Piano Lessons- Music Theory Lessons

Today we are going to address the question of what is better, a Digital Piano or an Upright Piano. This is a common question here at the store and it’s something worth investigating. While neither an upright or a digital piano is comparable to a good quality baby grand or grand piano, you may wonder which is a better choice.

The big plus to owning a digital piano is that it’s always in tune so you never have to spend time or money maintaining the instrument. Digital pianos can also change their volume as well as be used with headphones so you can practice without disturbing people around you. Most digital pianos allow you to connect to your computer to enhance your experience with programs that can record your playing and aid in learning. Digital pianos also allow you to play with different sounds and effects that simply aren’t possible on a traditional piano. There are a lot of possibilities with a digital piano.

On the other hand there are plenty of reasons that an upright piano is a good choice. If you’ve ever looked inside a piano you see hundreds of parts for each note that make up the piano’s action. Even though an upright piano action is not as responsive as one in a grand piano,

they are much more responsive than even the best digital piano action. There is simply no way to replicate the feel and touch of an actual piano action. This can be incredibly important if you plan on playing anywhere else besides your digital piano since as a pianist you are called upon to play whatever piano is available.

I generally recommend an acoustic piano to any aspiring student, but there are exceptions. If you can’t afford a decent upright piano or you can only get ahold of a shorter spinet piano (which has an inferior indirect blow action) then a digital piano might be a better choice for you. If you want to experiment with different sounds or are severely limited in space, a digital piano might also be the right choice for you.

Acoustic pianos have benefits when it comes to sound. Although digital pianos sample the actual sounds of nine foot concert grand pianos, there are limits to what can be recorded. Even a high end digital piano that has multiple sound samples of each note at different volume levels can’t replicate the range of tones possible on an acoustic piano. An acoustic piano has infinite levels of expression that simply can’t be matched on a digital instrument, although they keep getting better. For an advanced student there is no substitute for the expression possible on an actual acoustic piano.

So, unless you require the features and benefits of a digital piano, you are better off with a good quality acoustic upright piano over a digital piano. There is no substitute to playing an actual piano. Technology keeps advancing and digital pianos continue to get better and better. So, one day in the future this could be a different situation. Until then you are better off practicing on a good upright piano.

If you’ve shopped for a piano you might be familiar with these terms. As you might expect, the answer to which one of these types of hammers is preferable is not so simple.

Cold Pressed Hammers

Cold pressed hammers are typically found on American and European Pianos. The felt is typically softer than hot pressed hammers found on Asian pianos and they lend themselves more to the warm tone appropriate for much classical music.

Cold pressed hammers can actually be a bit too soft in some instances – like on many new Steinway pianos where hammers have to be treated with chemical agents such as lacquer in order to get the felt to harden up a bit to make the piano sound bright enough.

Hot pressed Hammers

Typically found on Asian pianos, hot pressed hammers contain felt that is already hard and produce a nice bright tone right out of the box! For certain styles of music this is the type of sound you may be after. In rock or pop settings the piano will cut through a mix better than a Steinway! This is why Yamaha is the preferred piano for many rock and pop artists.

If the hammers are a bit too hard for your liking and produce a sound that is too bright and brittle, you can sometimes have a technician needle them to soften the felt and get good results.

Time and Play is a Big Issue

Whether you have cold or hot pressed hammers, over time the felt will harden with continued play. As the hammers continue to strike the strings of the piano they will become grooved:

When the felt on the hammers becomes grooved like this, the felt becomes more compacted and harder over time with continued use.

Sometimes you can get new life out of worn hammers by filing to get the egg shape essential for good tone. Needling them can make the tone more mellow as well. Eventually there isn’t fresh felt to work with and new hammers are required.

The Choice Depends upon You

Like many aspects of the piano, the choice of the right type of hammers for you depends largely on the style of music you play.

If you are a classical player and you practice a great deal, hot pressed hammers could be problematic as they will get harder faster and need to be needled more often. But no matter how many times you needle them they might not be able to be brought down far enough to produce the softer tone you may be looking for. So, in this case, cold pressed felt may be more suitable.

However, if you play classical music but have a softer touch, you might prefer the sound of hot pressed hammers since you can get brilliant sound with less energy. If you don’t find yourself playing with a great amount of force on the keys, the hot pressed felt will help produce a louder and more distinct tone that can cover up for the lack of force at which the hammers strike the keys.

The same thing is true for rock and pop music. Hot pressed hammers may be a great fit, but if you are an extremely powerful player, you may want the cold pressed hammers so the tone doesn’t become crunchy and distorted at higher volumes.

So much depends on the type of music and style in which you play and your personal preference in tone. As with most decisions with your piano, there is no right or wrong answer when it comes to hard or cold pressed hammers.

Just keep in mind these simple truths when it comes to hammer felt:

Cold pressed hammers = softer felt – mellower tone

Hot pressed hammers = harder felt – brighter tone

This question comes from one of our viewers Elizabeth from Cozumel in the Caribbean.

She asks, “What can I do about the extreme humidity where I live?” when it comes to her piano.

There are several things you can do to help alleviate the problem of humidity or climate when it comes to the life of your piano.

Buy a Dehumidifier

Install the dehumidifier and make sure that you keep all the windows closed.

You can also use Air Conditioning to do pretty much the same thing.

However, if you are living near the beach or somewhere where you want to enjoy the elements, you might have second thoughts about keeping your windows closed. After all, you have to balance the enjoyment of your life with the longevity of your piano.

But is there anything you can do other than close everything up? Sure.

Close Your Piano at Night

At nighttime when the marine layer comes in, that is the worst time of day for your piano.

This shouldn’t just be something you do if you live near the beach either. Generally, closing your piano at night is a great idea to prolong the life of the instrument.

Buy a String Cover

With excessive humidity it might be a good idea to buy a string cover.

This is a piece of felt that will match the shape of the inside of your piano. It will cover the strings and protect them from humidity without affecting the sound too much.

Put a Cover over the Entire Piano

If you want to protect the piano even more, you can close the entire piano and put a cover over it to prolong the life of the instrument.

But if you want the enjoyment of having your piano open a good deal of the time and still protecting it, there is one thing that might be the right solution for you.

Install a Dampp Chaser System

This is a very interesting way to prolong the life of your piano and still be able to enjoy it’s beauty without having to close it or cover it.

This technology puts heating rods beneath the piano with a humidistat. Whenever the humidity gets above a certain level, the heating rods will become hot.

This will help to keep your soundboard stable and will make tuning more stable over time.

Bottom line, just make sure that no matter what you do to prolong the life your piano, you are able to get the enjoyment out of it that you want.

The heart and soul of your piano is its soundboard. Like the top of a Stradivarius violin, the soundboard is the wood beneath all the strings and plate of the piano which gives it its unique quality of sound. There are certain things you should know about soundboards:

– Tight cracks usually present no problems.

– Crown, the slight upward arching of the soundboard is essential for good tone.

– The ribs beneath the soundboard must be firmly attached at all points to avoid buzzing.

– Soundboards can be fixed, but only by removing the strings and plate and rebuilding the piano.

Watch the video to learn how to check the soundboard on your piano.

Robert Estrin performs Chopin’s Nocturne in F-Sharp Major

Portato (commonly referred to as Portamento) is somewhere between legato and staccato. Legato means to play notes connected while staccato means to play them detached, sometimes even short in faster music. Portato would fall in-between these two styles of play. Generally, the notes are played long but slightly detached. Portato is not an exact science so knowing how to play is determined by what style of music you’re playing, the tempo, as well as the context of the particular passage.

A good personality is certainly a positive attribute when it comes to making friends or improving business relationships. But can it also make you a better musician?

Music is an artform and as such it requires an artist’s expression to make it truly unique and stand out. Having a good personality to your playing is a vital component of captivating your audience. But do you need an outgoing personality to accomplish this?

The truth is that many accomplished musicians are not what I would call social extroverts. In fact, I know a number of musicians who are very expressive on their instruments but have a very reserved social personality. There are even musicians who don’t like performing in front of people!

Glenn Gould was an extremely popular and brilliant musician who eventually gave up his live performance career because he simply didn’t feel comfortable and preferred to be in a studio making recordings. He is one of many musicians who prefer to withdraw from live audiences and focus on different aspects of their art in a more comfortable environment.

So yes, personality is essential in your music but this doesn’t mean you have to be socially outgoing to be a great musician. As far as getting opportunities and promoting yourself it’s going to be much easier if you are comfortable talking with people but it shouldn’t interfere with your development as a musician.

Today we are going to discuss something that a lot of you have probably never heard of and that is quarter tone music. If you have ever heard quarter tone music before you would instantly recognize it as being different than anything typically heard in Western music. To most of us it may sound like music that is being played out of tune. So what exactly is it and how is it different from the music most of us know?

Let’s begin by talking about Western music. For most of us the music we are familiar with is founded upon the principles in Western Music. Everything from Rock to Pop to Symphonies utilizes the same twelve notes (or tones) that are the foundation of nearly all the music you know. But all music is not based on the principles of Western music and there are different cultures around the world that utilize notes beyond the twelve tones we are familiar with.

In our music we base things upon the smallest interval of a half step. For example, if you look at the keyboard of a piano, the smallest distance between any two keys (black and white) is a half step. On other instruments it is the same; the smallest distance between notes is a half step. Quarter tone music adds notes between these notes.

Today Robert is going to provide some tips on how to Improvise on the piano. This is a very deep and involved topic but we hope to provide a good starting point with this video.