Piano Lessons- Music Theory Lessons

You would think there would be a standard height of keyboards on pianos. After all, you rarely take your piano with you when you perform, so having a normal height would seem like something you should expect. Sadly, this is not the case when it comes to the height of keyboards on pianos.

Most upright pianos have keyboards that are lower than grand pianos, yet some of large uprights from decades ago actually have higher keyboards than grand pianos!

The height of keyboards on pianos also differs by region. For example, most Asian pianos, piano manufactured in Japan, China, Korea and Indonesia, usually have higher keyboards than American made pianos.

Stretch tuning is a term you may not be familiar with, but you’ve certainly encountered it if you play piano – or almost any instrument for that matter! Today we are going to talk about what stretch tuning is and why it’s important to you.

Before we get into the concept of stretch tuning we need to discuss what pitch is. Pitch is the ability of your brain to count sound waves. When you hear an A – as when an orchestra tunes to A440, you are hearing 440 vibrations per second which is perceived as the pitch A above middle C. If you double the frequencies to 880 vibrations per second, you will get A an octave higher. We could go into extreme depth about the proportional relationship of tones. This article and video touches on the subject:

When it comes to tuning, specifically the tuning on a piano, you’ve probably heard the term “A-440 tuning”. This refers to tuning the piano to A440 – or 440 vibrations per second. There are tuners who can precisely tune a piano to these frequencies but there is much more to tuning a piano than just the reference pitch. Even if a piano is tuned to 440, the higher octaves would sound flat to the human ear if they were mathematically perfectly in tune. You may wonder how this can be.

This is where stretch tuning comes into the equation. The human ears are imperfect in how they perceive pitch. They tend to hear flat in the higher register. To counter this, the octaves must be stretched beyond their normal pitches in order for the human ear to hear them correctly. A good piano tuner will know how much to stretch the higher octaves to make it sound correct to the human ear. This can be as much art as science since tuners take different approaches to this as well as other challenges in tuning a piano.

You can depend on technology to an extent, but the ultimate test is your ears when it comes to deciding if an instrument is in tune throughout all registers.

You may have heard the term polyphony before and might have wondered what it meant. Polyphony is intrinsic to almost all the music we listen to today but it wasn’t always that way. So, what does this term mean and why is it important?

There was a time when the only written music was monophonic, which means “one note at a time.” The first written music was called Gregorian Chant (or “plainsong”). This music was simply liturgical text that was sung with embellishments. There was only one line of music at a time and this is the only written music we have (and the very first written music) from the 9th and 10th centuries.

Eventually music evolved into something called organum, which had two lines – typically in parallel 4ths that would embellish the melody.

Timing is not only one of the most critical aspects in music; it’s one of the most significant aspects of life itself. Imagine you are going to a party: you know where the party is, you know what it’s celebrating, and you know everything you could except one thing; when it starts. If you don’t know the time, you have no party. I explain this concept to my younger students with this example. If you apply this same concept to music you can see that without timing and rhythm, you would have a mixture of notes with no meaning.

But how do you translate what’s written on the page into the rhythm the composer intended? You have to count! But how do you count correctly?

There is a popular way in which many people count that isn’t the best technique. However, because it’s so popular, I will mention it here and explain why it is flawed. This method is to count whenever there is a note. This might sound like a good idea but you’ll soon find that it’s very difficult to keep the counting consistent – after all, you will constantly have to change the speed of your counting. This is extremely difficult!

Instead, count all the beats consistently instead of just where there are notes. So you count all the beats the same – the counting never changes! This is a precise method and you will develop a fine sense of rhythm instead of trying to just count the notes. In this method, the notes will simply fall into place.

You can use this method on any level of music – no matter how fast or complex. If you have a hard time counting intricate rhythms, simply write down lines where the beats fall and the rest will fall into place.

Believe it or not, you can get drastically different tones out of the piano simply by pressing the keys a different way. How to approach the keys is a major part of playing the piano and especially important when it comes to chords.

In the video example provided, I demonstrate a bad technique by “slapping” the keys; it produces a very harsh sound. So how do you avoid this? It really starts with both the mental and physical aspects of your playing. Don’t think of hitting the keys; instead think of putting pressure onto them. Think and play with the sensation that you are trying to apply pressure onto the keys and push them into the key bed. Playing them with pressure and force will produce a much more pleasing sound. To be technical, you will be releasing the weight of your arms into the key bed.

But what about quiet chords? The general rule is that the softer you play, the more effort you will have to make to delineate the melody notes (generally the top notes). When it comes to playing loud, you can play the chords with the same amount of force and the top notes will come right through – this isn’t the case with quiet chords. You’ll want to reach for the top notes in quieter chords and let the melody sing through despite the lower volume. The video accompanying this article gives a great example of this.

I have known Jeffrey Biegel since childhood. Jeff studied piano with my father Morton Estrin for many years before going to Julliard and embarking upon an illustrious concert career.

This is a topic that a lot of people have very strong feelings about – either one way or another. Being a musician – no matter what genre you play – is so fiercely competitive that many venues and booking agents don’t only expect people to play for free but they sometimes actually expect the musician to pay them in order to perform.

This is not a new concept but it’s more widely used today more than ever. For example, musicians who play New York recitals actually pay in order to perform so that they can get reviews. They hope to sell enough tickets in order to break-even but they could be on the hook for a lot of money out of their own pockets if they don’t fill up the hall.

For rock bands you are often put in a position of what are called “pay to play venues” where they will issue a certain amount of tickets and require you to sell them. If you can’t sell all the tickets you still owe them the money so often times bands will need to shell out hundreds of dollars to perform. Most of the times venues will do little or minimal promotion for an event and the bands will be stuck marketing their own shows as well – so if you don’t sell any tickets or bring an audience you could be playing in front of an empty room (which happens more than you would think).

Getting back to the question at hand, should you perform for free? It’s something you must decide yourself but you should also look at the situation in which the performance takes place. How much is there to gain in playing for free? Sometimes it can be worth your while to get yourself in front of a new audience.

For example, if you were offered to play at a charity event somewhere and there was a guarantee of a good sized crowd, this could be something beneficial to you for the exposure. Not only would you get to perform in front of a lot of people but many of them see you performing in support of a noble cause and will be much more interested in what you are doing. Sometimes there are opportunities of collaborating with great musicians which can make performing a benefit concert worthwhile. Prospects of getting audio or video recordings of events which you can share in your marketing efforts may also make things worthwhile.

You must be careful with any opportunity to perform for free. Even though you might not be paying to play, you will be paying with time and work on your part. You will most likely be responsible for your own transportation to and from the venue and you will have to take into account the time you will need to dedicate to the performance – both the actual performance and practicing. Is this going to be worthwhile for you? You have to ask yourself that question; you shouldn’t put yourself in a position of being exploited.

An example of a bad non-paying gig would be something like playing at a party. If it’s not for a benefit and nobody will be specifically listening to your music, is it worth playing for free? Most of the time it won’t be; in some rare cases you might want to anyway because you can gain benefit from the networking opportunity. As a musician you really should value your talents and hard work and you should not let people take advantage of you.