Tag Archives: bach

Wood Pianos VS. Ebony Black Pianos

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I have an interesting question for you. Which are better, wood pianos or black ebony pianos? When you go to the symphony, onstage you see that classic black piano. You generally think of a piano as being black. But sometimes you see exotic woods, like rosewood. You see carved pianos, and they cost substantially more sometimes. But is there a benefit to wood pianos versus black pianos? That’s an interesting question with many ramifications.

Structurally and sonically, there is absolutely no difference between wood and ebony pianos.

There are many elements of the woods used in pianos that do make a tremendous difference in the sound quality. But pianos have had veneers on them for well over 100 years. So whatever the veneer is on top, whether it has a natural wood finish or a sprayed lacquer, whether it’s high gloss or satin, makes no difference in the sound of the piano. However, the wood underneath that finish, even on the rim of the piano can make a big difference in the tone of the piano. Many Asian production pianos utilize soft luan mahogany which is indigenous to the region. Luan rims are easier to bend than the hardwoods used in American and German pianos. So why do they do it? Since the soundboard is embedded into the rim, having a hardwood in the rim actually becomes part of the resonating chamber. So indeed the wood that a piano is made from does make a difference in the sound, but the finish does not. However, when piano companies are dealing with exotic woods, and intricate carved cases, they may naturally spend more time refining the instrument to the highest level since it provides a showcase for their work.

The wood of the soundboard has much more significance.

Almost all pianos today have spruce soundboards, but there are many different quality levels of spruce. Some soundboards are laminated woods with a cross grain. This kind of defeats the purpose of the fine spruce because generally the cement between those layers is going to inhibit the sound. But a laminated soundboard is far stronger, will last longer and is impervious to cracks, just like plywood is stronger than regular hardwood. So there are many things to consider about the different woods of a piano. For example, if you had the opportunity to have a wood piano or a black piano, and you really didn’t care one way or the other, black pianos tend to be more popular. So if you ever were to sell that piano, you might have an easier time selling a black piano than a wood piano.

There are people who love wood pianos and are willing to pay a premium.

With new pianos, wood finishes tend to cost a little more because they have to have matching veneers instead of essentially just spraying over with black paint. However, if you have a really beautiful wood piano, even though it might be harder to connect with someone who’s looking for that particular shade of wood, that person may be willing to pay a premium to get it. So there’s a lot to weigh here in choosing the finish of a piano. Ultimately you should get what you like because chances are, you’re not buying a piano to sell it. You’re buying a piano to enjoy it!

Choose the finish that you like best!

Get what you like! If you ever need to sell your piano, you want to have a long enough timeline so that you’re not under the gun. Because it’s not always easy to connect with someone looking for the piano you happen to have. Anything that’s relatively expensive, you want to have time to list it and get it into shape. But in terms of the sound and the playing, there is absolutely no difference in the finish of your piano!

Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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Make Your Practice Hard and Performing Will Be Easy!

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about making your practice hard so your performing will be easy. I have a strong recommendation for those of you who want to maximize the effectiveness of your practice. Now this isn’t for everyone. There are many reasons why people study the piano. There are some people who just want to enjoy playing the piano and not work too hard. For those of you who feel that way, this message is irrelevant. But for the rest of you who really want to get as much done for the time you spend working at the piano, this will be very helpful for you!

When I practice, I want to get as much done as I can in my limited time.

There’s almost no one who has the freedom to practice as much as they want. It’s very rare to have that opportunity. Even conservatory piano majors have to do their coursework. And some people have to work side jobs and learn accompaniments as well. So you want to maximize the effectiveness of the time you have to spend at the piano. What does that mean? It means you’re going to work really hard! But does it mean hours and hours of scales, arpeggios, exercises, Czerny? No, quite the contrary. Exercises are what you do when your brain is tired. You can just work your fingers and do your scales, thirds, octaves, and anything else that you want to do work on. Go for it! But that’s not the hardest thing. The hardest thing is learning music.

Learning music is the most important thing that we do as pianists.

Learning music is important in all styles of music. Of course, other styles have other disciplines. But certainly with solo music and accompaniments, you’re learning scores. And if you try to make that an easier process, you will be less equipped to handle performing. For example, I know people who spend hours and hours a day reading through music. Now that’s good for developing your reading. You will become a better reader if you do that. Although I know people who spend a great deal of time, but they never quite get their playing to a high level. They spend hours and hours practicing. But it’s not really practicing, because practicing is a thought process.

If you’re just mindlessly reading notes and letting your fingers follow the score, even if you’re working for hours and hours a day, you might not accomplish very much. But when you memorize music, methodically working through small chunks and assimilating them, getting them on a high level, that takes tremendous mental effort! Almost as tough is refining the music you’ve already learned. You must go through slowly and carefully, making sure every nuance of every phrase is just as the composer wrote, studying the score and then taking small enough sections that you can assimilate and incorporate all those tiny refinements of the score into your playing. That is really hard work! When you’ve done even an hour of that kind of practice, you will know you’ve done some work. And you’ll have something accomplished for it!

This kind of practice is very hard, but extremely rewarding!

When you’re performing a piece that you have on a high level, it is such a joy. To have that kind of command over the music is a great experience. It’s worth the sweat and effort you put into your practice! So remember to make your practicing hard, so you’re performing is easy. It’s worth it! And for those of you who don’t feel that way, you’re going to enjoy what you’re doing. But understand that you’re not going to get that pristine high level in your playing by just having casual practice. If that’s what you’re after, that’s fine. But if you want to play on a high level, you must go through the steps. Make your practicing worth it! Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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How to Play for Your Piano Teacher

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about how to play for your piano teacher. I’ve been doing a lot of teaching lately, and I’m enjoying it. I’ve been so busy for the past few years I didn’t have time for much teaching. Now I’ve made the time, and through the wonder of video chat, I have students from all over the world! They are amazing, talented, and dedicated students. It’s a real joy! But I’ve noticed something with my students. If you are a piano student you’ve probably had this experience. You work all week long, then you go to play for your teacher and everything messes up! It’s so frustrating! You want to show your teacher what you’ve done, but you can’t play! Everything’s coming out wrong! Things that you never messed up are going wrong and you feel like an idiot! What can you do about that?

You don’t have to try to impress your teacher.

I want to reflect upon this whole notion of performing for your teacher. You have to understand that your teacher is a confidant. Your teacher is someone who really understands you, if you have the right teacher. You don’t have to try to impress them. They are there to nurture you and to help you get the most out of your practice. It’s not the most important thing for you to play your absolute best when you’re first playing for your teacher. Of course, it’s a great frustration if you don’t play your best when playing for your teacher. But how well you perform a piece for your teacher at the beginning of a lesson is really not the most important thing. A teacher can look beyond those things. The things that they’re going to go over with you have very little to do with the quality of that particular performance. Having said that, I know you want to play better for your teacher so I am going to address that.

You want to show that you can play the music. How can you prepare for such a thing?

It’s amazing how you can play something by yourself at home a bunch of times, and it sounds great! But as soon as you play for someone else, you make mistakes. With in-person lessons the classic statement was, “It went better at home.” Now there’s no excuses. You are at home! So what can you do to prepare so that you can play your best? You must prepare by performing. This is critical. A couple of days before your lesson when you feel really confident, set up the same device that you’re going to have your lesson on and record yourself as if it’s a performance for your teacher. If you go to lessons in person, imagine being in the room you’re going to be in with your teacher. Then make yourself play through your music and see what happens. Psych yourself into the reality that this is the moment you are playing for your teacher. You can actually create that same sense. You’ll always learn something from this. You could even record it. Then if it comes out great, you can send it to your teacher to prove to them that you can play that thing that you never seem to be able to play for them at lessons!

Playing for your teacher can be more relaxed than a performance.

Let’s say you’re working on a new piece. Maybe you don’t have the whole piece learned, so you have to take the end pretty slow. Should you take the whole piece dramatically slower to accommodate the end? Well, not necessarily. In a performance situation, whatever speed you can play the whole piece is the tempo you must play from the beginning. But you might have worked extensively on the exposition of a sonata, yet the development you really haven’t gotten into that much. So you want to play the first part up to tempo to work with your teacher to get it on an even higher level. Then at a certain point you can say, “Okay, this part, I don’t know as well, I’m going to play slower now.”

Changing tempo throughout a piece that you’re learning is not in anybody’s best interest. But playing the first section at a tempo that you’re comfortable with, and then slowing down when you need to, can be appropriate at your lesson. If you have only part of a piece memorized, you can reference the score. You wouldn’t do these things during a performance, but these are all valid ways of playing for your teacher!

Remember, your teacher is there for you!

It’s not about impressing your teacher. It’s about being able to show some kind of representation in the course of the lesson so your teacher can help guide your practice techniques for the following week. So it’s not necessarily about impressing them. However, if you take my advice and practice performing, and record your performance as if it’s your teacher listening to you, you may be able to have more satisfaction in that initial performance at your lesson and subsequent playing during the course of your lesson. Then you won’t feel frustrated that you’re not showing a true representation of your abilities.

I want everyone to know I am not judging you! For my students, I am only here to help you. I hope this helps all you piano students out there feel more confident when playing for your teachers! And teachers, remember to be sensitive to your students so they can feel good about coming into lessons and playing their best, which is what it’s all about. We’re all on the same side here! Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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How to Learn a Fugue

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about how to learn and memorize fugues. Fugues are some of the most complex examples of counterpoint. Most music has melody and harmony. Typically on the piano, you have the melody in the right hand and accompaniment in the left-hand. But with a fugue, you have several intertwining melodies. To demonstrate this, I’ve chosen the C Minor Fugue from The Well-Tempered Clavier book one. I’m choosing this one because it’s a relatively simple fugue. I want you to understand the methodology, because it’s going to apply to all counterpoint and all fugues.

A fugue has a subject and a countersubject.

The entire fugue is built upon the subject and countersubject. The subject is stated and then the subject repeats starting in a different key, typically, the dominant (5 notes above the starting note). So with the C Minor Fugue from The Well-Tempered Clavier, the subject repeats starting on G. While that’s happening, the counter subject is introduced. Amazingly, the entire fugue is crafted from those two elements! The subject is of particular importance. So you want to bring out the subject wherever it occurs. Of course it will start with just the subject, but then when the subject returns in the dominant, you want to bring that out more than the countersubject. Throughout the entire fugue you want to bring out the subject whenever it occurs.

Sometimes the subject is divided between the hands.

Any of you who follow my YouTube channel knows that I learn music and teach music by absorbing digestible chunks of music at a time. Dividing the hands and learning hands separately is a great way of doing that. Once you can play each hand fluently from memory, you have a good chance of being able to play the hands together and getting that memorized. But with a fugue, sometimes it’s not so neat and tidy! This is true of any music that has substantial counterpoint. When you have a place in the music where the fugue subject is divided between your two hands, you still want to bring out the subject. So anytime the fugue subject is divided between the hands, you want to play it so you hear it when you play hands together. That way, you can bring out the fugue subject, even when it’s divided between the hands.

So aside from learning hands separately, you also want to have the integrity of all the lines so you can hear them. You must not only learn the hands separately, but make sure that you follow each voice through, particularly in instances where a voice is divided between the hands. You need to hear each voice. Play voices by themselves so you can hear them. Then when you play the hands together, even if you do learn hands separately, you can follow through and hear the voices. You don’t want to hear just your separate hands, because they really are not complete by themselves when a subject (or countersubject) is divided between the hands.

That’s the method for learning fugues!

Learning a fugue uses the same methodology as learning any music, but with the extra element of following the counterpoint of all the lines. Now this is a very simple example. Sometimes you have things that get really complicated. You’ll see fugues where notes are constantly dividing between the hands. So you really have to study the score to hear what’s going on and not just abstractly learn each hand separately when voices are divided between the hands since that doesn’t always make sense. I hope this is helpful for you! Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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Family Improvisation

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is personal. I found an old video of an improvisation I did with my nephews which I’m going to share with you today. Google photos is really cool, because you can go through and look up places or time periods. All the pictures or videos you took from that time or place come up. I was just exploring that the other day and found an improvisation I did with some family members almost seven years ago! It was just a spontaneous thing that popped up and I thought you would enjoy it.

Let me tell you a little bit about these guys.

They are my nephews. Both of them are very accomplished musicians. First, there’s Sean Kleve. Sean is a percussionist. He graduated from the Manhattan School of Music. He’s played in all kinds of orchestras and such. He has a great percussion ensemble called Clocks in Motion, which is worth checking out. In high school he was very accomplished on piano. He even played the Grieg Piano Concerto with orchestra. Currently, he’s got a really cool Twitch. If you go to Twitch you can see his video streaming playing harpsichord. So if you’re into harpsichord, you’ll definitely want to check that out!

My other nephew, who plays the other piano in this video is Evan Kleve. Evan is a really accomplished violinist. He’s done everything from playing with symphony orchestras to touring with rock bands. He’s also a really fine trumpeter. One night, it was late, there were no preconceived notions, we just started playing together. I thought what came out was really cool! I encourage all of you, whether you have training or no training, to try improvising. Sometimes things just come together. I hope you enjoy this.

See the video here

You may have noticed a little cameo from my daughter, Jenny, who walked through. This was one of those late night jams. All kinds of things were happening. We had a great time. Nearly my entire extended family are musicians of one sort or another. Whenever we get together, there’s all kinds of music! I thought I’d share this little personal glimpse with you. I hope you enjoyed it! If you like these sorts of things, let me know in the comments below! Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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The Ultimate Piano Scam

Hi, I’m Robert Estrin and this is LivingPianos.com. Today’s subject is about the ultimate piano scam. I made a video years ago about piano scams. It’s a pretty popular video. Apparently, a lot of people have been the subject of attempted piano scams. There are so many people doing the same scams over and over again! I’m going to tell you how you can spot a scammer!

If you are selling a piano, be aware of this common scam.

Let’s say you have a piano for sale and somebody is interested in the piano. Everything goes easier than you think it will, no negotiation, not as many questions as you would expect. This is a telltale sign of a scam, but you never know, so you follow through. At the end of the line they want to buy the piano. Then, sure enough, a cashier’s check arrives in the mail. You look at the check and see it’s made out for more money than the cost of the piano. Next thing you know, you get an email. (By the way, these scams are almost always through email, rarely on the phone.) In the email, they explain that the check includes extra money for you to pay their piano mover, as they have arranged for the move. Then they have you send money to the mover, the $500 or whatever it is. Then of course you find out that the check is no good. I’m so tired of this scam. People are doing this same scam over and over. A little originality, please. Well, be careful what you wish for! Because we did get one recently that was very creative.

A new piano scam.

I want to bring this scam to your attention because we got contacted by another potential victim of this scam in an interesting way, which I’m going to get to at the end of this article. Here’s how this one goes. If you’re a piano teacher or a piano store, or anyone who has anything to do with piano, you may get an email saying, “My father just died and I have to get rid of his piano. I just want it to go to a good home.” Right away, it might raise suspicion. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. But that’s not always the case. You can miss out on a lot of opportunities in life if you always assume any good thing is a scam, because a lot of times they aren’t! We do sometimes get offers for free pianos. Sometimes it’s harder to sell a piano than it’s worth for the time it takes. So it wasn’t so unusual that we got this offer, although this piano was a little bit nicer than most of the free pianos that are offered to us. So we were just waiting to see what would happen next.

We were told the piano was in storage and to contact the moving and storage company. In this case we actually talked to someone on the phone, which is really unusual. Most scams are all done through email because they’re sending a massive number of emails. Also, they might be in a different country and can’t speak English well enough. But these scammers were pretty clever. We got an email from the moving and storage company giving us rates for the move of the piano. They were in a neighboring state. Here’s where it gets really creative. They had a website for the moving company. The website looked totally legitimate. Everything was there, address, phone number, everything.

There are very few national piano movers.

We were actually more excited about the moving company than we were about the free piano! There are so few companies that specialize in long distance piano moves. Walter Piano Transport is a great company, Modern Piano Moving is another one. Keyboard Carriage is a company that caters mostly to the piano industry. There are just about no other major national piano moving companies. This moving company had different options for one day, four day, or ten day moves at different price points. It never works that way with piano moves. Piano moves are very sporadic. They can sometimes take months, and they usually can’t promise such specific timeframes. I realized it was a scam. That was the tip off. But boy, there was such sophistication in this scheme!

We were recently contacted by someone who was also targeted by the same scam.

Here’s where it gets really crazy. These scammers randomly used pictures from LivingPianos.com of a piano we had for sale years ago. This person was smart enough to search the serial number of the piano and found it on LivingPianos.com. They contacted us and I said, “No, we know nothing about this. In fact, we got emails from people trying to pull off the same scam on us!” So if you get something in your email about a free piano and they have the moving company all lined up, it may look legit, but it’s probably not. So be aware! This is a scam that I hadn’t seen before. I respect the intelligence and how far they went to try to perpetrate the scam. But obviously, ripping people off is something that’s disgusting and should be stopped!

How can you avoid being scammed?

You just have to be diligent and do your homework! Always check the URLs. Also, if there’s an address, go to Google Maps to see if the place actually exists. This moving company was on Google. But if you dig deep, you’ll always be able to uncover these scams for what they are. Be careful out there! And if any of you see something that you think could be a scam, feel free to email us at info@LivingPianos.com and we’ll get to the bottom of it for you! I hope this is helpful for you! Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

THE TOP 5 PIANO SCAMS

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