All posts by Robert Estrin

When to Tune a Piano – How Often to Tune a Piano

When a piano is in tune such as the glorious instrument in the accompanying video, you hear the beautiful tone, and you may wonder when to get your piano tuned. How do you know when it’s time to get your piano tuned. It’s not as easy a thing as you might think. So I’m going to liken it to a couple of different things. If any of you play guitar, you know that every time you take it out, you tune it up. In a perfect world, you would do the same thing with your piano! Since there are over 200 strings to tune, it’s not practical.

So there are certain guidelines much like with your car when you get the oil changed, you have an odometer reading, but there’s also a date. So even if you don’t drive your car, it’s still recommended you change the oil periodically. The same thing is true for your piano. Your piano might sound fine to you, but maybe it’s been a year or two since it’s been tuned. It’s very important to get it tuned because the whole piano could shift up or down and might sound good within itself but the instrument will not be able to hold the tuning without several more tunings to get the pitch stable again.

The Piano Technicians’ Guild recommends a piano ideally should be tuned about four times a year, a minimum of twice. Why is that? It’s very simple: the change of seasons affects the tuning of your piano. Even if you don’t play your piano, it’s got to be tuned a minimum of a couple of times a year and in most climates four times a year is close to ideal. If you play the piano a great deal, every time you play, it goes out a little bit – especially if you’re a strong player and practice a great deal. You might even consider monthly tunings of your piano. You might think this gets very expensive. But in the long run, like changing the oil in your car, the more you tune your piano, the better you preserve the instrument and the more stable the tuning becomes.

You never save money by putting off tuning. So here’s what I recommend for you. If you are a casual player and you’ve got a stable environment for your piano, put it on your calendar to get it tuned at least twice a year. If you’re tuning it just once a year, you’re going two steps forward and two steps backward because your piano over time will not be stable. If you do it twice a year, you might stay on that cusp and at least will not be going backward in the tuning stability. You and your piano will appreciate more tuning, and in the end, you will save money because your piano will become so stable that the tunings will hold longer for you. So that’s the long and short of it and thanks for joining us! info@livingpianos.com

How to Prepare for a Concert – Concert Pianist Preparation

Christina asks, how do you prepare for a concert? Do you play through your music on the day of the concert?

This question raises many issues of concern to all performers. Performing music requires many different types of preparation including:

– Physical

– Mental

– Emotional

The most important aspect of preparing to perform a concert is the work that is done weeks and months before the performance. This is essential to accomplish all 3 aspects listed above. Obviously, a thorough knowledge of the score as well as technical fluency is required for a good performance. But equally important is the psychological preparation. If the first time you think about being out there in front of an audience is the moment of the performance, you will be ill-prepared for the surge of adrenalin that surely would result. Take time days in advance of the performance to imagine the moment in great detail while being in a relaxed state so you can trigger that feeling when the actual performance comes.

Trying out your music the day of the program is a good idea particularly if the piano is one that you aren’t intimately familiar with. A good addition is to play some of your pieces slowly with the music with no pedal to reinforce the memory. Some people like to have special routines on the day of a performance like taking a nap or a walk, avoiding caffeine, even eating bananas or taking beta blockers to help ease nerves. Other people like to go about their routines as normal. You should do what makes you feel good. The bottom line is to enjoy the performance. If you are engaged with the music, the audience will share the emotions of the performance!

Piano Lessons – Hand Positions

This video was produced exclusively for Pianoworld.com

Growing up people used to tell me to play the piano on the tips of my fingers. You might have been told to use rounded fingers, like your holding a ball; for many people, this can be very uncomfortable. This is what we are going to talk about today.

When I was young I was told to play the piano with rounded fingers. I remember watching Vladimir Horowitz in concert and noticed that he seemed to play with flat fingers sometimes; I wondered how this could be. As a child, I had very small, weak hands. When I would play the piano my fingers would collapse which is bad because you can’t control the motion of fingers bent backward. This is one of the reasons I was taught to play with rounded fingers. Eventually, I realized that you don’t have to use any finger muscles to maintain an ideal position at the keyboard! I discovered the perfect piano position which can be maintained with absolutely zero effort. But how is this possible?

If you were to take your hand on a flat surface and let it drop naturally, you would notice that your fingers round naturally. But why is this so significant for the piano? If you put your hand flat on the piano you will notice that some fingers are longer than others; this presents a real problem. However, if you drop the hand and let it fall into its natural position, your fingers will all be in a straight line!

Another important revelation is how while white keys are full-length black keys are only on the half closest to the fallboard. It’s very important to keep your hand at the point at which black keys and white keys meet. Otherwise, you will expend a lot of extra energy and motion going back and forth to hit all the keys.

By using the correct hand position in which you let your fingers fall naturally onto the keys with no effort, and placing your hand at the point at which black and white keys meet, you will utilize the minimal amount of effort to get the maximum amount of sound!

So yes, there is truth to the method of using rounded fingers but there is much more to it. Keeping your hand in a position which is uncomfortable or taxing to maintain will cause unnecessary strain and could damage your hands. Remember; let your hands fall naturally on the keyboard at the magic line at which black and white keys meet. Experiment with this and see how it helps you play in a more relaxed and efficient manner.

Thanks again for joining me and be sure to check out our future videos here at LivingPianos.com

Brilliant Piano Finger Technique – Piano Lessons

When I was growing up, I would listen to some of the great pianists such as Horowitz and Rubinstein. I would also listen to some of the pianists from the early 20th century such as Hoffman, Rachmaninoff, and Joseph Levine. I was always so impressed with the pristine finger work. It almost would sound like a string of jewels because of the evenness of the notes, and I always wondered how to achieve that sound. So today’s show is about how to achieve brilliant finger work.

I’m going to regress a little bit more. When I first started studying the piano with my father Morton Estrin, he showed me how to practice scales with raised fingers and often times my students ask me, “Why do I have to raise my fingers?” Let me show you what I’m talking about. With slow scale practice, it’s important for strength to raise the fingers. You may wonder why you would ever want to play that way because obviously when you play quickly, you don’t have time to raise your fingers. The secret to getting the evenness in your scale work and fast finger passages is the release of notes.

For example, if you were to put your hand on a flat surface and just try to lift one finger, some of them are pretty hard to lift. Lift your fourth finger with your hands on a flat surface, and it’s very hard. It’s actually the release of notes that takes more strength than the pushing down of notes! So to strengthen and then to release is the reason for practicing slowly with raised fingers so you’ll practice the release of each note and that will lead to the pristine beauty you can get in fast finger work.

That is one of the secrets for achieving beautiful clarity in your playing. There are many others that I will discuss in future videos in terms of hand position and other practicing techniques. For now, I suggest that you practice very strongly. Practice your scales and your arpeggios slowly with raised fingers then work up gradually faster. As you get faster, your fingers, by necessity, must be closer and closer to the keys until you can play quickly but still have the pristine evenness, so each note is exactly the same length because the raising of fingers accomplishes the release of each previous note. That’s all for today and thanks for joining us! info@livingpianos.com

When to Tune a Piano – How Often Should you Tune a Piano?

If you play the piano you know there is nothing better than sitting down and playing a piano that is in tune. Unfortunately, tuning a piano is no easy task. It’s extremely difficult to learn how to tune a piano on your own – it takes tuners years to master the skill – and it can also be pretty expensive (ranging anywhere from $50-$200 or more depending on the tuner and where you live). With this in mind, how often should you tune your piano?

In a perfect world, you would have a tuner living next door and they would come over every day and keep your piano in tune. Because pianos start going out of tune right after being tuned simply by being played. How often you should tune your piano depends upon several factors:

Stability of the environment

keep a piano in a stable environment

Pianos are pretty temperamental instruments and require a decently stable environment to be kept in tune. Like most string instruments, the temperature of the room can drastically affect the tuning of the strings. Unlike most string instruments, pianos will rarely leave the room they are placed in. Keeping your room at a constant and comfortable temperature is one of the best ways to ensure your piano is kept in tune.

 

How much the piano is played

playing a piano makes it go out of tune

Naturally, the more you play your piano, the more it will go out of tune. From the second your piano is tuned, it will start to go out of tune – and playing it only makes it worse! For the average player, they probably wouldn’t notice their piano slowly going out of tune as they practice every so often.

I play the piano every day and actually had to learn how to spot tune notes in order to keep my piano in playing condition. I have the luxury of having piano technicians in the store almost daily and can have them tune my personal piano on a pretty regular basis. This is not the case for the majority of pianists.

If you play your piano every day you might want to think about monthly piano tunings.

If you play your piano a few times a week you could probably get away with 4 tunings a year – one for every change of the season.

If you play your piano a few times a month you then you might be able to have it tuned as little as one or two times a year.

 

Level of refinement required

piano technician working on a piano

The piano has hundreds of moving parts and eventually, they will break down and need to be refined, repaired, or even replaced. All sorts of small problems can lead to your piano going out of tune more frequently.

This is a complex topic and as such should be discussed with your piano tuner or technician to see if they recommend any proactive measures to keep your piano in good shape.

Thanks again for joining us here at LivingPianos, if you have any questions about this topic or any other please contact us directly: info@livingpianos.com (949) 244-3729

What Does the Middle Pedal on a Piano Do?

If you play the piano even casually, you probably know that the sustain pedal on the right makes all the notes you play hold until you release the pedal. The other 2 piano pedals are not as clear cut. In fact, only the sustain pedal operates on upright pianos. The other pedals do various things, but seldom what they are designed to do. Even some grand pianos pedals don’t operate the way they are intended.

The left pedal, sometimes referred to as the soft pedal is actually called the une corde pedal for “one string”. Indeed, early pianos had 2 strings for each note and the une corde pedal shifted the action so that the hammers only struck one string. Modern pianos have 3 strings for each note throughout most of the piano. So the une corde pedal shifts the action so that the hammers strike only 2 of the strings squarely. This is significant because it not only makes the notes quieter, but if offers a change of timbre. Upright pianos usually offer a soft pedal that changes the feel, not the sound. It does this by shifting the hammers closer to the strings making it harder to play loud.

The middle pedal is seldom used and even more seldom understood. Most pianos didn’t have functioning sostenuto pedals as they are called until the end of the 19th century. Many European piano manufacturers didn’t include middle piano pedals until well into the 20th century. Like the sustain pedal, the sostenuto pedal holds notes after you release the keys. The difference is that subsequent notes that are depressed will not hold, only the notes that were depressed when the middle pedal is engaged. This is useful in a few scores of Debussy and other 20th century composers. It’s like having a 3rd hand to hold notes in another register without blurring the harmonies with the sustain pedal. However, the sostenuto pedal is only called upon in 20th century music and very few compositions. It is by no means essential but could be important for someone specializing in 20th century piano music.