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Hi, I’m Robert Estrin and this is LivingPianos.com. The subject today is about how failure breeds success in music. When you see somebody who is accomplished on the piano, you might think it’s easy for them. Things must just come naturally to them. They’re so talented! But if you see behind the scenes what it takes, it’s the people who can fail again and again and again, and yet keep trying who become seasoned artists. This isn’t just in music. This covers a wide range of activities.

As a child I took a vacation with my family to the Finger Lakes and we had an opportunity to water ski.

I wanted to stand up on the skis. I tried and I tried. I’d start up and then bam, I’d be down. I was relentless, trying it again and again and again. I didn’t want to give up. I really wanted nothing more than to be successful. I even stood on the skis outside of the water tied to a tree to try to get the sense of it! Try as I might, I could not seem to stay up on the skis in the water. My sister today says that at the time, they didn’t have skis that fit me. Maybe that’s true. Or maybe she’s just being kind, because I guess it could be an embarrassing situation. Although I wasn’t embarrassed. I just wanted to water ski so darn badly! Eventually they had this contraption that was supposed to hold the skis together and then lift up. I used it and it held the skis together, but it never lifted up! There I went halfway around the lake, hunched over. That was the degree of success I had in water skiing. Many years later, I was on a boat with friends and they were offering water skiing. I tried it again and I was finally successful!

How does this relate to piano?

As a child, my hands were very weak. I have small hands even now. But as a child, I could barely reach an octave. Even in my teens I could only reach an octave around the keys. I was playing some pretty sophisticated music and I couldn’t even reach an octave! I rose to the occasion to play the whole Debussy Children’s Corner suite when I was 13 years old, which was really an achievement for me. There was a strong B-flat octave at the very end of the suite (Golliwog’s Cakewalk). And it just sounded anemic. My father actually had me leave out the octave in the left hand at the end and use all my fingers on the key in each hand to get some power to end the piece strongly. That was a really good workaround. I had to struggle for years to develop strength. When I was in Salzburg, Austria, in high school, I spent a summer studying at the Mozarteum. This was a time when I really practiced a lot. I was working on the Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6. I spent hours and hours practicing to the point where I had cracked, bloody nails. I was just trying to develop strength. That piece ends with a huge octave section that you’ve probably heard before. So that’s what I did to try to overcome natural weakness.

Other pianists might have completely different obstacles to overcome.

I remember one of my father’s students who was very talented from an emotional level. He had fire in his playing! It was a pleasure to listen to him. But his brain didn’t always cooperate. So his challenge was just holding the cohesiveness of the form together. Holding together an extended work or a whole program was very difficult for him. He had the fire, the passion, the technique, but musical intellect was his challenge. So he worked very hard. He’s a seasoned artist with a career. Everybody has to find what failures they have and build upon them. It doesn’t all come naturally.

It’s how you deal with failure that makes the difference.

If failure makes you feel defeated, and you stop trying, you won’t ever overcome weakness. But if you choose to fight on and not accept failure, that’s the secret to success! It doesn’t happen easily for people. It just seems that way on the outside. So remember, if you’re suffering from failure in your playing or in anything in life, just keep persevering! You can learn from your mistakes as to how to solve them appropriately in the future. The more things you try, the more things you know that don’t work. Thomas Edison once said of his struggle to invent the light bulb, “I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” That’s what it is with the piano. You try, and keep trying, until you find the answers that solve your problems so you can overcome failure in your music. I hope this is helpful and perhaps even inspiring to you! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrinContact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

How Failure Breeds Success in Music

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to tell you about five used pianos you should buy. There are so many different pianos out there that you should buy if you possibly can. There are some amazing instruments, but it’s all about condition. That is the big challenge with any used piano. That’s the caveat going into this. What are some instruments that you should look for? A lot of it depends upon what you’re after.

If you want a solid workhorse upright, there’s always the dependable Yamaha U1.

The good thing about the U1 is that they’re so popular that there are tons of used ones out there. Not only that, but the Japanese tend not to like used pianos very much. There’s a whole cottage industry of people who refurbish them and ship them to the United States to be sold in the used market. These are sometimes referred to as gray market pianos, which you can read about here:

It’s true that an older U1 might not have the same sound and quality as a newer one. It depends upon how much it’s been played, how much wear, the degree of restoration, and many other factors. But since there are so many of them out there, you could probably go to a number of piano stores and find used U1s. Technicians know how to work on them. They are dependable pianos. It’s easy to go with a good Yamaha if you’re looking for a mid-range upright that’s going to do the job for you without breaking the bank.

I’m a real lover of Baldwin pianos.

I grew up with Baldwin pianos. My father, Morton Estrin, was a Baldwin artist. We had Baldwin Grands in our home. In fact, my sister has my father’s seven foot Baldwin, which we restored for her. And I have his Steinway here, which is a whole other story we’re going to get to next. Baldwin, particularly the Artist Series Baldwins, represent tremendous value. Baldwin suffered a bankruptcy in the early 2000s. There was some quality decline towards the end. Worse than that, now there are Chinese pianos bearing the Baldwin name. It has cheapened the brand. Because of that, you can get a piano that’s on a top-tier level for closer to a mid-range price. Once again, it’s all about the condition and which particular years the pianos were manufactured. There are some deals on Artist Series Baldwins that are worth your attention.

Steinway pianos can be a tremendous investment if they’re rebuilt well.

There are a lot of people who just do what I call cosmetic rebuilds because there are so many people looking for Steinways. The smallest baby grand Steinway costs over $80,000 new! So obviously to get a used one in good condition for less than that can be a tremendous investment. So that’s a great used piano to look for. They are very popular. There are a lot of good used Steinways out there. But there also are a lot of questionable used Steinways out there. Once again, if you have questions, you can always hire a piano technician to check the piano for you.

I mentioned Baldwin and Steinway, I must also mention Mason and Hamlin.

Mason & Hamlin still build pianos outside of Boston. You can sometimes find deals on older Mason and Hamlin pianos. Again, some years were better than others, and condition is of paramount importance. But Mason & Hamlins are built so tough that they tend to last longer than a lot of other pianos. They have the tension resonator bracing underneath which supports the soundboard and the rim of the piano. So a lot of older Mason and Hamlins still have a lot of potential, as long as the worn parts are replaced.

One of the great uprights of all time were Baldwin Hamiltons.

The Baldwin Hamilton used to be the most popular upright in America. In fact, that was a piano I grew up with! My father bought my sister and me a Baldwin Hamilton as our practice piano. They were workhorse pianos. They were in schools and churches and homes. You can still find some of them out there. The furniture style isn’t quite as modern as pianos today. Often, they are in oak or other lighter woods. They are kind of industrial, but they were great practice pianos. If you find one that isn’t worn out, and if the furniture doesn’t bother you, it could be a tremendous piano to get.

Those are five pianos that are worth looking for on the used market.

I mentioned those five pianos, but honestly, any American made piano that’s not worn out, that has been well cared for, could be worth your while. Whether it’s a Knabe, a Chickering or a host of other brands, the methodology of many of these pianos is very similar to what Steinway and Mason & Hamlin make today. But because some of these brands are lesser known, you can get them for so much less money. If they’re not in bad shape, they could be worth putting some money into to get them on a high level. They can last a very long time.

What about other Asian pianos?

Asian pianos tend to not age as gracefully. More than that, let’s say you want to rebuild the action on a low end Chinese piano, for example. Well, maybe that piano only costs $10,000 new. Are you going to spend $5,000 to rebuild the action? It’s kind of questionable. However, sometimes you can find Asian pianos, whether they’re made in Indonesia, Korea, China, or even a Japanese piano that sat in somebody’s home as a furniture piece, rarely played, and everything’s in good shape. It probably needs tuning, regulation, lubrication, and a host of refinements. But maybe it’ll cost you less than $1,000 to do the work on it. If the piano has never been played, you can have a perfectly good instrument for a fraction of what it costs new. So you can’t leave out Asian pianos completely, as long as they don’t need much work. They can be worthwhile for you for the right price!

If you have questions about specific pianos that you’re looking at, you’re welcome to email me Robert@LivingPianos.com. I hope this has been helpful for you! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin
Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

5 Used Pianos You Should Buy

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how to get free sheet music. On the Internet you can get almost everything for free, from movies and TV shows, to books, and yes, sheet music! Of course, there’s a price you pay for something that’s free, which is not knowing the validity of the score. You don’t know the integrity of anything you get for free. However, sometimes it’s nice to have a variety to choose from. If you just want to check out some sheet music, maybe a free music site is just what you’re looking for.

There are a lot of different websites that have a smattering of free music. But the best place is a website called IMSLP.org.

IMSLP is an incredible resource of not just sheet music but also recordings. When you first go to the site it may seem a bit confusing. As soon as you click on something, it tells you you can pay for a subscription, or you can wait 10 seconds for your download. Then you’ll see all the recordings first. But once you figure out how the site works, it’s a treasure trove.

Fair warning, a lot of it is junk.

With some stuff you’re immediately going to see tattered, old, unauthoritative editions. But if you spend the time, there are nuggets of gold in there. If you just want to see two or three different editions of the same piece, it’s a great resource. You’re not going to buy two or three different copies of sheet music, but this allows you to have a reference.

Another option is VirtualSheetMusic.com.

Many of you may have noticed that I co-brand many of my videos with the VirtualSheetMusic.com logo. VirtualSheetMusic.com is not all free, but for a very small subscription fee you get the benefit of integrity of the scores. It’s also very convenient. You can download music right to your iPad or print out the music There are all kinds of technologies to make it easy with automated page turning, and all sorts of cool stuff. So if you’re looking for just free music, check out IMSLP.org, but if you want something more trustworthy and convenient, check out VirtualSheetMusic.com. Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

How to Get Free Sheet Music

Welcome to LivingPianos.com. I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about what piano concert pianists play at home. The first thing to think about is, what piano concert pianists play when concertizing. What piano do you usually find on stage in classical concerts? Most of the time, it’s a Steinway model D concert grand, which is just under 9 feet long. Sometimes, in smaller halls, it could be a 7-foot or just under 7-foot Steinway model B, but usually it’s the 9-foot piano. Touring artists may encounter other great pianos from time to time, but usually they play on Steinways because they are the last company servicing the concert market globally. So, you might think they would want to have that piano at home, so they’re familiar with the pianos they play in concerts. That would provide a seamless adjustment.

A concert grand is oftentimes impractical for homes.

Let’s say someone is performing a Rachmaninoff concerto with an orchestra. That pianist can fill the hall all the way to the back row of the balcony balancing with the full orchestra! There’s a tremendous amount of volume these instruments can produce. So, in somebody’s home, an instrument like this can be overwhelming. You have to have the right room to be able to handle the volume an instrument like this can produce. So the instrument that many concert pianists have at home is the Model B semi-concert grand Steinway, which is just under 7-feet.

The challenge is, a new Steinway B costs around $125,000!

Pianists like Lang Lang and other famous pianists can afford it. But there are many budding young artists who can’t afford a new Steinway B. So, people look in the used market for good Steinway model B’s. The challenge there is that even a late-model Steinway can be very expensive. With the older ones, the challenge is that although Steinway has been making the Model B since 1878, the design has changed. The specifications keep evolving over the years. So When rebuilding an older Steinway, the choice of parts is very difficult, because the design may have different geometry from current Steinway parts. Some parts aren’t even available from Steinway, like soundboards. So, you have to count on somebody being able to craft a great soundboard, and there is no assurance that they’re going to be able to build the kind of soundboard that was on the piano originally.

What is so different about concert grand and semi-concert grand pianos?

Obviously, the bass is far greater on larger pianos. But the tone throughout the instruments have more depth because of the larger soundboard, and the sympathetic vibrations of longer strings. Also, with larger pianos, the actions feel different. This is because the keys are longer on these pianos. Of course, not the part of the keys you see, but behind the fallboard the keys are longer. The difference is particularly noticeable when playing black keys and between black keys close to the fallboard. There is greater key travel, so you can control the sound far better.

If you want to compare the sound of a Steinway B to a Steinway D, you can listen to almost any recording of a concert pianist, and in most cases, you will be hearing a 9-foot concert grand Steinway model D since the vast majority of concert pianists record on Steinway D’s.

If you’d like to compare the sound of a 9-foot to a 7-foot Steinway, you can listen to the accompanying video

The video contains performances of the Mozart D minor Fantasy, and Debussy’s Golliwog’s Cakewalk performed on a 1981 Steinway B in concert condition. I hope you’ve enjoyed this! Any comments or questions you have can be addressed here at LivingPianos.com or on YouTube. Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

What Piano do Concert Pianists Play at Home?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The question today is, “Why do you play too fast?”. Most people try to play faster than they’re comfortable. Sometimes you will have a piece you can play just fine, but when you try to play it slower, you can’t even figure out where you are! There’s a great deal of motor memory or muscle memory that is involved in piano playing. Your fingers just seem to know where to go. So you want to go fast enough that you won’t forget where to go next. The problem with this is, unless the music is really secure, your tempo will fluctuate. You’ll make accommodations to the parts you don’t know quite as well, going a little slower. Then you’ll speed up again so you don’t forget where you are.

Motor memory on the piano is akin to touch typing.

I took a typing class in high school. I learned how to touch-type, so I don’t have to look at the keys. Little did I know, that would be probably the most important course I had in high school! In the computer age, it’s so great to be able to type without looking at your hands. But the funny thing is, if I stop and think where a letter is on the keyboard, for example, the letter “W”, I don’t even know! I have to look at the keyboard. If I have to type on a screen, where the keyboard is smaller, and you have to just touch the letters on the screen with your finger, I can’t even find them! Yet on a keyboard, I can type almost as fast as I can speak. I’m a really fast typist. I was the fastest in my class in high school. I guess all those years of piano paid off in my typing class!

Playing the piano too fast is a rampant problem among many piano students.

What you must do is take the time to slow down your playing and figure out what is there. This can be a painstaking process. I’ve talked a little bit about how sometimes when you want to start in the middle of a piece, you may have to speed up just to figure out what fingers to start with. When you’re playing slowly, you might want to play faster just a little bit at first, just to see where you are, and what fingers are on which notes as a starting point of a section.

Every fine pianist I have ever met practices slowly, incessantly.

There are three things that every accomplished pianist does: practice slowly, practice with a metronome, and practice without the pedal. I’ll also add to that, practice with the music! When you memorize a piece, that doesn’t mean you don’t use the score anymore. As a matter of fact, it’s the opposite. I like to memorize a piece first and then do all my practicing with the score, reinforcing the memory, practicing slowly with the metronome with no pedal and really solidifying.

The reason why you play too fast is because you’re not really cognizant of the score.

You play too fast because you don’t really have an intellectual understanding of the score. You’re just going through the motions. Your fingers kind of remember on their own without knowing what they’re supposed to be doing. But that’s extremely dangerous. It doesn’t have a solid foundation. Things can fall apart if you depend upon that type of playing. Thank goodness we do have motor memory! Piano would be so much more difficult if you couldn’t depend upon it at all. But you want to minimize your reliance upon the feeling of the keys and where your fingers naturally go. Slow, deliberate playing is the way to do it. Refer back to the score.

Try slow, deliberate practicing for yourself!

Take a piece that you can play fast, but you can’t play slowly with security. Take out the score and play slowly. You’re going to discover so many things! You will always find more details than you initially remembered. Your music has so many details in it! Let me know how it works for you here in the comments on LivingPianos.com and YouTube. Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

Why You Play Too Fast

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about when music is off the beat. Now you might be thinking, “Music that’s off the beat? Maybe it’s jazz or ragtime, like The Entertainer.” But that’s not what this is about at all. This is about hemiola. There are a lot of examples of syncopated rhythms where emphasis is on the weak beats or off the beat entirely on the “ands”, but hemiola is different. There is a great example of hemiola in the Kuhlau Sonatina Opus 55, No. 1. In the second movement there’s a big chromatic scale going up. When it gets to the very top, that’s when the hemiola begins.

You probably have come across hemiola in your music and wondered how to count it, and why composers even utilize it.

Listen to a little bit of the Kuhlau Sonatina. Do you hear the way it comes down after the chromatic scale? The grouping of notes overlap the beats. It’s kind of odd. It’s actually a pattern of two that is superimposed on this piece which is in three. So you don’t have the comfort of the downbeat at the beginning of each pattern. That, in a nutshell, is what hemiola is. It can be a very effective technique for giving a rhythmic accent that you don’t expect in music.

How do you approach hemiola?

You must count and you must count correctly! If you succumb to the hemiola and let it trick you into thinking in a different time signature where the hemiola is, it’ll mess you up. You must maintain the integrity of the time signature in hemiola. You don’t have to accent the beats. You can play it and let it be a flourish that’s off the beat even though you’re counting it correctly. It’s a wonderful compositional technique. I want all of you to check out your scores. Find places you think you might have hemiola. You’re welcome to share them in the comments here on LivingPianos.com and YouTube. I hope this is enjoyable for you and provides some insights into your music. Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com