All posts by Robert Estrin

No Piano is Above the Law!

Welcome to LivingPianos.com. Today we’re going to talk about how no piano is above the law. I’m going to give you the Ten Commitments of Living Pianos. This is important information for anyone thinking about getting a piano or already owns one. Let’s start with the fact that some pianos, of course, need new parts. Some of our pianos are completely rebuilt and it takes a year or more to rebuild everything. However, no matter the piano, there are ten things that absolutely must be checked:

Tuning

Number one, we have tuning. This is much more involved than you might think. A brand new or newly rebuilt piano requires many tunings to become stable. All of our pianos here at Living Pianos are tuned multiple times to get them stable. Additionally, after the piano acclimates to your home, we send a high-level piano technician to do another fine tuning to ensure everything plays beautifully for you.

Regulation

Action regulation is even more involved. When you push down a key, dozens of parts must work in perfect harmony and synchronicity. Each key has several adjustments that must be meticulously calibrated for optimal performance and evenness throughout the entire piano. This is an arduous task that combines both art and science.

Voicing

Voicing refers to the sound of each note, not the mechanics. Every hammer must be precisely shaped, and its contact with the strings must be exact. The hardness of each hammer also affects the tone, ensuring a beautiful, rich sound that is not too bright or too mellow. Evenness from note to note is crucial, and we spend a considerable amount of time achieving this.

Damper Regulation

You want to get a clean release of chords where all notes end simultaneously without buzzing or noise. This requires damper regulation. Dampers on most keys of the piano need meticulous adjustment to function correctly.

Sustain PedalMiddle Pedal

The middle pedal, or sostenuto pedal, although rarely used, must be functional. It’s crucial for some 20th-century music, and we ensure it works as well as the other pedals.

Soft Pedal Voicing

The soft pedal, or una corda pedal, changes the color of the sound. It must be adjusted to shift the action the right amount. When you push the pedal, the keys move to the right and left, so the hammers strike the strings from a different part. This part of the hammer must be voiced differently to achieve the desired tonal shift.

Inside Cleaning

Pianos collect dirt and dust, especially if not completely rebuilt. Professional cleaning is necessary, including underneath the strings and soundboard. Light corrosion on strings must be cleaned, as any gunk inhibits free vibration of the sound.

Furniture Touch-Up

The piano’s finish needs to look beautiful. Many of our pianos are refinished to look new. Often, a finish just needs refreshing, or minor blemishes need touch-up to maintain the piano’s aesthetic appeal.

Brass Polishing

The brass needs to be polished, and in the case of silver pianos, sometimes re-plated. This ensures that the piano looks as beautiful as it sounds and plays.

These are the Ten Commitments you get from Living Pianos with all our pianos. Use this checklist for any piano you’re considering. These are vital parts of your piano, and at Living Pianos, we rebuild and replace any parts to a high standard to ensure beautiful performance.

I am Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store. Thanks for joining me! 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

A New Kind of Music: What Is Sound Design?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to talk about sound design. I know many of you are pianists, but this is definitely worth your while. I’m going to show you something you’re already familiar with, but you may not realize the depth with which this type of music or sound is so involved in your lives all the time.

Historical Background

Instruments have been around for hundreds of years, with the symphony orchestra culminating in the late 19th century. So, what else could be possible? In the 1940s, a French man named Pierre Schaeffer came up with musique concrète. He used turntables, which is interesting because disc jockeys use turntables to create whole new soundscapes today! Schaeffer took sounds, manipulated them, and used tape recorders to gather sounds and mold them into compositions.

This was the infancy of what we’re discussing today. Music synthesizers entered into the equation soon after. In the late 1950s, RCA had their music synthesizer. I remember growing up, my father had a record of the RCA music synthesizer. You can probably find it on YouTube with all kinds of squeaks and weird sounds. At the end of it, they attempted to create a little jazz combo, and I was very taken with it as a kid.

It was Robert Moog’s synthesizer in the 1960s that really caught attention. Wendy Carlos’s famous album, Switched on Bach, took the works of Bach and orchestrated them using the Moog synthesizer. The Moog synthesizer was monophonic, playing one only note at a time. Carlos painstakingly recorded at half speed to get everything perfect, overdubbing all the parts to create different timbres, and brought Bach’s works to life in a new way.

Sound Design in Film

Sound design is most prevalent as a backdrop for video and film. Going back to the infancy of music for film, silent films used ragtime-type music to follow the action. Improvised music for silent films is a lost art, but a few people like Michael Mortilla in Los Angeles has kept it alive. https://www.midilifecrisis.com/

As time went on, film music started to become almost like sound design, even with traditional instruments. For example, Bernard Herrmann, a fantastic film composer, created music for Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. There’s a particularly terrifying scene where the music doesn’t sound like music but is incredibly effective. High-piercing strings create tension in a way that symphonic scores hadn’t been used before.

The Impact of Sound Design

John Williams’s scores, like Jaws, use simple musical motifs to create tension. The two-note motif in Jaws is a perfect example of how minimalistic sound design can be highly effective.

Sound design can subtly shift moods, creating emotions without the audience even realizing it. It’s an art form that can stand alone as music because of the emotion it conveys.

Conclusion

Is sound design music? It can be, because there is emotion associated with it. If you want to delve deeper into this, check out some examples from my son David Estrin. He does all kinds of music, traditional and experimental. https://davidpaulyall.bandcamp.com/track/fond

What is your opinion of sound design? Electronic music, musique concrète, film music, and the different directions they take, whether symphonic or experimental? I’d love to hear from you!

Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store.

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

Understanding Inversions in Music

Welcome to LivingPianos.com. Robert Estrin here with one of the most fundamental aspects of music and harmony: what is an inversion? In a recent video, I explained triads, the most fundamental chord. I have a future video about seventh chords and expanded chords. But first, let’s delve into inversions.

The Concept of Inversions

In 1722, John Philipp Rameau first articulated that chords can be inverted. But what does this mean? Sometimes you see chords with different intervals, but Rameau stated that all chords are built upon the interval of the third. If it’s not a third, it’s an inversion.

Let’s take a C major triad: C, E, G. What happens if you put the E on the bottom? Now you don’t have thirds. Instead, you have a third (E to G) and a fourth (G to C). This new arrangement is the first inversion.

Identifying Inversions in Music

These inversions are identified differently in harmonic analysis and sheet music. If you invert the chord again, with G on the bottom, you get a fourth (G to C) and a third (C to E), creating a second inversion of the C major triad.

In sheet music, these would be labeled simply:

C major: C
First inversion: C/E
Second inversion: C/G

In harmonic analysis, it’s more detailed:

Root position: C major
First inversion: C major 6 (or 6/3)
Second inversion: C major 6/4

Seventh Chords and Their Inversions

Seventh chords are a bit more complex due to having four notes. For example, a G7 chord (G, B, D, F) in C major:

Root position: G7
First inversion: G7/B
Second inversion: G7/D
Third inversion: G7/F

In harmonic analysis:

Root position: G7 (or 7)
First inversion: G7 6/5
Second inversion: G7 4/3
Third inversion: G7 4/2

Remember, these notations reflect the intervals:

6/5: a sixth and a fifth above the bass note
4/3: a fourth and a third above the bass note
4/2: a fourth and a second above the bass note

Practical Application

Understanding inversions helps in harmonic analysis and playing from lead sheets. For example, a dominant seventh chord, the most popular type, is assumed when you see a notation like G7 without further specification.


Conclusion

Inversions are essential in understanding chord functions. All seventh chords can be inverted and named in the same way, whether they are major, minor, or diminished. You can identify the root of the chord by arranging notes in thirds, giving you insight into chord function and resolution.

I hope you enjoyed this music theory primer. Let us know in the comments if these videos are helpful. This is LivingPianos.com, your online piano store. Thanks for joining me!

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

Is Playing Practicing?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The question today is: Is playing practicing? Many of you who have watched my videos know that I have drawn a red line that should not be crossed. You have to know whether you are playing or practicing. And yet here I have this question: Is playing practicing? There’s actually a nuanced answer to this question. While it is absolutely essential that you know whether you’re playing through your music or practicing your music, there are times when you want to practice performing, whether it’s a public performance that you’re preparing for or you just want to run through things for friends to see how they go. But what we’re going to talk about today is something entirely different.

Playing can be practicing!

For example, when you play a performance, whether it’s a formal recital or just playing for friends, particularly if you record the event, going back and listening to what you did while taking note of what went well, what things maybe you need to work on, and insights you may have gained during the performance that you’d like to explore further, can be an invaluable experience. In that case, playing is practicing.

What is practicing?

Aside from the physiological aspect of strengthening your hands and learning how to negotiate passages, finger work, and chords, practicing is really a mental activity. Anything that involves a thought process about playing is practicing. So that’s an example where playing is practicing. How could you use this to your advantage? There are actually many ways. I talked about practicing performing. How do you do this? In your practice, there are two complete extremes. During a performance, no matter what, the show must go on. You have to keep going! Nobody wants to hear you stop and correct something when you’re playing for them. In a live performance, this could be a disaster. But even when you’re playing informally for family or friends, it ruins the whole experience for them. But in practice, you want to stop whenever there is an error to correct it and solidify it.

When is playing practicing? How do you achieve this?

It’s just as I described before. You do a practice run-through of a piece, and you don’t stop. Make it like a performance. You can even record it. It doesn’t need to be a great recording. You just want to have something you can listen back to with the score. Maybe circle trouble spots in the score. Take notes as you listen. This can be an incredible experience for strengthening your performance. And indeed, this is an aspect where playing can be practicing. But normally, remember that red line. Practicing is on one side, and playing is on the other. And they are diametrically opposed. In playing, you want to keep going no matter what to maintain the continuity of the performance. In practice, you generally want to stop to make corrections and solidify. Double check the score, work through the passage, connecting it with the previous passage, getting that secure, then going back to the beginning and seeing if you can pass all of the trouble spots. So that’s the lesson for today! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store.

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 Is the Most Common Note in Music?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to answer a question from a viewer: What is the most common note in music? In the English language, E is the most prevalent letter. Is there a note that is the most common note in music?

There are two things to consider.

First, we need to ask: what kind of note? It could be the pitch of the note or the type of note rhythmically. The first one I’m going to cover is the type of note because it’s so simple. There’s whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, 8th notes, 16th notes, 32nd notes, 64th notes, and it goes all the way up to 128th notes. Each of these can be triplets as well. This is so easy because the most popular time signature is 4/4 time. It’s so common that it’s referred to as common time! What does it mean? It means there are four beats in a measure, and the quarter note gets one beat. So yes, the quarter note is the most popular and most common note in music.

Pitch is a little bit more complicated.

Let’s consider a few aspects. First of all, of course, A is not only the first letter of the alphabet, it’s also the note that an orchestra tunes to. So there’s a great significance to that note, naturally. And then we can talk about different groups of instruments and what notes are really intrinsic to them. On stringed instruments, E is a very popular note. Think about the guitar. I don’t play guitar, but there are two chords I can play on a guitar: E major and E minor. In fact, the highest and lowest strings on a guitar are both E’s, so E is really common. The lowest note on a bass is also an E. All string instruments have E’s on them, as well as A’s. So there’s a case to be made for E.

For wind instruments, flat keys are really common.

For example, the trumpet is pitched in B-flat. So is clarinet, generally. Of course, there is earlier period music where the pitches of the instruments were not set yet. Saxophones are usually E-flat or B-flat, and trombones are B-flat. So flat keys are very common as well. So where does that leave us with all of this?

There’s one note that, as a pianist, you look at all the time.

That note is C. Middle C is right in the middle of your keyboard. It’s all over the place! C is the highest note and one of the lowest notes on the piano. And when you play all white keys, you’re playing a C-major scale. So C is really common. But there’s more to it than that.

I mentioned all these transposing instruments. That is, when a trumpet plays C, a B-flat comes out. So even though the instrument is pitched to B-flat, their score, written in C, comes out in B-flat. So it presupposes C as the standard, from which all the other transpositions are derived. It’s the same with a clarinet in B-flat. It plays in C, but it comes out in B-flat. For the French horn, all the repertoire before the horn had valves was written in C. The horns themselves would be tuned with a series of extra pipes called crooks. That is what would change the pitch of the instrument. The modern French horn is pitched in F, yet the parts may be written in many different keys like, E-flat, D, or others, but the part’s are always written in C. So C is the standard pitch. When a conductor looks at a score, all the transposing instruments are in C for the conductor, and they must figure out the absolute pitch relative to the transposition of the various instruments.

I’ve got to say that C is the most common note in music!

A good case can be derived for other notes, as I mentioned earlier. What do you think about this? Let’s get a lively discussion going in the comments here at LivingPianos.com! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store.

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

Which Takes Longer: Becoming a Pianist or a Doctor?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to answer a really interesting question from a viewer: Does it take longer to become a concert pianist or a doctor? Both of these fields obviously require many years of study. So I’m going to break it down for you and give you an idea of what each of these career paths entails.

You have to spend many years in school to become a doctor.

To become a doctor, you will first need an undergraduate degree in some field, hopefully related to the medical field, perhaps biology or something. That’s followed by four years of medical school. So there is a big chunk right there. But is that it? Far from it! After that, there’s a residency, which can be anywhere from 3 to 7 years. Now, unless you’re becoming a general practitioner, there’s also a specialization with a fellowship that usually adds another 1 to 3 years. So you have anywhere between 11 and 14 years of studying before becoming a doctor.

What about pianists?

Pianists typically start at a younger age than doctors. In fact, most concert pianists on the scene today started as children between the ages of 4 and 7. There are some outliers outside of that range, but the vast majority are going to be somewhere in there. From the time they’re very young children, they’ve been practicing every day for at least an hour or two a day. As they get older, they’re probably practicing 3 to 5 hours a day. Most of them will go to a conservatory or a university program specializing in piano performance in order to study with the best teachers. If they’re expanding their repertoire, it’s likely that they’re practicing for at least 3 to 5 hours, more likely 6 to 8 hours if they’re entering competitions and things of that nature, because the repertoire requirements are so immense. So altogether, they’re probably going to spend easily 15 to 20 years of private instruction; that’s even more than the 11 to 14 years typical for doctors. It’s a long haul!

What about the continuing studies in each of these fields?

Doctors are always learning from experience. They need to keep abreast of the latest technologies and procedures by reading journals and possibly attending conventions. Pianists, on the other hand, are constantly learning new repertoire. They can’t keep playing the same solo recitals again and again. They have to have new music so people keep wanting to hear their performances. If they’re collaborating with other musicians in chamber music or accompanying, they have to learn the music that people want to collaborate with them on.

Concert pianists are constantly learning new music.

If they have the opportunity to perform concertos, they have to learn new concertos. A lot of pianists will also have original contemporary works commissioned for them, which they have to learn. For example, concert pianist Jeffrey Biegel, who was one of my father, Morton Estrin’s students. He’s carved out a whole career getting works commissioned for him, and he collaborates with orchestras all around the world. He has been doing it for years. This entails a tremendous amount of work, and you don’t even have the benefit of listening to recordings to hear what the pieces that you’re going to be performing sound like first! My sister, Coren Estrin Mino, performs a lot of new works here in the Cleveland area, helping out composers so they can have their works performed.

There are many avenues for both doctors and concert pianists, but concert pianists have a longer haul, starting younger and working longer in order to carve out a career.

Even going through everything I outlined for becoming a concert pianist is no guarantee that you’ll be a touring artist. There are just so many people who are highly skilled at the instrument, and a very limited number of people ever get to do it. Whereas for a doctor, if they go through all those different courses, degrees, and residencies, then chances are they’re going to find some place where they can practice. However, no matter how nerve-wracking performing the piano is, nobody dies. So we have a deep respect for doctors as well as pianists for the rigorous training that’s necessary in both of these fields. Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store

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