Piano and Music Videos

Welcome to Living Pianos, Robert Estrin here providing ways you can make money playing the piano. Can you make a living playing the piano? Did you know that there are tens of millions of piano students in China alone? And there are countless pianists in the entire world. However:

There are only around 200 pianists performing internationally in the great concert halls around the world.

There are close to 1,800 higher education schools granting music degrees in the United States alone. And each of these has piano majors graduating, hoping to become concert pianists. You might be discouraged by the whole idea of making a living as a pianist, but hang on a minute, because:

There are many ways to make a living playing the piano.

You’ll find that most people today who are making a living with the piano are people who are highly creative, not just in their art of playing the instrument but in their whole approach to how they bring the piano to people. After all, the piano has been around for centuries. It took hundreds of years for the piano to develop, but it’s been in its modern form since the latter part of the 1800s. Naturally, in that time period, there were some phenomenal pianists, from Liszt to Chopin and so many more.

In the early 20th century, the piano was the de facto home entertainment system in the United States!

The piano was tremendous, but it’s been on the decline, particularly in the United States, for over 100 years now. In China, the piano is really huge. There are hundreds of companies making pianos. And, as I said, there are about 40 or 50 million piano students in China! So at least in one part of the world, piano has risen in popularity. But let’s get back to how you can make money with the piano. There are many different ways. Obviously, playing solo piano concerts is tough. If you’re creative and you can figure out local series and what they’re looking for, you might just be able to find some possibilities for performing solo piano concerts. That is great because you are able to hone your craft and exploit what you’ve been trained for and spent your whole life lovingly working on.

Accompanying other musicians and collaborative playing in general can be richly rewarding.

There is some phenomenal chamber music repertoire for piano quartet or quintet. I was able to perform the Schumann Piano Quintet a couple of years ago. It’s a great piece. There are also great works by Brahms and Dvořák. There’s just spectacular music, and it’s quite an art form! It almost sounds like an orchestra because you have the string quartet plus a piano. It is one of the greatest ensembles, if you haven’t explored it. And there are many other opportunities for collaboration.

Almost all violin and cello solo music has piano parts that are fundamental to the works.

There is some great solo music for strings, by Bach in particular. Paganini and other composers did write solo music for violin and cello. But the vast majority of solo music for strings has integral piano parts that can be as demanding or even more demanding and intrinsic than the string parts. It can be a richly rewarding experience to accompany a soloist. But it’s not just string players. Virtually every orchestral instrument that has solo music, the vast majority of it is collaboration with the piano. Because of this, people are always looking for pianists. It can be a daunting task to think of all the music you have to learn. You might consider specializing. Maybe you’ll just learn a lot of vocal accompaniments. Maybe you’ll specialize in opera accompaniments or art songs. Maybe you played clarinet and are familiar with the literature, so you could specialize in learning accompaniments to clarinet music. You will find that virtually all instruments are looking for pianists to play their music with. So this is a great possibility!

What other possibilities are there in regards to performing?

There are other opportunities, whether it’s a musical theater production looking for somebody to play keyboard parts or rock bands, folk, country, or what have you. There are dance companies and schools that need pianists for rehearsals and performances. There are many different performing opportunities if you are versatile. Expanding the styles that you are comfortable with makes you much more marketable. This can provide you with more opportunities to play the piano.

Playing at church or in other places of worship can offer rich opportunities for musical collaboration.

There is a vibrant in-home concert scene in many communities in which people with good pianos in large enough homes host concerts and offer refreshments. Audience members all pay a fee to the artist. This provides important performing opportunities for musicians while enriching the lives of the people in the community. If you are creative, you may be able to work out musical programs in nursing homes or private schools offering a valuable experience for people of all ages.
Composers are always looking for opportunities to have their music performed.

Teaching is a tremendous way to share your craft.

You don’t necessarily have to get an advanced degree to teach piano. If you want to teach at the university or college level, a master’s degree is a prerequisite these days. A doctorate degree is very helpful because there are hundreds, if not thousands, of piano performance majors graduating each year in the United States and abroad, and they are all looking for these positions. So you have to do something to set yourself apart. I recommend not just getting advanced degrees, but trying to do something original so you can be noticed among the hundreds or thousands of applicants that schools receive for these positions. Something that is unique to you, some voice that you have, a vision about the piano in society today, or a specialty of repertoire. Maybe you love contemporary music and just want to help composers. That’s another great way to get performance opportunities.

Composers are always looking for opportunities to have their music performed.

If you love contemporary music and are willing to put in the work, you can find people who will pay you to play their music because they need performances. Otherwise, the music just sits somewhere, and nobody gets to hear it except maybe a machine playing it. What fun is that?

To teach privately, you don’t even need a degree!

You just have to have training to be able to know how to teach. There are people like myself who teach piano pedagogy, so you can get instruction in that. You don’t have to be a concert-level player to be a good teacher. In fact, there are many concert pianists who are not necessarily great teachers. Maybe they were child prodigies, and they have no idea how they do what they do. Someone who started later in life may not have a virtuosic technique, but may still understand how to convey what it takes to learn a piece of music. That knowledge could be passed on to piano students. It can be a tremendous experience to help people develop their piano playing.

There are many ways in which you can share your music on the piano.

Mozart was known to improvise music at gatherings. This was a common practice at the time. Sometimes there would be events with several keyboardists dueling it out trying to outdo each other! Naturally, Mozart astounded audiences with these displays of instant composition.

Mozart Fantasies offer a glimpse as to what his improvisations were like.

Mozart composed very few fantasies. He also composed only a few pieces in minor keys, although most of them are among his finest compositions. Unlike most of Mozart’s works which have very well defined Classical form, in his fantasies, he explores flights of fancy that drift seamlessly from one idea to another. The D Minor Fantasy is captivating from beginning to end keeping you wondering what is coming next!

This is Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.com. Today we have a musical test for you! You can test your musical ear with the accompanying video. You have an opportunity to see if you can hear the difference between different types of triads.

What is a Triad?

Triads can also be inverted. So the bottom note can be on the top, or the top note can be on the bottom:

The major triad has a happier sound compared to the minor chord which has a sad quality for most people. The diminished triad has a diminished 5th. So you can listen for a smaller outer interval. Whereas the augmented triad has an augmented 5th, so the outer interval is larger. The augmented triad is also every other note of a whole tone scale, a scale of all whole steps.

So now that you have an intellectual background of triads, try the listening test and see how you do! You can leave your impressions or results here at LivingPianos.com or YouTube!

Bach lived in Leipzig, Germany and did very little travelling. However, whenever musicians came through town, he would make a point of hearing them. So he wrote a vast array of music of different cultures including English Suites, French Suites, Italian Concerto, as well as a wealth of other music. He wrote weekly masses at the church where he worked. At one point, he was composing music for 3 different churches!

One of Bach’s most substantial bodies of work are his 48 Preludes & Fugues known as, The Well Tempered Clavier. He celebrated the advancement of tuning technology, which finally afforded the possibility of playing in all 12 keys without the necessity of re-tuning the instrument, by composing Preludes and Fugues in each of the major and minor keys. As if that wasn’t enough, he composed 2 books of them!

The Toccatas are pieces in which Bach explores free-form writing.

This gives insights as to what it might have been like to hear Bach improvise music at the keyboard. The E minor Toccata starts with a short movement, then goes right into a fugue. Then there is a very free movement which is like a fantasy. Finally, an incredible fugue with a subject that only Bach could utilize with his brilliance with counterpoint. It is a long, fast subject, and the fugue ends with a flourish of notes for a rousing ending to this fantastic piece!

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The question today is about whether you should you follow pedal markings in your scores. All too often, you don’t even have pedal markings! So where should you pedal? In a nutshell, it’s where harmonies change. You don’t want to blur harmonies from one chord to another because you get a mess of dissonance. So whenever harmonies change, that’s the appropriate place to change the pedal. But what about when you do have pedal indications in the score? Well, this comes down to two factors. Are they the composer’s markings or the editor’s markings?

Very few composers wrote pedal markings in their scores.

Most of the pedal markings you’re going to find are editors’ markings. You can try them, but I would, for the most part, ignore them unless you find them helpful. Now, what about when composers write pedal markings? There are some places where Beethoven wrote pedal markings, for example. Even then, with Beethoven as a good example, the piano was a very different instrument during Beethoven’s lifetime. As a matter of fact, the piano was a very different instrument early in Beethoven’s life compared to later in his life! The piano was evolving. The pedaling that worked for Beethoven’s piano doesn’t necessarily work well for the modern piano. Well, what about later composers? If you have composers from the late 19th or 20th century who wrote pedal markings, should you follow them? You may want to in some instances.

Sometimes you’ll have markings for the una corda pedal, the soft pedal. Should you follow them?

In regards to the una corda pedal, on some pianos, the soft pedal does almost nothing. On a new piano, for example, where the hammers aren’t grooved, the change in position of the hammers makes very little difference. On other pianos, it can make a dramatic difference in tone. If the hammers are very heavily grooved, the una corda pedal will make a significant tonal change. You’ve probably noticed how, on a grand piano, the action and the hammers move when you depress the una corda pedal. That puts the soft felt striking the strings. So did the composer make these una corda pedal markings for a piano with a dramatic change or a subtle change? You have to weigh that in deciding whether you follow the markings. Ultimately, your ears are your guide.

What about sustain pedal markings?

In regards to the sustain pedal, different pianos have different levels of sustain. Different rooms have different qualities of reverberation. Also, the composer may or may not have been a great interpreter of their own music! So I would say pedal markings are suggestions. Try them, by all means, when the composer wrote them, certainly, and even if editors wrote them. But if they don’t work for you, don’t feel compelled to follow pedal markings in your scores. They may or may not work on your piano, in your room, or in the style you’re trying to achieve in your playing. I hope this is helpful for you! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.