For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrinContact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how you can get the most out of your piano technician. First of all, did you know that not all piano tuners are piano technicians? Most tuners are technicians. But some
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. I had somebody ask me recently how long digital pianos last. I have a Steinway here, built in the late 1930s and still going strong. We rebuilt it a few years ago. But you know what? 100 years from now, it could be rebuilt again. Pianos can go on forever if they’re not completely thrashed by the environment. But what about digital pianos?
It’s hard to find good piano technicians, but it’s nearly impossible to find people to work on digital pianos.
There are not many people who work on digital pianos. The parts are not readily available. A lot of issues are related to the circuit boards. You end up paying so much money for those circuit boards. It’s kind of like when your printer breaks. Sadly, most electronic devices are basically disposable. You end up buying another one because you can’t find anybody to repair electronics. And digital pianos are no exception.
What goes wrong with digital pianos?
Generally speaking, unless there’s a spike in the current, like your home is hit with lightning or there’s some kind of surge of current, your piano should probably do fine for many years. The problem that people typically have is with the key contacts themselves—the mechanical components, not the electronic components. Because wherever the keys come down, there has to be metal-to-metal contact. If pianos are in a very humid or dusty environment, eventually you might find certain keys don’t play correctly. Maybe you have to hit it a couple of times, or you’ll play a note and it’ll be at full volume because it’s not getting the right information. Sometimes there are optical sensors there, and if even a tiny amount of dust gets in there, it can be a nightmare. It may be inconsistent in its performance. Can that be fixed? Technically, it could be, if you could find somebody crafty enough to figure out how to take the thing apart!
Just like computers, digital pianos keep getting better and cheaper all the time.
So when your digital piano is no longer operating correctly, buying a new one is generally what people do. But how long is the life of these instruments? Unless the environment is really harsh, you should be able to get ten years out of a digital piano. You might not get as much life from a cheaper one or one that’s taken around on the road a lot or in a house with smokers where there’s a lot of particulate matter in the air. But I have friends who have had digital pianos for decades that are still going strong! So it’s not always the case that you only get ten years out of a digital piano. In the right environment, you might get 20 or more years out of a digital piano.
If you want to prolong the life of your digital piano, get a surge protector.
Better yet, get an uninterruptible power supply. Basically, it’s a battery that you plug into the wall that you plug your electronics into. It’s great for any sensitive electronic equipment. Everything is running off the battery all the time. So if the electricity goes off or there is a surge, it doesn’t matter. It provides a stable current. So that is your foolproof way of avoiding one cause of failure.
Sometimes you can do a reset routine.
If you’ve ever had a problem with any electronic gear, there’s what’s called initialization or reset. There’s both a soft reset and a hard reset. A soft reset usually involves just turning it off and back on again. But a hard reset takes it back to the factory specs. If all else fails, try initialization or a hard reset on your device. If it’s not a mechanical issue like I described, where the keys are collecting dust or corrosion, that could very well help you.
I’d love to hear about your experiences with digital pianos!
Have any of you gotten less than ten years out of your digital piano? If so, what brand was it? And were there any circumstances that you can attribute to the short life of the piano? Have any of you had a record amount of time you’ve gotten from your digital piano? Maybe some of you have digital pianos from the 1980s that are still performing just like they did when they were new. Let us know in the comments here at LivingPianos.com and on YouTube! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin
Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. I had somebody ask me recently how long digital pianos last. I have a Steinway here, built in the late 1930s and still going strong. We rebuilt it a few years ago. But you know what? 100 years fro
Hi, I’m Robert Estrin and this is LivingPianos.com. The subject today is about why a piano should be on an inside wall. You’ve probably heard before that you must put a piano on an inside wall. There is some truth there. Why should that be important?
Pianos are incredibly delicate instruments.
Pianos are robust in some respects. But the wood of the piano, particularly the soundboard, is susceptible to very small changes in the atmosphere in regards to temperature and humidity. This is particularly true with an upright. If you have an upright against a wall and the wall has any drafts at all, then the piano will not hold its tuning as well. Worse yet, if there’s a heating vent or something blowing in the back of the piano, it could destroy the soundboard. So in some homes, it’s really important to avoid an outside wall with your piano.
Modern homes are very well insulated.
You can judge for yourself. Is it a place you would be comfortable sitting day in and day out? If so, your piano should be fine. But if it’s a place that’s drafty or cold or the sun is beating on you, this could be a bad place for your piano. So it’s really just common sense. In a well insulated home, an outside wall shouldn’t present a problem, so long as the sun isn’t beating on your piano and you don’t have a hot air vent or a radiator nearby. But for older, drafty homes, it’s really essential to use an inside wall for your piano.
There’s another thing to consider, which is disturbing neighbors.
If you’re in an apartment, you don’t want your piano on an adjacent wall with another apartment. This is particularly true with an upright. It’s going to throw the sound right into your neighbor’s room. So you could have trouble. There’s a lot to be considered here. I hope this is helpful for you! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin
Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com
Hi, I’m Robert Estrin and this is LivingPianos.com. The subject today is about why a piano should be on an inside wall. You’ve probably heard before that you must put a piano on an inside wall. There is some truth there. Why should that be im
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I have an interesting question for you. Which are better, wood pianos or black ebony pianos? When you go to the symphony, onstage you see that classic black piano. You generally think of a piano as being black. But sometimes you see exotic woods, like rosewood. You see carved pianos, and they cost substantially more sometimes. But is there a benefit to wood pianos versus black pianos? That’s an interesting question with many ramifications.
Structurally and sonically, there is absolutely no difference between wood and ebony pianos.
There are many elements of the woods used in pianos that do make a tremendous difference in the sound quality. But pianos have had veneers on them for well over 100 years. So whatever the veneer is on top, whether it has a natural wood finish or a sprayed lacquer, whether it’s high gloss or satin, makes no difference in the sound of the piano. However, the wood underneath that finish, even on the rim of the piano can make a big difference in the tone of the piano. Many Asian production pianos utilize soft luan mahogany which is indigenous to the region. Luan rims are easier to bend than the hardwoods used in American and German pianos. So why do they do it? Since the soundboard is embedded into the rim, having a hardwood in the rim actually becomes part of the resonating chamber. So indeed the wood that a piano is made from does make a difference in the sound, but the finish does not. However, when piano companies are dealing with exotic woods, and intricate carved cases, they may naturally spend more time refining the instrument to the highest level since it provides a showcase for their work.
The wood of the soundboard has much more significance.
Almost all pianos today have spruce soundboards, but there are many different quality levels of spruce. Some soundboards are laminated woods with a cross grain. This kind of defeats the purpose of the fine spruce because generally the cement between those layers is going to inhibit the sound. But a laminated soundboard is far stronger, will last longer and is impervious to cracks, just like plywood is stronger than regular hardwood. So there are many things to consider about the different woods of a piano. For example, if you had the opportunity to have a wood piano or a black piano, and you really didn’t care one way or the other, black pianos tend to be more popular. So if you ever were to sell that piano, you might have an easier time selling a black piano than a wood piano.
There are people who love wood pianos and are willing to pay a premium.
With new pianos, wood finishes tend to cost a little more because they have to have matching veneers instead of essentially just spraying over with black paint. However, if you have a really beautiful wood piano, even though it might be harder to connect with someone who’s looking for that particular shade of wood, that person may be willing to pay a premium to get it. So there’s a lot to weigh here in choosing the finish of a piano. Ultimately you should get what you like because chances are, you’re not buying a piano to sell it. You’re buying a piano to enjoy it!
Choose the finish that you like best!
Get what you like! If you ever need to sell your piano, you want to have a long enough timeline so that you’re not under the gun. Because it’s not always easy to connect with someone looking for the piano you happen to have. Anything that’s relatively expensive, you want to have time to list it and get it into shape. But in terms of the sound and the playing, there is absolutely no difference in the finish of your piano!
Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin
Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I have an interesting question for you. Which are better, wood pianos or black ebony pianos? When you go to the symphony, onstage you see that classic black piano. You generally think of a p
Welcome to LivingPianos.com. I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how to get a unique sound out of the piano. It seems like all that’s involved in getting a sound out of the piano is just the speed at which the hammers hit the strings. So how could you possibly get a unique sound? Obviously, singers each have distinctive sounds because the physiology of everyone’s body and vocal chords are unique. With wind instruments, it’s the same thing because the whole vibrating chamber within you is essentially part of the instrument. But the piano is a mechanical contraption. How could you possibly get a unique sound? Yet, if you listen to different pianists, you hear drastically different sounds! You might wonder how this is possible. Well, there’s a lot to this subject.
First let’s talk a little bit about the mechanics of a piano.
I just happen to have an instrument with the action of a nine-foot concert grand piano I use on many of my videos. It’s my second prototype, modular piano system. You see that you push a key and the hammer goes up. Key goes down, hammer goes up. Really the only thing affecting the key once it’s pushed is its speed. It’s the only thing being measured. You might wonder how you can possibly get a unique sound. Is it really possible, the physics of it? The answer is yes! I’m going to explain how this is possible.
First of all, of course the speed has a lot to do with the tone and the loudness. Before we get into the subtleties of pedaling, what about just playing with your hands? Can you really get different qualities of sound just with your hands? For example, if I were to play Bach’s Sarabande Movement from his G Major French Suite no. 5, to see if it’s possible to achieve a different sound playing it with two completely different types of touches, I wonder if you can hear any difference.
See the accompanying video to hear for yourself!
You might have noticed some different shadings of expression. It is possible to play with completely different techniques in order to create different qualities of sound. The first time I just let my fingers be totally relaxed and floppy. I just let them play the attack of the note without any regard to the sustain of the note. You might be thinking it doesn’t make any difference on a piano, but it does! Why it does and how it does is partly due to the fluidities from note to note. You have the analog of the breath by the weight of the arm being transferred smoothly from note to note. That’s one aspect of sound. And secondly, the precise balance between the hands. It can be achieved by having different weights in the two hands and even different weights on the different sides of the hands. So right there, already, you can hear some difference.
The sustain pedal allows for even more expression.
When you add the complexities of what the pedals do on the piano, there are dramatic differences! Of course, if you put the pedal down before you play a note, it’s going to have an echoey sound. In fact, it almost has a little plume right after the initial attack. But if you want to achieve a truly sustained tone, you wouldn’t want to necessarily have that large swell on the attack. You probably would want to increase the sustain of the tone by pedaling just after the initial attack. You do this to capture more sustain, to make the note hold longer so you can create a smooth line instead of a percussive quality of each note. By pushing the pedal down about half a second after playing each note, you can achieve much more sustain. There’s a subtle difference in the tone. The sustain is more full when you put the pedal down after the initial attack. Unlike putting it down before you play the note, which just makes the beginning of it very loud and doesn’t really achieve that continuous quality you want, to mimic the sound of a human voice or a bowed instrument.
Many modern digital pianos will do some of the same things I’m talking about by using physical models of acoustic pianos. But naturally doing this on an acoustic piano is the ideal situation for you. I’m using Pianoteq physical modeling piano software which is not sample based. So you can really get a feel for the sound of the pedals and all the complexities of piano tone.
The una corda pedal can also help to create a sustained tone.
The una corda pedal, or soft pedal, is the one on the left. On a grand piano it shifts the whole action over so the hammers are not striking directly on all three strings. They strike more directly on two of them. You get a warmer tone, because the initial attack is less intense, yet the sympathetic vibration of the three strings is relatively more prevalent. You get a more sustained tone just by using the una corda pedal. It’s not just softer, but the envelope of the sound is different. The initial attack is less and the sustain relative to the attack is greater.
Combining the una corda pedal with the technique I showed you earlier of depressing the sustain pedal just after the initial attack, you can get a very sustained, continuous tone. And that’s just scraping the surface, because you can utilize the pedal in innumerable ways. You can try half-pedaling techniques, where the dampers are just coming a little bit in contact with the strings, just to be able to dampen the tone a little bit to get different tonal colors. There are even ways of fluttering the pedal or just using little bits of pedal here and there to bring out certain notes within a line. So yes, there are ways in which you can get different sounds out of the piano with the pedals as well!
Support the weight of your arms when playing massive chords instead of hitting the keyboard.
When you hit the keyboard, it’s a rather harsh sound. Whereas if you keep your fingers on the surface of the keys, you can precisely depress all of the notes with the same energy. It’s a more musically pleasing sound. You do this to avoid some of the notes being overplayed and harsh while others are underplayed. You don’t have the same control when you are hitting the keyboard from above. Try that on a fine grand piano and you’ll really hear a difference!
Pianists have dramatically different sounds! Ultimately one of the most important components of getting a unique sound out of the piano is how you balance the notes within a chord or the lines within counterpoint. You can achieve a tremendous variety of sound on the very same pieces of music. I often love to listen to a great number of performances of the same piece with great pianists. It’s so enlightening! I encourage you to do the same thing. YouTube is a tremendous resource for that. Look up almost any piece of music and you’ll usually have dozens of different performances from professionals, up and coming pianists, and even students. You’ll hear a great variety of sounds on the piano.
So yes, you can get a unique sound out of the piano! I’ve just shown you many techniques, and there’s even more for you to discover. I’d love to hear your ideas for getting a unique sound out of the piano! Let me know in the comments! Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin
Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com
Welcome to LivingPianos.com. I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how to get a unique sound out of the piano. It seems like all that’s involved in getting a sound out of the piano is just the speed at which the hammers hit the st
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s viewer submitted question is, “Do You Need to Disinfect the Keys on Your Piano?” This is a very timely subject with the coronavirus going around. Let’s say you’re a piano teacher with 30 students coming into your studio every week playing your piano. One student after the next, after the next, after the next. What can you do to keep yourself and your students safe?
Can germs live on piano keys?
Absolutely. There’s no reason why they can’t. I would say it’s a very good idea to clean your piano keys. So the question is, how do you disinfect the keys on your piano? What’s important is to not get them wet. Why? Because even though the tops may be ivory or plastic, piano keys are wooden underneath. If they get wet, the wood will absorb the moisture. It could expand the wood, so the key tops could warp or fall off! So you really want to be careful.
The best way to sterilize your piano keys while cleaning them is using a high solution of alcohol.
Alcohol evaporates extremely quickly, much faster than water. So it’s important to find a high concentration of 90% alcohol or higher. Just put a small amount on a paper towel or cotton swab. Then, wipe all the keys of your piano. It shouldn’t be soaked, just slightly damp. The benefit of the alcohol is, it evaporates quickly, so you’re not likely to do any damage to your piano. But of course if you have 30 students you might not have the time to clean your piano keys meticulously between every student. You could just use little Clorox wipes and I’m sure that would do the job for you. Something is certainly better than nothing.
One note of caution is, cleaning ivory keys regularly with alcohol can damage ivory. So, using bleach or white vinegar may be a better choice for pianos with ivory keys.
I would recommend sterilizing your piano keys as a precaution.
Right now it’s a very good idea to avoid the risk of transferring infection, particularly if you have a large teaching studio. This is a very good idea for you. Thanks for the great question!
I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store.
Please feel free to contact us with any piano related questions for future videos!
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s viewer submitted question is, “Do You Need to Disinfect the Keys on Your Piano?” This is a very timely subject with the coronavirus going around. Let’s say you̵
