Piano Lessons- Music Theory Lessons

Hi, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store with a viewer question. Does installing a player system on your piano affect the touch? This is actually a really good question. I’ve never addressed this exact question, even though I have other videos on player systems on pianos.

Well, first some historical context. Going back to the early 20th century when player pianos were really popular, pianos had different accommodations for them. As a matter of fact, many of them had shorter keys and they weren’t exactly the same type of touch on many of the player pianos.

Well, today, the way player pianos are worked is that a slot is cut in the key bed. I know that sounds really scary, and indeed, if somebody doesn’t know what they’re doing, they can destroy a piano. But if it’s an experienced installer, it has absolutely zero effect upon the piano, the way it functions, or the way it plays because here’s the thing, the player mechanism doesn’t actually come in contact with the keys or the action in any way. So, it can’t possibly have any effect whatsoever on the function of the piano or the way it plays, or even the way it sounds when you play it without the player playing.

That’s the good news. So, if you want to be able to hear your piano playing, here’s something else that’s really remarkable, there’s a tremendous library of the original player pianos, the expressive players from over 100 years ago. The great pianists, some of whom made piano rolls even before audio recording was developed. Like do you know there’s Debussy, there’s some horrifically sounding piano recordings made on 78 RPM records of Debussy. But you can listen to Debussy and Gershwin, Rachmaninoff, Paderewski, all on piano rolls, which had been converted digitally.

It seems amazing that you can pick up your iPad or your smartphone and listen to Rachmaninoff play on your piano, his performance. But this is all possible with player technology. The good news is, no, it doesn’t affect how when you play your piano, the piano feels or sounds.

The subject today is the truth about piano competitions. Piano competitions are a whole industry and the level of players in competitions is astounding. Consider this: some of the big international competitions, like the Tchaikovsky for example or the Cliburn, just the amount of music you have to learn in order to enter these competitions is so formidable that you have to already be an extremely accomplished pianist to even go for it. Typically there are two programs of music.

You might have to have two, two and a half hours of music under your belt, all from memory.

I’m talking about some of the most difficult, challenging music with a wide variety of period styles from the Baroque all the way through to 20th Century and beyond.
Not only that, many competitions also have a component where you might have to have a concerto or two ready to go. And chamber music, maybe a piano quartet, that is a piano with strings. And oftentimes they’ll throw a piece of music at you that you just have a little bit of time to get together and be able to perform. Your abilities at learning music quickly also comes into play in these competitions. How do people even approach international competitions? Well, it’s really tough for most people. If students have nothing but time on their hands and great training where they can just hone their skills and practice endlessly, many hours a day, and be able to play for juries and to be able to play in master classes, honing in everything about their playing.

But that’s not enough. They also must be able to go from competition to competition, again and again, because at any competition there will be literally hundreds of supremely qualified people. That is people who come in knowing all the music and playing it on a really high level. You’d think that only a few people could even achieve this because what it takes to enter one of these international competitions is beyond belief. How does somebody actually get anywhere in these competitions? Aside from everything I’ve told you, the preparation, and having benefactors to fly you around the world whenever there are competitions,

people who tend to win the major competitions have done so by taking enough of them and getting used to the whole process.

And maybe they’ll place in this competition, make the finals in another, finally land in the third or fourth place, and eventually maybe they’ll be lucky enough to land a first prize or second prize. A first prize might actually get you a career in one of these major competitions. Sustaining a career is a story for another video, but let’s just talk about who are they looking for? How do you choose among so many supremely talented, accomplished pianists? Well, one aspect that has become kind of apparent is that one thing is that the jury of pianists, of concert pianists, who are judging these competitions, and many times it’s not necessarily the pianist who has the most individual voice, because they might really turn on one or two of the judges and some of the other judges might think oh, that’s not the way I’m used to hearing it.

A lot of times competition winners can be great players who don’t offend anybody.

They play in such a way that everything is unarguably first class. A good example of this is the great concert pianist, Ivo Pogorelich. Back in 1980, he was a youngster entering the Chopin International Piano Competition. Well, interestingly, Martha Argerich, another great concert pianist, was one of the judges of that competition. And when Pogorelich did not make it to the finals, she was so incensed that she walked out, she stormed out of the competition. Well, this was so news worthy that it actually carved out a career for Ivo Pogorelich, who didn’t win the competition. Now that’s a really interesting story, isn’t it?

But this is actually emblematic of what piano competitions and other music competitions are like. Oftentimes our players who are first class and who don’t take those crazy chances of individualistic interpretations, that were much more popular early in the 20th Century before recording became so prevalent. Today, everybody hears everybody, and you can hear it instantly. Just go into your phone, you can hear half a dozen performances of any piece you want. And so

everybody tries to sound like everybody else to a great extent

or if they’re not, they know they’re going out on a limb playing a different tempo or different expression.

If you’ve taken piano lessons and listened to your teacher, they undoubtedly told you to play with rounded fingers – having your hand shaped like you’re holding a ball. If this is true, then why did one of the greatest pianists of all time play with flat fingers? Did Vladimir Horowitz play with flat fingers? The answer is yes; there is some truth to this!

Difference Between Round Fingers and Flat Fingers

You may wonder why you’re supposed to play the piano with rounded fingers? It’s very simple: if you play with your fingers outstretched you don’t get the benefit of using all of your finger joints. First of all, some fingers are longer than others. So thumbs and pinkies don’t reach all the keys! When rounding the fingers, they all form a straight line so your fingers are all over keys. Also, when playing fast passage work, it is necessary to play with curved fingers in order to play with speed. However, in slow passages, you’ll see Horowitz and other pianists such as Glenn Gould sometimes playing with flat fingers. This technique can allow for different tonal gradations which are difficult to achieve with rounded fingers. On the accompanying video, you will hear two versions of the beginning of Chopin’s Prelude in E minor, one with rounded fingers and the other playing with outstretched fingers.

Can You Hear the Difference?

A lot of people wonder if you can begin studying the piano as an adult. I often hear from people who have just retired and finally have the time, if they can begin studying the piano at their age. There are also people who never practiced when they were younger and wonder if it’s too late to take up the piano again. The simple answer is:

It’s never too late to begin learning the piano!

It’s important to have your expectations in alignment with reality. There are certain things you must be aware of. I’ve seen an incredibly wide range of results in piano progress among various people. Some have made remarkable progress at the piano in a short amount of time as adult beginners. How can this be? Your exposure to music in general is going to have a great deal to do with your success at the piano.

For example, if you’ve played an instrument like the clarinet, you are used to reading at least one staff of music as well as playing music. You’ve also developed finger dexterity. A transition to piano is going to be a lot more seamless than for someone who has never even listened to music let alone played a musical instrument. That person is going to have a harder time assimilating musical language.

A lot of affinity for music develops just from listening to it. So even if you’ve never played anything, but you’ve been an avid listener of music; you’re going to progress faster than someone who has avoided music their whole lives.

There is a parallel to how exposure to a foreign language can make it much easier to learn a second language.

There are a lot of things that enter into your success with studying the piano at any age. For example, there are different programs like Scott Houston’s Piano in a Flash. He was recently on our show and demonstrated how he helps people to enjoy the piano with his innovative chord system. His program isn’t designed to be able to play classical compositions of Beethoven or Mozart, but it offers fun for people wanting to play popular songs they are familiar with. His method of playing chords with the left hand and the melody line in the right-hand makes delving into the piano an enjoyable, casual endeavor. His program also offers ear training and guides you with improvisational skills. This is a way that a lot of people can get enjoyment out of the piano without striving to be a concert level player. For those of you wanting to play classical compositions, I suggest getting a teacher and studying the piano more formally because it’s more difficult to learn classical music on your own. Having a good teacher can help to guide your practice.

So, anyone can learn to play the piano at any age!

Recording the piano is a very deep subject. Today I’m going to give you an overview of what the process is about. I might offer a video course on this subject in the future because there is so much involved in recording the piano.

A piano is a kaleidoscope of sound.

There are so many different sounds you can get out of a piano. One aspect of the piano is that sound comes out of many different parts of the instrument. You have to decide what sound you are after when recording. There are so many different possibilities and questions regarding how to record a piano!

Microphones hear differently from human ears.

First, there’s the reality of recording versus hearing things with your ears. There’s a fundamental difference. To demonstrate this, say you’re at a party where there are a lot of people around. You can focus in on different conversations around the room. But if you were to take an excellent pair of microphones and try recording a room full of people talking, listening back even through top of the line studio monitors or headphones would not enable you to zero in on different conversations. You would just have a jumble of talking. The best you could hope for his being able to follow the conversation of the people closest to the microphones. You might wonder why this is. First of all, how you can direct your attention to different sounds in a room is a fascinating subject in itself.

Your brain deciphers what you hear.

In motion pictures, or in complex musical recordings, there are recording techniques to enable you to hear many separate elements. Techniques such as panning left and right, and equalizing different bass or treble frequencies can make it possible for you to hear many distinct sounds or conversations in recordings.

Your brain is an amazing machine and it can accomplish this by utilizing the folds in your ears to decipher early and later reflections of sound. It’s able to identify minute differences in distance and frequencies to help you discern the directionality of sound thereby differentiating what you are hearing. That’s why even blindfolded without moving at all, you can tell if a sound is coming from in front of or behind you even if the balance of the volumes are exactly the same!

There are countless variations in sound in recordings.

I bring up all of these aspects of psychoacoustics so you can begin to understand the challenges of recording the piano. If you want to get a more intimate sound, you place the microphones closer to the piano. It will give you a somewhat compressed quality when microphones are placed inside a piano. You can sometimes achieve a warm quality of sound by doing this. However, as you play louder, you can hear more percussiveness with close miking techniques.

Half the sound of a piano comes out from the bottom.

If you want a more balanced sound, try placing the microphones further away from the piano. It’s a compromise between detail of sound versus balance.

There is an art to recording the piano.

What are the challenges of using multiple microphones? Once you have more than one microphone that isn’t physically next to others, you add a level of complexity with such things as phase cancelation. This is when the sound reaches different microphones at different times. Some frequencies will cancel themselves out while others will amplify themselves since sound is comprised of waves. If the sound waves from one microphone are at the opposite end of the wave cycle, the sound cancels out just like in noise canceling headphones There are time alignment technologies that can solve this problem, but it gets complicated, very quickly.

Here’s a tip for you. I suggest when you’re recording, try standing in the room and listen to what it sounds like at different places in the room. Then, place a microphone or a pair of mics next to each other at that point. For example, you might find a pleasing sound at the tail of the piano. Listen to the results of your recording. Then try recording with a different microphone placement and compare the sounds. You might discover a sweet spot where the sound is very pleasing. Ideally, you get someone else to play the piano while you listen on headphones or speakers in another room.

Experimenting with microphone placement.

Better than that, get a pair of mics that you can mount on a stand with headphones and long cables. Have somebody play the piano while you are listening and moving the microphones around the room. There are all sorts of microphone techniques that you can discover. It’s one of the best ways to determine the kind of sound you’re getting out of your piano when you record it. It’s not a right or wrong proposition. There are many different types of sounds you can get depending upon what you’re looking for. Generally, recording closer to the piano will give you a more intimate sound with more action noise. Further miking will give you a more balanced sound. Room acoustics are also an important consideration. Ambient noise may preclude distant miking of your piano. You may have never noticed your ventilation system before. Yet, when listening back to your recording, anything from cars outside to your refrigerator may destroy an otherwise wonderful recording.

My experience in the recording studio.

I grew up with hand me down recording equipment from my father that I loved to play with as a kid! Later, he would let me work with his professional recording equipment. Better than that, I got to attend my father’s recording sessions from an early age and learned a tremendous amount from them. These historic recordings are available now on CD and are on the highest level of the art of recording.

Piano appraisals are not what you might think. Many people seek out appraisals to determine selling prices for instruments, but this is not the purpose of piano appraisals. A piano appraisal is a legal document drawn up by an expert in the field which assigns value to an instrument, often for the purposes of insurance protection or estate settlements. In cases of tax fraud, an appraiser is held legally liable, since an appraisal is a legal document. Although this value is well researched and legally binding, it has little to no bearing on the potential selling price of an instrument.

Selling a Piano is Not Like Selling a Car or House

Selling a piano can be a bit overwhelming at first, so naturally one compares the process to selling other large items, such as cars or houses. There are some key differences in the valuation of pianos. When selling a house, you can access the selling history for a property, and coupled with current market values, this will give a fairly accurate idea of a reasonable sale price. In the case of automobiles, there are reliable valuations available from Kelley Blue Book and Edmunds which provide a general idea of sale prices. When it comes to pianos, there are several factors that affect a potential sale price. The age varies greatly in pianos, from being brand new, to pianos that are over 100 years old. This will affect the sale price. Condition and brand play an even bigger role.

Why You Can’t Use Appraisals to Determine Selling Prices of Pianos

As we discussed earlier, an appraisal is a legal document that assigns value to an instrument, often for the purposes of insurance claims or an estate settlements. However, this value does not necessarily reflect the current market value. There are countless piano brands out there, many that no longer produce instruments. So, the replacement value can be difficult to determine. Also, the type of sale will often affect the sale price. For instance, the price for a piano in a store, where instruments are tuned and regulated will differ greatly from the price on Craigslist, and consignments will vary as well. If you are curious, go to eBay and compare the asking prices for pianos with the prices of pianos that have already sold, and you will find the values are often drastically different.

Your Selling Price is Up to You!

When it comes down to it, all these factors will affect how much you can sell your piano for, but ultimately the selling price is whatever someone is willing to pay for your instrument. Generally, the more work you are willing to put into the sale, the more money you can get for the instrument. For example, if you have the piano put into top shape, take high resolution pictures, post online on several websites, show the piano whenever someone wants to see the piano, offer to help arrange the move, and are patient, you may get top dollar for your piano. On the other hand, if you just want to list on Craigslist and sell fast, or sell the piano wholesale to a piano dealer, you will get far less for your piano.

Piano appraisals are important legal documents. For example, if you lost your piano in a fire and you had to replace it quickly going to the nearest piano store and finding a similar replacement, you might pay appraised value. That’s the whole purpose. You shouldn’t be put out in that kind of situation. You also want an equitable solution in an estate settlement that everyone can agree upon. These are where appraisals have great value. But they really doesn’t have much to do with what you can sell your piano for.

Did you know that if you go to music conservatory or major in music at a university, you have to have a certain level of piano proficiency in order to get your degree?

All Music Majors Have to Play the Piano

Let’s start from the beginning. There are two essential instruments for all musicians. The piano is one and the voice is the other. They are diametrically opposed to one another. One is the most natural instrument we all carry with us. You must hear something in your head before you can even produce the sound. The piano is the opposite, when you push a key it makes the sound even if you don’t hear it first.

The Piano Can Play Complete Music

Most instruments can only play one note at a time. So, in order to play complete compositions, you usually have to play in an ensemble. What’s unique about the piano is that you can play complex, polyphonic music all by yourself! You can play chords and harmony. More than that, it’s visual. The piano is laid out in such a way that you can see what diatonic harmony is all about. That is, the half-step/whole-steps arrangement which is readily apparent on the keyboard. Chords are easy to negotiate as well. Even a child can do it. It’s that easy!

There’s More to Piano Than Just Visualizing Your Music

If you play the clarinet, saxophone or flute; the vast majority of music is written to play with other musicians. In fact, most solo music for other instruments contain substantial piano parts. Piano has more repertoire than all other instruments combined. Piano is a tremendous second instrument because you can realize the other parts to the pieces you’re playing. You might wonder what the orchestra is doing in a concerto you are playing. There will be an orchestral arrangement on our score you can play on the piano so you can hear it!

All People Should Study the Piano

The piano is intrinsic to music. You’ll learn theory and understand chord structure. It makes an excellent tool for ear training as well. It’s visually in front of you and you can produce sounds and harmonies that are impossible to create by yourself on most other instruments. I had the good fortune of starting the piano at a very young age. Later, when I was in 4th grade, I start playing the French horn in school. I could already read music fluently and was playing somewhat sophisticated music (for a relative beginner) on the piano. It was easy for me to grasp the horn initially because I was used to much more complex music on the piano. It made me take to the French horn quickly because I was used to the complexity of reading two staves on a score. Reading music for the French Horn was easy by comparison (even though there are many challenges playing a wind instrument).

There are so many things involved in studying the piano. There is everything from note reading, figuring out rhythms, considering hand position, following fingering, negotiating phrasing, expression and more. There are also skills which must be mastered such as memorization, sight-reading and improvisation. You must also have a keen understanding of the underlying music theory. But there is one intrinsic thing that is a macro to learning to play the piano which transcends everything:

How to Practice

There are so few teachers in this world who teach how to practice; not just in piano but all subjects. I remember when I was in 11th grade, for the first time Mr. Gray showed us how to to compose an English composition. Before that, any time a paper was assigned, I would break into a cold sweat having no idea how to approach such a thing! But Mr. Gray broke it down to an organized method of how to write a clear, compelling composition. I’m so grateful to him to this day. His methods have stayed with me. It’s how I do all my writing, and I write a lot of articles!

Having Productive Lessons:

I was fortunate to study with my father, Morton Estrin. From the very first lesson, he showed me how to practice as he did with all his students. Many of his students went on to teach his methods including my sister and myself. Our teaching is based upon showing students what to do the other six days of the week when they’re not at the lesson. This is the key for effective training which makes the lessons exponentially more productive. It’s not just correcting wrong notes and assigning new material. There are a myriad of things you can do in a lessons from working on scales and arpeggios, to delving into music theory.

Providing a Step by Step Approach

You must show students what to do on a daily basis. They should have a clear idea how to approach each skill set whether it is memorization, sight-reading or something else. The students must be provided with the methods for approaching each skill. The most valuable thing a teacher can do at lessons is to practice with the students. You may work with them for months or even years getting them to the point where they can work effectively independently. Once students reach that level, their progress at home will soar. Your role shifts more to a coach than a teacher being able to work on refining their playing to a high level. So, be sure your teacher (whatever the subject) provides clear, step by step instructions of how to work out assignments at home for fruitful study.