Piano Lessons- Music Theory Lessons

There was a time when all pianos had ivory key tops.

By the middle of the 20th century, the use of plastic key tops began to replace ivory keys in a big way. Laws protecting elephants made ivory keys extremely rare in pianos built after the early 1970’s.

No pianos have ivory keys.

The keys of all pianos are made out of wood. It is only the thin top of the white keys which are made of ivory or plastic. The black keys are made of ebony. However, most Asian production pianos have plastic black keys. In this case, the entire key is made out of plastic and is hollow on the inside.

Growing up, my father had 2 grand pianos in his studio, an old Steinway with ivories, and a newer Baldwin with plastic key tops. I found the ivory to be slippery and the plastic offered a better grip on the keys. However, when I would perform in student recitals, it was quite the reverse. With a bit of nerves, the sweat in my hands made the plastic key tops slippery and the grip on the ivory much better.

Ivory key tops are porous.

So cleaning is more difficult than cleaning plastic key tops which can be cleaned with a high concentration rubbing alcohol; 90% or higher works best. You can use a soft cloth, paper towel, or cotton swabs made damp with the alcohol. Rub all the keys, black and white and you will be amazed at how much dirt comes off the keys. The high concentration of alcohol assures that the moisture will not compromise the integrity of the wooden keys. Ivory keys present a greater challenge. While cleaning with alcohol as above will work, in time it can dry out the ivory and cause warping. So it is best to use a slightly damp cloth with only water and use alcohol only when needed to remove persistent stains.

Ivory keys also will yellow in time.

You can help them keep white by not closing the fall board. While it is important to close the lid of the piano when not in use to avoid corrosion of the strings, the fall board only protects dust from settling on the keys which can be wiped off easily. If ivory key tops get too dirty or yellow, they can be polished and bleached. If a few are chipped or missing, some piano technicians have a large stock of replacements. This is no easy task since matching the exact size, color and texture of ivories is very challenging. Replacing key tops altogether with modern composite plastic key tops is not very expensive, 2 or 3 hundred dollars. Usually when doing this it is a good time to replace key bushings and front rail bushings which wear out. That can add another couple of hundred dollars.

So the question is…

which is better, ivory or plastic key tops?

I have run into many people who have a strong preference for one or the other. Many people prefer the mystique of real ivories on a beautifully restored vintage piano. Other people are horrified by the sacrifice of the animals to produce the ivory. Overall I would suggest if you have a piano with usable ivories, keep them in good shape as long as you can since they are nearly irreplaceable. A set of ivories can be procured but a set costs thousands of dollars. Keep in mind however that if you went out and bought a brand new Steinway grand piano, it would have plastic key tops. Functionally they are very close. Perhaps the texture of a good set of ivories gives a better grip particularly with sweaty hands. Otherwise it is not one of the more important considerations for a piano’s quality.

This is a really interesting question. We have music from centuries ago so it might be easy to think that we pretty much have all the music there must have been created in human civilization (or at least close to it) but this is far from the truth.

For most of history music was not written down. We really have no idea what people played in antiquity – which is really a shame to never be able to know what songs they sang or what beats they played.

Music was actually written down as far back as the 6th Century B.C. in ancient Greece and Rome. The writing in this time was a bit more of a reminder on how to sing the songs rather than precise notation but it was certainly the beginning of writing down music in a digestible form.

The modern system of music notation had its roots in the 11th Century which grew from Gregorian Chants or Plainsong in the church. This is a process of taking liturgical text and singing it. To remind people of how the song is supposed to be sung – the sections where it goes up or down or certain embellishes – there would be squiggly lines and other ornamentations added to the text to direct the singers.

Eventually Guido d’Arezzo decided to draw a single line to make a reference for pitch. Notes would be drawn above and below the line to designate higher or lower pitches. This system was eventually refined and evolved into a more modern system which contained four lines.

If you have the chance you should really check out what notation for Gregorian Chants looks like. It’s very evocative of modern notation but not quite there; there are no bar lines or rhythmic accuracy like we have in today’s notation.

It wasn’t until the end of the 17th century that modern notation began to flourish.

You may not have heard the term Minimalism but you have certainly heard the music. This is a recent evolution in music and it is featured in countless film scores. Today we are going to discuss aspects of minimalism and what separates it from different musical styles.

There have been a number of cycles throughout music history. Over time, musical forms become more complex and eventually reach a point where they collapse upon themselves. By the end of Johann Sebastian Bach’s lifetime, Baroque music had become so complex that it literally broke down and ushered in the Classical era of music with its well structured forms. This is not the only time this has occurred in history and sure enough this similar pattern is found throughout musical eras.

The Romantic period following the Classical period shared many forms. However, the structures were expanded as was the orchestra and the length of works. Harmonies and modulation of keys in the music of Wagner, Richard Strauss and others led to the breakdown of tonality with composers such as Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern abandoning tonality completely and ushering in the 12 tone system of composition which is not based upon major and minor scales at all!

Eventually in the 20th century we had another breakdown in music which ushered in minimalism. This form of music took incredibly complex music and broke it down into simple patterns and textures that interweave in new and complex ways. In the video provided with this article I play an excerpt from Orphee Suite for Piano by Phillip Glass to give you an idea of what minimalist music can sound like.

Welcome to Part 2 in our series on the Chopin G minor Ballade. In Part 1 we discussed how the middle section of this piece requires you to switch your techniques rapidly. We are going to cover the next section which doesn’t get any easier. I’ll provide some tips on how to approach this section and practice techniques that will help you master it.

Let’s discuss this first section:

With the right hand, you have a very quick passage that requires a lot of finger work. As I’ve recommended in the past lesson, try taking the passage slowly and working your way up to speed. Start at a comfortable speed and practice with the metronome. Once you have the section down without any issues turn the metronome speed up one notch and start again. Repeat this process until you have the section up to speed. Make sure that you delineate all notes clearly.

Let’s focus now on the left-hand, which has this particular rhythm:

It’s very snappy and precise and you want to bring out the rhythm of this particular section against the fast passage in the right hand. As always I recommend slow practice but in this particular section, I recommend exaggerating the rhythm. Instead of playing the eighth notes as written, play them as sixteenth notes.

So right here, for example, you can wait an extra sixteenth rest and play the following note as a sixteenth note instead of an eighth note as written. Now why would you want to play the rhythm wrong and not as written? Well, this is only for your slow practice. When the piece gets up to full speed sometimes the eighth notes can sound limp and you want to accentuate the snappy rhythm of these notes. The best way to do this is to wait and play these as sixteenth notes instead of in your slow practice. Once you get this section up to speed, you will be prepared to play these notes quickly enough; you will notice the difference in your playing.

Let’s go on to the next section in this piece:

This section is best practiced by playing two-note groups together in the right hand. Once you start to get comfortable in your slow practice you can break up these chords and play the notes as written. Why should you practice this section in chords? Because you can train your fingers to be in the right position before you have to play the notes. Doing this will greatly benefit your finger positions and allow you to be much more comfortable when playing up to tempo.

You’ve probably seen this in music and you might have wondered exactly what a dot does to a note. To preface, we are not talking about staccato notes (which have dots above or below notes) but dots next to notes that look like this:

The short answer is that these dots change the length of a note.

The real question is how much does it change the length of a note? There is an explanation that many teachers and pianist use that might seem a little confusing. If you add a dot to a note it adds half the value of the note. With a little dissection this is easy enough to understand but trying to teach this to younger students can be a real challenge. Luckily, there is a simpler way to explain this.

I typically teach students what these dots mean using the following phrase: a dot after a note adds the value of the next faster note. This is really simple if you know all your notes because each note is half the value of the next note. For example, if you have a whole note, it’s the value of two half notes. This chart should help explain things a bit more:

So knowing this information, what would a dot do to each these notes? Luckily we have another chart here that will help explain it:

So a dot next to a whole note would mean that you would have a whole note plus the value of a half note. A half note with a dot next to it would mean you have a half note plus the value of a quarter note. The same rule applies for all notes with a dot next to them. I always encourage my students to think of dots next to notes as adding the value of the next faster note because it makes it easier to figure out.

There is even one more way of looking at this to break down dots next to notes that could be potentially easier for students. Breaking down the true value of notes with dots next to them actually doesn’t take any sort of addition at all. In this chart we break down the true value of each of these notes:

As you can see:

A dotted whole note = three half notes

A dotted half note = three quarter notes

A dotted quarter note = three eighth notes

A dotted eighth note = three sixteenth notes

When you think about it this way it could be even easier for you to break down rhythms. What about when you see two dots next to a note? This is going to be covered next time!

This is a very common problem for many performers and it can be a challenge to overcome. Learning the correct playing methods for different room acoustics can be tough but I’m going to give you a few tips to help you out.

I performed a concert recently at the Laguna Beach Art Musuem. The room was incredibly loud – it was in a museum gallery with wood floors and a tall ceiling. The sound reverberates incredibly well in that room and with too much volume it can be overwhelming to the audience. So how do you cope with something like this?

If you’ve been to classical concerts with multiple movements you might have heard people applauding in the wrong places. For the uninitiated, it can be a challenge. You have just heard a performance of a piece with a heroic ending and then there is silence from the audience! As a musician – especially when it comes to solo performances – you want to avoid these random bouts of applause since they can disrupt the flow of the music. This article provides some tips on how to avoid applause in the wrong places and how to deal with them when it inevitably happens.

As a performer, you will want to give your audience clues where to clap. I recently performed the Schumann G minor Sonata (a 4 movement work) and the 1st movement ends with such a ferocious finale that you might think it’s the end of the piece. If you finish the first movement in a dramatic fashion and put your arms in your lap, you will probably garner applause. While you don’t want to temper your performance diminishing the energy, when you finish, keep your hands over the keys ready to play the next movement. This will signal to the audience that there is more to come. While there is no way to definitively stop an audience from clapping, this will certainly help cue them to the structure of the work.

So what do you do if the audience begins to clap anyway? Well, there are a number of ways to handle this and some are better than others. Some people might actually stand up and take a bow in the middle of the piece. I wouldn’t suggest doing this because it disrupts the flow of the piece, however, you should acknowledge the audience in some way. You can look at them and thank them by nodding your head and smiling. They will eventually stop and everyone will realize in a few moments that there is more to come. You can handle this in different ways. I have seen performers put their hands in the air and signal the audience to stop! While I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this, it certainly will help to quiet the audience. No matter what you do, it’s best to acknowledge the audience in some way so they don’t feel embarrassed.

A successful performance is not just about how you play, it comprises the entire presentation. If you find yourself in a situation where the audience has reacted before they should, you should simply thank them and move on. After all, they are there to see you and if they are applauding before they should it’s simply a sign that they have enjoyed the performance so far.

This question is very important because it’s something we all consider from time to time – using shortcuts to gain traction in our development as musicians. The thought of using a device outside of playing music to improve as a musician might sound attractive, but is it really effective? And more importantly, is it safe?

The first thing that comes to my mind when I think of this question is Robert Schumann. Schumann went through painstaking efforts to try and strengthen his fingers (his fourth finger specifically) using different devices he created. He ended up with disastrous results; he destroyed his hands and was unable to perform ever again. Schumann was a little unorthodox with his techniques in strengthening his fingers but it’s a cautionary tale for all of us.

Are there any devices you can use today that will safely enable you to strengthen your fingers? Yes but they won’t be the ultimate solution to your problem. When I’m on vacation sometimes I will bring some stress balls – those spongy balls you can squeeze in your hand to alleviate stress – that will allow me to keep my hands in shape when I’m away from the piano for an extended period of time. However, these won’t necessarily increase your hand strength to the point of making you a better pianist. However, it can help you to maintain muscle tone when you are away from your instrument. Make sure you find something that will create some resistance for your hands but not something that will involve a lot of stress or pressure on the muscles in your hands, wrists or arms.

There is no substitute though for simply practicing and playing your instrument. Sitting at your desk and squeezing a stress ball will not make you a better pianist. If you practice your music consistently you won’t need to strengthen your hands as it is something that will occur naturally over time.

It is a good idea though to have something in place when you leave your instrument for an extended period of time. Be careful not to jump right into virtuoso music as soon as you get back on the piano – you could end up seriously injuring yourself! This is where something like the stress balls can help keep up your strength even while you’re away from the piano.