Tag Archives: music theory

How to Tune Your Own Piano: Part I

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about how to tune your own piano. Can you tune your own piano? That is the real question. I’m going to provide you with the information so you will know if you can tune your piano, and if you want to tune your own piano. But more than that, I’m going to show you an incredibly valuable skill that you can all take to heart: how to touch up the tuning on your piano! That is something I think every pianist should learn how to do. I’ve been doing it for years. You’re going to love it once you learn how to do this!

What tools do you need to tune a piano?

You will need a tuning wrench, sometimes referred to as a tuning hammer. Make sure it has a removable head. You should look for a star head, not a square head. Because with a square head, you only have four positions that you can put the tuning wrench. That is really cumbersome because as you’re going to discover, it’s really hard to move a tuning hammer! So, you want a star head that can be in many different positions. That’s going to be a lifesaver for you! Don’t skimp on your tools either. It’s not that expensive. There are tons of them on Amazon starting at less than $40. Then you just need a couple of wedges so you can mute out some of the strings. As you know, through most of the piano, there are three strings to each note. You need to be able to hear just two of the strings at a time when you’re tuning one string to another. For tuning grand pianos, this is really all you need. To tune a whole piano you can use software for the pitches, but these few tools are all you need to touch up your tuning.

Why is it so important to touch up the tuning of your piano?

It can take hundreds of tunings before you have the skills to get a piano not just to be in tune, but to hold its tuning any length of time at all. Any competent tuner can get a piano in tune. But the first time you play it, notes can go out of tune. It’s really hard to set the strings and pins in such a way that the pitches will hold. Touching up is a totally different ballgame. Let’s say you get your piano tuned. A few days later you’re playing it and notice notes drastically out of tune right in the middle of the piano. It can drive you crazy! You scheduled this tuning, you paid good money for it, and now your piano is just not fun to play at all. What do you do? Hire them back for another tuning a couple weeks later?

If you have the tools and the knowledge – You can touch up the tuning on select notes yourself!

 

Armed with these tools and the knowledge I’m going to show you, you can alleviate the problem of stubborn out of tune notes on your piano. And you can actually extend the tuning of your piano to last much longer just by going through and touching it up on a periodic basis. Let’s get right to work on this. Now, my piano is pretty well in tune. There are some notes in the very high register that are not perfect. But those high notes are really very difficult to tune. The slightest motion of the tuning wrench knocks the pitch way off. To get it just right is very difficult. The lowest notes on the piano are also difficult, for a different reason. Particularly on smaller pianos, there’s so little fundamental pitch it’s hard to tell what pitch you’re even hearing. But If a note in the very high or low register is out of tune, it’s not going to affect you that much. You’re not going to encounter those notes nearly as often as you will with notes in the middle register of the piano. So, that’s what I’m going to focus on here today, because it’s the most value with the least work.

Let’s start with middle C. Does it sound in tune to you? How do you know if a note is in tune or not? Do you look at a tuner to see if it’s in pitch? No, because the important thing is for a piano to be in tune with itself. If your piano is tuned to 442 and then you play A and you want it to be at 440, that A is going to be out of tune with the rest of the piano. When you’re touching up the tuning, it’s usually only one or two strings of a certain note that will be out of tune. A unison goes out to make it sound funny. It’s not the whole note that is going to go out. That rarely happens in any kind of uniform fashion.

You don’t need a chromatic tuner for what I’m showing you. You do need to listen.

When one of the three strings is out of tune on middle C on your piano, instead of the pure sound, you’ll hear waves. If it’s slightly out, the waves will cause a slow undulation. As it gets more out of tune, they become quicker and quicker. So, the first thing you do is find the three strings for middle C. By pushing down the key, you release the damper so that you can pluck them. Then you’re going to follow the string all the way back to find the pin that associates with the right string. When one string is low you can hear that slow wave. Listen for it. If it’s even further out of tune, that wave will get faster.

This is what I’m talking about. You’re playing your piano just after it’s been tuned and a note goes out for no particular reason. It can happen. The weather or just playing hard can knock a string out of tune. If it’s right in the middle of the piano like this, you won’t even want to play your piano. And you don’t want to spend a bunch of money getting the whole piano tuned again. Even just getting your tuner there, they have to charge you for their time, right? So what do you do? Well, the first thing you do is you identify which string is low. You want to listen for it, so listen to the separate strings. Go ahead, pluck them and listen. See if you can notice which one is lower. One thing you want to do is check to make sure the other two strings are in tune with one another. You can do this by muting the string that is low. Now you’re listening to the other two strings. Let’s say those two strings are absolutely in tune with one another. To be able to compare the out of tune string with an in tune string, having just one string sound with the out of tune string is better. So, you want to mute one of the two in tune strings so that you’re left with one string that’s in tune and the one that is low.

Once again, you pluck the strings to be sure you got it right. Push down the key to release the damper so you can pluck them. Now you’re ready to adjust the pitch. When you try this the first time you will develop a deep respect for your piano technician, because it’s really hard to get even one string in tune! Now, you might just luck out and get it right on the first pull. It can happen. But you might go back and forth for five or ten minutes trying to get it locked in. It’s hard to believe how much effect the minuscule motion on your tuning hammer has on the string.

I’ve seen my piano technician, who’s a master concert technician, struggling to get the string locked to the right position. This is because there’s huge amounts of tension on the strings.

Tension builds up at all the points of termination. Right near where the felt is, there’s tremendous tension. As soon as you hit a note hard, that tension is released on the other side where there is termination at the bridge. You can get a note in tune, but with the first loud strike of the note, the string tension equalizes across the points of termination. That’s why it’s so important once you get your piano tuned to give a couple of hard blows to the key so that the first time you play it loud, it doesn’t go out of tune.

Now you want to pull the low string up to pitch very gently. As you do this you will want to check to make sure you didn’t pull it too far. Listen to the strings again. First the string that is in tune, and then the one that was low before to see if it’s still low. If it’s still low you are going to pull a little bit more. When it’s really close it’s tough to hear which one’s higher and which one’s lower. Once again, push the key down and pluck them. Now if it’s extremely close, you can listen to the difference between the slow undulation of the out of tune string played with the in tune string, compared to the purity of the two strings that are in tune with one another. Once you’ve gotten the two strings sounding in tune, listen to all three strings. Now that note sounds good!

What you’ve just done is tune one string on a piano that has somewhere between 220 to 240 strings!

It gets more complicated if your piano is really out of tune. The pitch of the whole piano could be slightly low. As you start tuning one section of the piano, the pressure that is exerted on the bridge in one area pushes the soundboard down affecting the previously tuned area of your piano. So, you have to go through the tuning at least a couple of times to get anything to hold. Tuning a whole piano is very complicated. You also have the factor that smaller pianos don’t have such pure sounds. They have a lot of what are called overtones, which are color tones that are higher notes contained within the lower notes. Sometimes those can conflict with the fundamental pitch of other notes. So, skilled tuners know how to finesse the tuning to get a sweet sound out of all different pianos.

There is good news for you if you want to learn how to tune a piano like a pro!

 

There are software programs that can take the tunings from great tuners and take into account the size of the piano and the pitch you’re starting with. By sampling all the A’s on the piano, for example, it knows how much stretch you need. It’s still an arduous task to tune a whole piano. So, I recommend all of you get your feet wet by touching up your piano. This is something that will really prolong the tuning of your piano and save you when you have one or two notes that are out of tune driving you nuts! Touch up tuning is a great skill to develop! I hope this is enjoyable for you! If you’re interested in learning more about piano tuning I’m happy to share with you a bit more about it. Today I’ve given you a valuable skill that any of you should be able to take to heart and make your piano sound better, longer, by touching up the tuning. I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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Are Digital Pianos Better Than Acoustic Pianos?

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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Don’t Find Your Mistakes, Find The Corrections

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is. about focusing on corrections instead of your mistakes. This may seem counterintuitive. Don’t you have to find your mistakes in order to find the corrections? It’s true that you need to find where your problems are. But beyond that, you don’t want to hunt for what you did wrong. I know a lot of students desperately want to find their mistakes. What’s worse is when they not only want to find the mistakes, but they want to replay them to see exactly what they did wrong. This reinforces the mistakes! You want to learn and cement the corrections right from the get go. This might seem like an arbitrary distinction. But think about when you play a concert, you obviously want to put on a good performance. You want to have the performance securely memorized. You don’t want to go out there thinking, “I hope I remember everything. Am I going to remember the third movement?” If you start thinking that way, it’s a downward spiral, because whatever you think about tends to manifest itself.

Visualization can be extremely valuable in a concert situation.

Conceptualize and see things the way you want them to be in your performance. Imagine yourself on stage in front of an audience. Imagine your performance going well and you’re much more likely for that to happen. But, if in preparation for your concert you’re thinking about the mistakes you might make, it can be crippling. Those thoughts keep percolating in the back of your mind. Then when you get out on stage, it’s going to undermine your performance. It’s the same thing with searching for your mistakes. You don’t want to concentrate on your mistakes. You want to concentrate on the corrections! And that is what is going to assure a good performance for you.

So instead of asking, “What did I do wrong there?” Find out, “What do I need to do right there?”

This is an important distinction that will help the productivity of your practice tremendously. And it’s a lesson for life as well. Remember, you believe what you tell yourself. This is an important fact. So take this to heart, in everything you do and everything you think, because it has a profound effect upon what happens to you in life, and in your music.

I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
Please feel free to contact me with any piano related questions for future videos!

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Do You Have to Follow Dynamics in Musical Scores?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s question is from a viewer, and it’s kind of a long one, so I want to read it to you word for word, because it really brings up such an important point. Joseph asks, “Hi, thank you for the reply to my previous question. This doubt is about Moonlight Sonata, movement number one. I went through many videos on YouTube. These recordings were a little bit different from what is written. There are sustains, very slight tempo variations, and small pauses at some points of the recordings. But these are not indicated in the notation. And I can say the majority of the portions were not in perfect tempo. Could you please explain on what basis these dynamics are made, and how to know which place we should apply these dynamics? I have seen your Moonlight Sonata pedal usage video. A big thanks for that video.” A lot of people are really confused about this: the sanctity of the score, what the composer intended. Is this authoritative? Is that what the composer meant?

Composers aren’t always the best interpreters of their music.

How could this be? Beethoven must have played his music better than anyone else. Let’s think about this. The people, for example, who write screenplays aren’t necessarily the best ones to direct, or act in it, for that matter. Just because somebody can write a play doesn’t mean they can act. So what is the analog here? If somebody is reading the lines of a play, does it have all the inflections indicated? – where to go up and where to go down, where to pause, where to go a little faster, where to go a little slower? Of course not. There are general indications in the play about the direction and the moods, but the performer fleshes out and creates the character from the words, bringing the character to life. That’s exactly what we do on the piano! The score itself, you could literally program it into a machine. It’s pretty easy to do that. If you took the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata and programmed every note exactly as it was written, the rhythm, the dynamics, everything, it would be an abomination. It wouldn’t even sound like music.

The score is just a skeleton.

The score is not the Holy Grail. It’s just what you build upon. Does this mean that you don’t play what’s written? No. You are playing what’s written, just like a great actor is saying the words that are written, but how do they say the words? There are so many ways of saying them. The same is true with playing the piano or any instrument. You’ve got to make sense out of the musical lines. Just like you have to make sense out of the words in a play. You can’t just read them flat. The same thing is true with music. Composers couldn’t possibly write in every inflection of every note. Notation doesn’t work that way. It’s impossible. That’s why we have performers.

The musical score doesn’t come to life until it is performed.

It takes the performer to make the work of art alive, and that is why you hear these nuances. Of course, there’s a limit to how far you can go before you’re just playing an entirely different piece! You want to have integrity to the score, absolutely. Know that score, and know what to play. But that doesn’t mean that a musical line that doesn’t have any dynamics is going to be flat all the way across. No, it will have a rise and a fall, just like the words in a sentence have in a play. I hope this helps you understand the implications of what a score really means.

I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store.
Please feel free to contact us with any piano related questions for future videos!

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How Do You Compose A Cadenza?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin with a question from a viewer. Evan asks, “How Do You Compose A Cadenza?” Cadenzas in concertos, solo pieces with orchestra typically, often have sections where the orchestra dramatically stops, and the soloist plays their cadenza. In many concertos, the cadenzas are written. Cadenzas are not just in concertos, they’re also in solo pieces sometimes. For example, in Liszt’s 2nd Hungarian Rhapsody, there’s a part near the end that says ad libitum cadenza. And indeed, many pianists play cadenzas. In concertos, the composers often write cadenzas, but just as often there aren’t cadenzas written by the composers. Sometimes, there are cadenzas that people typically play, for example Beethoven wrote some cadenzas to Mozart concertos! So, there are often choices of cadenzas to choose from. But suppose you want to compose your own cadenza.

You can hear the hands independently from one another when you play scales two octaves apart.

For example, Evan asked specifically about the Liszt 2nd Hungarian Rhapsody. I haven’t played that piece in years, but when I did, I would actually make up cadenzas on the spot! I didn’t write one, I would improvise. I don’t necessarily recommend that. But I like to improvise. So, I would challenge myself. Here’s the key with a piece like that: You want to find techniques that are impressive sounding, but not necessarily something that is hard to play. It’s best to play something that sounds difficult because a cadenza is meant to show off your unique skills. However, I’ve heard cadenzas in concertos that were so far away from the style f the composer of the concerto, that it seemed ridiculous. For example, a Mozart concerto with a cadenza that’s in a 20th century style can be disorienting. Having stylistic integrity is important with cadenzas.

Showcase what you can do.

You don’t have to do the hardest thing in the world. You can do something that sounds hard, that lays into your hands. How would you compose such a thing? Start improvising! Just make something up that is based upon the themes and play around with it. Over time, you’ll find certain riffs that you like. Start building upon those and before you know it, you’ll have a framework. From there you can flesh out a cadenza for something like the Liszt 2nd Hungarian Rhapsody. For a full fledged concerto cadenza, it’s a bit more of a task. If you’re writing a cadenza to a Haydn or a Mozart Concerto, you probably want to play something that sounds like the composer. This is no easy task. Even Beethoven couldn’t do it!

Try to have some stylistic integrity, but do something stylistically that you like.

That is always a good key not just for composing cadenzas, but for all composing. Use what comes naturally to you and you’ll be richly rewarded! I hope this is helpful for you Evan, and everybody else! Keep your questions coming in. There are over one thousand videos at LivingPianos.com. You can search for them with keywords. We’ve got everything covered for you here at LivingPianos, Your Online Piano Store. Subscribe to our videos and join everybody else having a good time here with piano. See you next time.

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Why Crying is Essential for Your Musicianship

Hi, I’m Robert Estrin. This is LivingPianos.com and today’s subject is, “Why Crying is Essential for Your Musicianship.” You might think I’ve gone off the deep end with this subject. Crying and music? What does crying have to do with music? A lot.

What is music about?

There are a lot of different styles of music. There’s dance music, there’s electronic music, there’s Gregorian chant. There’s a wide range of music, but ultimately I believe music is primarily a way of expressing emotions – emotions that are impossible to express any other way. Let’s say you have had some really tragic experiences in your life. Everyone experiences tragedy in this world. Nobody is sheltered. I know from the outside it looks like some people have that glorious lives of perfection. If you look on social media, everybody’s having a great time doing the greatest things. But the reality is that it’s just a front. Not just on social media, but even in person. Everybody is guarded, keeping their emotions at bay, not revealing too much for fear of getting caught by somebody who has spurious intentions.

Why do you need to cry?

Why can’t you just go through your life and just ignore those tragedies and the pain? Well, if you’re trying to express emotions honestly in your music, but you haven’t even reckoned the emotions you’re feeling, it’s all but impossible to be genuine in your music. You need to feel things in your life, not just the joyful things, but the tragic things as well. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that if you don’t experience pain in your life by crying, at some point it’s going to come out inappropriately and it will also affect the other side.

How can you feel joy if you don’t feel sadness?

You have to feel. So you must work through your emotions so you can honestly express beautiful music, sad music, happy music. This is a lesson for life as well as for music. And if you have repressed emotions, it’s going to be all but impossible to really have the poetry, and the vision, and the experience that you want to share with others.

I encourage all of you to be honest with yourself and others about your pain.

It’s important to feel your emotions and work through them. It could be what you’ve been looking for to be really expressive in your music. I’d love to hear from any of you out there who’ve had this experience and share it in the comments below.

Thanks so much for joining me. I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store. See you next time!

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