Tag Archives: music theory

Why Aren’t Keyboards Divided Into an Even Number of Octaves?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’ll be addressing a question from a viewer. Raymond asks, “On an 88 key piano, the lowest note is A and the highest is C. Why aren’t keyboards divided into an even number of octaves starting and ending on C or A?” This is actually a very good question because it seems so logical. In fact, if you ever look at five octave synthesizers and other portable keyboards, they almost always have an even number of octaves. From C to C, typically four or five octaves. So why aren’t pianos built that way?

Before the piano was invented, there were harpsichords.

Harpsichords had different numbers of keys and even different starting and ending points on the two keyboards, which is a whole story unto itself. The earliest pianos had a limited range of keys, typically around five octaves. You might wonder why. Well, it’s because those are the sounds those early instruments were capable of producing.

If you look at all the works of Mozart and Haydn, for example, they never really exceed that approximate range. It’s remarkable to think that all of the music they wrote was confined to this number of keys, because the piano just didn’t have more keys than that!

Beethoven worked closely with instrument builders expanding the range of the piano.

Expanding the range of the piano was no easy task! As you get higher, the tension of the strings becomes cumulatively enormous. So they started reinforcing the frame of the piano with metal, which eventually led to the full cast iron plate like we have today. Beethoven never reached the full 88 keys in his lifetime. But it’s interesting to see how the evolution of his music was affected by the capabilities of the instruments. Early Beethoven compositions had a much narrower range of keys than later Beethoven works.

How did the piano end up with 88 keys?

Late in the 19th century, most pianos ended at the highest A, and yet they went down to the lowest A. So there was a symmetrical keyboard in terms of the number of octaves! Eventually the high C became more and more common until it became the standard. So why doesn’t it go higher or lower? Well, to answer that question, there are a couple of instruments out there that do explore lower notes. The famous Bosendorfer Imperial Concert Grand, for example, goes all the way to C below the low A! It’s hard to discern pitch there, which is one of the reasons most pianos don’t venture below that low A. The lowest notes on the Bosendorfer Imperial Concert Grand sound a bit unearthly because the vibrations are so slow. You start hearing the separate vibrations instead of the pitch. Our brains almost don’t perceive it as pitch anymore! There is another instrument that also goes down to that low C and that is the Stuart and Sons from Australia.

Those instruments have those low notes, not just for those rare times when you want to take advantage of a lower octave. I know there are a couple of places in the literature where it would be really nice at least to have that low G or F. But it’s also because whenever you depress the sustain pedal all the dampers are released allowing those strings to sympathetically vibrate, giving more richness to the overtones of the sound.

What about the other end of the spectrum, going higher than the highest note of the piano?

Well, Stuart and Sons actually has a piano that goes higher than the high C. It goes all the way up to the high B, almost an octave above the highest C! Naturally the big hindrance with those really high notes, even the highest notes on any piano, is that they just don’t last that long. The notes die out in a matter of a second or two. Even the second to highest C on a piano doesn’t last very long. That’s why pianos don’t even have dampers for all those high notes. Dampers end on pianos somewhere in the D sharp to G range. Yamaha’s have dampers up to G. On Baldwins and Steinways, typically the last note that has a damper is D sharp. Do you need dampers on those high notes? Well, it does ring quite a bit. And you’ll find on different pianos, the dampers end in different places. But those extremely high notes have limited value because they don’t last long enough to use them melodically. They’re really just percussive little pecks of sound.

You can hear for yourself why they’ve settled in on A to C.

It’s a musically useful range of tones for the technology brought to bear. That’s the simple answer to your question, Raymond! Thanks for that very insightful question, I hope you’ve enjoyed this! Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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Why You Should Play The Piano With Your Hands Crossed

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about why you should be playing the piano with your hands crossed. Now what do I mean by that? There are a lot of places in music where the hands cross in order to accomplish a certain sound or texture in the playing. But what I’m talking about today is entirely different. The physiology of our hands is just wrong for piano playing in one fundamental way. Your strongest fingers are in the middle and the weakest fingers are on the ends. Yet you want to bring out the treble, you want to bring out the bass. But you have these big, heavy, strong fingers, right in the middle obscuring everything!

If you were to play the piano without compensating for this weakness, you’d end up with a pretty awful sound.

Imagine just letting your thumbs be and letting the balance come out the way it naturally would with the hands. It wouldn’t sound right because the thumbs are just really strong and your pinkies and fourth fingers are weak. So you have to learn how to lessen the thumbs and bring out top notes and bottom notes. This is one of the most difficult aspects of playing the piano! It’s not easy to balance notes because your hands are designed exactly the wrong way to accomplish it! Crossing your hands corrects that imbalance, but obviously presents a whole other set of problems. So I’m not actually recommending you do that. But in a perfect world, there would be some way of achieving this.

So how do you learn to balance?

One terrific way to learn how to balance is to play with different articulations. Underplay the notes that are accompaniment and play legato for melody notes. Playing inner voices with a gentle finger staccato teaches your hand which notes to bring out and which ones are less important. You can do this with virtually any music you play. Interestingly, you don’t have to restrict it to just the top line and the bottom line. When you’re playing counterpoint, for example, you can bring out whatever line you choose. And not just in counterpoint. This is a phenomenal technique for developing the ability to bring out whatever you want within a polyphonic texture. Until we have some way of compensating for the fact that our hands are built backwards for the piano, this is a technique I recommend for you! Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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Is Music Subjective? – What Do You Hear?

This is LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin asking, “What do you hear? – Is music subjective?” How much of our listening experience is cultural and how much is innately human? This is such a tough question to answer. I thought I’d elicit your help in this! I’ve got some original music that no one has ever heard before, which is a perfect vehicle for exploring this subject. But first, let’s talk a little bit about how much of the perception of music is just cultural. For example, we’re all used to hearing scary music, like a diminished seventh chord. It’s classic. It reminds us of old silent movies with a woman tied to the railroad tracks as a train is coming. We assume those emotions just from hearing the music. Is that just because we’ve been conditioned? Yes, that is certainly part of it. But there’s more to it than that!

In a way, tonality goes against nature.

What do I mean by that? Tonal music is based upon the naturally occurring overtone series that’s contained in all pitched sounds. That’s why a C-major chord sounds very natural to us, because indeed every single pitched tone you hear contains those basic pitches in it anyway. Whereas when you listen to harmonies that clash, it’s grading. One of the reasons for this is that some intervals are easy to digest because they are based upon simple math. An octave is a two to one relationship. It sounds very soothing, very easy to calculate. You’re essentially calculating intervals in your head. I bet you didn’t even realize that, but that’s exactly what you’re doing! When you’re hearing an interval, you’re counting vibrations per second. And when they double, that’s an octave. It’s easy to hear, it’s easy to calculate. Your mind can figure that one out. A fifth is a one to three relationship which sounds pure. But when you get to dissonances, they’re very distantly related mathematically, and they’re hard to hear as a result. So some of it really is biological, yet some of it is influenced by our cultural upbringing.

Is major or minor inherently happy or sad?

When you hear a major chord it seems cheerful compared to a minor chord. How much of that is innate in our biology and how much is cultural? A major 3rd is more closely related to the fundamental tone in the overtone series than a minor third. So the simpler relationship may have something to do with why a major 3rd in a major chord is more cheerful sounding to us. I’m going to share with you some original music and you’re going to get the opportunity to comment on LivingPianos.com as well as YouTube to get a discussion going to see how this music makes you feel. I hope you enjoy it!

Watch The Performance

This is music that no one has heard before. You get the chance to comment and get a conversation going! Talk to each other on the blog at LivingPianos.com as well as YouTube, and see what this music makes you feel. Together we can discover how much is innate and how much is cultural in how we hear music. We have people from all around the world hearing this music, people with different cultural biases. We want to hear from all of you. This will be a fun experiment for you to take part in! Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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What is the Most Important Musical Form of All Time? The Sonata

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about the most important musical form, the sonata form. You would not believe how much music is based upon this form. You might wonder why the sonata is so important. What’s the deal about this?

I’ll start with a little bit of background on the sonata.

The sonata form has been around since the Baroque era. But it really came into its own during the Classical era. During the Baroque, composers like Scarlatti wrote sonatas. These were one movement works that had two sections, each of which repeated. But that’s not what we’re talking about today. We’re talking about the classical sonata form, which has endured to this day. Not only are sonatas prevalent from composers from Mozart to Prokofiev and beyond, but concertos, string quartets, symphonies, every kind of musical form you could imagine contains the sonata form within them!

What is a sonata?

I have a video on this which will be in the description below. But briefly, a sonata is a multi-movement work generally, except for those Baroque sonatas that I referenced earlier. Sonatas usually have at least two movements, typically three and oftentimes four movements. These are separate sections that are almost like separate pieces all unto their own. When a performer plays a piece and it seems like it’s over, then they start something that sounds like a whole other piece. Well, that’s a sonata! You’ll see the same thing in trios, quartets, duos, multi-movement works. Almost all multi-movement works contain at least one movement in what’s referenced as the Sonata Allegro form. Allegro means fast. Typically the first movement of a sonata is fast, so it became known as the Sonata Allegro form because the first movement is usually in that form, although other movements can be also.

What is so special about the sonata form that has inspired so many composers to use it over hundreds of years?

I could simplify it first and say, it’s kind of like an ABA. You have a statement, you have something different, and then you have the statement again. It’s a little bit more complex than that. So what I want to do is first of all, is to outline the form for you. And what I’m going to do is make it easy and digestible by picking not a sonata, but a sonatina, which is essentially a short sonata. I’m going to use the famous Clementi Opus 36 number 1 in C Major. I’m going to show you what the form is intrinsically. Then I’m going to talk about how composers have used this form and why it’s so effective and pervasive in all of music.

Sonatas and sonatinas start with a theme called the exposition.

The exposition exposes two themes. This sonatina is in C major. So the first theme, of course, is in C major. It starts off with a catchy little theme. Since it’s a sonatina, it’s short, so it makes it very easy to digest. From there, a second contrasting theme is introduced. There’s a little transition using a G major scale there. That is the introduction into theme two, which always goes to another key. This is a trademark of the sonata form. It generally goes into the theme of the dominant, that is the five. Since this was in C major, it goes into G major. And from that point on, you’re going to see a lot of F sharps since it’s in G major. That is the exposition of this sonatina. You’ll notice when you get to the end of the exposition, there is a repeat sign. The exposition always repeats. Why does it repeat? The idea is to cement these two themes into your head, because after the exposition comes the development section. This is where the music gets really interesting. Composers will take these two themes and go wild with them!

The development section is really interesting.

Mozart and Haydn had development sections that were very compelling. Beethoven exploded the development section making them much longer and going much further afield. Now before I explain the reason why this works so well, I’ve got to tell you the last section. You started with the exposition exposing two themes, the theme in the tonic, and then the theme in the dominant. Then that whole section repeats. Then you have the development section. So what’s next? The recapitulation!

The recapitulation brings back both themes.

At the end of the development section, it comes back like the beginning. Now there are always little deviations that composers make in their writing, because there wasn’t a guide of how to write a sonata. This is just something that happens to work. In the case of the Clementi Opus 36 no.1 in C Major, the recapitulation comes back an octave lower. So we get the theme once again in the tonic, just like it was at the beginning, except an octave lower. But now instead of going to G major, the dominant, it stays in the tonic key of C major starting with the C major scale. So that is basically the form of a sonata. You have two themes in the exposition, tonic and dominant, repeat, development section, then a recapitulation in which the two themes are both in the tonic key of the piece. So, it ends in the key it began.

Why does this form work so well?

The sonata form works because the first themes are so strong in your head. You’ve heard the whole exposition twice through. Look at all the sonatas of Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Schuman, and Chopin. And it isn’t just the Classical era. It goes through the 20th century with Poulenc, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich. And it’s not just sonatas, it’s also in their chamber music. Symphonies almost all use this form too, because it is so effective! After going far afield in the development, it’s so refreshing to have those themes back again. And of course you want your piece to end in the key in which it began, which is why theme two in the recapitulation stays in the tonic.

So that’s why the sonata is the most substantial form of music of all time!

It’s not just because sonatas are so pervasive in music. It’s because the sonata form has been used in countless compositions other than just sonatas again and again. Even popular music is loosely based upon the sonata form oftentimes, because the idea of what is familiar and what is unfamiliar, and the interplay of those elements, is universal to human nature. And it really works! It establishes these themes for you so you can really grasp the music and where you are. You go far afield, then you get that great feeling of coming back home. The sonata form just fits human nature!

I’m interested in your opinion about this. You can leave comments on LivingPianos.com. I’m here to answer your questions. I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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WHAT IS A SONATA?
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EXTREME Instrument Restoration: What is a Conservator?

Hi, I’m Robert Estrin, this is LivingPianos.com. The question today is about musical conservators. What is a musical conservator? Have you ever heard that term before? I hadn’t, until a few years ago when I met a musical conservator in Los Angeles. It was an enlightening experience! I didn’t understand the process until I experienced it for myself and I thought you’d be interested in this. Now, of course, there are people who restore instruments. There are piano rebuilders, technicians who take older pianos and try to make them fresh and new again. They’ll put in new pin blocks, they’ll refinish cases, they’ll put all new parts on the pianos they restore. They actually rebuild all the thousands of parts of the pianos, getting high-level performance out of old instruments. What a conservator does is quite different, even though the end result can be similar.

How is a piano conservator different from a piano rebuilder?

When a conservator is working on an old instrument, instead of just putting new parts in it, they will go to painstaking lengths to preserve as many original parts as possible. For example, if the pins are loose, usually, a rebuilder will remove the strings, remove the plate, and craft a new pinblock for the piano. The pin block is the piece of wood underneath the plate that has holes for each tuning pin. The holes are drilled to tolerances of thousandths of an inch at precise angles. So when the pins are banged in and twisted, they’ll hold. But a conservator will do something dramatically different. If they’re meticulous enough, they’ll torque each and every pin to see how much strength it takes in order to turn the pins. They will record the torque of each and every one! There are 220+ strings on a piano. Each pin is labeled to identify which pin came from which hole. And then they go through hole by hole, filling in the holes with the precise amount of wood to be able to get the proper amount of torque out of each pin rather than just putting a new pin block in.

What about the finish of the piano? How do you preserve that?

Believe it or not, they will scrape the finish off and then liquefy it and reapply that same finish! There are all sorts of techniques. If the hammers are worn out, typically you can just get a new set of matching specification hammers. But a conservator will take felt and rebuild each and every hammer one by one, putting the missing felt back on each hammer. This just gives you an idea of the absolutely tedious process a conservator goes through in restoring instruments. Why would they go through such a process? It would be far easier to replace these parts, wouldn’t it? In truth, yes, it would be much easier to simply replace the parts. Is the purpose to save money on those parts? Absolutely not, because the labor is so intensive.

The point is to preserve the past!

If nobody ever goes through the intense process I’ve described for an older piano, say a 1912 Steinway, painstakingly bringing that instrument back to its original state, at some point in the future, we won’t know what a 1912 Steinway was! In museums particularly, when you see historical keyboards, obviously you don’t want to rip out those irreplaceable parts and put in new parts because it wouldn’t even be that historical instrument anymore!

So that’s what a conservator does. It’s a completely different methodology from typical instrument rebuilding. It requires a different mindset! It has a different purpose. Yet, either one can get great results in the hands of masters! I thought this would be interesting for you to know. I know I was flabbergasted when I learned about this.

Keep the questions coming in! I give preference to my Patreon subscribers, but all of you are welcome to contact me any time! I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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Why Practicing the Piano is Different From Other Instruments

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how practicing the piano is different from practicing on all other instruments. I majored in both piano and French horn in conservatory. In fact, all through my childhood I was completely obsessed with both instruments. I think what I loved about the French horn and the piano was how completely different they were from each other. And in regards to practicing, it’s a completely different experience. Practicing the horn is about tone production, intonation, being able to play at any volume, with any articulation, at any register with control, and getting a beautiful sound.

Basic tone production on the piano is the easiest of just about any instrument!

On the piano, you push a key and it sounds pretty good. With flute, getting a sound out at all is really tough! Just holding a violin correctly is incredibly difficult. Other instruments have tremendous challenges. For example, double reed players like oboists and bassoonists spend a tremendous amount of time crafting reeds, either making their own reeds or refining reeds they get from others. This requires meticulous carving with knives to get just the right response out of the reeds. Vocalists have to study languages and diction. Think about the hours spent doing that, yet there is only so long you can practice singing before you will tire your voice. But there is a tremendous amount of research that goes into understanding what you’re singing in other languages, and being able to express content appropriately. You also have to stay healthy, because you are the instrument! Every instrument has challenges. The big challenge with piano is the music.

The piano is fundamentally easier to play, but the music makes up for it with its great complexity.

As a classical pianist, the vast majority of your time is spent learning scores. On French horn, there’s a tremendous amount of warmups involved in practicing. Things like long tones on wind instruments are essential. My wife is a flutist and she doesn’t miss a day of doing her long tones. What are long tones? Long tones are slow swells from very, very soft to very, very loud, back to very, very soft on every single note on the instrument. This is a great way to develop control on a wind instrument. So if you have a decrescendo, you can maintain the pitch and beauty of the sound by practicing each and every note consistently. On the piano, of course, we don’t have those issues. We don’t even have those capabilities!

With French horn, a great deal of time is spent on the instrument itself developing the physiology of the lips. There’s an old saying about French horn, “Skip a day and you know it. Skip two days, your section players know it. Skip three days, everyone knows it!” After a break from French horn, it can take weeks to get back into shape! The muscles of the lips are so delicate. You can’t just practice and practice until you’re back in shape, because you’ll blow your chops and then you can’t play anything! Your facial muscles become fatigued. So you have to really baby your lips and keep them in great shape. After a break from the piano, at first your fingers feel kind of mushy and lack strength. But just keep playing. Make sure you don’t tax yourself too much. After a day or two, you should be right back in shape. Everything should come back pretty easily.

What is so different about piano practice?

With piano you’re learning scores, and it is a meticulous process. One of the reasons I loved practicing French horn so much is that I could concentrate on pure sound, the beautiful rich tone of the instrument. The sound you get out of each note becomes a trademark of your own personality. On the piano, this just isn’t the case. Practicing the piano, if you’re doing it right, requires tremendous mental effort. You’re assimilating notes and scores and music. You must be able to think through complex arrangements that have polyphony and counterpoint and bring out different lines. Now, it’s true that other keyboard instruments have some of the same challenges. As an organist, you even have the pedals! However, you don’t have to balance notes and lines within a texture. For example, if you’re playing a four part chorale, you have four different lines. You can bring out the soprano line, the alto line, the tenor line or the bass line. You can do this simply by reaching with your fingers. The most obvious is to bring out the top line. But you can emphasize any of the four lines, each one calling attention to different lines within the score.

But balancing isn’t necessarily just bringing out one line, it’s being aware of all of the lines and controlling them.

In order to get that kind of control, you have to really know the scores. You have to study the music to develop that level of control. Are there techniques or exercises that can help with that? Somewhat. But there’s no substitute for spending a great deal of time really learning scores. You want to know the score so well that you have control of all the notes literally under your fingertips! And that’s what makes piano practice unique! I’m interested in your opinions on this subject. If you play other instruments, as well as the piano, let me know how you feel about practicing those instruments compared to practicing the piano and how it feels different to you. I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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