Piano Lessons- Music Theory Lessons

Is it okay to fake at the piano? Many teachers would say that you must not fake on the piano. I would tend to agree with them. But is this all-encompassing?

Let me give you some examples where faking or not playing totally accurately might actually be necessary.

Everything we strive for in practice and in teaching is geared to ensure that you know the score faithfully and can perform accurately. So, why would you want to ever play sloppily?

There have been times where I was called upon to accompany someone at an audition when their pianist didn’t show up at the last minute. Imagine sight reading the Hindemith Trombone Sonata under such circumstances if you had never played the piece. Hindemith scores are extremely complex pieces of music that are nearly impossible to read accurately at first glance. There may be some parts you can play accurately depending on the level of your reading. But some sections will be impossible to grasp initially up to tempo without working things out.

In this instance, if the trombonist didn’t have an accompanist, they couldn’t even take the audition. In situations like this, I have reluctantly accepted the challenge to rescue the soloist. I have gone in and grabbed as many notes as possible. Most importantly, I stayed with the soloist never allowing any problems to interfere with the fluidity of their performance. This is one instance where faking will be inevitable.

Here is another example. You are playing a concert and you are well prepared and are in great shape. Then you get to a certain part and something happens where you find yourself over the wrong set of keys. This could be due to a number of things such as a mechanical issue with the piano or you simply got distracted by something in the room. There is nothing better than you can do than to fake it until you get back on track because if you stop you will ruin the performance for everyone. Not only that, but people will be very uncomfortable for you. An eerie silence in the middle of a performance is not something you ever want to subject anyone too much less yourself! You are much better off faking your way through a little bit to get back on the right track rather than to correct or go back to the beginning of the section.

So there is a place for faking in some unusual circumstances. But we do everything in our power to avoid doing it. But when the situation comes up, the show must go on!

Tuning a piano cost different amounts in various regions. Some remote places have no piano technicians! So, when tuners come through, they are in incredible demand and command high rates for tuning. In metropolitan areas with lots of tuners, the going rate is usually around $100-150 – some areas are higher than others. And top-notch concert level tuners can cost substantially more.

But this is only half the story! Because it also depends upon several other factors:

– How often the piano is tuned

– How much the piano is played

– Stability of the environment

– Quality of the piano

Pianos that are played a great deal such as in schools or pianos owned by serious players who practice a lot will require much more tuning than pianos that are not played much.
A place that has wide swings of temperature and humidity will cause a piano to become out of tune more readily than in a more stable environment.

A higher quality piano will hold its tuning longer than a lower quality piano. Newer pianos and newly rebuilt pianos will also require more tuning and adjustment as strings stretch and the piano settles.

So, there is much to be considered when servicing your piano. There is almost always at least some additional adjustments necessary when getting your piano tuned. So the cost of having a piano technician visit can vary a great deal. $100-$150 would be an ideal amount to spend if you have a high quality, broken in piano tuned on a regular basis, kept in a stable environment and played minimally. In most instances, the cost will be greater.

Nearly every piano has a fallboard and you might assume that if it’s there it should be used. Should you close the fallboard on your piano when you’re not playing it?

There are certain instances when the fallboard can be useful to keep people from playing the instrument. If you have a piano in a restaurant or hotel that you don’t want random people playing, you can close the fallboard and the lid and lock the piano (if your piano has a lock). If you have a piano in your home that you don’t want children playing around with this can also be useful.

When it comes to institutional use, the locks on pianos do very little to protect them because they can be easily pried open. That’s why there are much more secure locks available to prevent people from getting inside pianos

The practical use of fallboards is to prevent dust from collecting on the keys of pianos. Playing a piano with dirty keys feels awful! However, dust will still collect on the fallboard and you will have to dust the fallboard. With delicate satin finishes, this can be more challenging than dusting the keys.

The biggest issue when it comes to closing the fallboard is whether or not you have ivory or plastic key tops.

How you sit at the piano is extremely important for several reasons. It offers you the most ergonomic position for tone production and technical fluency. It also assures that you can practice for long periods without causing injury. Wind players are accustomed to focusing on embouchure (lip position) on their instruments for optimum performance. How you sit at the piano is no different. In this video we will explore ideal sitting position which will benefit your piano playing and enjoyment.

This is a question I received the other day and I was surprised about how in-depth the answer became. All musicians are familiar with time signatures at the beginning of pieces – whether it’s 3/4, 4/4, 6/8, or even something like 12/8 – but why is there no 3 at the bottom of time signatures? The answer to this question comes down to what a time signature means.

The top number in a time signature represents how many beats there are in each measure. In other words, each measure (the box around each set of notes) of music on your sheet has that many beats contained within it – for example, a piece in 3/4 would have 3 beats in each measure of music.

The bottom number in a time signature represents the kind of note getting one beat. For example, a 1 would stand for a whole note. So a time signature with a 1 at the bottom – such as 4/1 – would mean that each whole note gets 1 beat and the top number tells you that there are 4 beats in each measure of music. A 2 at the bottom of the time signature would represent a half note and that means that every half note gets one beat. A 4 on the bottom would represent a quarter note and that would mean that every quarter note would get one beat. This goes on and on with each number representing a different note. But you might have noticed we just skipped 3 and instead went from 2 to 4; why is this?

There is not really a 3 note in music. What about something like triplets? Couldn’t you have a triplet getting one beat? The answer is not a simple yes or no.

Composers are able to make triple divisions as part of a time signature but they aren’t represented by a 3 at the bottom of the time signature. When you see time signatures like 6/8 or 12/8 these are actually functioning differently than you might think. There are certainly 6 beats in a 6/8 time signature and there are 6 8th notes to a measure. The question is, how is this different from 3/4 where you have three quarter notes in a measure? After all, three quarter notes equals the same amount as six eighth notes; it is exactly the same amount of time that’s measured. So how are these different?

When you have something like 6/8 time or 9/8, or even 12/8 time it’s actually a triple division. 6/8 time is actually two groups of three – sometimes referred to as a duple meter. In these triple division time signatures, the bottom number can represents dotted quarter notes. So 6/8 time is like having 2 dotted quarter notes in each measure. 9/8 time can be thought of as a piece with 3 dotted quarter notes in each measure. (Each dotted quarter note contains 3 eighth notes.) So, this is how a triple division of the beat is achieved with time signatures.

So why can’t we just put a three at the bottom of the time signature? Because there is simply nothing we can denote as a three note – every time signature must have a note represented in the bottom number and 3 is not represented by any particular type of note.

This question comes from a viewer named Diane. This is a very interesting question and yes, there is an answer to it; although it’s not quite what you might expect.

Throughout my development on the piano, I had the opportunity to study with some phenomenal pianists. My father Morton Estrin was my teacher in my formative years of study. Unlike me, my father has enormous hands! Later I studied with John Ogden who also was a very large man with tremendous hands. I also had the opportunity to study with some sensational women pianists: Constance Keene and Ruth Slenczynska – each of them had smaller hands and probably weighed less than a hundred pounds. These are definitely extremely different body types and as you’d imagine, their approaches to playing and teaching are very different.

When it comes down to it, the difference between men and women playing piano relies less on their gender and more on their physical stature and makeup. Now there are always exceptions to this; I am a great example. Not only do I have small hands but my thumb does not go totally straight – this means I have a pretty small reach. This is something I have had to overcome throughout my entire career. Just as someone having larger fingers and hands might have a tougher time playing between the black keys – there are pros and cons to hand size.

So how do men and women approach the piano? For argument’s sake, let’s say that men will tend to have larger hands and arms, while women will tend to have smaller hands and arms. Men will typically be able to play larger chords almost effortlessly just utilizing their forearms. I remember how Ruth Slenczynska would use her entire arms to produce an incredibly large sound!

This is a very interesting question. We know as people get older their mobility may suffer and their minds can potentially slow down. But how does this affect their ability to perform music? Today we are going to discuss this and the answer might surprise you!

You might think that a performer would naturally slow down with age – but this isn’t always the case. When it comes to prodigies, they tend to play very quickly when they are young, but as they mature they begin to take more time with the music. This is not a case of slowing down due to physical limitations, but as a way to express the music on a deeper level. They learn to express themselves with every note instead of rushing through the music almost like a sporting event.

The technical side is one thing, but there is a whole other aspect of why you might find yourself slowing down your playing as you get older. If you take a piece you know very well, you may have played it hundreds or even thousands of times – and to you it might seem slow because you know every single note of it inside out. While it might seem “slow” to you, for your audience, they must digest the music for the first time. They might be overwhelmed by the volume of music to digest. As you mature as a musician, you appreciate what it is like for people to listen to a piece they are not familiar with.

Age is not always an indicator of the speed of a musical performance. I’ve heard older pianists who play very fast and younger pianists who play much slower. Sometimes personalities come into play. Often times the differences between professional musicians and talented students are the tempos they take – and this doesn’t mean that more accomplished artists play faster or slower than students. For example, many times, less experienced players will play slow movements much slower than what works, which bogs down the performance, losing the pulse which keeps the music alive. It takes experience to understand how to get these sections to flow and sound natural.

Generally, older musicians tend to play slower. But I don’t believe it has anything to do with mobility and age, it’s much more a product of learning how to play expressively.

Can you major in two instruments in college? When I was growing up, I started playing piano around the age of seven. Shortly after in school, I started playing the French horn. I have an equal love for both instruments. While the piano can play the complete score which is richly rewarding. However, after you hit a note, there really isn’t a whole lot you can do with it after it is pressed. Whereas on the French horn, just one note can reveal expressive possibilities of a profound nature.

I knew early on that I was going to have trouble deciding which instrument to major in. So I looked for schools that would allow double majors and was accepted to several conservatories as a double major. I chose the Manhattan School of Music and I discovered very early when I was going to my advisor to put courses together that the course load would have been so substantial that I would not have had much time to practice! So I majored in both instruments, but not at the same time.

I did private instruction on both instruments and the good news was, I got to play French horn in the orchestra as well as in other ensembles. Most piano majors sing in the choir if they don’t have a secondary instrument. I got a phenomenal experience on both instruments!

If you are really passionate about two instruments, you can consider a double major. If you can get high level ensemble experience and work with first rate private teachers on both instruments, there may not be a need for a double major. Plus, you can avoid the extra course load and additional semesters of work at the school in order to earn your degree.

If you are very industrious and academics come easily to you, a double major is something you can consider. But I would proceed cautiously. I hope this is helpful to all multi-instrumentalists out there! Thanks for joining me here at Living Pianos.