Piano and Music Videos

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about becoming a concert pianist. Do you aspire to be a concert pianist? Maybe you have children you’d like to expose to piano with the hopes that someday they can become concert pianists. There are many things involved with this. First, I don’t want to disappoint any of you out there, but starting young is really important. It will help to set the foundation and passageways in the brain.

Is it essential to start playing piano at a young age?

There are always exceptions, but I’d say starting young is important. Many concert pianists not only started playing young, many of them were child prodigies concertizing as children! Some of those people evolve into great artists. Many of them go by the wayside. The transition from being a child prodigy to being a concert artist later in life is not an easy one for many reasons. Coming into one’s own as an adult is a time of discovery for everyone, not to mention the fierce competition in the world of concert pianists.

Innate talent plays a role.

Some things are just just inborn in your DNA. There are so many different facets of intelligence and physiology that come into play as a concert pianist. You need to be able to memorize scores, the dexterity to be able to play complex passages with your fingers, the ability to hear things acutely, and good hand eye coordination. There are so many aspects that obviously somebody who’s born with these natural skillsets is going to have a much easier time. I can tell you from years of teaching there’s a dramatic difference in how different people learn. Yet interestingly, because there are so many different facets involved in playing the piano, some people have tremendous gifts in some areas and struggle in others. For example, somebody might have perfect pitch but be rhythmically disabled. Simply counting to a metronome might totally elude them. They will have to work 10 times harder at rhythm than somebody else. There are so many aspects to playing the piano. Just because you have weaknesses and strengths doesn’t mean that you can or cannot become a concert pianist. You must develop your strengths and mitigate your weaknesses.

Proper training is a must.

To become a concert artist, you must have superb training at some point along the line, hopefully in your formative years. If you have poor training that has compromised your playing and you’re already an adult, being able to unlearn bad habits and relearn proper piano technique and musicianship is a daunting task that few people will endure. It takes intensive work to relearn something that’s been ingrained for years incorrectly.

Exposure to music is vital.

Being exposed to music, especially from a young age, is so important. You have to live it and breathe it! Go to concerts, listen to recordings. If you’re in a family of musicians you’re surrounded by music and that’s great. But there are some people who just take to the piano and they’re the only musician in their family!

There are exceptions to every one of these rules. There isn’t a cookie cutter way to become a concert pianist. Don’t get discouraged if you don’t check all these boxes and you have hopes for yourself to become a concert artist.

You have to have an unwavering commitment to become a concert artist.

If it’s something you kind of want to do but you don’t have a dedication to it, that’s not really a recipe for success in any field, much less the piano which is so highly competitive. Speaking of being competitive, how about competitions as an avenue? Competitions are one of the few ways to get recognized for your achievements on the piano. But today, there are more fine pianists out there than have ever been around in the world, and the number keeps growing. China in particular has 40 million piano students, many of them on an increasingly high level. Competitions are not for everyone, but if you want to be a concert pianist, it’s one of the few ways to put yourself on the line and see how you stack up. Even if you don’t win competitions, you might be recognized by some of the concert artists who are judges. They might keep you in mind for something. You might develop a relationship with somebody. So, competitions are an important component if you want to become a concert pianist.

Developing and sustaining a career as a concert artist is incredibly difficult.

Versatility at the piano is valuable when trying to carve out a career in music. Being able to play different styles of music with different ensembles and having some kind of creative approach can be helpful. You want to be able to bring something to the table that’s different from everyone else. Playing the same music but maybe just a little better, is that enough? Well, there are tens of thousands of accomplished pianists that are doing that already. Just playing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata brilliantly isn’t enough. Even playing the hardest piano literature, there are many people who do that. But if you have a vision for programming or some comprehensive idea of how to expose audiences to music in new and creative ways, you might be able to carve out a career for yourself.

These are all different aspects that go into becoming a concert pianist. If it’s something you really have a passion for and you’re willing to be creative in your approach, you can make a life in piano. You can develop your playing to a concert level if you have the aptitude, the willingness and the training to make it happen. If you have questions I would love to hear from you! At the Living Pianos Patreon I can give you even more personal attention! Thanks so much for joining me. I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about happy accidents in music. This transcends just performance. This can occur in composition, improvisation, and so many aspects of music. What are happy accidents? When something unexpected happens, particularly in a live performance, where you can’t just stop and try it again. So you go with it and it takes you to unexpected places. From that point on, you will envision this piece in a way that you had never imagined before.

Just go with it.

Now, here’s the thing that I want to encourage all of you to do. If while playing piano something happens where you’re feeling uncomfortable for some reason, maybe you took a dramatically different tempo, go with it and see where it takes you. You can discover things. Maybe you won’t want to take that faster or slower tempo later, but you envision the piece in a new way that you never would have come upon before. In composition, it’s even more important to experiment wildly, with abandon. Don’t be worried about what comes out. You can always judge later what you want to keep and what you want to discard.

Don’t let the beauty in life pass you by!

I say that happy accidents can only happen if you pay attention to them. Otherwise you might just hear it as a mistake and move on. If it’s interesting, listen to it. You might discover something new. It’s the same with life. Take in the beautiful things around you, even if you don’t expect them to be beautiful. Maybe you’re on your way to someplace and you pass a beautiful scene without expecting it. You didn’t plan this, but here it is. Enjoy it! It’s the same thing with your music, your performance, your composing, and your improvisation. Pay attention to what is around you and take advantage of those opportunities. Explore them further, because they can be the seeds of creativity!

I hope this is enjoyable for you! Thanks again for joining me! I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to share with you a personal story about the things I’ve learned from Vladimir Horowitz. Horowitz was a phenomenal pianist and a phenomenon of the 20th century. I remember he used to make comebacks. He would retreat from the concert stage for years and people wondered if he would ever come back. Every time he reemerged it was an exciting event, and his playing was spellbinding!

I had the good fortune of studying with Constance Keene at the Manhattan School of Music. She was good friends with both Vladimir and Wanda Toscanini Horowitz. That’s right, his wife was the daughter of the great conductor Arturo Toscanini! She would visit with them all the time socially. I would hear all kinds of stories and I ended up getting tickets to his concerts! It was a tremendous learning experience for me. So I want to share some of the aspects of his playing that perhaps you can embrace and try to understand what he did that was so unique.

Horowitz gave the illusion of speed using articulation.

Aside from his poetic musicianship, Horowitz also had a technique that was mind bending. He would do things that sounded so impossibly hard. You listened to him play, and it sounded so fast. And yet, if you were to compare his performances to other performances of the same pieces, you would discover that indeed his tempos weren’t always faster. They just sounded faster. How is this possible? Horowitz had a way with his technique of creating delineation between notes. You hear each and every note so clearly in his playing. Instead of playing very smoothly, Horowitz punctuated each note. So, while it wasn’t necessarily faster, it gives the illusion of it being faster because of the articulation of all the notes. That’s one of the aspects of his technique. Listen to his performance of Chopin’s C-Sharp Minor Etude Opus 10 And you’ll hear what I’m talking about. The feeling it gives you is pretty spectacular.

Horowitz had a way of tone production and phrasing that no one to this day has been able to duplicate.

Most pianists will try to play a musical line as smoothly as possible. But there’s a property of the piano that when you play notes, they are immediately fading out. Horowitz used this to his advantage. Instead of trying to just force a smooth line, he would strategically listen to how one note would melt into the next and somehow carve out a line with all these angular tonal shadings. I would try to imitate this in my playing because it was such a compelling sound. Ordinarily, if other pianists tried to achieve this, it would have a very mannered approach. But somehow he could get a sense of a composition and create these little gems of beauty. Somehow he would put all these gems together and you’d have this magnificent line. There was a unique character to his musicianship that was unlike anybody else in that respect.

Most pianists have a nice balance from the bottom to the top, with the melody being heard above the other notes. It’s very lovely. It’s very smooth. But Horowitz had a way of bringing out inner lines you wouldn’t expect to be brought out, constantly calling your attention to inner lines that keep the performance interesting. Horowitz paid as much attention to inner lines and baselines as the upper melody, and didn’t just play a static homogeneous performance. With most performers, the soprano is the loudest, the bass is the second loudest, and the inner voices are softest. And that strata of musical lines is maintained throughout. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m not saying that this is better or worse. It’s just different. That’s why when you listen to Horowitz, he doesn’t sound like anybody else! Listen to his G Minor Ballade of Chopin. He recorded it many times, including many live performances. I was fortunate to hear him perform this piece live on more than one occasion. He never played it the same twice, and they are all highly individual interpretations!

Seeing Horowitz live was a revelatory experience for me.

One of his many comebacks was in the 1970s. He was playing at the huge Metropolitan Opera House. Can you imagine a piano recital in a hall of that size? Because it was a comeback it was a big event. There were actually 100s of people camping out the night before. I was one of them! While waiting for the tickets to go on sale the following morning I met Horowitz! He came by at about three in the morning with Wanda and handed out donuts and coffee to the people in line. I thought that was really sweet. Finally, I got to the front of the line to purchase tickets, and they only allowed two tickets to each person! So, I got my two tickets and they were in the nosebleed section. It was about as far away as you could get! He was like a little ant on this huge stage. That hall is enormous. Typically not a hall for piano recitals because it’s so large. But it was a cataclysmically beautiful performance. Everything was very refined and smooth.

Just a couple of months after I had camped out to see him, my teacher Constance Keene, who was such good friends with the Horowitz’s said, “Horowitz is playing at Carnegie Hall. How many tickets would you like?” I couldn’t believe it! I got box seats as close as you could get in Carnegie hall! It was unbelievable! What was so fascinating is that I had just heard him in the back of a huge hall and everything sounded very refined and smooth. When I saw him up close, there was an angularity and a grotesque beauty of Horowitz, because things are kind of contorted to stretch a bit. And when you’re up close, you can hear this. For example, when you’re in a big hall and you have a rapid passage and a chord, you need a little space for the reverb of the hall to dissipate. When you’re far away, you don’t even notice any of these things, but up close, you can hear how everything is delineated. Everything is exaggerated. Even in much smaller concert halls, it’s absolutely essential to exaggerate dynamics and to take time in certain places, depending upon the acoustics of the hall. And Horowitz really understood this.

Seeing him up close after seeing him from so far away was enlightening. understanding how he was able to achieve a sound in a large hall where you felt like he was playing just for you. Even if you were way in the back of the balcony, everything came through so clearly. Up close, it was almost like getting close to a painting and seeing all the brush strokes. It was extremely angular and well-defined. I learned a great deal about how he approached the piano. Technically it’s a whole other area. He played the piano like no one else, sitting rather low. And a lot of times it looked almost like he used flat fingers. And his piano was unorthodox. He had it regulated with a very shallow action, very light with super hard hammers. So anytime he put down just a little bit of weight, it was a roar! The magic of his technique was being able to play so lightly that he could control this. So anytime he wanted power, all he had to do was let a little bit of weight down. Because of this, he didn’t have to sit at a height that most people do. Most pianists use the weight of the arms or even the body. If you only weigh 100 pounds you might have to use the weight of your body to get power at the piano.

Horowitz was a one of a kind pianist.

It’s interesting to try to incorporate some of the aspects of his playing, but it’s all but impossible. Horowitz made things work in a way that nobody else could imitate. He could do things that sounded so convincing. But then when you really analyzed it or tried to do it yourself, it would fall flat. How the heck could he do these crazy things and make it sound so perfect? It was the conviction of his playing that pulled it off. What he was doing was rather odd, but somehow the magic of the execution made it all work and made it so fascinating to listen to. I Hope you will listen to some Horowitz recordings to hear the magic for yourself!

Horowitz-Chopin etude op.10 no.4

Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition, Horowitz (1951)

Horowitz at the White House:

Horowitz Plays Scarlatti:

Chopin G Minor Ballade – Horowitz:

Vladimir Horowitz plays Mozart: Concerto No. 23 in A major

These are some facets of what I learned from Vladimir Horowitz. I hope there’s something of value for you here! And I encourage you to go out and listen to some of his discography. I hope you’ve enjoyed this! Thanks again for joining me. I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.|

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Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how playing the piano is like learning how to walk. Obviously playing the piano seems much more complicated than walking. But have you ever seen a toddler taking their first steps? Each step is very careful and deliberate. They are trying not to fall down as they figure out all of the mechanisations of walking. And yet, we can walk and talk, and you don’t even have to think about walking! If there’s something in your path, you could possibly trip, That’s when you become cognizant of walking. But most of the time, you don’t need to think about it. How does this relate to piano playing? Let’s say you’re playing a 90 minute solo recital from memory. Obviously, no matter how skilled you are, there are going to be moments when you’re going to lose your concentration.

There’s a certain amount of motor memory or tactile memory that we depend upon.

Now, this isn’t something desirable. But it is a fact of life that you’re not going to be able to concentrate fully every single moment in your performance. I’m going to show you how this is true for piano playing, just like you can talk while walking. You don’t really have to think much about it. But I’m going to show you something in the accompanying video which proves how this same fact of life is present in your piano playing. We all depend upon this automatic pilot that we have. I’ll talk about the benefits and the dangers of that.

Learning to play the piano is similar to learning how to walk.

If you watch a toddler learning to walk, particularly the first time they are unaided, each step is a milestone. You can see the concentration it takes. The same is true in piano playing. When you’re learning something, at first it’s very complex. It’s a slow arduous process. But eventually, it becomes automatic! Your fingers just go where they’ve gone before, because you’ve done it so many times. Chances are, you’re going to remember where your hands go. Or your hands will remember where they go, because they’ve done it the same way hundreds of times before. This is sometimes described as, muscle memory.

There will be moments during a performance where you will lose your concentration.

Maybe there’s a noise in the audience or a key trips up on the keyboard, and yet you can manage to keep on going. Well, this is extremely dangerous, because your hands have no idea whether you’ve taken a repeat, whether you’re in an exposition, or a recapitulation. You could take wrong turns anywhere, because your hands are just doing what they’ve done before. But your hands don’t have intelligence. Your hands just have motor memory. So, how do you overcome this limitation? How do you get your memory so it’s not just motor memory? Rather than practice a piece over and over for months and then memorize it, you flip it.

The first thing you should do with a piece, after reading it through a couple of times, is to begin memorizing it.

Take small chunks at a time, putting the hands together and connecting phrases as you go. I’ve described this process many times before. Eventually, you will get to the point where you really know the score well. But how can you know if you’re just depending upon tactile or motor memory? How much is intentional? To better understand, take the motor memory completely out of the equation! The way to do that is to:

Practice the score away from the piano.

If you try to play the score without the benefit of your fingers moving, it’s really difficult. At first when you try this, you may need to move your fingers, even if it’s just in your lap. Eventually, you can get to the point where you’re not moving your fingers. Then you’re just thinking it all through with every nuance of sound and touch, knowing every finger and imagining the music in great detail. If you can get through your music like that, it’s almost impossible to have memory problems. It’s like singing a song that you’ve sung countless times before, or telling a story that you know so well. It’s part of you. So, that’s the way to overcome this limitation of what your motor memory can do. At the same time, you’ve got to be thankful that you have motor memory to rely upon for those times when you become distracted in your performance. But you want to do everything you can to not have to rely upon it.

I hope this has been interesting for you. I’d love to hear perspectives from all of you. Have you had this kind of experience? If you think that you’re playing just by feel without an intellect behind it, you can try this idea of playing away from the piano and let me know how it works for you. Thanks again for joining me! I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is how Mozart can sound like Beethoven when the music is in a minor key. You might be thinking that Beethoven and Mozart have completely different musical personalities. That’s true. Even though they lived around the same time, you hear the fire and the passion of Beethoven and the elegance and sweetness of Mozart. So, what are the similarities between these two brilliant and unique composers?

Mozart wrote very few pieces in minor keys.

Mozart mostly wrote works in major keys. But the few pieces that he wrote in minor keys are among his greatest works! For example his 40th Symphony, in G Minor Symphony, or his Piano Concerto K 466 in D minor are masterworks. The few works Mozart composed in minor keys sounds a lot more like Beethoven. I have a way of proving it to you today. First, I’m going to share a brief theory lesson with you, so you can understand the significance of what I’m about to show you which is something truly extraordinary!

Major intervals become minor intervals when inverted.

This is an interesting subject and I’m going to demonstrate this. Major intervals include 2nds, 3rds, 6ths, and 7ths. They are major only when the top note is found in the major scale of the bottom note. For example, in C major if you play C and D, that’s a major second because D is the second note of the C major scale. If you invert the 2nd so the D is on the bottom and C is on top, you have a minor 7th because C is not the 7th note of the D major scale. The 7th note of the D major scale is C-sharp. So, the interval has become smaller by a half-step and is now minor. You can do the same thing with a 3rd in C major. Playing C and E, you have a major 3rd because E is the 3rd note of the C major scale. Invert the 3rd and you have E on the bottom and C on the top which is a minor 6th because C is not the 6th note of an E major scale. The 6th note of an E major scale is C-sharp. So, again, the interval has become smaller by a half-step and becomes minor. All major intervals when inverted become minor.

I’m going to play just the exposition of the famous Mozart C major Sonata, K 545. With the help of my computer, I’m going to invert it. So, every note that goes up goes down, and visa versa. What that’s going to effectively do is take this piece in the major and turn it into a whole other piece in the minor! With the keyboard switched around you wouldn’t even believe it’s the same piece! It’s all exactly the same notes and rhythms, except reversed. You can hear the minor characteristic. It sounds angry. And it sounds a little bit more like Beethoven than Mozart. Check out the video to hear this for yourself! You will be amazed. You will also hear the beginning of two sonatas both in C minor, one by Mozart, one by Beethoven. I’m not going to tell you which one is which. I want you to listen to these two sonatas and see if you can guess which one is Mozart and which one is Beethoven.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

It’s remarkable how Mozart takes on a very different character when played in a minor key! I’m very interested to see how all you did out there with your guesses. If you didn’t know either of these works before, I wonder how many of you got it right. Let me know in the comments! Thanks again for joining me. I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about how to tune your own piano. Can you tune your own piano? That is the real question. I’m going to provide you with the information so you will know if you can tune your piano, and if you want to tune your own piano. But more than that, I’m going to show you an incredibly valuable skill that you can all take to heart: how to touch up the tuning on your piano! That is something I think every pianist should learn how to do. I’ve been doing it for years. You’re going to love it once you learn how to do this!

What tools do you need to tune a piano?

You will need a tuning wrench, sometimes referred to as a tuning hammer. Make sure it has a removable head. You should look for a star head, not a square head. Because with a square head, you only have four positions that you can put the tuning wrench. That is really cumbersome because as you’re going to discover, it’s really hard to move a tuning hammer! So, you want a star head that can be in many different positions. That’s going to be a lifesaver for you! Don’t skimp on your tools either. It’s not that expensive. There are tons of them on Amazon starting at less than $40. Then you just need a couple of wedges so you can mute out some of the strings. As you know, through most of the piano, there are three strings to each note. You need to be able to hear just two of the strings at a time when you’re tuning one string to another. For tuning grand pianos, this is really all you need. To tune a whole piano you can use software for the pitches, but these few tools are all you need to touch up your tuning.

Why is it so important to touch up the tuning of your piano?

It can take hundreds of tunings before you have the skills to get a piano not just to be in tune, but to hold its tuning any length of time at all. Any competent tuner can get a piano in tune. But the first time you play it, notes can go out of tune. It’s really hard to set the strings and pins in such a way that the pitches will hold. Touching up is a totally different ballgame. Let’s say you get your piano tuned. A few days later you’re playing it and notice notes drastically out of tune right in the middle of the piano. It can drive you crazy! You scheduled this tuning, you paid good money for it, and now your piano is just not fun to play at all. What do you do? Hire them back for another tuning a couple weeks later?

If you have the tools and the knowledge – You can touch up the tuning on select notes yourself!

Armed with these tools and the knowledge I’m going to show you, you can alleviate the problem of stubborn out of tune notes on your piano. And you can actually extend the tuning of your piano to last much longer just by going through and touching it up on a periodic basis. Let’s get right to work on this. Now, my piano is pretty well in tune. There are some notes in the very high register that are not perfect. But those high notes are really very difficult to tune. The slightest motion of the tuning wrench knocks the pitch way off. To get it just right is very difficult. The lowest notes on the piano are also difficult, for a different reason. Particularly on smaller pianos, there’s so little fundamental pitch it’s hard to tell what pitch you’re even hearing. But If a note in the very high or low register is out of tune, it’s not going to affect you that much. You’re not going to encounter those notes nearly as often as you will with notes in the middle register of the piano. So, that’s what I’m going to focus on here today, because it’s the most value with the least work.

Let’s start with middle C. Does it sound in tune to you? How do you know if a note is in tune or not? Do you look at a tuner to see if it’s in pitch? No, because the important thing is for a piano to be in tune with itself. If your piano is tuned to 442 and then you play A and you want it to be at 440, that A is going to be out of tune with the rest of the piano. When you’re touching up the tuning, it’s usually only one or two strings of a certain note that will be out of tune. A unison goes out to make it sound funny. It’s not the whole note that is going to go out. That rarely happens in any kind of uniform fashion.

You don’t need a chromatic tuner for what I’m showing you. You do need to listen.

When one of the three strings is out of tune on middle C on your piano, instead of the pure sound, you’ll hear waves. If it’s slightly out, the waves will cause a slow undulation. As it gets more out of tune, they become quicker and quicker. So, the first thing you do is find the three strings for middle C. By pushing down the key, you release the damper so that you can pluck them. Then you’re going to follow the string all the way back to find the pin that associates with the right string. When one string is low you can hear that slow wave. Listen for it. If it’s even further out of tune, that wave will get faster.

This is what I’m talking about. You’re playing your piano just after it’s been tuned and a note goes out for no particular reason. It can happen. The weather or just playing hard can knock a string out of tune. If it’s right in the middle of the piano like this, you won’t even want to play your piano. And you don’t want to spend a bunch of money getting the whole piano tuned again. Even just getting your tuner there, they have to charge you for their time, right? So what do you do? Well, the first thing you do is you identify which string is low. You want to listen for it, so listen to the separate strings. Go ahead, pluck them and listen. See if you can notice which one is lower. One thing you want to do is check to make sure the other two strings are in tune with one another. You can do this by muting the string that is low. Now you’re listening to the other two strings. Let’s say those two strings are absolutely in tune with one another. To be able to compare the out of tune string with an in tune string, having just one string sound with the out of tune string is better. So, you want to mute one of the two in tune strings so that you’re left with one string that’s in tune and the one that is low.

Once again, you pluck the strings to be sure you got it right. Push down the key to release the damper so you can pluck them. Now you’re ready to adjust the pitch. When you try this the first time you will develop a deep respect for your piano technician, because it’s really hard to get even one string in tune! Now, you might just luck out and get it right on the first pull. It can happen. But you might go back and forth for five or ten minutes trying to get it locked in. It’s hard to believe how much effect the minuscule motion on your tuning hammer has on the string.

I’ve seen my piano technician, who’s a master concert technician, struggling to get the string locked to the right position. This is because there’s huge amounts of tension on the strings.

Tension builds up at all the points of termination. Right near where the felt is, there’s tremendous tension. As soon as you hit a note hard, that tension is released on the other side where there is termination at the bridge. You can get a note in tune, but with the first loud strike of the note, the string tension equalizes across the points of termination. That’s why it’s so important once you get your piano tuned to give a couple of hard blows to the key so that the first time you play it loud, it doesn’t go out of tune.

Now you want to pull the low string up to pitch very gently. As you do this you will want to check to make sure you didn’t pull it too far. Listen to the strings again. First the string that is in tune, and then the one that was low before to see if it’s still low. If it’s still low you are going to pull a little bit more. When it’s really close it’s tough to hear which one’s higher and which one’s lower. Once again, push the key down and pluck them. Now if it’s extremely close, you can listen to the difference between the slow undulation of the out of tune string played with the in tune string, compared to the purity of the two strings that are in tune with one another. Once you’ve gotten the two strings sounding in tune, listen to all three strings. Now that note sounds good!

What you’ve just done is tune one string on a piano that has somewhere between 220 to 240 strings!

It gets more complicated if your piano is really out of tune. The pitch of the whole piano could be slightly low. As you start tuning one section of the piano, the pressure that is exerted on the bridge in one area pushes the soundboard down affecting the previously tuned area of your piano. So, you have to go through the tuning at least a couple of times to get anything to hold. Tuning a whole piano is very complicated. You also have the factor that smaller pianos don’t have such pure sounds. They have a lot of what are called overtones, which are color tones that are higher notes contained within the lower notes. Sometimes those can conflict with the fundamental pitch of other notes. So, skilled tuners know how to finesse the tuning to get a sweet sound out of all different pianos.

There is good news for you if you want to learn how to tune a piano like a pro!

There are software programs that can take the tunings from great tuners and take into account the size of the piano and the pitch you’re starting with. By sampling all the A’s on the piano, for example, it knows how much stretch you need. It’s still an arduous task to tune a whole piano. So, I recommend all of you get your feet wet by touching up your piano. This is something that will really prolong the tuning of your piano and save you when you have one or two notes that are out of tune driving you nuts! Touch up tuning is a great skill to develop! I hope this is enjoyable for you! If you’re interested in learning more about piano tuning I’m happy to share with you a bit more about it. Today I’ve given you a valuable skill that any of you should be able to take to heart and make your piano sound better, longer, by touching up the tuning. I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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Robert@LivingPianos.com

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