Piano Lessons- Music Theory Lessons

Music expresses emotion. It can be a great challenge to bear your soul in a genuine way when performing music. It can be a challenge avoiding distractions whether it is noises from an adjacent room or a squeaky bench. Worse yet, you may find your mind wandering to concerns of daily life taking you away from your purpose as a performer – to reach the audience with a message only music can convey.

Perhaps the greatest challenge in offering true feelings in your music is when you are improvising, particularly freeform improvisations, not music based upon written scores. This is something most typically associated with jazz musicians, but not exclusively.

In the accompanying video, you will hear a performance of a freeform improvisation in which my purpose was purely to convey honest emotions.

Sometimes it can be a rewarding challenge to create musical forms such as Sonata or Theme and Variations. But in this instance, my goal was not to impress the listeners with displays of virtuosity or musical prowess, only to convey musical expression in a genuine way.

This is one of the greatest musical challenges! Fortunately, I had a great Baldwin SF-10 grand piano to inspire the performance with its beautiful sound. Please feel free to leave your thoughts about this subject.

This is Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com. The question today is, “Why are Hamburg Steinways so hard to find?” Steinway was started by German immigrants as an American company and later started building pianos both in New York and Hamburg, Germany.

The reason why they are so scarce in North America is because the New York factory services our whole hemisphere: North America, South America, and Central America. The Hamburg factory supplies pianos to Europe and Asia. So, there are very few over here and if you want to get one through the Steinway dealer network, it is going to cost a premium. The ones there are earmarked for their market and there are challenges to overcome such as overseas shipping. Something else is to consider is being able to buy Euros with Dollars which can increase costs as well..

There are a lot of reasons why they are very difficult to buy in North America and really scarce. Some people wonder, if they are better. That’s a whole other subject for you which I cover on the following video:

Musical expression is the personal take a musician has on the music they perform. It’s a uniquely individual experience. What do I mean by the term, “infinite expression” and how can you apply this to your music? Let’s start by explaining the two concepts of infinity and how they can relate to music.

The first concept of infinity is the idea of moving endlessly in any direction.

For example, if you go out into space and just keep going in any direction, you could theoretically go on forever. So, when it comes to music, what if you were to allow the music to flow in any direction with no limits? In the video included with this article, I demonstrate this concept with Chopin’s A flat Ballade No.3, Op.47.

If you listen to the piece in the video you might have an interesting response. Those who are intimately familiar with the piece would probably not be pleased with the performance. However, those of you who are new to the piece might have a more positive response. How can this be? In the context of the whole piece, adding so many liberties with timing, expression and voicing with infinite expression causes the music to go in so many different directions that it would be unsustainable. The whole piece wouldn’t hold together. It’s impossible to maintain the music cohesiveness for the duration of the piece playing in this manner. Infinite expression in this sense simply doesn’t work for classical performance.

The second concept of infinity is the idea of going halfway to a destination again and again repeatedly.

This presents another concept of infinity. Your musical framework allows for minute levels of expression and detail which is truly limitless. The nuance of each note, the levels and the balance of each chord, there are an infinite number of possibilities to add more character and expression to your performance. This concept of infinity can be applied to musical expression. This might sound like a complex concept, and it is, but I have provided an example of this type of performance in the video included in this article as well.

If you listen to the second performance in the video, you will notice how it contrasts with the first performance. While there are an infinite number of gradations of tone, balance and expression, there is a continuity that holds the music together.

I could play that section over again and again and never play it the same way twice!

Adding subtle details to different elements allows you to create character and expression while potentially never repeating yourself – a truly infinite form of expression.

Adding subtle details to your music within a framework allows for infinite possibilities in your music while still maintaining the intentions of the composer and the structure of the music. Yet with this concept, you can still add your own unique voice and expression to everything you perform. When you look at your performances in this way, it’s incredibly exciting – you can truly play a piece thousands of times and always add something fresh and creative.

Hi, this is Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.com, the question today is: Why are Steinways so expensive? I’m sitting in front of a concert grand Steinway that costs new over $200,000. Can you believe it? You might wonder, are they really worth that? Why do they have to cost so much? After all, you can get brand new pianos for less than $10,000. What’s up? Why are they so expensive? Well, there are a lot of reasons and we are going to get into it right now.

First of all, Steinways are created to be the finest pianos possible. They are made with the best materials with highly skilled labor and have a long, rich history of piano manufacturing. There are a number of piano companies mostly in Germany, that make pianos on an extremely high level and cost as much as Steinway. On top of that,

Steinway in New York uses all union labor.

New York union labor! New York City labor – can you imagine the cost of that? The real estate in New York is incredibly expensive and all the woods and other materials are also premium quality which doesn’t come cheap.

More than that, even though they’ve been doing very well and had a banner year, they only built and sold about 1,100 pianos last year. They sold every one they built, which is a good thing! So, there is a demand for these pianos. Steinway does have the distinction of being extremely sought after both new and used. So dealers don’t typically discount them, or have to discount them, they sell all the ones they can possibly build as it is. Whereas other top-tier pianos, often times dealers have to discount them some in order to be able to sell them.

The Steinway name is so powerful because they essentially own the concert market.

No other companies can support concert grands in every major city in the world. That’s a very expensive endeavor at $200,000 a pop! Even in the used market, Steinways cost more than any other top-tier piano. It is partially because of the name. Also, the quality, the workmanship, and the materials are all top-notch. It is the same reason why, for example, a Toyota or Lexus has one price, but a Rolls Royce costs a lot more since they are not mass-produced.

There is a lot to consider with this question. A short while ago, I produced a video:

When I first thought of this question, I was interested in what information was available from Google and on Youtube. I was surprised to find that there isn’t much information available on this subject! This is a really important subject for anyone who has studied Chopin Waltzes or Mazurkas. Chopin wrote a thick book of Mazurkas as well as a big book of Waltzes. These staples of the piano repertoire are stupendous pieces of music!

The Differences and Similarities of Waltzes and Mazurkas

First, there’s a great deal that Waltzes and Mazurkas have in common. Waltzes and Mazurkas were both dance forms of the 19th century. They are also both in ¾ time. So, what makes them different? In this video, I’m going to demonstrate the B-minor Waltz and the B-flat major Mazurka so you can hear them for yourself to see if you can figure out what’s different about them. Since they are both based upon dance forms in 3/4 time, you might wonder what sets them apart.

In a nutshell, the difference between Waltzes and Mazurkas is which beats are accented!

Let’s start with a Waltz. They typically have a strong first beat. The third beat is also somewhat strong, but the first beat is the strongest beat. In a Mazurka, the emphasis is on the second beat. On the accompanying video you will hear complete performances of the B-minor Waltz and the B-flat major Mazurka with all of the changes of sections. You can listen for the accented first beat in the waltz as well as the somewhat prominent third beat.

When listening to the Mazurka, notice the strong second beat. I chose these particular selections for you because they have similar tempos and are both energetic pieces. Some Waltzes have a solemn mood with slower tempos while there are Mazurkas which are highly introspective. They can be quite deep pieces of music. They’re well worth listening to and I may present these in future videos. I hope you get a sense of the fundamental differences between Waltzes and Mazurkas. This is Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.com Your Online Piano Store 949-244-3729 info@LivingPianos.com

Welcome to LivingPianos.com. This is Robert Estrin. Today the subject is, how to approach a new piece of music on the piano. I randomly opened this big fat book of Chopin Mazurkas to the Mazurka in A-flat Opus 24 No. 3. I do not know this piece. I literally flipped through the book, and we’re going to see what happens.

The first thing you want to do when you’re approaching a new piece of music is to sight read it through to get acquainted with it. There’s a fundamental difference in the way you’d sight read a piece when you’re playing it for someone, or certainly when you’re accompanying someone where you have to keep everything moving. If you’re playing with someone else, you must stay together. When sight reading a piece for someone, you do the best you can even though you may have to flesh some of it out leaving out some inner notes. You must surmise what it should sound like and do the best you can. But in this case, when you’re reading to get acquainted (not playing for or with someone), you want to make sure you’re playing everything accurately, even if you have to play slower.

So, I want to start off and sight read this piece. I’m going to do it the way I would if I was playing it for someone and when it starts, maybe I’ll know if I’ve heard this Mazurka before! You can listen on the accompanying video.

That went pretty well. But at this point you will notice, it wasn’t entirely accurate. I was sort of getting the chord changes. Since there is a repeated section, I’m going to stop. If I was playing it for somebody, I’d make my way through it, perhaps not using the best fingering and not quite getting all the notes. However, if I was reading this to get acquainted with it, I wouldn’t do that. Instead, I would take it slowly figuring out the exact notes. I would figure out how to negotiate the music properly. I wouldn’t get too hung up because I wouldn’t want to start practicing yet. I just want to get acquainted. So, you have to draw the line of how far to go with your reading in order to get a sense of the music, yet not start pounding out wrong notes and cementing mistakes. So let’s see how to approach learning a new piece.

I am going to use no pedal so I can hear everything clearly. This will give a sense of the harmony. I had it mostly right! I did spot a double flat that I had missed.

The first time I went through it, it wasn’t perfect, but it was like a performance at least. So if somebody wanted to hear the piece, it could be satisfying for them because I wasn’t stopping and starting all the time. However, when you’re approaching a new piece of music, you want to take a moment to make sure you’re playing the correct notes, the correct harmonies. Double check your accidentals and things of that nature.

Now, the next step, after you’ve read through the whole piece in the matter I’ve described, you really don’t want to read the piece ever again, if you want to read pieces, pick another Marzuka or another piece of music entirely. Why is this? If you continue to sight read the piece, unless you played it perfectly, the first time through, you’re going to continue to miss things. And even though I played fairly accurately most of the piece the first time, there are all kinds of details on the score that are essential for the piece that are important such as, the exact place where slurs end, where dynamic start and end, and other fine details. Composers aren’t haphazard with these details. These are intrinsic to the composition and must be learned meticulously.

The very next thing to do after the precursory reading, is to go to the very beginning and break it down to the smallest possible elements checking everything. I could probably start from the beginning and read it through five or six times and sort of know it and then I could go back and keep reconstructing the score trying to fill in the details I didn’t quite get. But that’s not very effective practice.

Every day, the first thing I do when I get up is to go to the piano and play music – often times before I’ve even gotten dressed! After an entire night, there is always fresh music percolating in my head. Sometimes I play music in my dreams. It can be something from my classical repertoire. Other times it is music that comes to me while I am sleeping!

Is it good to play the piano first thing in the morning? I believe there are great benefits to playing when you first arise. Before you have to deal with the myriad tasks that are demanded of you, taking a moment to enjoy the beauty of music starts your day with fresh creativity that stays with you! It also gives you an opportunity to limber up your hands for further play and practice.

In the accompanying video, you will hear an improvisation that I played first thing in the morning. Hope you enjoy it!

Let’s get some historical context to this question. When I was growing up, if we saw a piano tuner come into a home carrying a strobe tuner, and that’s all that was available at that time, well, you knew right away that you had basically an incompetent tuner. Why is this? Because the technology at the time wasn’t accurate enough to take into account so many aspects of tuning a piano, like stretch-tuning.

What is stretch-tuning?

If a piano is mathematically, perfectly in tune, it’s actually out of tune because your ears hear pitches in the high register flat. They have to be stretched. And the strobe tuner just does simple math, so it’s not going to sound right.

The technology has come a long way. Any really experienced tuner knows that you can’t tune a baby grand the same way you would tune a concert grand. In fact, each piano requires a different method of tuning. You may wonder, “Why is that?”

There’s something called overtones. The fundamental pitch, that is the pitch you hear when you strike a note, is only part of the sound, and there are overtones coloring the sound.

And those must also balance and mesh with other notes, so a small piano, for example, may have very strong overtones at a certain register, and those overtones have to sound good with fundamental pitches of higher notes. It’s very complicated.

How can machines possibly take that into account? By having virtual tunings of hundreds of first-class piano technicians, their models are loaded in the software. It’s possible to tune a piano with software like CyberTuner or TuneLab is another one. What they do is, first you punch in the size of the piano. The next thing is really interesting. It has you play all the octaves of the piano, one by one, so it hears where the piano is in pitch.

This is incredibly helpful because it can save vast amounts of time. Normally, if a piano is low in pitch, it takes a couple of passes, of pitch raises, because once you raise the pitch in one section, the other section goes out of tune, so it takes several tunings.

By playing all the notes of the piano, and it knows what size piano, it knows how much to stretch the tuning in different registers of the piano, so that by the time you’re done, it’s decently in tune. It’s pretty incredible technology.

Here’s the thing, though. Many tuners today use technology, but there are also tuners who tune completely by ear, and increasingly, I find that tuners utilize both because ultimately, there are decisions that can be made by a fine tuner, but checking the work and getting suggestions with the technology, nobody can complain about that, right?

If you think that maybe you can just take one of these software programs and be able to tune your piano, realize that not only is an arduous task, tuning a piano, but just setting the tuning pins and the strings so they’re going to hold, you’ve got to tune a lot of pianos in order to get to that point.

So you should have a healthy respect for your piano technician.