Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s topic is about the Secret of Music: Order Versus Randomness. This is a weighty topic. The essential truth is that familiarness is comfortable, but if things are too familiar and predictable they can be boring. This is true of everything, not just music. On the other side, randomness is very interesting but it can be difficult to digest. Listening to music that’s all random can sound cacophonous and it’s difficult to make sense of it.
Something that has an element of order but enough randomness to keep you wondering what’s coming next can be very engaging!
Looking at a painting that contains a bunch of random squiggly lines and different colors might be interesting for a while. But it’s exhausting trying to make sense of it, because as humans, we seek to find order in things in order to gain understanding. Conversely, something that is predictably geometric is equally boring since there is nothing new to surprise you and keep you engaged. Elements of both order and randomness are intrinsically important in art and music.
Here’s an historical perspective on this. The origins of written music goes back to Gregorian chant in the 9th century, which was monophonic plainsong based upon liturgical text. The music grew in complexity somewhat during the Renaissance gaining polyphony and other elements. Music got more and more complex in the later Baroque era. In fact, during Bach’s later years, he was writing some fantastically complex music like Art of the Fugue. He had actually lost favor in the public and many composers writing the new simpler, structured Classical style were more popular than he was, including his own son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach! Can you imagine such a thing? So music became more and more complex. I wouldn’t describe the late Baroque music as being random, but if you listen to a complex multi-voice fugue it can almost feel random the first time you hear it if you’re not musically astute and comfortable with that level of complexity. This is one of the reasons why music with a structured form became much more popular in the Classical era with Mozart and Haydn. With very clear repetition, development and recapitulation of themes, it was very digestible music. Over the centuries, music became more and more complex once again. Beethoven expanded the form. Then in the Romantic era, music became more overtly emotional.
Harmonies became more and more complicated, until finally composers were writing things that were not based upon tonality.
Alexander Scriabin, at the turn of the 20th century, was writing pieces based upon all different intervals, even ninths! Bartok was also writing music that bordered on atonality. But it was Arnold Schoenberg who came up with the twelve-tone system which systematically avoided repetition of any of the 12 possible notes in what was called a tone row. Music composed with the 12-tone system was extremely difficult to sing. Things went even further with Anton Webern who serialized not just pitches, but rhythms, systematically avoiding rhythmic patterns. Even textures and articulations were serialized in a similar manner. So, there was very little to grab onto. As a work of sheer mathematics, many of these works were brilliant compositions. But this music is extremely challenging to listen to.
This led to a major breakdown of music once again which led to minimalism.
People wanted something that was digestible with repeated patterns. Not to say that minimalism is simple, because the way things are nested and overlapped can be quite fascinating. But compared to what came before, it was much more listenable. So, you see the historical pattern of music becoming more and more complex over time until there’s a breakdown to something simpler, and then the process starts all over again. The intrinsic nature of what makes music tick is that balance between order and randomness.
I hope this is enlightening for you. I’d love to hear your opinions on this subject! It’s really fascinating how our brains perceive things. The comfort of the familiar, and the exploration of the new, and how those two things are balanced is really what it’s all about in music and art, and in life itself! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
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Hi, this is Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.com with some great news for you: we are putting together a complete piano course for you! Since you are followers of Living Pianos, you get to decide what will be offered!
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. There are many aspects to becoming a successful musician. Like any other field, it requires a combination of talent, intelligence, training, and consistent work. We could explore all the intricacies of the nuts and bolts of carving out a career. But today I am going to focus attention on one particular aspect of how to approach developing a career in music which relates to almost any endeavor. Sometimes, the hardest thing is just knowing where to begin. You are faced with a myriad of possibilities of what to do each moment of every day. The great trumpeter Adoph Herseth said:
“Analysis = Paralysis”
It would be comforting to have a clear vision of all the steps involved in carving out a successful life in music or whatever it is you want to achieve. But the reality is often murky with vague possibilities of how to approach building a meaningful career. But sometimes you just have to do something in order to know how to proceed.
It’s like if you were lost in the woods. Obviously, just standing there, you aren’t going to escape to safety before dark. But you certainly don’t want to get deeper into the abyss surrounding you! So, what is necessary is to start moving and looking for clues. Perhaps you know that there is a mountainside beyond the road you entered the forest. But you can’t see through the thick brush. But if you come upon a stream, you can notice the direction of the water and surmise that it must be coming from a higher elevation. So, you can follow the stream and hope it leads to something familiar. Then maybe there is a clearing and you can see the mountainside and then you know you are on the right path. Or perhaps not! You may have to make adjustments along the journey to safety. It’s exactly the same thing when trying to carve out a new path in your life.
You must take steps in the general direction you want to go even though you don’t know exactly where you are headed!
As time goes on, you make the necessary adjustments in your direction in order to achieve the desired goal. You will learn how to achieve success as you face obstacles learning what works and what doesn’t work. Whole new avenues of possibilities will emerge as you bravely power on without the comfort of a clear plan. This is the way most people find fulfillment in their lives. Only from the outside looking in, in hindsight does it ever appear that people know exactly what they are doing.
Adversity and unexpected twists and turns form the foundation for building a plan of action.
So, even if you don’t know exactly where you are going or how you are going to get there, you must move in the general direction in order to gain clues and insights as to how to achieve a fulfilling life in music or whatever it is you have a passion for in life – just like finding your way out when you are lost in the wilderness.
I hope this life lesson resonates with you. I would love to hear from those of you who have either bravely forged ahead in life even though you didn’t know exactly where you were headed, or from those of you who are trying to gain the courage to take the first step to a new life. You must keep moving forward as you learn from both adversity and success.
Thanks for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s topic is about how to approach teaching music lessons online. There are many challenges. I deal with piano, and a lot of you are pianists as well. But this applies to all music teachers and the particular challenges of dealing with younger students is really important. It’s an interesting thing that everybody’s going online now. We’re all interfacing with video chat! One of the great things is that people realize now that they’re not restricted to just their neighborhood teacher. Now, the world is at your fingertips.
Teaching music online, particularly to young children presents uni
Conveying hand position, relaxed shoulders, and even how people sit at the piano can be tough when teaching remotely. Parents can help tremendously in this regard. In addition, kids’ emotions can be a bit fragile at the moment since everything has changed in their lives. It’s important to keep things fun and positive.
Like so many musicians, my daughter Jenny had a packed schedule of performances with orchestras cancelled indefinitely. Fortunately, teaching is one area musicians can still be engaged in. However, it requires an understanding of how to deal with a new medium.
We have a very special guest. I’m incredibly pleased to bring today somebody who has been teaching since she was a teenager. It’s been the whole crux of her career along with performing and composing, my sister Coren Estrin Mino. Hello Coren!
Coren Estrin Mino:
Hi, Bob. It’s really good to see you, although I wish we could be in person.
Robert Estrin:
This is pretty good, actually.
Coren Estrin Mino:
This is amazing. This is so fun.
Robert Estrin:
I don’t know about you, but I’ve been doing virtual visits with more people in the last couple of months than I’ve done in the rest of my life combined.
Coren Estrin Mino:
Yes, this is true. I’m visiting with a lot of people I haven’t seen in a really long time.
Robert Estrin:
It’s opening everybody’s consciousness. We’re going to talk about the unique challenges of teaching music lessons online, because there are people out there trying to figure out how to deal with all this technology. I remember when I first started doing this, I had a friend who I wanted to do a video chat with. I’m pretty adept at technology and my friend happens to be a computer teacher. Even we were struggling for 10 or 15 minutes to get any of the platforms to work! It’s a funny thing, sometimes everything just works seamlessly and other times, nothing seems to work. Tell me about what your experiences have been. Afterall, you’ve been teaching in person for so long.
What have been the challenges for you in getting set up in this whole new world online?
Coren Estrin Mino:
Well, in a nutshell, everything! I am not computer illiterate by any stretch, but this was really new for me and I was really struggling my first two weeks of doing this in March. Terrible sound, just terrible glitches, sound cutting out, a delay between the visual and the audio. There were so many problems! So I was complaining about this to my son, Brian, who helped me enormously. He told me some things I needed to do to improve my setup. The main thing he told me about were these headphones with the microphone. One of the things that was happening to me my first couple of weeks, I was losing my voice because all of us, when we are video chatting, if our headphones don’t have our own voice in them, we don’t realize we’re shouting. There’s a psychological distancing from your device. You feel like you’re far away from people. So you tend to shout. I was getting very hoarse, because if you’re giving 12 to 15 piano lessons a day and you’re shouting all day long, your voice doesn’t hold up. And mine certainly didn’t.
Robert Estrin:
I found the same thing at first when I was doing video lessons. I just used my iPad. I have a nice iPad Pro with a big screen which works great. The audio and the video are fine. But in order to get the piano keys in the shot, the iPad had to be far enough away. So, I had to be shouting. It was really exhausting until I figured out how to incorporate streaming into my studio.
You had talked to me about your issues with the internet. What was your solution for that?
Coren Estrin Mino:
That’s a really good question. Brian recommended that I get an extra router, which is made by a company called, Orbi. That improved the sound. Then, I upgraded my internet service as well. Those changes made huge improvements. There was no longer a delay between audio and visual. One of the things that kept happening was a bubbly sound. It almost sounded like my piano was underwater, and that disappeared completely. The one thing that I will never have any control over is what my students are using, what their internet is, what device they’re doing their piano lessons on. So I have at least improved my situation as much as I can without putting thousands of dollars into it.
Robert Estrin:
There are some other tips that people should be aware of. These video chat platforms are not meant for music. They are optimized for spoken voice. There are all kinds of settings for noise reduction of different types. If you have those enabled, which they are by default, when you first start chatting, when you play anything quiet, the notes sound really weird. I think it’s important for people to understand that there are settings in Zoom and in Skype and in some of the other platforms. We’re using Zoom right now for everybody. And one nice thing about Zoom is that you can record your call, just like we’re doing. That’s how we’re able to share this with you.
We disabled the noise reduction on both ends so that we can play music with no problems. That’s really essential when you’re giving lessons, isn’t it?
Coren Estrin Mino:
Yeah, absolutely. There are some entertaining things that happen on their end, I’ll hear their dogs barking or somebody chatting in the next room. And that actually is a bit of a problem. My headphones pick up ambient noise almost as loud as the sounds I really want to hear, which is my students talking or playing the piano. So, I sent out a message to everybody to please try to keep the noise level down in their homes while the piano lessons are going on.
Robert Estrin:
Now, I know you teach a wide range of students from beginners to advanced adults, but teaching younger children online, I’m wondering how you engage them. They’re looking on a screen, maybe some of them are even on phones. How do you deal with that?
What methodology is there for keeping children engaged remotely?
Coren Estrin Mino:
That is actually a huge issue. Anybody who’s teaching children online, any subject, knows it’s not easy to engage children remotely. The best solution for that is to have a parent sitting in the room with the child.
Robert Estrin:
It’s got to be the right parent though, of course.
Coren Estrin Mino:
Well, I’ve had good luck. The one little issue that comes up with parents sometimes is a parent wants to jump in and answer a question. If the child doesn’t answer right away, they’ll just jump in and tell the child the answer. That’s a natural response. Most parents though let me conduct the lesson and I will say, “Could you please point to measure three?” And they’ll do that. So the child knows where we are. That’s the biggest problem, a child not understanding. If I say we’re on line two, measure three, they don’t respond to that. They don’t understand that. If I stop them to look at a little correction, their default is to start again from the beginning.
Robert Estrin:
That’s a timeless problem with students anyway. I have a video on that subject!
Coren Estrin Mino:
So, you know what I’m talking about. It’s very hard for me to convey where we are in the music. One of the most important facets of my teaching has had to disappear. I play duets with my students, especially the young ones.
Not being able to play duets with my students has been very challenging because it’s one of the best ways to get young students to sense pulse in music.
Robert Estrin:
Also great for sight reading.
Coren Estrin Mino:
And dynamics, or even a music that they have prepared that they are not sight reading, pieces they have actually learned. By me playing a duet with them, I can exaggerate the dynamics a little bit and say, “Copy what I’m doing.” So, they understand how loud is loud, how soft is soft. And I can’t do that now. So, I’ve had to rely on some ingenuity, I guess, in trying to get kids to do things. Plus, I have to always make sure that what they’re doing is what I’m hearing. The electronics make dynamics, tone, and balance very difficult to hear sometimes, especially if they are on devices that are old or not great to begin with. Phones are not necessarily bad. If they have a brand new iPhone, for example, I’m going to get good sound from that.
Robert Estrin:
Right. In terms of the transmission.
I would imagine it’s hard for them to see if you’re trying to show them anything on a small screen.
Coren Estrin Mino:
Exactly. Well, I don’t do a lot of that. Sometimes I will pick up a book and I’ll say, “This is what I’m talking about right here.” I’ll resort to pointing to the place in the score. For a while I had thought of getting a little handheld camera, but my son informed me that even though for people who are way more tech savvy than I, they could go back and forth between the computer and the little camera easily. For me, that was just a step that would have been too time consuming to do quickly in a lesson.
Robert Estrin:
Another thing you can do with some of these platforms like Zoom is screen-sharing. So if you have something up on your computer screen, instead of seeing you, they’ll see what you’re seeing on the computer, and that could be one way of sharing.
Coren Estrin Mino:
That’s a great idea. I’m mostly with my students using FaceTime. Almost all my students have Apple products. I’m also using some Skype and a couple students are using Zoom.
Robert Estrin:
Right. I think that Skype and FaceTime actually have the best video quality, but Zoom is very flexible.
Coren Estrin Mino:
Exactly. So those have been some of my challenges. I did send home a note to parents, to please purchase a tripod for their devices. I’m getting very tired of phones falling off stacks of books or a phone being on the edge of the piano. Whatever end of the piano the phone is on, I’m either hearing way too much bass or way too much treble. So, a little bit of distance from the keyboard makes it so that I can hear a truer sound as well as being better visually. I don’t like when I can see the keys, but I can’t see my student’s face. That’s very uncomfortable for me. With a lot of the phones that’s what’s happening. And I don’t like that.
Robert Estrin:
I’m with you there.
For everybody out there, are you still accepting students?
Coren Estrin Mino:
Yes, I am accepting students, particularly adults, because they can come in the morning. So, yes, so I am more than happy to speak with anybody who is interested.
Robert Estrin:
I know that you always have a packed schedule because you’ve been teaching for so long. When did you start teaching?
Coren Estrin Mino:
I have been teaching since I was 13.
Robert Estrin:
13? Wow!
Coren Estrin Mino:
Yes. I started taking students at 13 and our dad started giving me students when I was about 15. Then when I went to college, you inherited my students.
Robert Estrin:
That’s right. And that’s when I started assisting dad. That’s what got both of us into it from such a young age.
Coren Estrin Mino:
That’s right. I did the same thing with my children. And I know you did the same thing with yours. My children started teaching when they were very, very young, so I think we carried that through very nicely.
Robert Estrin:
So, we’re carrying the torch for future generations! If any of you out there have questions about the technology, you’re welcome to email me. I can tell you what I’m doing and help any of you who are teachers or students trying to figure out how to do all of this. We’re happy to help you, and we’re here for everybody. I want to thank Coren for joining us. And it’s been a pleasure visiting with you virtually.
Coren Estrin Mino:
Yes, it has been.
Robert Estrin:
Coren has had many students go on to illustrious, professional careers as teachers and concert pianists. She’s really good with a wide range of students. So, if you have any questions, address them to me and we’ll help any of you, whatever you’re trying to do with your music! Again, I’m Robert Estrin and this is LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource. Thanks so much for joining us here today. We’ll see you next time.
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Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’ll be examining the pros and cons of digital pianos vs. acoustic pianos. You might think that my opinion would automatically be in favor of acoustic pianos, and I kind of feel that way. However, it’s not a matter of which is better, but which is appropriate for the task.
In some situations, a good digital piano is a great choice.
I have a hybrid instrument that I am developing. With this instrument it’s possible to interface with music software. With a piano, you can put MIDI sensors under the keys that can do some of that. But obviously there are benefits to digital pianos: having different piano sounds, orchestrations, or being able to play with headphones. There are many benefits to technology. Digital pianos don’t require the same maintenance, and they are much more easily moved. Taking even an upright piano to gigs isn’t feasible. Having a good digital piano, one you can put under your arm, is a godsend. So it’s not that one is necessarily better than the other.
What if you have a limited budget for a piano and none of the benefits of a digital piano are particularly important to you?
In that case, should you just automatically get an acoustic piano? Even then, not necessarily. Because if you have a limited amount of money to spend on a piano, for way under $3,000 you can get some seriously good digital pianos. Looking at acoustic pianos in the $3,000 price range, your options are severely limited. You will likely be limited to short uprights with slower actions than grand pianos, and they will have an anemic sound in the bass. You’re not going to get much of an acoustic piano at that price point. If you are looking for something closer to $1,000, good luck finding any kind of acoustic piano in the used market that doesn’t require a lot of work. Additionally, you’re going to have to spend hundreds of dollars just to get it moved into your home and tuned. At that price point, a digital piano could be a better choice for you.
It all comes down to your personal preferences and situation.
While I love playing my grand piano, I also love technology and what it affords. There are many benefits to each of these. You have to find what works for you and what’s important to you. How you’re using the instrument, where you’re playing it, and what your goals are are all important things to consider. If you want to have a concert grand bass in an instrument that’s the size of an upright, you’re not going to be able to achieve that with an acoustic piano. There is a lot to consider with finding the right instrument for yourself. I hope this has been helpful for you. If any of you have questions about this, you’re welcome to contact me anytime. This is my passion and I’m happy to share it with you!
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Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s question is about what makes a pianist’s sound unique. This is a really tough question to answer, but I’m going to do my best!
My wife is a flutist. When she was very young, she studied with some great concert flutists. At one point she heard her teacher play her cheap student level flute. Sure enough, it no longer sounded like a cheap flute. It sounded like this great flutist! With wind instruments, it’s obvious. And it’s most obvious with singers. As soon as you hear a voice, you know who it is.
If you hear Frank Sinatra, there’s no doubt about who you’re listening to.
With piano, it’s much further removed from singing, certainly. It isn’t even like the distinctive sounds of wind and string players. But indeed, there are unique sounds different pianists produce. I grew up idolizing Horowitz and Rubinstein. The whole methodology of their pianistic approach was so drastically different from one another. So, this enters into it. Certainly, physiology has something to do with the sound of the piano as well. A massive man might have a bigger sound compared to a very slight man or woman. But not always. It goes much deeper. How you hear things will affect the way you approach the keyboard, and results in very different sound production.
What are some of those differences? Well, I was trained from a very young age by my father, Morton Estrin, to have the weight of the arms supported by the fingers instead of having limp fingers floating in midair and letting the fingers push down. Now, in very fast passages that’s exactly what you want to do, because you can’t support much weight when you’re going very quickly. But in a slow melody, you certainly want to have a sense of line. And the best way to get that is to use the weight of the arm. Using this method you can produce a fluid line on the piano like a singer. Playing just with the fingers, without supporting with the weight of the arm, results in a less fluid performance. Naturally, how the pedal comes into play also affects the tone tremendously.
There are some pianists who produce such unique sounds that you know who they are instantly!
I find this amazing. With the human voice, you’ve got the whole inside of the body and the vocal cords and the intonation of speech. On a wind instrument, you have the lips and you also have the throat and the vibrations within the chest cavity. There is so much more to identify sound. What do you have with the piano? The tone is produced by hammers hitting strings. How the heck do you achieve a distinct sound? Well, just like I have revealed previously, growing up I had very small, weak fingers, and yet I grew up hearing my father and some of his spectacular students. I always would strive to get that big beautiful sound. In fact, I contorted my body trying to make my spaghetti fingers produce anything close to the sound I heard from my father. But I made it happen in slow music particularly. Fast pieces were a little bit tougher for me having weak fingers, and I didn’t practice a great deal as a young child. But on slow music though, even from the youngest age, I was able to produce the sounds that I heard just from making it happen.
The sound of a pianist comes down to what they hear in their head and achieving that sound.
So that’s the lesson for today. It’s all about the connection of the hands to the ears. And that’s what you want to strive for in your playing so you can express your voice on the piano. I’d love to hear from any of you who have ideas about how to produce a beautiful sound on the piano! There’s a lot more to this subject, and I may produce a whole series about this on my Patreon channel. Thanks to all of you who have subscribed! I’ll see you next time. Again, I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource. Thanks again for joining me.
