Piano and Music Videos

Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com. Today, three secrets to memorizing music. The three secrets all come down to one thing, and I’ll tell you how they relate to three aspects that will help you in memorizing music. Memorizing music is tough, it’s hard work if you’re doing it correctly. If you just play through a piece over and over in hopes that eventually it will assimilate, that’s not a very efficient way to learn music. You need to be organized, and I have videos on how to approach memorization.

The three secrets come down to memorizing every day.

Why does that give you three benefits? Well first of all, obviously if you’re memorizing every day you’re going to learn more. If you only try to do it once or twice a week, or every other day, you’re limited in how much you’re going to be able to learn by the sheer amount of time.

The second thing about memorizing every day is you get to reinforce your work from the previous day.

Otherwise, you’re going two steps forward, one step backward every day trying to get back what you learned, even the next day is a big challenge. But if you wait a couple of days you will have forgotten a great deal, and so you really are not going to be as productive.

Third reason is that since memorizing is very taxing, there’s only so much you can do at peak performance in one sitting.

If you do it every day, you get your mind when it’s fresh, and that’s a tremendous benefit to you. You can soak up a bunch of music before you get to that point of diminishing returns.

There is a lot to consider with this question. A short while ago, I produced a video:

The organ and piano share a similar keyboard layout. So, you may wonder how easy it is for an organist to play the piano and for pianists to approach the organ. One of the first challenges pianists face playing the organ is being able to play melodies with their feet on the pedals of an organ!

Hi, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store with a viewer question. Does installing a player system on your piano affect the touch? This is actually a really good question. I’ve never addressed this exact question, even though I have other videos on player systems on pianos.

Well, first some historical context. Going back to the early 20th century when player pianos were really popular, pianos had different accommodations for them. As a matter of fact, many of them had shorter keys and they weren’t exactly the same type of touch on many of the player pianos.

Well, today, the way player pianos are worked is that a slot is cut in the key bed. I know that sounds really scary, and indeed, if somebody doesn’t know what they’re doing, they can destroy a piano. But if it’s an experienced installer, it has absolutely zero effect upon the piano, the way it functions, or the way it plays because here’s the thing, the player mechanism doesn’t actually come in contact with the keys or the action in any way. So, it can’t possibly have any effect whatsoever on the function of the piano or the way it plays, or even the way it sounds when you play it without the player playing.

That’s the good news. So, if you want to be able to hear your piano playing, here’s something else that’s really remarkable, there’s a tremendous library of the original player pianos, the expressive players from over 100 years ago. The great pianists, some of whom made piano rolls even before audio recording was developed. Like do you know there’s Debussy, there’s some horrifically sounding piano recordings made on 78 RPM records of Debussy. But you can listen to Debussy and Gershwin, Rachmaninoff, Paderewski, all on piano rolls, which had been converted digitally.

It seems amazing that you can pick up your iPad or your smartphone and listen to Rachmaninoff play on your piano, his performance. But this is all possible with player technology. The good news is, no, it doesn’t affect how when you play your piano, the piano feels or sounds.

Did you know that if you go to music conservatory or major in music at a university, you have to have a certain level of piano proficiency in order to get your degree?

All Music Majors Have to Play the Piano

Let’s start from the beginning. There are two essential instruments for all musicians. The piano is one and the voice is the other. They are diametrically opposed to one another. One is the most natural instrument we all carry with us. You must hear something in your head before you can even produce the sound. The piano is the opposite, when you push a key it makes the sound even if you don’t hear it first.

The Piano Can Play Complete Music

Most instruments can only play one note at a time. So, in order to play complete compositions, you usually have to play in an ensemble. What’s unique about the piano is that you can play complex, polyphonic music all by yourself! You can play chords and harmony. More than that, it’s visual. The piano is laid out in such a way that you can see what diatonic harmony is all about. That is, the half-step/whole-steps arrangement which is readily apparent on the keyboard. Chords are easy to negotiate as well. Even a child can do it. It’s that easy!

There’s More to Piano Than Just Visualizing Your Music

If you play the clarinet, saxophone or flute; the vast majority of music is written to play with other musicians. In fact, most solo music for other instruments contain substantial piano parts. Piano has more repertoire than all other instruments combined. Piano is a tremendous second instrument because you can realize the other parts to the pieces you’re playing. You might wonder what the orchestra is doing in a concerto you are playing. There will be an orchestral arrangement on our score you can play on the piano so you can hear it!

All People Should Study the Piano

The piano is intrinsic to music. You’ll learn theory and understand chord structure. It makes an excellent tool for ear training as well. It’s visually in front of you and you can produce sounds and harmonies that are impossible to create by yourself on most other instruments. I had the good fortune of starting the piano at a very young age. Later, when I was in 4th grade, I start playing the French horn in school. I could already read music fluently and was playing somewhat sophisticated music (for a relative beginner) on the piano. It was easy for me to grasp the horn initially because I was used to much more complex music on the piano. It made me take to the French horn quickly because I was used to the complexity of reading two staves on a score. Reading music for the French Horn was easy by comparison (even though there are many challenges playing a wind instrument).

As crazy as it sounds, unlike people, pianos don’t age unless acted upon by an outside force, namely the environment or simply being played a lot. Upkeep also enters into it. A piano that sits in a stable climate with moderate temperature and humidity, away from direct sunlight, kept closed and rarely played, yet tuned on a regular basis can be in virtually new condition even after many decades. We have had a number of pre-WWII pianos that only required refinement but no new parts in order to get an extremely high level of performance and very attractive appearance. We have also seen 10 year pianos ready for major rebuilding. Beach pianos, desert pianos, pianos from schools, restaurants or hotels are examples of pianos.

What is also interesting is that new pianos (and newly rebuilt pianos) require more servicing in the first couple of years of ownership as strings stretch and woods become acclimated to their climate. So, although it may seem counterintuitive, older pianos require less maintenance than new pianos.

There are limits of what is likely to find. Generally, any piano going back into the 1800’s will undoubtedly require work or have had work performed on it in order to play on a high level. So, you must assess each piano for what it is. The year of manufacturer only tells a part of the story.