Piano Lessons- Music Theory Lessons

You may have noticed that the feel on some pianos is heavier than on other pianos. But did you know that the keys on any piano are different weight across the keyboard? All pianos have gradually heavier feel the lower you play on the keyboard! There are 2 reasons for this you can observe if you look inside a piano:

The keys (behind the fallboard) get longer and longer as you get lower across the keyboard.

The hammers are thicker and heavier the lower you go on the keyboard.

This is why the keys on pianos are harder to push down in the bass section than in the treble. You are moving more mass with longer keys and heavier hammers the lower you play on the keyboard.

Digital piano manufacturers attempt to mimic this feel by creating different weight in zones across the keyboard. Soon, there will be a digital piano on the market which will have a truly weighted-graded action transitioning smoothly from key to key across the entire keyboard, not just in zones. Stayed tuned to Living Pianos to hear about this new technology!

Today we are going to discover what is the most difficult scale to play on the piano. By the end of this article and video, you will be surprised at the answer!

When you are first learning scales, just figuring out the notes can be a daunting task. You look at a scale like B major with 5 sharps, and it’s tough to figure out. But when you start to play it, you discover something really interesting:

The thumbs in both hands play white keys at the same time.

Not only that, but the black keys are played with the other fingers in both hands. This is referred to as mirror fingering where both hands anchor on white keys with thumbs on the same notes, in this case B and E and the other fingers play the black keys. This makes it easier to play.

So, what about scales with a lot of flats – are they harder? Let’s take G-flat major which has 6 flats. There is certainly a lot of black ink on the page! You will discover that while there are 6 flats, there are only 5 black keys in a G-flat major scale. This is due to the fact that C-flat is a white key (the B key). Here again there is mirror fingering. However, in the B scale, the white keys in both hands occurred a half-step above (the very next key) the notes played with the thumb. The G-flat scale is slightly more challenging in that the first white key in the scale (C-flat) is a half step above the previous black key (B-flat), but the next white key (F) is a whole-step (2 keys) above the previous black key (E-flat). But at least you have the benefit of anchoring both thumbs at the same time whenever they play.

Next, we are going to look at a scale that you would think would be easier since it only has 2 sharps – D major. Here you have the challenge of having the thumbs both anchor together on D, but as you go up the scale, the right hand plays the thumb on G, but the left hand plays the thumb on A. So, you don’t have the benefit of mirror fingering where both thumbs play at the same time. This is somewhat more challenging to play.

So, what is the most difficult scale to play? Once you know all your scales, they are about equal in difficulty. However, there is one scale that presents challenges no other scales have, and that is the C major scale!

How can this be? It’s the first scale most people learn and it’s simple to learn because it’s all white keys. That’s exactly what makes it more challenging to master. You don’t have the benefit of having black keys to guide you.

You are faced with a sea of white keys!

There are no black keys to differentiate where you are in the scale. On top of that, you don’t have the benefit of mirror fingering where you anchor the thumbs on the same notes in both hands. I bet some of you are surprised, but it’s a fact that C major is the most difficult scale to play even though it may be easier to learn than other scales.

Incidentally, the resource for fingering of all the major and minor scales and arpeggios on the piano that the vast majority of pianists rely upon is:

Another Thought:

There are two major scales that don’t have any mirror fingering whatsoever. That is, the thumbs never play the same notes at all. Those scales are B-flat and E-flat. For that reason, it is arguable that those scales may be the most difficult.

Hanon: Sixty Studies for the Virtuoso Pianist

There is another school of thought that a small number of pianists adhere to which has mirror fingerings for all the scales. I would be interested in hearing from anyone who plays all scales with mirror fingering. Having learned all my scales and arpeggios as a young child, I couldn’t imagine relearning the fingering to them at this point any more than I could imagine typing on a more ergonomic keyboard where letters used most often were in the middle of the keyboard instead of the one we are all used to.

I hope this has been interesting for you and I look forward to comments on this presentation. This is Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.com 949-244-3729 Robert@LivingPianos.com

Arpeggios are simply broken chords. Scales and arpeggios form the foundation of technique, not just for the piano, but for virtually all musical instruments. I’ve talked about how to practice scales and arpeggios in the past. Today, I’m going to give you three ways of practicing arpeggios specifically. If you like this, I could probably give you 10 more ways of practicing them because there are many ways of practicing arpeggios.

Here are three good starters for you:

Let’s start with a basic C major chord which forms the foundation of a C major arpeggio. Since you’re going all the way up and down the keyboard with both hands, you have to deal with finger crossings. I suggest you reference Hanon – 60 Selected Studies for the Virtuoso Pianist. This is a resource for all the fingerings of all major and minor scales and arpeggios as well as exercises and additional materials. The first way to practice arpeggios is perhaps the most fundamental. I’ve talked about this before in videos and I’m going to recap this because it’s essential.

You must practice slowly first to develop independence of the fingers.

As you get faster, place the fingers closer to the keys to get speed and lightness. You want to use the metronome when practicing arpeggios and scales because the whole idea is to measure your playing because you want to achieve precision. You must strive for evenness in tone, touch and timing.

Of course you can practice arpeggios with different phrasing and dynamics. For now, I’m going to suggest you play them at a strong level always from the fingers. It won’t do any good to practice arpeggios or scales using your arms or wrists because as you go faster, they’re not going to be able to keep up. The whole idea is to develop the strength of your fingers. So, watch how you can approach arpeggios slowly. If you’re a beginner studying arpeggios, I recommend putting the metronome at 60 and going one note to the beat, then two notes to the beat, and finally playing at four notes to the beat. You can even do gradual metronome speeds raising a notch or two at a time if you run into difficulties going faster. There is a brief demonstration on the accompanying video on how to practice this way with the metronome.

Notice a couple of things. First of all, you want to avoid any up and down motion with the arms. Use only your fingers. Notice how you raise your fingers to achieve independence and strength. You get the feel of exactly where each key is. It provides an opportunity to dig into each note gaining security. Once you’re comfortable, you should do that at least four times before moving on any faster. Then you can go to two notes to the beat. Notice, as you get faster, the fingers must be closer to the keys. When transitioning to four notes to the beat, you want to have your arms almost floating in air just above the keys because they don’t have the strength to support the arms at great speed. At four notes to the beat there’s less motion of your fingers as well. They are kept very close to the keys. You must spend sufficient time at each speed. At one note to the beat, you might spend around five minutes mastering it. If you’re playing only an arpeggio at one note to the beat at 60, five minutes is a pretty long time! This helps you gain great strength and independence of the fingers.

So we’ve covered one way of practicing arpeggios which is essential. It think it’s probably one of the best ways to practice arpeggios. You may get to a stumbling block and get to a point where you know you can do one note, but getting to two notes or four notes to the beat proves to be very difficult. You’re wondering how you can get it any faster. Are there any shortcuts? I’m going to show you a couple!

One shortcut is to practice in chords. Here is how to do this: Delineate where the thumb crossings are and play two notes together, then play the thumbs. You can watch how to achieve this on the accompanying video. Once you are comfortable, you can do that at two notes to the beat. Doing four notes is probably too fast for this practice technique depending upon the tempo you choose You want to get it fluent so you get the sense of the thumb crossings which are essential for smooth transition of registers. Instead, of trying to go faster, try breaking up the inner notes quickly and land on the thumbs securely holding them longer so that you gain security of the thumb crossings in both hands. This helps you get the sense of how the thumbs anchor you versus the finger which hover over the other two notes of the chord. You must strive for evenness playing the inner notes cleanly.

Today, we are going to demonstrate some fundamental differences in American and European pianos. Naturally, there is a tremendous variance of pianos within Europe as well as in the United States. However, what we are going to show is how it is necessary to approach playing American and European pianos with dramatically different techniques in order to get the sound you are after out of them.

You will hear the beginning of Debussy Claire De Lune on the 9′ 2″ Petrof Concert Grand. Then you will hear the same section performed on a Steinway Model D Concert Grand.

Next, I will play the Debussy on the Petrof the same way I approached the keyboard on the Steinway. You will notice that the Petrof doesn’t require the same support of the keys. A more delicate approach is all that is required to get the sound out. Like a fine sports car, the piano responds to the most gentle motions. Playing on the Petrof with the technique utilized previously on the Steinway creates a crass, overblown performance.

Next, I play the Debussy on the Steinway with the technique utilized on the Petrof. It results in a lifeless sound that lacks projection.

Each instrument has unique responses to touch. You must approach every piano in a unique manner in order to achieve the sound you are after. Even the room acoustics play a large part in the technique you must use in order to achieve the desired sound.

I am also a French hornist.

There is a parallel with American French horn playing versus European hornists.

Generally, in the U.S., people play larger bore horns with bigger mouthpieces than in Europe. More than that, American horn players like myself tend to play more on the F-horn side of the instrument rather than the B-flat side as European hornists do. The thumb valve adds around 3 feet of tubing to the horn! So, European horn players have a more open sound and an elegance whereas American French horn sound tends to be bigger and fatter.

The same is true of American pianos compared to European pianos. American pianos require more arm weight which is analogous to using more breath which is necessary on larger French horns. While European pianos have an open, clear sound and respond to smaller gradations of touch and require a more refined approach than American pianos.

A lot of people have noticed that I have lost weight. In the past, I have gone up and down in weight which I know is not very healthy. But lately, I feel great and can go hours without eating, yet retaining energy. Musicians are typically very busy and it’s hard to have enough time to eat!

On a recent trip to New York to hear my student Bijan Taghavi play his senior recital at The Manhattan School of Music, I discovered that a lot of the music students there do what I’ve been doing which is:

Intermittent Fasting – doing all your eating within a limited number of hours of the day, say from 9 or 10 in the morning until 6 or 7 at night

You may have heard about the:

Keto Diet – basically, you stop eating carbohydrates, particularly refined carbohydrates, but eat lots of vegetables. You even avoid eating healthy carbohydrates like potatoes, rice and bread. In a few days your metabolism changes and you don’t get the big swings of hunger and energy throughout the day. So you can go long periods of time without eating and maintain energy and clarity.

If you’re healthy and want to lose weight, and your doctor says it’s O.K., I recommend it. It’s been great for me!

This is a really interesting question and it brings to mind a video I made years ago demonstrating how the pedals interact with tone and techniques that add sustain to the tone of the piano by utilizing the pedals. If you push down the sustain pedal after you’ve played a note, you can enhance the tone after the initial attack. You can also depress the una corda pedal (soft pedal) which shifts the action so only two of the three strings are struck directly by the hammer for each note which makes the attack softer and creates a more sustained tone. By using these two techniques in conjunction with one another, you can achieve a very sustained tone. But what about just using the soft pedal alone? Is that ever done?

Here’s an interesting fact for you. Way back when the first piano was developed by Bartolomeo Cristofori around 1600, he had sort of a una corda pedal. It wasn’t like a modern type, but indeed he had a mechanism on his early pianos that could provide a softer tone. However, that piano didn’t have a sustain pedal! Later on in Mozart’s era, the early pianos had a lever that could be operated with the knee that did the same thing as the sustain pedal on modern pianos. You could combine changes of registration achieved by engaging felt on the strings, along with the sustain lever, thereby softening and sustaining the tone. This is like on a modern piano combining the sustain pedal along with the soft pedal. For example, in the second movement of the Mozart sonata K330 in C major; I always love to take the una corda pedal in the minor section. I use the sustain pedal along with the una corda pedal to achieve a soft, singing sound.

If you’re playing Baroque music which predated the invention of the piano, composers wrote for various keyboard instruments including the harpsichord, clavichord, virginal as well as others. These instruments had no sustain pedal. Yet there were changes of sound with registrations which engaged different sets of strings. This is why many people believe that you should not use the sustain pedal in Baroque music for the reason that it wasn’t on any of the keyboard instruments of the time that composers like Bach and Scarlatti were writing music for. So this is one instance where there is a good case for using the una corda pedal without using the sustain pedal. You can hear the change of color on the accompanying video which demonstrates engaging the una corda for a change of tone. Indeed it is possible to use just the una corda pedal without necessarily combining it with the sustain pedal as is usually the case.

Today you are going to get a glimpse in the accompanying video into our studio where we record our videos! Starting out in the control room, you will hear a brief snippet of a recording project for a film score we recorded this weekend. It is a documentary which features ragtime music. Through some creative equalization and other techniques, we reproduced the sound of a piano going through a 1930’s radio! The piano was recorded on my new prototype which provides a virtual concert grand experience which I will demonstrate briefly for you. As you can hear, it sounds like a first class concert grand! It’s funny that we downgraded the audio experience to 1930’s technology for the film!

Moving into the performance room, you see grand pianos, microphones, lights and the equipment we use to record videos. The acoustics are dialed in with bass traps in the corners to avoid a muddy sound, while keeping reflections for natural reverberation.

Recording has been a passion of mine since childhood. My father had professional recording equipment in his teaching studio growing up. I would get his hand-me-down equipment which I played with as a young child. Eventually, I got into recording music both in the studio and on location for fun and later professionally.

I also had the good fortune of attending my father’s recording sessions from a young age. The Connoisseur Society Recordings from then were state-of-the-art and hold up well on CD today. In fact there was an artistry to these recordings that is quite rare as you can hear on some of these links on YouTube: