This is Robert Estrin from LivingPianos.com. There are so many times that I improvise on the piano and I have recorded quite a number of them for you. It is fun to do, I love to improvise! I have music going on in my head all the time. Sometimes it is music that I memorize like Beethoven, Chopin, Listz, or Debussy. Other times it is the equivalent of musically doodling. Mentally I am always creating something in my head. It can be hit or miss but is inspired by whatever is going on in my head at the moment. Sometimes I play without anything in particular on my mind, and the sounds of the piano inspire something new.
When you improvise on the piano, you may have no idea what will come out, but you might be surprised by what you can come up with. I encourage you to try improvisation and see where the music takes you. It is always fun bringing these to you, I hope you enjoy them. Be on the look-out for our live videos, we have many more coming your way in the future. Again, I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store.
This is Robert Estrin from LivingPianos.com. There are so many times that I improvise on the piano and I have recorded quite a number of them for you. It is fun to do, I love to improvise! I have music going on in my head all the time. Sometimes it i
I’m Robert Estrin from LivingPianos.com. Today’s question is, “Can playing the piano ease depression?” Disclaimer: I am not a doctor and the information in this article is anecdotal. I would not suggest playing the piano as yo
This is Robert Estrin from LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store with a question. “Does playing the piano make you smarter?” I hope so. I’ve been playing a long time and wonder what I would be like if I didn’t play the piano! This is a serious question. Indeed there have been studies, like famous Gordon Shaw – Frances Rauscher studies at UC Irvine. These studies showed:
With a control group of children studying the piano, compared to other groups studying computers, as well as a control group studying nothing, the children who studied piano showed an increase of math and science scores and even increase in English skills!
That is exciting to think about! Later on, they even discovered the “Mozart Effect”, which had some controversy. They simply played recordings of Mozart while kids were taking tests and found that there was a temporary increase in IQ scores just from listening to the music! Temporary is the keyword here. Later on their findings were diminished when they found it was just a temporary boost, but that is exciting enough!
Why should playing the piano increase your intelligence? Did you know?
Playing the piano uses more parts of your brain than any other human activity.
This is according to the New York Times in article years ago about the human brain that showed piano playing as the single most complex endeavor of the human mind. How can this be? Think about it. You have short-term memory, long-term memory, tactile memory as well as visual and aural cues.
You have just about every part of your brain firing when playing the piano.
It is a fantastic opportunity to develop your mind. Of course if you play with other musicians you also develop social skills. It is endless. Just playing music is a great way to expand your mind. The discipline of practicing and the organization it takes to digest a piece of music make for an incredible opportunity to explore aspects of your own mind in ways that are richly rewarding. At the end of the line, you have something to show for it. You can play a piece of music or many pieces of music!
As if that isn’t enough of a reason to play the piano, being able to increase your intelligence is a benefit too! Everyone should study the piano, don’t you think? Let me know how you feel about this. I wonder how many of you are on board. I suppose if you are reading this there could be skewed results because many of my readers might already feel this way!
There are studies that prove an increase in intelligence just from playing the piano.
Spend more time with the piano and your brain will thank you! Once again, this is Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store.
This is Robert Estrin from LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store with a question. “Does playing the piano make you smarter?” I hope so. I’ve been playing a long time and wonder what I would be like if I didn’t play the piano! This
Hi, this is LivingPianos.com, and I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s question is, “Why is a slur impossible on the piano?” It seems like a ridiculous question because you know that you have slurs all over the place in your scores on the piano, and here I am telling you that slurs are impossible on the piano!
Well, as you probably know, the piano is an instrument of illusion. After all, you play a note and as soon as you play it, it’s dying away. So, every single note you play on the piano has a decrescendo to it, and yet you have music that’s written with crescendos. That’s a whole other issue, why crescendos are impossible on the piano, or are they? Obviously, if you play multiple notes, each successive note can form a crescendo. Correct. But what about a slur? Why is a slur impossible?
What does a slur mean?
Did you know that a slur on the human voice and many instruments have all the notes within the slur? In fact, it’s impossible to avoid it completely when singing. Try singing from one note to another note, and try to avoid getting the notes between. If you were to slow that down dramatically, you would hear all the notes sliding between the notes very quickly. I’m also a French horn player, and on the French horn, slurs also have all the notes between. If you listen to great string players, violinists and cellists for example, when they play slurs they won’t always have the notes between, but for expressiveness, depending upon the positions and which strings they choose, they will achieve a smooth slide between notes when slurring.
That’s impossible on the piano.
So what do we do as pianists? We fake slurs! We create the illusion of slurs by simply having the notes overlap slightly. In one case, you can play two notes and detach them. If you want to create a creamy, slurred effect between two notes, you would release the first note after you play the second note of the slur. You will hear a much smoother sound. If you want to avoid a slur, you can detach the notes. That’s how you achieve the effect of a slur on the piano. But you are not technically slurring on the piano. You’re just creating the illusion of a slur by judiciously overlapping the notes just enough so it doesn’t become ugly, particularly if you have a half step slur, you want to avoid dissonance. You can overlap the notes slightly in order to achieve a smooth connection from note to note.
Yes, slurs are impossible on the piano, but we try our darnedest to create the illusion of slurring by overlapping notes slightly. I hope this has been interesting for you, and I wonder how many of you realize what a slur actually means, and how to achieve the effect on the piano.
Thanks so much for joining me again. This is Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.comYour Online Piano Store. We’ll see you next time.
Hi, this is LivingPianos.com, and I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s question is, “Why is a slur impossible on the piano?” It seems like a ridiculous question because you know that you have slurs all over the place in your scores on t
I’m Robert Estrin and this is LivingPianos.com. The question today is, “Why can’t all music be profound?” Wouldn’t that be great if everything you listened to was enlightening? Is that possible? Is that even desirable? Naturally, there are many different purposes music serves. Going to concerts and having a truly uplifting experience is certainly a very important aspect of music, but what about parties? What about dancing? There are times when profundity is the least concern when listening to music. You just want to have something that you can move to, something that feels good. Let’s focus for a minute on concert music.
Should All Concert Music be Profound?
Before I answer this question, I’m going to bring up a parallel. Have you ever seen a band perform and they were playing with really high energy, fast and loud? At first it’s like, “Wow, this is impressive.” But as the night goes on, everything they play is fast and loud. After a while, you end up tuning out the music, and nothing seems energetic at all! How can this be? The energy level becomes your new baseline. Let’s say, you go to the same club on a different night with a different band playing, and this band plays with extreme dynamics. They take the music up and then they come down – way down. They play whisper-quiet, and then it comes up again. It’s enriching! So what is the lesson here?
Something Can Only be Exciting if Something Else is More Relaxed.
The same exact truth is evident with how profound a piece of music can be. More than that, if a performer tries to make every phrase of a piece of music profound, nothing is profound. It becomes labored and self-indulgent. You have to let some music speak naturally. It’s the places where you focus attention that molds a performance. This way, the entire work will have a profound nature, not because every single phrase is played to the nth degree of what can be done with the music.
Great composers and great performers understand this, and they bring out parts of the music that draw your attention at just the right moments. Not everything is profound, but when you get done listening to the piece, you’re left with something really meaningful and special that stays with you. That’s why all music can’t be profound.
If Everything is Profound, Nothing is Profound.
This is applicable not only for composition but also in your musical performance.
Thanks for joining me once again. This is Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store.
I’m Robert Estrin and this is LivingPianos.com. The question today is, “Why can’t all music be profound?” Wouldn’t that be great if everything you listened to was enlightening? Is that possible? Is that even desirable? N
This is Robert Estrin from LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store with the question: What is the future of player piano technology? If you’ve been paying attention in the last couple of decades to what has been going on in this field, it is pretty fantastic. Player pianos have a long, rich history going back to the 19th Century. This was a contraption that went in front of your piano to play it. Soon after was an explosion of the player piano. Every home had to have one, much like how we have big-screen televisions today in just about every home. They were incredibly popular. Three times more pianos were purchased back then than today, with a population less than a third of what it is now. It was really the glory days of the player piano at the turn of the century until the 1920’s when the phonograph and radio came in and wiped out the player piano. However, they made a resurgence in the 1980s with the cassette-based player, floppy disks, CDs, and today we have wireless player pianos.
Wireless Piano Player Technology
Wireless player pianos can both record and play back performances. Yamaha’s Disklavier has been doing that for years on a very high level. Steinway with their Spirio system can now record and playback impeccably. There are other amazing things they can do. For example, the libraries that were created on the piano rolls of the expressive players, which they had at the turn of the century, offers performances of composers and pianists who may have recorded on 78 RPM awful sounding recordings. They recorded on piano rolls which recorded every nuance of their playing and have since been digitized. You can listen to Rachmaninoff or Gershwin play ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ on your modern player piano.
On the Spirio system and the Disklavier, they have their artists come in and make titles. They have other instruments that play through audio in perfect synchronization. You can even have videos of your performers and your piano plays live with the video. These are all things that are happening now. There are other features you may not be aware of. Disklavier can have concerts in multiple cities simultaneously by having their systems set up in concert halls. Auditions are also done this way so that people don’t have to travel so far. They may have a West Coast center and a New York center where people can play at and the judges can be wherever they want to be. The piano will play the same part for them, live.
What is on the horizon with player piano technology?
Are we done? Not by a long shot. One thing that Steinway is doing is taking old audio recordings of Horowitz, Rubinstein, and others and are digitizing them so that your piano plays their actual piano performance, even if they never made piano rolls. That technology may get good enough so that you could do that on your own someday. It isn’t there yet, but it is something to look forward to.
Another thing to look for is the emergence of hybrid pianos. Hybrid pianos use the front end of an acoustic piano, the action, with a digital sound generation. Combine that with player technology and the possibilities are endless. What is in store with player piano technologies? We can only guess. It has been very exciting in the last few years. I look forward myself and have been working on a prototype of a new category of modular concert grand systems that you’ll be hearing more about.
So glad to have you join me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store.
This is Robert Estrin from LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store with the question: What is the future of player piano technology? If you’ve been paying attention in the last couple of decades to what has been going on in this field, it is pret
