The heart and soul of your piano is its soundboard. Like the top of a Stradivarius violin, the soundboard is the wood beneath all the strings and plate of the piano which gives it its unique quality of sound. There are certain things you should know about soundboards:
– Tight cracks usually present no problems.
– Crown, the slight upward arching of the soundboard is essential for good tone.
– The ribs beneath the soundboard must be firmly attached at all points to avoid buzzing.
– Soundboards can be fixed, but only by removing the strings and plate and rebuilding the piano.
Watch the video to learn how to check the soundboard on your piano.
Portato (commonly referred to as Portamento) is somewhere between legato and staccato. Legato means to play notes connected while staccato means to play them detached, sometimes even short in faster music. Portato would fall in-between these two styles of play. Generally, the notes are played long but slightly detached. Portato is not an exact science so knowing how to play is determined by what style of music you’re playing, the tempo, as well as the context of the particular passage.
In the video above I use an example of the second movement of the Mozart K330 Sonata in C-major – which incidentally starts with three notes that are portamento. You can watch the video to gain insights.
The piano is unique from other instruments because repeating the same note, they will be detached unless you utilize the pedal. Every note has a damper which ends the sound of a note when the key is released (unless you have the pedal down which raises the dampers).
On wind instruments, the tongue is used to delineate each note of a phrase unless it is slurred. String instruments also have different bowings to achieve the proper phrasing.
There are several techniques for playing portato on the piano. One approach is to brush the keys with your fingers. However, since key tops vary from piano to piano, this can be unreliable since ivory keys feel different from plastic key tops. Also, the moisture level in your hand will change the resistance you feel on the keys.
Here is a technique you may find helpful for achieving slightly detached repeated notes. It involves lifting previously played fingers high to allow as much legato as possible:
You can always detach the notes more since this technique gives you total control of the length of notes. It can also be utilized for passages of different notes. You must practice without the sustain pedal to achieve the phrasing desired. Later, using the pedal can add color to your playing.
A good personality is certainly a positive attribute when it comes to making friends or improving business relationships. But can it also make you a better musician?
Music is an artform and as such it requires an artist’s expression to make it truly unique and stand out. Having a good personality to your playing is a vital component of captivating your audience. But do you need an outgoing personality to accomplish this?
The truth is that many accomplished musicians are not what I would call social extroverts. In fact, I know a number of musicians who are very expressive on their instruments but have a very reserved social personality. There are even musicians who don’t like performing in front of people!
Glenn Gould was an extremely popular and brilliant musician who eventually gave up his live performance career because he simply didn’t feel comfortable and preferred to be in a studio making recordings. He is one of many musicians who prefer to withdraw from live audiences and focus on different aspects of their art in a more comfortable environment.
So yes, personality is essential in your music but this doesn’t mean you have to be socially outgoing to be a great musician. As far as getting opportunities and promoting yourself it’s going to be much easier if you are comfortable talking with people but it shouldn’t interfere with your development as a musician.
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Today we are going to discuss something that a lot of you have probably never heard of and that is quarter tone music. If you have ever heard quarter tone music before you would instantly recognize it as being different than anything typically heard in Western music. To most of us it may sound like music that is being played out of tune. So what exactly is it and how is it different from the music most of us know?
Let’s begin by talking about Western music. For most of us the music we are familiar with is founded upon the principles in Western Music. Everything from Rock to Pop to Symphonies utilizes the same twelve notes (or tones) that are the foundation of nearly all the music you know. But all music is not based on the principles of Western music and there are different cultures around the world that utilize notes beyond the twelve tones we are familiar with.
In our music we base things upon the smallest interval of a half step. For example, if you look at the keyboard of a piano, the smallest distance between any two keys (black and white) is a half step. On other instruments it is the same; the smallest distance between notes is a half step. Quarter tone music adds notes between these notes.
Now you might be wondering, if most instruments are made with half steps in mind, how do you produce notes between these notes? It is easier on some instruments than others. For example, on a violin – an instrument with no frets – you can simply produce these notes without much trouble provided you have the ear to produce them. There are some guitars which have extra frets which allow you to produce quarter tones as well. When it comes to piano there are a few compositions where quarter tone music is achieved by playing two pianos, one at standard pitch and another tuned a quarter step higher or lower. Here is an example of quarter tone music played on a piano.
So what does this mean? Not a whole lot to most of us. It is an anomaly to our ears and it’s something we rarely utilize in our music.
Western music is based upon 12 notes, A B C D E F G plus the sharps and flats between some notes. Other cultures have more than 12 notes or tones and some of them (like Indian music) have a great number of notes beyond our standard twelve. People who grow up with these different forms of music can actually hear more tones than someone who is only familiar with Western music. To our ears it just sounds out of tune but it is actually much more than that.
Western audiences are also indoctrinated with something called tempered tuning (See our video: Why a Piano is Never in Tune). This basically means that any two notes on a piano are out of tune with one another (except for octaves). But they are equally out of tune in all keys. When it comes to a piano there is really no way to get pure intervals like a singer or a string instrument can produce unless you tuned it to play perfectly in one key. Then all other keys will be out of tune to one degree or another. Our ears actually are used to this phenomenon so it doesn’t affect our enjoyment of the music and we hear these notes as correct even though the intonation is flawed.
When it comes to different world music there are many types of tunings that produce incredible results. I recommend listening and exploring music from different cultures for yourself. I would love to hear your comments on the subject.
Thanks again for joining us here at LivingPianos.com info@LivingPianos.com (949) 244-3729.
Today Robert is going to provide some tips on how to Improvise on the piano. This is a very deep and involved topic but we hope to provide a good starting point with this video.
If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for future videos please contact us here at Living Pianos: info@LivingPianos.com (949) 244-3729
