Piano Lessons- Music Theory Lessons

This is Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com with a really big question. How do you compose music? This is a huge subject and it is interesting that there isn’t just one answer. I’m going to give you a lot of pointers today. While there are exceptions, there are those who find a certain formula. I hate to say that Mozart found a formula, but when you consider the massive quantity of music he wrote, you’ll notice that a great deal falls into Sonata Allegro form. He wrote works other than those based upon the Sonata Allegro form. There are some notable exceptions such as his operas and his Great Mass in C minor. However, there are a lot of commonalities in the structure of many of Mozart’s compositions.

The same is true in pop music. There are some popular composers who churn out somewhat formulaic compositions one after another that are great. But all too often there is a sameness to the work of most songwriters. There are very few people who can pull that off. Mozart was able to compose many sonatas and symphonies with each one offering unique musical statements despite being structurally similar to one another.

Many composers don’t have one way of composing.

Every single piece they compose is a different way of getting there. What are some of those ways? One way is to come up with a melody. Make something up off the top of your head. Play with it a little bit and add more and more. Then, you go back and add some accompaniment. Composing a melody and then harmonizing it is one great way of composing. If you try to put every last detail in at first, it can bog you down and you’ll lose the vision of where you are going with the music. If you have a melodically-oriented piece of music in mind, this can be a phenomenal way to knock out a piece of music. Write out the melody line on manuscript paper or sing it into a recorder. Make sure you get it down somehow. Then go back and flesh out the rest of it.

Are there any other ways you can approach composing? Absolutely! You can also come up with an interesting chord progression first, then later come up with the melody. Maybe after that you come up with another chord progression. So, you can start with melody and add harmony, or you can start with a harmony and add a melody.

There are countless other ways to compose music. The more ways you can approach a piece of music, the more creative you can be. The last thing you want to do is to fall into a rut. You might come up with some sort of groove or rhythmic element that is captivating that you want to build upon. Maybe you can start with a groove, but then change the chords. You could even start with a motif.

Anything you start with that captures your interest is what you should go with.

You don’t want to compose something for the sake of doing it a certain way because you’ve been told to do it that way or you think it’s the right way to do it. That is the surest way to come up with something that isn’t engaging. You’ll know when you are on the right track when you feel a burning desire to keep on plugging away. Whether it’s a melody, a harmony, a riff, or a groove, if it fascinates you, you are on the right track!

Some last thoughts for you. Think about the structure. Some people like to consider the form first so they know where they are going in the piece in a macro sense. I mentioned Sonata Allegro form which is kind of like an A-B-A (themes, development, themes). Another type of form worth considering is theme and variations. Find a theme that you love and come up with multiple versions of it that take off in different ways. Pachelbel’s Canon is an example of that. It is essentially the same thing over and over again but you never get tired of it because each iteration is inventive. A rondo also has many repetitions with a prescribed form (A – B – A – C – A – B – A) You can try to carve out something with several recurring themes in this form.

You’ll find that ultimately it is what is genuine for you that is going to get the best results. I know that when you are composing sometimes you may hit a brick wall. Rather than going through the motions and trying to force something that isn’t there, sometimes it is better to just wait for inspiration to strike. One of the best ways to do that is to play around with notes freely until you come up with something you like and build from there.

I hope this has given you some ideas for any of you who have tried to compose. It is so easy today with modern technology to produce a large output. It used to be such an arduous task to write out scores and individual parts for an orchestral piece.

With programs now like Finale and Sibelius, you can have all of that done for you!

A lot of the great composers had their students doing copying work. Today there is technology that can do that for you.

Digital sequence programs are another great tool for composing. Plug in a digital piano and free programs like Audacity or GarageBand or professional programs like Logic and ProTools which allow you to play to your heart’s content saving anything you like. Snip, copy, paste just like a word processor except with music. It can be a tremendous time saver. You can work with an idea off the top of your head without having to write everything out, perform it, and record it. It is all instantaneous!

I hope this has been helpful for you. Again, this is Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store.

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Hi, I’m Robert Estrin. This is LivingPianos.com. The question today is, “Is socialism good for music?” This is a very complex question and there’s a lot to think about. So, let’s start with the first thing that’s probably going to come to a lot of your minds, which is the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had quite a vibrant music scene and composers like Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Khachaturian, and others, were funded by the government and had illustrious careers and wrote great music. Shostakovich, in particular, suffered under authoritarian rule. It was great that the artists were funded. There were phenomenal performers such as cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, pianist Sviatoslav Richter as well as many orchestral musicians who could make a decent living. But at the same time,

Authoritarian rule was a heavy hand telling people what they could play and what they could compose.

The music had to glorify the state. So it was really a double-edged sword. What about today? Is there socialized music today? Socialism is essentially something that is publicly funded.

Germany has 133 symphony orchestras that are publicly funded.

That’s in addition to private orchestras. They have a vibrant classical music scene! Now, not all of them have budgets as high as the Berlin Philharmonic. There are different tiers of orchestras just like there are here.

In the United States, orchestras are endowed with private donations

and are always struggling. Many go bankrupt and there are fewer and fewer of them as the years go on. So, Germany has something going that is vibrant for the classical music scene. Is there any socialized music in the United States? Can you believe there are 140 publicly funded bands?

There are 5,000 professional musicians paid for with our tax dollars right here in the United States.

In fact, the government spent 1.5 billion dollars in a recent four year period on military bands. There are 140 military bands in the U.S. The Air Force, Marines, the Army, and the Navy all have music programs. They spent over $155 million just on instruments and equipment in that same recent four year period. So, there’s a tremendous amount of money going into music in this country, and that’s basically a social program for music and musicians. It’s all about how money is spent and how it’s delegated along with the rules that come with it. The Soviet Union was very harsh, glorifying music for the Communist Party. And in Germany, it’s glorifying the great traditions of Western music. And here it’s about the military. So, there are different ways that public money can be utilized in music. I’d love to get your opinions about the different ways public funding can help music and what your thoughts are about what I’ve outlined here today. I’d love to hear from you. Again, I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com Your Online Piano Store.

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Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store, with a great question. When do you use the soft pedal on the piano? The una corda pedal is the left pedal on grand and baby grand pianos. It is an amazing device for expressive playing because it changes the tone. Those of you who practice on upright pianos, the left pedal does not do what it is supposed to do.

What does “una corda” mean?

Una corda translates from Italian as “one string”. What does this mean? Originally, pianos had two strings for each key. By depressing the una corda pedal, the hammers would only strike one of the two strings giving a softer, delicate tone. Modern pianos have three strings for each note through most of the piano. So, depressing the una corda pedal makes two of the strings hit directly. Depending on how the piano is voiced, it may even hit all three strings with softer parts of the felt of the hammer.

The fundamental thing about soft pedals is that every piano is different.

Think about this: on one piano the hammers may strike two of the strings. On another piano, the hammers may strike all three strings, but a little off-axis. The grooved part of the hammer with the hardened felt does not hit the strings. So, you get a more delicate tone. I’m telling you all this so that you understand how different the impact is on depressing the soft pedal on different pianos.

The answer to the question is: it depends not just upon the music, the performance you are after, or the acoustics of the room, but on the specific piano and the way its soft pedal affects the tone. Naturally, a great deal has to do with how you approach the piano with your hands. In some pianos I’ve played, every time you put the soft pedal down it creates a drastic tonal change.

On other pianos, you depress the una corda pedal and you don’t even notice any difference at all!

On this type of piano, you might use the pedal very liberally. On such a piano, if you want a little change of color, you might as well push the soft pedal just to make it easier to play softly.

Perhaps you’ve worked out all of the places you want to use the soft pedal. Then, as soon as you start playing with the soft pedal, the tone gets swallowed up completely. You may find that you are not going to use the soft pedal except very sparingly, in the most delicate sections on a piano like this.

That’s the long and short of it:

When playing a performance, it’s so important to have an opportunity to try the piano beforehand. Not just for the soft pedal, but all the pedals. It is remarkable how different the pedals respond on various pianos! I would go so far as to say that in trying out a piano for a recital, an audition, or just to play for someone, checking out the pedals is probably the most important thing because they vary more than any other aspect of each piano.

I hope this has been helpful for you. Again, I’m Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store.

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This is Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.com. The question today is “How do you play hands together on the piano?” This is a big subject. After all, playing hands together is what the piano is all about! You might wonder, particularly if you are a wind player or if you play almost any other instrument that plays one note at a time, how piano players play different parts in each of their hands. This is something that makes the piano unique. It’s what the instrument is all about. In fact, all keyboard instruments have this in common. So what is the secret? How do people do this? Even doing something like tapping your head and rubbing your tummy can be confusing for most people! The intricacy of the parts for each hand in piano music can present enormous challenges. You might wonder, how do you approach such a thing? There is an answer!

Of course, the more you practice, spending months or even years at the piano, it becomes more natural for you to be able to play independent parts at the same time. You may even develop the ability to read at sight new music that requires independence of the hands. But that usually takes a very long time to develop for most people. How can you do it right from the get-go?

I’ve been teaching piano for many years and I always introduce playing hands together from lesson one.

Otherwise, it would be like learning to ride a bike with one leg. It misses the whole point! How do you teach how to play the hands together? Even though it seems counter-intuitive, it’s by practicing hands separately. I don’t mean practicing incessantly hands separately. I mean that each phrase you work on, you practice each hand separately first. If you want to learn a new piece, rather than putting the hands together from the start, you break things down. Initially, you may read through the piece hands together a couple times just to get acquainted. Then, you should get to work and and start learning the piece. You should learn a very small section of each hand first while observing all the details.

Anytime you have music that can be broken down into chords, learn it in chords first.

By learning the chords, you are going to find the best fingering. It’s also easier since you only have a few chords to learn instead of so many separate notes. Once you have that learned, then you learn the other hand. Then you put the hands together and get it learned. Finally, you break up the chords and play the music as written.

When learning, you should also avoid using the pedal most of the time. The last step is adding the pedal. By working hands separately, each little phrase at a time and then putting them together, you have the benefit of breaking things down to size so you can master each section. You also can really digest a score and have all of the details learned because you focus on one phrase of music at a time. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of details in each phrase of music. How can this be? Each note has a duration and rhythm. Each note has a fingering. Each note has a phrasing and an expression. So, there are five aspects to each note. There’s only so much you can assimilate at a time!

That’s why learning small chunks of music a phrase at a time hands separately is such a powerful practice technique.

That’s the secret. You hear people playing intricate pieces of music that you want to play, and you wonder how it is possible to learn so much music with your hands doing dramatically different things. The accompanying video shows you how to achieve this with music that is relatively simple. But the same principle applies to learning any piece of music. That’s the secret to playing hands together on the piano. I hope you’ve enjoyed this here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store. I’m Robert Estrin.

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This is LivingPianos.com and I am Robert Estrin with a great subject today, Unique Problems with Steinway Pianos.

Steinway pianos are the de facto standard in the concert world.

In fact, it’s the only company left that still supports the concert market with concert grands in virtually all major cities in the world. This is an arduous task when you consider the cost of each one is in the six figures! Steinway in different periods of time had problems and I’m going to bring up two of them today.

Fortunately, Steinway pianos being manufactured today do not suffer from either of these problems.

I want to let you know that right out of the gate. But early in the 20th century, Steinway had an idea of a way that they could make actions last longer and be less susceptible to corrosion. They used a solution containing paraffin on their actions. If you ever looked at old Steinway pianos or sat down at an old Steinway that’s been neglected, it may have played like a truck. You can look inside and the hammers go up and down very gradually. There’s no speed. Everything’s gummed up. You can actually see green in all the little felt bushings of all the hundreds of action parts on each key. That is an example of vertebrae.

Verdigris is a condition in which a piano action becomes corroded.

This paraffin solution had exactly the opposite effect of the intention that Steinway had in avoiding corrosion. Unfortunately, in certain environments, the actions would gum up like crazy! Sometimes it’s possible to get things moving by treating the action parts with different chemicals. However, with really severe verdigris, all you can do is rebuild the action with all new parts.
Sometimes you can replace center pins if it’s not a really bad problem. You can also try lubricating. But oftentimes problems will recur. With humidity, the air gets inside the piano. You might think you’ve got the problem solved and everything’s moving nicely. Then, a month later, it starts gumming up again. So that’s one problem of early 20th-century Steinways.

Fortunately, you don’t have to worry about vertigris on newer Steinway pianos.

The second problem was in Steinway’s CBS era when they experimented with something else that sounded like a great idea. The thousands of felt parts in actions wear out and are susceptible to humidity. So, Steinway engineers thought about utilizing Teflon.

From around 1968 to 1982 Steinway used Teflon in their piano actions.

What’s wrong with this? I’m a believer that oftentimes there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. However, the problems that plagued them is that some pianos that went to extreme environments the wood would swell and contract with the weather. Of course, Teflon is hard. This created space between the Teflon and the wood creating noise in the actions. Sometimes, rebuilding the actions are necessary for these circumstances. However, I will say this:

The vast majority of the time, the biggest problem with Teflon actions, is finding technicians who know how to service them properly.

Oftentimes Teflon itself isn’t the problem. Using slightly larger center pins can sometimes solve the problem if the Teflon is worn. However, Teflon is very robust and can last many, many years. Teflon is not necessarily a problem. In fact, if I was buying a Steinway piano from that era and it had Teflon and there were no problems, I wouldn’t be concerned. Now, it doesn’t mean there would never be problems. But you know what? It doesn’t matter what piano you have, things will require servicing eventually and parts will wear out if you play a good deal.

That’s the long and short of Teflon. It was something they tried and they eventually gave up the practice. The idea of piano actions that don’t wear out so quickly is a very appealing idea and I applaud them for trying something. If you have a piano with Teflon, if it isn’t giving you problems, you should be fine. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it. As long as it’s functioning well, you’re in good shape.

Again, I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com Your Online Piano Store. Keep the questions coming in! info@LivingPianos.com 949-244-3729

You piano playing will be on an entirely new level when you stop using the pedal as a crutch and learn how to connect the music with your hands. I hope this tutorial helps your piano practice and your playing. This is Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.com Your Online Piano Store 949-244-3729 info@LivingPianos.com

This is Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store. Today, I have three secrets to playing slow music. When you hear instrumentalists, such as pianists, you notice that many have a lot of technical achievement. But when you hear a great artist play a slow movement, magic can happen. It can reach the inner depths of your soul. This is the sign of a great musician. How do you approach slow movements in order to get that quality, to get that beauty and be able to reach people on an emotional level? These are the secrets I’m going to give to you today.

Number one is: Make sure you take the right tempo.

A lot of people play slow movements too slowly. For example, if someone were to perform Debussy, Clair de Lune, you may hear it played very slowly. Now, it might be okay at the beginning, but by the time you get to the middle and compare the tempo they’re playing in the middle of the piece, often, they’re going faster because it gets ponderous after awhile at such a slow tempo.

Another clue for you when you’re taking a tempo that is too slow is that you will find that if there are repeats, you won’t want to take them. They don’t seem to work. So, if you have a piece of music and think, “Mozart didn’t mean all those repeats”. Yes, he did! And if they don’t work, it’s a clue that you are playing too slow a tempo. Another thing related to this is to:

Hold long notes long enough.

There’s nothing worse than robbing long notes. But it’s so easy to rob long notes because you’re just sitting there doing nothing! It’s easy to count to yourself and accelerate your counting in your head. You can lose the pulse.

A lot of performers play very slowly and rob the long notes, such as again, the beginning of Clair de Lune. To me, that is simply playing out of rhythm. But you’d be surprised how many performances you’ll find online of very renowned concert pianists playing this piece and robbing the long notes. Holding all the long notes for their full written value gives the music soul, doesn’t it? You’ve got to take the right tempo and you must hold the long notes long enough. What else is there? The other thing is to:

Think of the long note as the pulse.

This enables you to have a slow pulse with a faster tempo. An example is the second movement of the K. 332 Mozart Sonata in F major. First, you could play it thinking of each sixteenth note as the beat. The left hand has sixteenth notes, and each one of those can be punctuated as the beat. Then, instead of thinking each sixteenth note as the beat, try thinking each eighth note as the beat. It’s already going to be better. Rachmaninoff said,

“The bigger the phrase, the bigger the musician.”

Well, related to this is, the longer note that you feel as the pulse, the more freedom you have with your music. Now try feeling the quarter note as the pulse. This also gives you the benefit of being able to take a faster tempo but still having a relaxed feel to your music. Even with a slightly faster tempo, but with the quarter note as the pulse, it doesn’t feel hurried! Those are three secrets to being able to play slow music.

Make sure to hold long notes long enough, feel the long note as the beat, and choose the right tempo.

Don’t take slow pieces too slowly. If you do those three tips, it will enhance the performance of your slow music. I’d love to hear from all of you and give me your perspective. And if you haven’t subscribed to LivingPianosVideos’ YouTube channel, go for it! You’ll get all the fresh videos. We produce them for you every week.

Thanks for joining me again,  Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.com Your Online Piano Store.   info@LivingPianos.com 949-244-3729

This is Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store with a fantastic tip for your memorization, which is the power of interlocking phrases.

Now, what am I talking about here? Well, if you’ve spent time memorizing music, you know that the most efficient way to do it is to take a small section at a time, because after all, there’s a limit to how much you can learn at once. What can really help you is by watching this video and reading the article on how to memorize:

HOW TO PRACTICE THE PIANO PART 1 – MEMORIZING MUSIC

You take each hand separately a small section at a time, mastering each hand and then putting them together and getting that memorized.

But How Do You Get the Phrases Together?

You learn this section, that section, and you’re going to have a whole bunch of random phrases. That’s where the interlocking phrases come in. For example, in the above video, if you are learning a Mozart sonata like the K545, the famous C-major sonata of Mozart, you start with the first phrase to learn. But instead of doing that, go one note further as demonstrated in the accompanying video. That extra note is where you start learning your next phrase. That way, after you learn the first phrase and get that solid, you have a common note between the two phrases. When you finally get the second phrase learned, you go back to the beginning, and you’ll be able to be on the first note of the second phrase.

Interlocking Phrases Is So Helpful!

Beyond that, when you get into more advanced stages of learning your music, you might find that you have all the phrases learned but you can’t get through everything in a fluid manner. Then you can try interlocking at different points. For example, you do the first four measures, and then you try the second measure to the sixth measure. Then you practice off-setting the points at which the phrases connect because one of the biggest challenges with memorizing music is getting everything smoothly put together.

So, that is the power of interlocking phrases in learning music. I hope this tip if helpful for you. Again, I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store. If you haven’t already subscribed to my YouTube channel, go for it, because you’ll get all the fresh videos. Thanks for joining me. Robert@LivingPianos.com 949-244-3729