Piano and Music Videos

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. How can you tell if a student is talented? You sometimes see kids who have difficult pieces they can play fast, and they have it all memorized. And then sometimes you hear somebody who just touches you, and you have a deep emotional connection.

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I will share some secrets to executing trills. When I was in music conservatory, I remember the really advanced students would spend an inordinate amount of time working on trills. And in fact, it’s one aspect of my playing that I have developed further in the past year or so. I’m always discovering new things.

The most intrinsically important thing about trills is that they must be measured.

I know that when you hear a trill, it just sounds like a whole bunch of random notes. But if you don’t know exactly how many notes you’re playing in a trill, good luck ending it! You may not end up on the right note. You have a 50/50 chance of being on the right or the wrong note. So you have to figure out exactly how many notes you’re playing. So even though it sounds like a flurry of notes, the number of notes is worked out precisely. There are different ways to execute trills with different numbers of notes, but each one should be measured.

Today I’m going to give you a hack for your trills!

I recently performed a concert in New York. I played the Mozart Sonata K. 457 in C minor. It’s loaded with trills! I wanted to execute those trills really cleanly, and I also wanted to play a good number of notes. You can always play an easier trill with fewer notes, but I didn’t want to do that. I started my program with this sonata, so I wanted to be rock solid on it. I figured out how to achieve very clean, faithful, and accurate trills. And it’s not just for trills like this, but virtually all ornamentation.

The secret is lifting up your fingers just a little bit instead of being right on the keys.

You want to lift up your finger just a little bit before you play the trill. That little bit of lifting articulates trills so wonderfully, you won’t believe it! Try it with your playing wherever you have trills. Lift your finger just before the trill, and you’ll get a clean trill. If your fingers don’t lift up, the notes may not play reliably. That’s the hardest part of a trill. The hardest part about piano playing and finger work isn’t so much the pushing down of the fingers, it’s the lifting up of previously played fingers. If you try to play a trill and the fingers don’t come up, the notes won’t play.

By lifting your fingers, you are certain that the fingers are up and out of the way, so the keys can replay.

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Did you know that it’s not important how much you practice? It’s not important how much you memorize. It’s not important how much you work on scales and arpeggios. Likewise, it’s not that important how much you exercise. None of these things are important.

What is important is how often you do these things!

What’s important is how often you practice, how often you memorize, and how often you work on scales and arpeggios. And indeed, in a recent study, they found that the most important component for health is not how intensely you exercise; it’s how often you exercise. The same is true with your piano practice. There are some really good reasons for this.

It’s the things you do every day that make a difference in your life.

You want to get to the important things every day. The blue zones around the world, where people live to be over 100 on a much more regular basis, are areas where exercise is just part of life. If you live in the mountains of Sardinia, Italy, walking up and down the hills is just a part of your life. You don’t have to make appointments to go to the gym three times a week. Just by going out and getting your food, you’re going to be getting exercise.

Make sure your piano is in a place where you’re going to pass by it.

You shouldn’t have to have a long ritual to get going with your practice. It’s good to close your piano for the health of the instrument, at least at night, but make it so that you can get to it easily. Make it a part of your regular routine. Make memorization part of your regular day, or at least learning new music. You want to always be expanding your repertoire. How often you practice is much more important than how much you practice. Cramming doesn’t work that well for a lot of aspects of piano practice, but the continuity of study is vitally important to build upon what you do each day.

With consistent practice, you will grow enormously.

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m talking about a piano mystery, the Steinway Model C. You may already be familiar with the Steinway Models B and D, but if not, I’m going to give you a quick rundown. Virtually all new Steinways sold in North America are made in New York. There’s the Model S at 5′ 1″, the very popular Model M at 5′ 7″, then the Model L (now the O) at 5′ 10 1/2″. Then it skips all the way to the Model B at 6′ 11″, and then to the concert grand, which is just under nine feet. So there’s a big gap there.

What about in Hamburg?

In Hamburg, Germany, where Steinways are also made, they never produced the Model L, but they have the Model O, which is also 5′ 10 1/2″, but a different scale design. And they also have the Model A at 6′ 2″. Some of them were actually a little longer; the Model A3 is 6′ 4″ which was made in New York for a brief period of time early in the 20th century. The model A was made in New York only in the early part of the twentieth century. Now the model A is made in both Hamburg and New York. In fact, they make all the same models: S, M, O (not the L anymore), A, B, and the concert grand model D.

What is the model C?

The Model C was made in New York up until 1905. Then they had limited numbers of them made all the way up to 1936. The Model C has not been made in New York since 1936. But the model C, at 7′ 5″, is still made in Hamburg. The speculation as to why the model C is not made in New York is that it would interfere too much with the sale of their popular Model B, which is the quintessential semi-concert grand at just under seven feet. But there’s still no reason why this great scale design shouldn’t be made in New York. I think it would be terrific for people in this hemisphere to be able to buy a Steinway C without having to go to the expense of buying a German piano imported overseas all the way to the United States.

Do you think Steinway should make the Model C in New York?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about what makes great music. There is so much to this subject. We could talk about inventiveness, melody, rhythm, or orchestration. There are countless aspects of music that, together, make music great. Take a composer like Mozart. Now, when Mozart was alive, what other great composers were around? Haydn was around, and Beethoven and Schubert were a little bit later. Were those the only composers? No, of course there were hundreds of composers. But what is it about Mozart and Beethoven? What is it about these great composers? And even in the 20th and 21st centuries, what is it that separates The Beatles from hundreds of other bands that were producing similar music?

What separates the great composers from their contemporaries?

You listen to their music, and if you analyze it, you can’t really say what’s so different about their music from that of their contemporaries. Same thing with The Beatles. I think what separates the greats from their contemporaries is that every single composition is a unique statement. Beethoven wrote 32 piano sonatas. There are no two that are really alike. They’re all unique compositions. Take a look at the Beatles. You may love the Beatles, or they might not be your favorite band, but you have to admit that every single album is different from every other album. And every song on each album is unique. This is a really hard thing to achieve.

In pop music, for example, you might have a one-hit wonder.

Somebody writes a great song and the rest of the album is not so great, or there’s one great album and that’s the end of it. You may never hear from the band again. But the Beatles kept coming up with great albums. They’re not the only band; I’m just using them as the quintessential band of all time that just kept churning out great music. Look at Brahms, four symphonies, and they are completely unique musical statements, every one of them. Now, you might say that Mozart is more similar in his works than other composers, but each one has its own character, its own motifs, and its own structure. The rules of form are slightly altered here and there, keeping the audience interested.

What really separates great composers is their originality from composition to composition.

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.