Piano Lessons- Music Theory Lessons

This is a great question and it’s something people don’t often consider. Most of the time people are used to the lesson plan of learning a new piece during the week – if you’re just starting it will probably only take you a week to learn – and then starting another piece the next week. The question is, what should you do with those older pieces and when you advance further in your playing, is it possible to work on two pieces at the same time?

When it comes to learning new pieces, it’s always a good idea to continue to practice the pieces you’ve already learned. It’s not worth forgetting about them. If you’ve taken the time to learn them, you should continue to reinforce them and expand your repertoire as much as possible. It’s much better to have a few pieces of music in your repertoire that you can play extremely well and as you continue to practice your older pieces you will be able to play them easier and more effectively. As you continue to learn new music and continue to practice all of your pieces you, will expand your repertoire very quickly.

Once you get to a certain point you might have too much music, which means that you might have to start dropping older repertoire to have the time to learn new pieces. This is a good place to be. It’s always great to have a solid repertoire you can refer to and once you begin to learn and master new pieces you can simply replace older ones you no longer like as much or you don’t think showcase your talents as well. Later you may revisit these pieces.

Instead of playing exercises, try playing your older music It can be more beneficial than simply practicing just exercises and it will allow you to refine your playing even more. I highly recommend playing older music as warm up exercises. You will become intimately familiar and comfortable with the music.

Once you advance to a certain level of music, it’s going to take you a long time to learn and master a new piece. If you’re entering competitions or playing recitals you will have to learn a lot of music all at the same time. It’s beneficial to practice each of your pieces at least thirty minutes to an hour a day – and many times you will have to practice much more than that. Learning one piece at a time simply isn’t feasible for a schedule like this and you will have to learn more than one piece at a time in order to keep yourself current with your music and the goals you’ve set for yourself.

So the short answer is yes, you should always practice more than one piece at a time, especially your review pieces in your repertoire because it only expands your personal music library and enables you to have many pieces on a high level at the same time. I know some people who simply learn a new piece each week and drop the older ones they were learning – they never have a piece that is on a high level they can simply play at a moment’s notice. The bottom line is that if you are to perform concerts, you must have a substantial repertoire under your fingers even though you can’t keep everything you’ve learned on a high level all the time.

This might sound like a crazy question, however, this might be possible!

Player pianos have come a long way since the days of paper rolls and pedal-based systems:

Eventually player systems progressed to floppy disks, to CDs and eventually to what we have today, which are player systems that are barely even visible on the pianos:

Today’s systems are controlled wirelessly through remotes, smart phones, and tablets that actually work off your home’s wi-fi network. Because these systems are based on a wi-fi connection, they could theoretically be hacked!

You’d need to have someone who is pretty adept at breaking into home networks and a strange reason to hack your piano but anything is possible right?

The only scenario I could see this being even a remote possibility is if you’re a famous musician who stores your piano recordings on your piano’s player system – such as Disklavier or other recording device. Maybe someone would want to steal your music or destroy your work for malicious purposes. This is a far-fetched scenario, but it could potentially happen!

Expert hackers will always find a way around encryptions but keeping strangers out of your wireless network or piano is dependant on you to come up with a strong passwords and not share them publicly.

While I don’t think people will be hacking into your piano anytime soon, if you have a wireless player system on your piano and hear your piano playing in the middle of the night for no reason – this could be why!

Like most things when it comes to the piano, this question does not have a simple answer. There is no absolute standard for how many strings are on a piano but there are some general guidelines that can shed some light on this question.

Some people might assume that since there are 88 keys on a piano, there would be 88 strings; but this isn’t the case. Most keys on the piano actually strike 3 strings when depressed. They are steel strings that run from the highest treble all the way to the bass section. Once you hit the bass section of the piano, the strings become copper wound and there are less of them per note (2 and eventually 1 on the lowest notes).

Now the problem in figuring out how many strings are on a piano depends on something called scale design. Scale design is a complex topic which I’ve covered in the past:

But basically what you need to know is that all pianos have unique scale designs with different numbers of strings in each section. Each piano switches from the triple steel strings to copper strings with different numbers of dual and single copper bass strings!

So the simple answer is you can’t say how many strings are on a piano exactly, but it ranges generally from about 220 to 240 strings.

Now this really should give you a renewed respect for your piano tuner if it hasn’t already! They have to tune every single one of those strings making sure they are all in proper pitch with each other. The octaves and intervals have to sound as pure as possible; their are also overtones to deal with – the process is actually quite complex.

This is a very common question we get around the store. People wonder if it’s necessary to cover their pianos and whether or not it will help to preserve their instruments or the finish of their pianos.

It is not necessary to cover your piano and truthfully it can be a chore to have to constantly cover and uncover the instrument every time you want to play it. However, when we get pianos in the shop that have been kept covered, they can look like new pianos!

A cover over a piano will not only protect it from scratches or dust but it will slow the aging process – particularly for the furniture. If a piano is in direct sunlight, the finish will eventually suffer sun damage. The finish might change color in spots that are exposed to the sun and the finish may dry out and eventually start flaking off.

If you have a piano in your home that has direct sunlight on it you should definitely get either shades for the window or a cover for the piano. Sun damage can inflict thousands of dollars of damage to a piano’s finish over a short period of time.

More important than covering your piano is to close the lid when you are done playing. The humidity and temperature changes particularly at night can adversely affect the integrity of your piano. You can’t stop all exposure to the elements. However, providing constant air conditioning and humidity control in the room the piano is located can slow the aging process particularly when combined with keeping the piano closed.

Unless you are in a harsh environment where there are wild swings of temperature and humidity, you don’t necessarily need to close the lid of the piano but it certainly will help to prolong the life of the instrument. The most important thing to avoid is direct sunlight on your piano.

While it’s not necessary to cover your piano it can help. If you are playing it all the time it might be cumbersome to constantly cover the piano but it will help to delay the aging process and keep your instrument fresher longer.

For pianos in institutional settings, covering the piano can be a lifesaver from potential abuse.

You’ve all heard it and you’ve probably all played them, but in this lesson I’m going to describe everything you need to know about Chromatic Scales.

As we talked about in our other series on scales, they are really just a series of half steps and whole steps.

Half Steps are two keys together with no keys between.

Whole Steps are simply two keys together with one key between.

Always remember! Half steps and whole steps incorporate the black keys as well as the white keys.

A chromatic scale is built with all half steps – simply all the available notes with no notes in between; Technically, there can really only be 1 chromatic scale. You might start on a different note but it will always be the same series of notes.

So if you start on C it would be: C, C-sharp, D, D-sharp, E, F, F-sharp, G, G-sharp, A, A-sharp, B and C.

It covers all the keys in order without skipping or repeating any – all half steps, that’s it!

Next time we will cover the whole tone scale.

Thanks again for joining me Robert Estrin Robert@LivingPianos.com (949) 244-3729

This is a great question but it does not have a simple answer. If you play guitar you know that the oils in your skin can degrade the strings quickly and you will need to replace them often to get a lively tone. The piano is certainly not this extreme but the strings are susceptible to the elements as well. However, there is no definitive answer when it comes to this question.

Right now we have two Steinway pianos in our inventory from the 1930s. Both of these pianos actually have the original strings and they sound incredible. The bass sounds robust and the tone is vibrant; there is simply no reason to change the strings. On the other hand, we have a Steinway piano from the 1980s that we actually replaced the strings. How can this be? How can a piano that is fifty years older than others not need to be restrung? It has everything to do with the environment the piano is in.

The strings of a piano don’t actually age on their own; they age through outside forces and elements of their surroundings. A piano that is in a very humid environment – like near the beach – is highly susceptible to the elements. I have seen pianos in homes near the beach where the lid of the piano is left open with windows left open and the strings are rusting, breaking and just completely degraded within a decade.

However, here in Southern California if you go only ten miles from the beach and not too close to the desert you have an incredibly ideal environment for your piano. Just ten miles from the humidity of the beach there is an area where you can have a piano even left open in your home and not experience rust or serious problems with your strings possibly for decades. This is where I have seen 80 year old pianos still with the original strings; and they sound great!

There is a limit however to how long strings can last. I have seen pianos 50 to 100 years old lose some of the tone in the copper wound strings – which is where you will first see string problems. There is a simple way to check for this. Play a descending chromatic scale on the piano and notice where you transition from the steel strings to the copper wound strings. If you hear an abrupt change in tone in this transition to the copper wound strings, you know that it’s time to replace at least those strings. Sometimes you can twist the bass strings and get them back to life and sometimes you can simply replace the bass strings and be just fine.

The big red flag when it comes to strings is seeing rusty and broken strings – and this can be both the copper wound and steel strings. This is a sign that more strings are bound to break and it’s a good idea to restring the whole piano.