Piano Lessons- Music Theory Lessons

If you are familiar with one of the great American piano companies Mason & Hamlin you have may have heard about the Tension Resonator System, sometimes referred to as “The Spider” or “Crown Retention System”. This technology is unique to Mason & Hamlin pianos. What is this all about?

Welcome to my ongoing series of music theory lessons. Today we will be covering Pentatonic scales.

“Penta” means five, and as such these scales all have 5 notes in them. Major and minor scales contain 8 notes and chromatic scales contain 12; so 5 notes is quite a difference from other scales. As far as the intervals for pentatonic scales go, you can form one in any key by using the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 6th note of that major scale.

It’s actually great that we are using a piano keyboard as an example because the black keys on the piano actually form a pentatonic scale all on their own starting on G-flat. You might have noticed that if you play just the black keys on a piano, they tend to sound good together. That’s because it’s literally impossible to play a wrong note using just the black keys!

What’s really great about pentatonic scales is that all the notes sound really good together. I’m not kidding when I say you can play the black keys and make nearly anything sound good. Even someone who has never played the piano before can play just the black keys and create something that sounds pretty nice. If you’ve never improvised before this is a great place to start learning; just start playing the black keys and make something up. If you have a friend, try playing together just using the black keys; you will be pleasantly surprised at how good it can sound!

That’s really about all there is to know about pentatonic scales. I hope you enjoyed this exploration and look forward to next week’s video when we cover more music theory topics.

While you might not be familiar with the term glissando, you have no doubt heard it countless times before. It’s when the player slides their hands across the keys – it’s heard all the time in blues and rock. Believe it or not, it’s not as easy to pull off as it might look. You can actually injure yourself playing this incorrectly – which I have actually done as a child.

Glissando basically means a slide over all the keys. String players can perform this very smoothly by just moving their finger down the string; it’s not this easy on the piano. There is a simple secret however for playing this correctly.

The wrong way to play a glissando is to put your fingers down on the keys and simply slide them with the back of your hand. You can end up tearing off the skin on the back of fingers and causing tremendous pain!

The right way to perform a glissando is to place your hand at almost a right angle to the keys – so that mostly the nails hit the keys instead of skin. The video above provides an excellent demonstration of this. Believe it or not, that is it!

Now there are many different types of glissandos that can be performed in a few different ways. For example, you might want to play a descending glissando that would be played with the thumb on the right hand. The same principle applies; keep the angle straight up (at nearly a right angle) and slide the nail across the keys. If you stick to this technique you can even perform black key glissandos. Be careful though as this requires the angle to be precise in order to avoid injury.

Anyone who is familiar with historical keyboards is aware that at one point the black and white keys were reversed from what we have today. What many people don’t know (including myself until recently) is the reason why they were changed.

On earlier instruments like harpsichords and fortepianos, the naturals are represented by black keys (often times rosewood or ebony) and the sharps were actually white keys (traditionally with a little bit of ivory). So, why did they eventually switch?

The reason is a lot simpler than you probably imagine. When you look at a picture of the keys on an earlier period instrument that has black keys you might notice that seeing between the keys is very difficult because the black space is camouflaged by the black keys.

They blend together. On the other hand those white keys sure stick out!

Now let’s look at modern keyboard:

You can easily see the dark lines between each of the keys giving excellent visual clarity.

Believe it or not, this is the reason that the key colors were switched. It’s easier to see the distance between the keys and separate them from one another. So if this was a problem, why were the natural keys ever black in the first place? The reason is most likely that ivory has always been more scarce than wood. So this solves this timeless mystery!

This is something many of you might not be familiar with, it’s truly a topic for Steinway aficionados or those curious enough to look underneath their pianos. So what is the Steinway bell and what does it do?

If you have ever looked below a large Steinway grand piano, you would have noticed a strange piece of metal that is attached to the bottom of the piano. It looks like this:

As you can see, it has the shape of a bell – which is where it gets its name – but does it actually serve a purpose? The short answer is yes.

With President’s Day around the corner, I thought I would share with you the rich history of pianos in the White House!

From the very beginning there were pianos in the White House starting with George Washington. Early presidents had fortepianos like Mozart played and harpsichords in the White House.

Square Grand Pianos were popular with 6 presidents! These monstrously large pianos have been relegated to the footnotes of piano history.

Upright pianos have also been popular with 6 presidents owning uprights.

4 piano companies stand out for being very popular in the White House:

– Steinway: including one given to the White House by Steinway in 1938
– Baldwin
– Chickering
– Knabe

Below is an outline of what pianos were owned by presidents.

HARPSICHORDS:

– George Washington
– Rutherford Hayes (& upright)
– Grover Cleveland (& piano)

FORTEPIANOS:

– George Washington
– Thomas Jefferson

SQUARE GRANDS: 6 presidents

UPRIGHT PIANOS: 6 presidents

CHICKERING PIANOS:

– Franklin Pierce
– James Buchanan
– Abraham Lincoln (square & upright)
– Theodore Roosevelt (& Steinway)

STEINWAY:

Steinway grand piano with gilt American eagle supports. It was designed by Eric Gugler with gilt stenciling by Dunbar Beck (with help from Franklin Roosevelt) and was given to the White House in 1938 by the manufacturer.

Theodore Roosevelt (& Chickering)

Lyndon B. Johnson (& Knabe)

Ronald Reagan

KNABE:

– Woodrow Wilson
– Herbert Hoover
– Lyndon B. Johnson (& Steinway)

BALDWIN:

– William Taft
– Harry Truman
– Richard Nixon – accompanied singer Pearl Bailey in a performance in the East Room

Can you clean your Piano? You absolutely can! I have various videos such as how to clean piano keys as well as cleaning various piano finishes. Most people want to know how to clean the inside of their pianos. Well, how do you get in there? The strings are in the way! You can try blowing it out with a vacuum, but if it is really dusty that could make a mess and you’re probably not going to get all of the dirt out anyway.

The secret is to ask your piano tuner. They have a tool that is designed for the purpose of cleaning the inside of pianos. The way it works is very simple. The entire action of the piano comes out as one unit and there’s a gap between the strings and the key bed where they can get in with a tool in order to clean everything out. They are able to get all the dust off the soundboard and make everything beautiful again.

If the strings are rusted, the piano may need to be restrung. However, if the strings have light corrosion, a skilled technician can use a very fine steel wool and clean the strings to get them shiny which will help enhance the tone as well as the look of your piano.

Cleaning the inside of your piano is not something that you want to undertake yourself because pulling an action requires special skill. If you’re not careful you can easily break off hammers. If your tuner is already out there tuning your piano, they probably won’t charge a lot to clean your piano since they are there anyway. Be sure to let them know beforehand so they bring the proper tools and have the extra time to perform that job for you. Hope this has been helpful for you! You can always reach us at Robert@LivingPianos.com.

I get this question all the time; can you replace the soundboard on your piano?

The simple answer is yes.

However, you have to consider a number of factors when answering this question.

Replacing the soundboard requires removing the strings, the plate, and rebuilding the piano – which already costs thousands of dollars. Replacing the soundboard will then cost additional thousands of dollars; it’s going to be an incredibly expensive undertaking.

But more importantly, what makes the tone of a piano? What makes piano sound like a Steinway, or a Baldwin, or a Bluthner? To a great extent, it’s the soundboard.

In Europe if you replace the soundboard on a piano you are legally not allowed to put the name of the original manufacturer on the instrument.

You also have to take into account that the results you have after replacing the soundboard might be dramatically different than the original piano. If you are going to get this job done, you will need to find someone who is very experienced at it. There are a very few belly men (technicians specializing in soundboard repair) who do excellent work replacing soundboards.

It is more a repair for a piano that is incredibly special or expensive, such as a concert grand Steinway or Bosendorfer that has a soundboard in really bad shape but is still worth restoring.

Bottom line is, if you are going to replace a soundboard prepare to spend tens of thousands of dollars and definitely hire the best people you can find – it’s a repair that can make or break the piano.

At Living Pianos we find pianos with soundboards that are in good shape so these American and European pianos can be brought to their original glory and still be offered at a reasonable price.

If you have any questions about replacing a soundboard or a specific piano you are considering this repair for, feel free to contact me or leave a comment on the blog.

I get this question all the time and I figured it was finally time to make a video about it. The short answer is no, you can’t soundproof a room. Is it theoretically possible? Yes, if cost and space is no object, then you can soundproof a room. But let’s talk about more conventional ways to reduce the sound of a room to make it a little more tolerable for your neighbors or housemates.

I once asked a studio engineer in a very nice studio how he would go about soundproofing a room. He said one option would be to build a room entirely out of cinder blocks and fill them with sand. While this may not be practical for too many situations, there is something to be learned from this.

Mass is one of the great barriers to overcoming sound since sound is waves of energy and increasing the mass requires substantial energy to have much of an effect upon something so heavy. Even the loudest sounds produced by musical instruments would have a hard time getting through. Even with all that mass, it still might not be completely soundproof.

Anywhere there is air, sound will escape. With that in mind, the way to help soundproof a room is to eliminate any space air can escape through. The way recording studios do this it to build a room within a room. That is, not only are all the walls duplicated with space between, the floor and the ceiling are “floating” meaning that they come in contact with adjacent structures only at minimal points. The dead air between the structures will inhibit the transfer of sound. The recording room will be contained in it’s own room, then there will be a space before the walls of the existing room. Every room in the studio must utilize this building technique. The ventilation system must be isolated from room to room as well utilizing baffles since any sound deadening is only as effective as the weakest point of isolation.

Notice the empty space between the walls and the ceiling. If you had something between those walls – like a stud in a traditional house or office – it would create mass for the sound to travel through since it isn’t so dense. As you can see in the diagram above, the best way to reduce sound is to have nothing between the two sets of walls. However, the floor will still have sound travel through unless it is floating as described above.

One helpful building method is utilizing resilient channel when putting drywall up. Resilient channels are metal strips that are screwed in perpendicular to the studs in walls which creates a slight gap between the dry wall and the studs. This cuts down on the amount of sound transferred between walls because it prevents the sound of the vibrating drywall from transferring through the stud to the drywall on the other side.

The best solution to soundproofing is to find an existing space that lends itself to soundproofing. For example, if you have a house with an additional building outside.

Some people might wonder why you can’t just put foam egg cartons on the side of a room. Don’t these soundproof?

They actually don’t. These are placed on walls to stop the reflections of sound that occur when sounds hits a wall. Instead of having them reflect back into the room, these foam pieces will absorb some of the sound and reduce it, but they will not soundproof a room. It will make the room quieter therefore it will reduce the amount of sound that transfers from room to room somewhat, but it’s not a solution for soundproofing

The more soft material you fill a room with, the less sound will reflect and travel and the more will be absorbed. Filling a room with large, thick carpets and heavy, cushy furniture will reduce sound in the room. Low frequency are very large sound waves. So, they require large absorptive panels to help deaden those frequencies. These are referred to as, “bass traps”. It might not be satisfying playing in an acoustically dead, room but it will reduce the sound. But it will not soundproof the room.