Piano Lessons- Music Theory Lessons

I consider myself very lucky to have grown up in a musical household. Not only were both my parents musicians, they were teachers as well. This ended up being a very positive environment for me. What about households where a parent might not know much about music at all? Is it detrimental to their child’s musical development? Should they learn to play the instrument with their children? These questions are what we are going to be covering today.

Learning to play along with your kids can be very beneficial to both you and your child. Especially if you are having a child learn to play an instrument at a young age it’s a very good idea to learn to play along with them. Being able to guide and help them in their lessons will greatly improve their learning – especially when it comes to reading notes and learning rhythms.

Not only does learning an instrument with your child potentially improve the technical aspects of their development, it also allows your kids to be more engaged in the musical process. By seeing you learn an instrument along with them they will see you engaging in a similar activity and they will naturally want to emulate you. It’s a great bonding experience and will greatly enhance their enthusiasm to keep learning.

It’s certainly not the end of the world if you want your children to learn to play a musical instrument and you can’t play one yourself. I have seen this countless times and I’ve seen many great students come out of these types of circumstances. However, if you are not going to be directly involved in the learning process you need to make sure that you are providing a good environment for them to learn. This means getting the best teacher you can afford as well as motivating them (not forcing them) to learn and keep up their enthusiasm. If you take an interest in what they are doing and provide encouragement it will help them immensely.

Either way, you should provide a positive environment for them to learn their instrument and develop as a musician. Just paying for lessons and not taking an interest will eventually lead to disaster.

You’ve probably heard the term “Concert Grand Piano” many times in the past and you might have wondered if there is something fundamentally different about a piano that would classify it as a “concert grand” instead of just a regular grand. So what does this term mean?

In some cases the term concert grand is used loosely by people to describe concert level grand pianos they might own. It sounds right, doesn’t it? They have a grand piano and it’s a concert level instrument, so it’s should be safe to call it a concert grand piano, right? Technically, no.

While there are concert level instruments that are smaller than typical concert grand pianos, they are not actually concert grand pianos! Standard concert grand pianos are around 9 feet long. The reason this term is designated to pianos of this size is because in a concert setting, particularly where a piano is used with a symphony orchestra, it will need to be this size in order to produce the volume needed to balance with the orchestra. Concert grand pianos are the standard for Classical performances and recording.

In certain cases where a concert grand piano simply won’t fit in a location or is impractical for a performance (such as with a chamber group where the volume could be overwhelming), a semi-concert grand piano might be an appropriate fit. These pianos are typically around 7 feet long and are fairly close to the sound and feel of concert grands.

So what makes concert grand pianos different from their counterparts? Is it just the size and the sound? There is actually a great deal that differentiates them from smaller pianos.

When I was a student in music conservatory and I was going to practice, I would always peek into the recital hall to see if either of the two concert grand pianos were available because even a few minutes of practice on one of the concert grands would benefit my practice tremendously because of primarily two things: the touch and the sound.

The touch of a concert grand piano is different from a standard grand piano. This is because the keys are longer on a concert grand. It’s not the part of the keys you see, but what’s behind the fallboard. In fact, when you go from a baby grand, to a parlor grand, to a grand and so on up to a concert grand, the keys get longer and longer as you progress to larger instruments. This makes a difference in the feel because on smaller pianos it is more difficult to press the keys down the closer you get to the fallboard. This is because the keys of pianos function like a seesaw. When you are closer to the middle, it’s harder to push down. Since concert grand pianos have longer keys, they have a more even feel from the front to the back of the keys. However, you will also be moving more mass which produces a more formidable feel.

The sound of a concert grand can be an ideal scale design. Smaller pianos offer compromises in sound and touch. Only on concert grand pianos do the strings get longer and longer as you go down the bass on the instrument. On grand and baby grand pianos, the strings are roughly the same length on the bottom half of the keyboard. Therefore, lower notes lack the purity of the fundamental pitch of a concert grand and and produce strong overtones which color the sound.

The tone also develops slower on concert grands than on smaller pianos. I’ve found through my personal experiences that I tend to play slower on concert grand pianos because the tone lasts so much longer, particularly in the bass and tenor registers. If you have the opportunity to play a concert grand piano you should certainly try one out and see how it differs from pianos you are used to.

Thanks again for joining me here at Living Pianos. If you have any questions about this topic or any topic at all please contact us directly: Info@LivingPianos.com (949) 244-3729

Over the years I’ve made a lot of videos about pianos and practicing piano. Today I’m going to provide a concise list of some areas to focus on during your development as a pianist and give some examples of past lessons you can refer to.

1. Memorize, Memorize, Memorize!

One of the most important aspects to practicing the piano and developing as a musician is to spend time on a regular basis memorizing music. I can’t stress enough how important this is and how it is often neglected. Any pianist specializing in solo classical music must spend a vast amounts of time memorizing music.

The amount of music in the world is endless and nobody can memorize all of it. But if you spend time on a daily basis memorizing music, you will develop security and mastery of performance. Not only will you expand your repertoire, you’ll be giving your brain a workout and you will spend more time focusing on how to play your music rather than what you have to play.

My video on how to memorize music is a great resource for you:

2. Sight Reading

Sight Reading is another crucial element to your development as a pianist and is another topic that is often overlooked. Wouldn’t it be great to explore new repertoire and try it out before you commit a significant amount of time learning it? That’s where sight reading becomes incredibly beneficial.

Developing your sight reading is very important and if you work on it regularly, you will continually improve. The following video has tips to improve your sight reading:

3. Playing With Other Musicians

Playing music with other musicians is not only fun, it’s a necessary experience in developing your own skills. Even if your primary interest is playing solo piano, you should seek out opportunities to play with other musicians and do it as often as possible.

There is no need to be intimidated by playing with musicians who are better than you are. In fact, this is one of the best ways to advance your scope as a musician. Even if they play other instruments, examining their sense of style, phrasing, timing and other aspects of their playing can help you develop a new depth of understanding to music.

Sight reading might be incredibly difficult on your own as you will find yourself starting and stopping when you make mistakes. When you sight read with other musicians, you will be forced to recover and you won’t be able to stop playing. It forces you to become a better at sight reading!

If you need help in learning how to accompany other musicians I highly recommend this video that I produced with my wife Florence Estrin (a concert flutist).

4. Improvise Often and Don’t be Afraid to Explore New Styles of Music

Improvising is so important to understanding your music and gaining a new depth of understanding about how it’s constructed. Many styles of music such as rock and jazz rely on improvisation as a key element to the music and encourages musicians to create something new and interesting every time they perform. Developing your improvisation skills (even with classical music) is a crucial element to becoming a better and more well-rounded musician.

Exploring new styles of music enables you to experience and understand styles you might not have been aware of; it can also be a great deal of fun! I’m a classical pianist but when I’ve been at parties with other musicians and played blues music, it’s been a great deal of fun and an incredible learning experience to improvise with them and learn how they approach music.

Improvising is also a universal language. If you learn how to read a lead sheet for jazz standards, you can take that anywhere in the world, to play with any musicians. Spoken language is not a barrier for musical performance!

Never improvised on the piano before? No problem, check out this video to get some great tips on where to begin:

5. Practice Mentally

This is something that people might not ever think of. Practicing mentally away from your instrument can offer benefits not possible while playing your instrument. Playing music requires a thought process and there are tremendous benefits to thinking through your music.

Let’s say you’re waiting in line at the grocery store. You can practice your music mentally by thinking through a piece with every nuance of performance without any physical restrictions. Going through your music when you are away from your instrument allows you to think about it in a different light. Naturally, practicing with your instrument is essential, but you may rely on motor memory rather than the music. Practicing mentally allows you to think through your music playing it exactly as you want.

This can have tremendous benefits strengthening your memory. Just play through your music in your mind and see how far you get. You can always refer to the score to clarify the comprehension of the score.

This is a great piece of music for students to learn. It is not a simple piece of music by any means, but it’s one of the easiest Beethoven Sonatas to learn and it is a substantial work. It’s interesting to know that the Op. 49 sonatas were composed much earlier than the opus number would indicate. However, they were published later.

I just recently received this question from a viewer and I thought it would be a good thing to address. If you play piano – or other polyphonic instruments – you probably have seen these before:

If you’re a singer or you play the flute, clarinet, trumpet, or perform another monophonic instrument you may have never seen these before in your notation.

These notes typically only occur in polyphonic writing. For example, on the piano you have multiple parts and sometimes you will have two different parts that play the same note. Imagine for example if there was a choir and there was the same note being sung between both the altos and the sopranos. Instead of writing the note twice, it would be easier to write the note on the same line and just add a line going up for the soprano and down for the alto.

Sometimes you might even see double stem notes for different rhythms. You might have a half note and a quarter note on the same note. This might sound confusing and it can be but it’s best to break down the music and understand how it is supposed to sound.

The Concerto goes back centuries and is a very important musical form. You might have seen my video on What is a Sonata?; This is a good follow up.

When we talked about Sonatas, I referred to the famous C Major Sonata K545 of Mozart. We discussed the structure of a Sonata extensively in the last video and we talked about how Sonatas can be written for any instrument and usually feature piano accompaniment.

A concerto, by contrast, is a piece of music written for a solo instrument or a small group of instruments along with a symphony orchestra. Symphony concerts often feature soloists at the start of the second half of the program. You will usually see a pianist or a violinist playing solo in front of the orchestra as they back them up. In the Baroque era, Bach wrote the Brandenburg Concertos for small groups of instruments accompanied by a small orchestra. There are countless Classical and Romantic period concertos which feature more than one soloist with an orchestra as well.

Many of you are probably familiar with the famous Tchaikovsky B flat minor Piano Concerto which starts with the thunderous chords on the piano. (You can hear them in the video example provided above.) While the piano is playing these huge chords, the orchestra is playing a beautiful melody which accompanies it.

There is a structural similarity between Sonatas and Concertos that is significant. Concertos are often written in the Sonata-Allegro form! If you want a detailed explanation of this please check out the link for the Sonata video provided above.

Recently I received this question from a viewer:

“If baby grand and upright pianos have shorter strings than grand pianos, and the pitch of a string is determined by its length, how can the smaller pianos play the same set of low notes as grand pianos?”

This is a very good question and one that deals with the physics and scaling of pianos. Longer strings make lower sounds, so how can you replicate the same pitch on pianos with shorter and longer strings?

This is where the scaling of pianos comes into play. The scaling of a piano has several factors which affect pitch. It is the combination of the length of the string, the thickness of the string, and the tension it is under that will determine its pitch. Scaling is something that is determined when the piano is designed and built and it is as much art as science. When replacing strings on a piano you must make sure the thickness and gauge of the strings is the same as the original ones or you could end up breaking strings! Even the steel strings vary in gauge across the piano.

Although even a small piano can create the lowest pitches, they are not pure tones. You might notice that when you play smaller pianos, the lowest notes sound muddled. The fundamental pitch is quite weak and the overtones are extremely audible. The overtones are present in all pitched sounds which create the color of the sound. In very small pianos, the overtones of the lowest notes are extremely pronounced obscuring the fundamental tone.

When I was a young boy I tried an experiment by taking my tape recorder and recording the lowest note on my father’s piano. I played the tape back on my father’s tape recorded which allowed me to hear it played back 4 times faster which also raised the pitch several octaves. The results shocked me. It sounded more like a chord rather than a single note! This is due to the overtones which are so predominant in the sound of the lowest notes of a piano. The smaller the piano, the greater the overtones and the less fundamental pitch comes through on the lowest notes. Larger grand pianos have stronger fundamental pitches on the lowest notes for a richer, cleaner sound but they still contain overtones as almost all pitched sounds do.

Let’s say you have access to a baby grand and a concert grand in the same room. If you played the same low notes on both instruments you would instantly be able to tell the difference in tone between the two because of the different balance of fundamental tones and overtones between to the two.

You’ve probably seen pianists gliding all over the keyboard almost effortlessly. It’s amazing to witness their speed and precision – it seems almost impossible. Sadly there is no turn-key solution for playing the piano faster but I will try and give you some tips on how you can improve your speed.

Learning to play fast is something that takes a lot of work and dedication. It’s not something you can master overnight; it’s something that can take years to develop and a lifetime to master. The most important aspects to improving your speed are to develop strength in your fingers and play lightly as you increase speed.

In the video on the top of this page, I use the Mozart K332 Sonata to demonstrate these techniques.