Piano and Music Videos

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about maintaining your piano in different environments. We have sold pianos to people all over the world, in all different environments. Just in California, you can be in the desert, in the mountains with snow, or on the beach. How can you possibly maintain pianos in all these different environments? Well, I’m going to give you some tips today to help you keep your piano in good condition, whatever environment you’re in.

What environment do pianos love?

Pianos love what you love. They want to be in a place that’s not too humid, not too dry, not too hot, not too cold, and pretty stable. That’s pretty simple. So are we done? Well, not quite, because there’s a lot more to this subject. Some people don’t have the luxury of those choices. For example, say you live on the beach, with the beautiful sound of the ocean waves and the smell of that air. But also, the piano’s very important to you. What are you going to do—close off your living room, use air conditioning, and not let in the ocean air? Of course not. There are compromises you have to make in life, and sadly, your piano may suffer somewhat.

Even in a beach environment, there are simple things you can do to help mitigate the humidity.

Humidity will take its toll on a piano at the beach. But if you simply close your piano, particularly at night when the marine layer comes in, it will help to mitigate the humidity in your piano. You can even get a cover for your piano. If your piano is completely closed and covered when you’re not playing it, or at least at night, that will really help to minimize the humidity that is going to affect the strings and other parts of the instrument. Another thing you can consider is a string cover. You can get a felt cover cut to the exact shape of the inside of your piano. And interestingly, it doesn’t really affect the sound as much as you might think it would. The sound goes right through the thin felt. But it will help protect it from the humidity. As far as underneath the piano, moisture isn’t really going to hurt the soundboard. But moisture will affect the strings, and all the metal parts will tarnish.

Moisture can also affect the action of your piano.

I remember when I was a kid in my father’s studio before he had air conditioning. In the summertime, the whole piano would become sluggish because all those moving parts on each key have felt bushings, which would absorb moisture. So it would feel slow. It would even affect the sound because the hammers absorb moisture, so you get a less brilliant sound. It was just a mess. So putting a string cover in the piano will not just help to protect the metal parts of the piano from tarnishing or rusting, but it will also help to keep the action from gumming up and giving out a dull, lifeless sound.

You may consider getting a dehumidifier system for your piano.

There are other technologies that come into play. For example, something called the Dampp-Chaser System. The Dampp-Chaser or Piano Life Saver are heating rods that usually go under the piano, but sometimes in extreme environments, rods can actually be fit inside the piano as well. And the way it works is with a humidistat. Just like a thermostat measures the temperature of the air, a humidistat measures the humidity level of the air. And once it gets above a certain level, the heating rods will turn on. That heat will help mitigate the moisture. These are all good techniques for dealing with excessive humidity.

What about climates with excessive dryness?

Even though humidity can really destroy a piano, excessive dry air can be even more deadly to the longevity of your piano because the wood dries out and wood joints can crack. It can be a nightmare for people living in the desert. Even in a temperate climate, your home can get very dry if you have hot air heat. If you don’t have a humidification system built into your central heating system, it can get really dry. We first moved to Cleveland just about two and a half years ago, and one of the first things I did was look for a piano for my studio. It was hard to find a piano that would fit up the stairs. I looked for a Chickering Quarter Grand, which has such thin cheek blocks making the piano narrower, so that the piano could make it up the stairs. Not far from here, I found one from the 1970s. I looked at it, and it looked fine, but it was drastically out of tune. The pin block had dried out, and the piano couldn’t hold tuning anymore. And that’s not that old for a piano. We’ve had 50, even 100-year-old pianos with good tuning stability. But the dry environment from the heating system was too much for it. Extremely dry environments can also cause soundboards to crack which can be a disaster for a piano.

What can you do to mitigate the dryness?

Well, you simply need a humidification system. You’re best off having a whole-house system or a room humidifier. Try to keep the humidity around 45 to 50 percent. That’s ideal. If you’re in the thirties or in the sixties, you’re still okay. But when you get down to single-digit humidity, that is a problem. What else can you do? I mentioned the Dampp-Chaser System. They actually have a humidity-adding system as well. There’s a tank that you fill with water, and whenever the humidity level gets too low, it adds humidity underneath the piano to the soundboard, which is the critical place. If the soundboard gets too dry and cracks, you’ve got a rebuild on your hands. There’s no real way to fix a soundboard without pulling the plate and re-stringing. That can easily cost tens of thousands of dollars. If you’re living in a place where the summers are excessively humid and the winters are really dry, you can get a dual system that engages the heating rods when it gets too humid or the water tank when it gets too dry. Some people in dry climates will put a tray of water under their piano just for the evaporative effect. Believe it or not, just filling your room with a bunch of plants is going to add to the humidity of the air environment quite a bit, particularly if you don’t have hot air blowing. If you just have radiator or baseboard heating, that might just do the trick to bring the humidity up a few percentage points.

Direct sunlight on your piano is another big problem.

Obviously, sunlight hitting the inside of the piano can affect the tuning. But sunlight just hitting the case of the piano is a problem. I’ve seen pianos damaged after just a few months of sitting in a room where sunlight would hit the piano part of the day. A telltale sign is the two-tone lid. You have your piano lid folded over, but then you unfold it, and you see that the part that was not exposed to the sun is darker. It’s been bleached by the sun. To avoid this, you could try a window treatment, which will help somewhat, but really, you need to just close your shades when the piano is being subjected to direct sunlight. If your piano is warm to the touch, your finish is going to be damaged over time. After many years of that, your piano will check. Checking is when you get that alligator look. The finish dries out, and there’s no way to deal with it other than stripping everything and refinishing. This is another hugely expensive endeavor. So you want to avoid that.

You should also think about the environment your piano is in in regards to the sound.

Acoustics are so important. If you have a piano in a room that is really dead and you’re pounding it to be able to be heard, you’re going to wear out your piano, and you’re not going to enjoy playing very much. What can you do about that? Well, short of removing soft furniture and curtains, you can actually just put something hard under the piano. You could use a sheet of plexiglass if you have a rug and you don’t want to ruin the look. You just want something that will reflect the sound. About half the sound of a piano comes from underneath. So something that reflects the sound will help. Having your piano open so it projects into the room will also help. How you place your piano factors in as well. You want it open to the room instead of to a wall.

What if the piano is too loud for its environment?

If your piano is hurting your ears, of course you can close the lid, which will certainly help. If you have hardwood floors, putting your piano on a rug will absorb a lot of the sound because, as I mentioned, half the sound is coming out of the bottom. If that doesn’t help, try putting soft furniture and thick drapes in your room. Anything that will absorb the sound is going to help. You could even hang tapestries on the walls. So these are ways that will actually help you enjoy your piano more and increase its longevity. You don’t want to have to pound your piano when you can’t hear it enough or pussyfoot on it and never enjoy the sound of the instrument. Worse yet, sometimes people will have their hammers needled to bring the voicing way down just so it’s not too loud, but you don’t get that nice, rich tone anymore. You don’t want to compromise the voicing of your piano just to accommodate room acoustic problems.

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how to get your kids to practice the piano. This is a really important subject because you want your kids to enjoy the piano. But if they never practice, how can you justify the lessons you’re taking them to and spending money on? You feel really committed, and you want your kids to be committed. Sometimes it can really come to loggerheads. So I’m going to give you some tips today!

I have vast experience with this subject.

I come from a family of teachers. Both my parents were music teachers. My sister is a piano teacher. I’ve taught piano pedagogy to many teachers. Getting kids to practice is a universal challenge for anyone who teaches kids or parents with kids studying the piano. I started teaching the piano when I was in high school, assisting my father with his teaching, as my sister did before me. And it’s been a continuum of my career since that time. I’ve pretty much always taught. Today, I have the great privilege of teaching students all over the world because of my popular YouTube channel and website, LivingPianos.com. I have students from Australia to Alaska and all points in between. For the most part, they’re serious students. I have some kids who are just wonderful to work with, as well as people decades older than me! However, when I was starting out making a living as a private piano teacher, I took all kinds of kids and adults as well. They didn’t all love the piano the way my students do today. I saw many different ways that parents dealt with their kids, some effective and some that were really counterproductive.

The first thing you have to understand about working at the piano is that practicing correctly is hard work.

So when you tell your kids they have to practice for 30 minutes or an hour, realize that, if they’re doing it correctly, it’s an incredibly intense experience. You must appreciate that. I remember my wife had a student, and the mother was always upset with her child for not practicing enough. Eventually, the mother started taking lessons, and then she finally realized how difficult it really was! So you have to appreciate that. To encourage your kids to practice, you have to think of it the way you think of so many other things in life.

Your kids, given a choice, probably wouldn’t clean their room, do their homework, or brush their teeth!

There are myriad things that your kids are kind of coaxed or trained to do, and piano practice must fit into that realm. So the techniques you’ve used to get your kids to do what they need to do are also appropriate for piano practice. But piano practice is not something that’s legally required, the way school is, or a matter of personal hygiene, the way brushing your teeth is, so they might feel there’s some wiggle room there. You must encourage your kids to practice by understanding and appreciating the hard work they do. Showcase their talents to your family and friends whenever possible. If they’ve been working really hard and they have a piece they can play well, when company comes over, let them shine. Give them a chance to enjoy the fruits of their labor!

You can encourage young students by bringing them to concerts and expanding their scope of music.

Bring them to classical concerts and other styles of music that maybe they haven’t been exposed to. I can’t tell you how many times people have said to me something like, “I hate opera.” And I say, “Have you ever been to an opera?” And they say, “No.” Well, how do you know? Seeing an opera performed by a great opera company, like the Metropolitan Opera, is just an astounding experience. You can’t get that experience by listening to music on a sound system. It’s not the same at all. That’s also true with classical music in general. Some types of music translate better to an electronic medium. For example, rock music is coming out of speakers, whether you’re going to a live event or not. But acoustic music sounds so much better when you’re listening to it live. It doesn’t sound the same coming through speakers. The sound of an acoustic performance in a great hall can’t be described or duplicated any other way. So take your kids to concerts! But you can also play them great recordings. Expose them to great music. They may just latch on to a few key pieces that could change their lives.

So remember to encourage your children!

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about staccatos. Are staccatos accented? You see the little dots in your music, and you know to play short or detached, but does that mean you also articulate them with accents?

There are different markings for accents.

You have little sideways triangles, and you also have sforzandos, which are strong accents. For example, Ballad of Burgmüller starts off with staccatos, and then you have sforzandos. You have the nice, crisp staccatos and the accented sforzandos. But what about other instances where there are just staccatos? Should they be accented?

There are times when staccatos are an indication to play with some emphasis, but oftentimes it’s exactly the opposite!

A good example of that is when you have two-note slurs. The first note is articulated with some energy, particularly when it’s on the beat, and then the offbeats are light. For example, in the Allegro k.3 of Mozart, you want to articulate the two-note slurs by playing the second note of each slur staccato. By doing this, you end up with a light staccato. Imagine if those staccatos were articulated with energy. It would give a syncopated feel to the rhythm like in Debussy’s Golliwog’s Cakewalk, which is not at all what a 2/4 time usually is. Generally, the strong beats are on the beats and the off beats are lighter, except in instances where syncopation is happening. There are times when accents are on staccato notes and off the beat, but most often staccatos are light, particularly when there are two note slurs. Remember to accentuate the beat. The offbeats, the second notes of two note slurs, should be light.

The way to achieve light staccatos is by using a down-up motion.

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about why you need a practicing checklist. What’s this all about? A lot of my students want to have a routine in their practice to do a certain number of things in a certain order on a daily basis. And while this is commendable in one sense, a routine can sometimes work against you because you want to take advantage of the discoveries in your practice. You might go off on a tangent and think you’re spending too much time on something because you need to get to other things. So you might not take advantage of an exploration that could lead to an epiphany in your playing.

Instead of a routine, a checklist offers something really valuable for you.

When you practice, you might get to a point where you’re thinking, “What am I supposed to do now?” If you don’t have a routine, you’re kind of lost. But if you have a checklist, you know you want to do certain things every day. I offered this idea to one of my students, Jancarlos, in the Dominican Republic. I asked him to come up with a practice checklist for himself. I said, “You should come up with a checklist that has things you really want to do on a daily basis and then things you do on a weekly basis, maybe not every single day, but something that you don’t want to go too long without visiting in your practice.” So this is what Jancarlos came up with. See how many of these things resonate with you! I’d love to get suggestions here in the comments on LivingPianos.com and YouTube.

Jancarlos starts his checklist with memorization of new material.

I stress this all the time. Why is it so important to memorize new material on a daily basis? Because cramming memorization doesn’t work! Let’s say you’ve gone four or five days without doing any memorization. You think you can just make up for it in a few hours, but it’s not so easy. When you first learn a phrase, it’s not that hard. You learn the second phrase, and it comes along okay. But by the third or fourth phrase, it starts to get really taxing. How much can you cram into your head in one sitting? It’s tough. So take advantage every day when your mind is fresh to learn something, even if it’s just one phrase. You’ll be rewarded! Take a look at the score of whatever music you’re working on and figure out the smallest phrase that you could learn; maybe it’s four measures, and then multiply that by seven and then deduct any measures that are the same. You’ll discover that you might get a page or a page and a half of music learned just by doing a phrase a day. So make that a priority in your practice. What else should be done every day?

Reinforce material from the previous day.

Obviously, you need to solidify what you learned the previous day. You might have to relearn it. The good news is that you’ll be able to learn it much faster. Not only that, but if you learned four measure phrases the previous day, you might be able to learn eight measure phrases when you relearn it because it’s already there.

Another thing you really should be doing on a regular basis is playing scales and arpeggios.

If you’re not up to scales and arpeggios, you should at least do simple Hanon exercises to strengthen your fingers. If you learn one new scale a week or one new arpeggio a week, you’ll have them all learned in a year. That is a good foundation for your playing. And if you already know them all, solidify them. Take them to the next level in speed, different articulations, or doing them in contrary motion or in intervals. You can keep working on scales and arpeggios your whole life. There’s always value in doing so!

Another thing you should do is review your old pieces.

Go through slowly solidifying pieces you can already play. This is a great way to keep them in shape and to check your work so things don’t degrade over time. By doing this, you always have music you can play on a high level. Also, make time for free playing. Play old repertoire or improvise, just to keep your fingers moving. You can keep pieces in shape just by playing them, and improvising develops your ear and your connection to the keyboard.

Another thing that you can do on a regular basis is sight-read.

Sight-reading is a vital aspect of strengthening your reading because you might learn more and more music and still have a beginning reading level. So make reading something you do on a regular basis. Finding sight-reading material on the right level for you is the most important part. If it’s something you struggle just to get through a line or two, it’s not going to be that valuable. It’ll be painstaking for you, and you’re not going to want to do it. And you’re not going to get the fluidity and sense of reading and maintaining a tempo. Finding easy enough music for sight-reading is a challenge for many people because many people do become somewhat accomplished, yet they still have the reading level of a beginner. I was in that category when I was a pretty advanced player in high school because I didn’t do enough sight-reading. So make that a part of your regular study.

Go through theory on a regular basis.

It can be something as simple as just going through your sharps and your flats. You don’t want to just memorize by rote. That’s not that valuable. Frankly, it’s better than nothing. But you’re better off figuring out the intervals you’re playing. Why is this so important? Imagine trying to solve quadratic equations in algebra while not being fluent with your multiplication tables. That’s not going to work very well. You have to be pretty fluent with all your tables before you can approach higher mathematics. The same thing is true with music theory. You better be really solid with your key signatures and all your major scales before doing chords, intervals, and all of that. So spend some time with that on a regular basis.

Explore other styles of music.

It can be incredibly valuable to explore other genres, whether it’s jazz, salsa, pop, blues, etc. You’ll make discoveries, and you’ll understand the structure of music better. It ties in with music theory. All of these skill sets relate to each other. That’s why the more of them you do on a regular basis, the more productive your practice is.

Make a checklist for yourself!

Make a checklist so you never get stuck in your practice. If you’re not getting anywhere, change it up and do something different. You can come back to what you were doing the next day, and maybe it will resonate more genuinely with you at that time. Have your checklist on hand, either on your phone or on a piece of paper, so you can make sure you practice all these fundamental skill sets on a regular basis. Thank you, Jancarlos, for sharing this with everybody! Share your musical checklist 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.

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about why you must know your primary chords. What are primary chords? Well, I’m going to break it down for you today. I’m going to show you something called diatonic chords first, because that’s how you can discover what your primary chords are.

Diatonic chords, simply put, are chords built on every note of the scale.

The simplest chords are triads—three notes arranged in thirds. What are thirds? Thirds are every other note of a scale. If you play every other note of a C major scale, you have a C major chord. If you go up the scale, you can play all your diatonic chords. So D-F-A is also a diatonic triad. E-G-B, and on up the scale forming all the diatonic triads. This is essential to understand, and it can help you immensely in digesting a score if you’re reading or learning it. It’s also valuable just for listening to music.

I’m going to show you what are referred to as primary chords.

If you are vaguely aware of this now, this is going to be a revelatory moment for you. So let’s go through. We start with the one chord, and you notice that you have four half-steps on the bottom between the C and the E. That’s called a major third. Now on the top, there are three half-steps between the E and G. That’s a minor third. When you have a major third on the bottom and a minor third on the top, that is a major triad. This is really fundamental to music. We’re going to go up and discover where the major triads occur in Diatonic Chords. So far, we’ve established that the one chord is indeed major. That is the first primary chord. Where is the next one? If you go to the two chord, on the bottom, you have three half-steps between the D and F, which is a minor third, and you have four half-steps on the top between the F and A, which is a major third. So that’s a minor triad. So the two chord is not a primary chord; it’s a secondary chord because it’s not major. What about the three chord? I bet you can figure this out now that I’ve shown you the secret. You have three half-steps on the bottom and four on the top, so that is a minor triad again. The three chord is also a secondary triad. The four chord has four half-steps on the bottom and three on the top, so it is a major triad. So the one chord and the four chord are both major triads; therefore, they’re primary chords. Are there any other primary chords? The five chord has four half-steps on the bottom and three on top. So that’s another major chord.

The one chord, the four chord, and the five chord are your primary chords.

The six chord has three half-steps on the bottom and four on top; therefore, it’s a minor triad, another secondary chord. We have one more left. The seven chord has three half-steps on the bottom and also three on top. What the heck is going on here? That’s not a major or minor triad. Two minor thirds forms a diminished triad. It’s the only place where a diminished triad occurs in a diatonic chord. To recap, you have your major triads, which are your primary chords, the one, four, and five; you have your secondary chords, which are the two, three, and six, which are all minor; and you have your leading tone, the seventh chord, which is diminished.

Why is this so important?

Those basic one, four, and five chords are intrinsic to Western harmony. It’s a classic, authentic cadence and a great way to establish the key. You can go through all your keys this way. It’s a great way to gain comfort in all the major and minor keys. It’s a terrific way to have your primary chords literally at your fingertips! It makes reading music, understanding the harmonic underpinnings of your music, and learning music much easier.

You should know your primary chords in all keys.

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about the five things piano and ping-pong have in common. There are so many things they have in common! One thing, and this isn’t one of the five, is that they are both things that I particularly love and have been doing almost my whole life! I remember getting a ping-pong table when I was a kid. There’s a crazy story about that. It was during the holidays, and I went with my good friend Marty to Sears, which was over a mile away. I thought I would surprise my family with a ping-pong table. We bought it, and then we tried to carry it home. I had to call my dad to pick us up, so it wasn’t much of a surprise. But we grew up with a ping-pong table. And of course, we had lots of pianos in the house. These are two things that have been very close to me. To this day, I still play ping-pong on a very regular basis. And of course, piano is my life! So let’s come up with the five things that these two activities have in common.

1. They both involve motor skills.

With piano, you have the finger coordination, the arms, and you have to coordinate with the sounds and the visuals of the keys, as well as the sheet music. There are so many aspects of motor skills involved in piano playing. With ping-pong, you have to judge the trajectory of the ball and be in exactly the right place to hit it. There’s obviously a tremendous amount of motor skill involved in both of these activities. What else is there?

2. They both involve aerobic exercise.

Obviously, ping-pong provides aerobic exercise. In professional ping-pong matches, the players are ten feet from the table, and they’re running all around. It’s mildly aerobic, even if you’re playing casually. But it’s not so exhausting that you can’t play for an extended amount of time. That’s what’s great about ping-pong. Now, what about the piano? Is piano aerobic? Well, there are some things on piano that are certainly aerobic, like, for example, the coda of the Chopin G minor Ballade. Whenever you have leaps like that, it’s mildly aerobic. It’s definitely more exercise than sitting and reading a book! So they both provide some level of aerobic exercise. What else?

3. They both keep your brain sharp.

There was a study years ago in a New York Times Magazine article years ago. It was an in-depth article about the human brain. In that article, they cited piano playing as being the single most complex activity of the human brain. Think about all the things involved in piano playing: I mentioned earlier the coordination of your fingers, but the sound, the sights, short-term memory, and long-term memory—it’s an incredibly complex activity for the brain! But in ping-pong, you also have to make split-second calculations from moment to moment. There’s strategy involved: trying to get your opponent off kilter by where you place the ball, spinning the ball to try to throw them off, hitting corners so you have the greatest distance, trajectories, the arc of the ball, and where you’re standing. These are all great activities for the brain. As a matter of fact, both of these activities can help prevent cognitive decline because you’re exercising your brain, which is terrific!

4. They both provide stress relief.

When you play the piano, your mind can completely let go of everything and just focus on the beauty of the music. Your brain is occupied 100% with something other than your relationships, work, chores, or whatever is causing you stress. It’s much the same thing with ping-pong. When you’re playing ping-pong, you let go of everything and get into a state of flow. You’re just enjoying the game, and you let go of all your worries. These activities allow you to disengage from the worries and stress in your life.

5. Piano and ping-pong are both immensely popular in China.

In China, there are about 50 million piano students! 100 years ago, in the United States, there were hundreds of piano companies. That’s what China has today. There are hundreds of piano manufacturers in China that you don’t even know about because they only serve the domestic market. Only a handful of companies export because there’s such a huge market there. During our trip to China, we saw all kinds of piano brands with some of the oddest names you could ever imagine. These are companies that probably wouldn’t be able to export their products because they’re not up to international standards. They produce low-priced pianos for the massive number of people who play piano in China.