweets.

If you have a really bad cough, maybe you should give your tickets to someone else.

Coughing can destroy a musical performance. For example, I try to post musical performances of mine on my YouTube channel. I even have a section you can check out if you want to hear some of my concert performances. But many of them don’t end up being utilized, because there’s some loud coughing right at the most delicate part of the performance. Just remember when you go to concerts, it’s an experience that you want everybody to enjoy. Make sure you can be quiet and have comfortable clothing so you won’t feel like you have to move a great deal in your seat. There’s nothing worse than a chair that squeaks! You don’t even want to move because it causes a disruption. So, check that out when you get to a concert so you can enjoy the performance, and everybody around you can as enjoy the music as well. I hope this is helpful for you! It’s seems like common sense, but not everybody has grown up with Classical music the way I have, so I think it’s important to share this. Thanks again for joining me!

I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store.
Please feel free to contact us with any piano related questions for future videos!

Robert@LivingPianos.com
949-244-3729

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin with a question from a viewer. Evan asks, “How Do You Compose A Cadenza?” Cadenzas in concertos, solo pieces with orchestra typically, often have sections where the orchestra dramatically stops, and the soloist plays their cadenza. In many concertos, the cadenzas are written. Cadenzas are not just in concertos, they’re also in solo pieces sometimes. For example, in Liszt’s 2nd Hungarian Rhapsody, there’s a part near the end that says ad libitum cadenza. And indeed, many pianists play cadenzas. In concertos, the composers often write cadenzas, but just as often there aren’t cadenzas written by the composers. Sometimes, there are cadenzas that people typically play, for example Beethoven wrote some cadenzas to Mozart concertos! So, there are often choices of cadenzas to choose from. But suppose you want to compose your own cadenza.

You can hear the hands independently from one another when you play scales two octaves apart.

For example, Evan asked specifically about the Liszt 2nd Hungarian Rhapsody. I haven’t played that piece in years, but when I did, I would actually make up cadenzas on the spot! I didn’t write one, I would improvise. I don’t necessarily recommend that. But I like to improvise. So, I would challenge myself. Here’s the key with a piece like that: You want to find techniques that are impressive sounding, but not necessarily something that is hard to play. It’s best to play something that sounds difficult because a cadenza is meant to show off your unique skills. However, I’ve heard cadenzas in concertos that were so far away from the style f the composer of the concerto, that it seemed ridiculous. For example, a Mozart concerto with a cadenza that’s in a 20th century style can be disorienting. Having stylistic integrity is important with cadenzas.

Showcase what you can do.

You don’t have to do the hardest thing in the world. You can do something that sounds hard, that lays into your hands. How would you compose such a thing? Start improvising! Just make something up that is based upon the themes and play around with it. Over time, you’ll find certain riffs that you like. Start building upon those and before you know it, you’ll have a framework. From there you can flesh out a cadenza for something like the Liszt 2nd Hungarian Rhapsody. For a full fledged concerto cadenza, it’s a bit more of a task. If you’re writing a cadenza to a Haydn or a Mozart Concerto, you probably want to play something that sounds like the composer. This is no easy task. Even Beethoven couldn’t do it!

Try to have some stylistic integrity, but do something stylistically that you like.

That is always a good key not just for composing cadenzas, but for all composing. Use what comes naturally to you and you’ll be richly rewarded! I hope this is helpful for you Evan, and everybody else! Keep your questions coming in. There are over one thousand videos at LivingPianos.com. You can search for them with keywords. We’ve got everything covered for you here at LivingPianos, Your Online Piano Store. Subscribe to our videos and join everybody else having a good time here with piano. See you next time.

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949-244-3729

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s topic is “Why You Should Practice Scales Two Octaves Apart.” Two octaves apart? You might wonder what value this has. Typically, you play scales an octave apart, right? So what about this idea of practicing scales two octaves apart?

You can hear the hands independently from one another when you play scales two octaves apart.

When you’re playing two octaves apart, it’s much easier to hear sloppiness. I’ve talked about playing in contrary motion also. These are all techniques to help you hear the clarity and evenness of your playing. This is a quick tip for you. If you have never done it before, try playing your scales two octaves apart. At first it’s going to feel a little unnerving. First of all, you can’t look at both hands. But truth be known, you don’t really have to look at your hands very much with scales. The notes are all right next to each other! But you can hear better playing two octaves apart.

You should always practice your scales in four octaves.

This is another good tip! It’s very important to cover the entire range of the piano. You might not think there is a difference playing in the high register versus playing in the low register, but there is! Even though it’s the same notes and the same fingering, your body is at a different angle. It feels different. Get comfortable playing the whole keyboard. The good news is once you learn one octave, it’s all the same! So, go for the full four octaves. In Hanon: 60 Selected Studies for the Virtuoso Pianist, you can find all the scales and arpeggios with the correct fingering. I’d love to hear from any of you who have never tried playing scales two octaves apart before. Tell me how it goes! Let me know if you find improvement in your scales from practicing this way.

I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store.
Please feel free to contact us with any piano related questions for future videos!

Robert@LivingPianos.com
949-244-3729

I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com Your Online Piano Store. Thanks for joining me.

info@LivingPianos.com

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to answer a viewer submitted question. Ploy asks, “What Influence Does Classical Music Have on Modern Popular Song?” What does modern music have to do with music from hundreds of years ago? Quite a bit really. Music is an evolving language. I would go so far as to say, modern popular song wouldn’t exist without the roots of Classical music. It’s so obvious to those of us who have delved deeply into music theory and music history because you see a lineage of development.

The structure of a pop song goes back to sonata-allegro and rondo forms.

These forms have been around for centuries. The harmonic language that is utilized in modern music is something that developed hundreds of years ago. This isn’t to say that music doesn’t continue to evolve, because it absolutely does. The integration of Afro-Cuban rhythms in jazz and leading to rock and even hip hop. It’s all a lineage. You can hear it if you appreciate that it’s a musical language that continues to grow. But if you took away the roots, what would you have left? You wouldn’t have the flourishing that we see today.

An appreciation of Classical music will serve you well if you’re writing in contemporary styles.

There are some exceptions to this. There are some styles of music that are so far afield, experimental styles that maybe have little to do with the roots of Classical music. But that’s really the exception rather than the rule. So for those of you who are delving into composition of popular songs, a good understanding of Classical harmony is invaluable for you. You will see so many things that will open your eyes to new possibilities in your writing. I hope that this is helpful for you, Ploy!

I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store.
Please feel free to contact us with any piano related questions for future videos!

info@LivingPianos.com
949-244-3729

Hi, and welcome to LivingPianos.com. I’m Robert Estrin with a very special announcement:

Now you can buy brand new Seiler pianos from Living Pianos!

Seiler, from Germany, started building pianos in 1849 making concert instruments as well as excellent practice and institutional pianos. Some things never change! Today, Seiler still manufacturers pianos in Germany and around the world, and they’re amazing instruments we’re proud to represent and sell to you anywhere in the country.

What is Seiler about? There are three editions of Seiler pianos. I’m going to get into a lot of that and I’m also going to perform on this beautiful six foot 10 inch SE – 208 model, which is the top of the line series Seiler. There are many things about these pianos that are remarkable. Starting with the GS line which has a wide tail and a wet sand cast plate, double A grade, solid spruce soundboards, and German Abel hammers. It’s an amazing value piano with so many features you don’t find in pianos at this price point. They are beautifully manufactured.

The SE and ED lines are above the GS line and they have some technologies that are not found in any other pianos.

The Membrator Soundboard, is Seiler’s unique technology that provides more sustain to the tone. How is this possible? At the point at which the soundboard is attached to the rim of the piano, the Membrator System transfers sound back to the soundboard, reinforcing the tone. It’s a phenomenal system that’s found in the SE and ED pianos.

The ED line is manufactured in Asia, with exactly the same scale design as the SE line with precision manufacturing. How are they able to achieve this? With German engineering!

With Computer Numerical Control (CNC) a precise duplication of all the specifications are possible in the Asian factory offering you an instrument that is so close to the top of the line, hand-built piano, but in numbers where everybody can enjoy these phenomenal instruments.

On the accompanying video, you can hear a complete performance of Debussy’s Clair De Lune performed on the German made, 6-foot 10-inch, model SE -208.

It’s something to be in the presence of true greatness in pianos. The singing tone, and the clarity, are achieved with a warmth not found in other European pianos. This piano has it all. You’ll be hearing a lot more about Seiler pianos.

Their vertical pianos also have technologies that no other pianos have.

The problem with upright pianos, as you probably know, is there’s a limitation in the speed of repetition because of basic physics. In grand pianos, the hammers go up and down, giving you rapid repetition and control since gravity is at work. On uprights, hammers travel sideways. So, there’s a limit to the speed. Or is there?

With Seiler’s patented, Super Magnet Repetition you can achieve much more rapid repetition than on other upright pianos.

This is available on both the SE and ED lines. The affordable GS line has all kinds of technologies as well! There are pianos with silent systems, and player systems are available as well. We welcome your questions. Once again, I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com Your Online Piano Store. Thanks for joining me.

info@LivingPianos.com

Hi, this is Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com in our Private Reserve Showroom, giving you a peak at what we have here. Now, why is this so important for you? We are offering virtual visits with Robert Estrin! That’s right. We can get together virtually. You can see the Living Pianos: Private Reserve showroom from the comfort and safety of your home. I haven’t spent very much time video conferencing until this last month or so visiting with family and friends, as well as people looking at pianos, wanting to learn more about them.

Beyond the videos, audio, and descriptions on our website, a personal encounter with you would be welcome!

We can show you pianos, we can visit, and with the technology today, it’s better than being there! We have all the resources for you. So I invite you to email Robert@LivingPianos.com to set up a one-on-one virtual meeting. We can go around the room and show you everything just like you’re here. Then we will arrange the careful delivery of your piano to your home. It’s a turnkey system for you! Thanks so much for joining me. I hope to hear from you soon!

I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store.

info@LivingPianos.com
949-244-3729