Tag Archives: used pianos

How to Get Your Kids to Practice Piano

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how to get your kids to practice the piano. This is a really important subject because you want your kids to enjoy the piano. But if they never practice, how can you justify the lessons you’re taking them to and spending money on? You feel really committed, and you want your kids to be committed. Sometimes it can really come to loggerheads. So I’m going to give you some tips today!

I have vast experience with this subject.

I come from a family of teachers. Both my parents were music teachers. My sister is a piano teacher. I’ve taught piano pedagogy to many teachers. Getting kids to practice is a universal challenge for anyone who teaches kids or parents with kids studying the piano. I started teaching the piano when I was in high school, assisting my father with his teaching, as my sister did before me. And it’s been a continuum of my career since that time. I’ve pretty much always taught. Today, I have the great privilege of teaching students all over the world because of my popular YouTube channel and website, LivingPianos.com. I have students from Australia to Alaska and all points in between. For the most part, they’re serious students. I have some kids who are just wonderful to work with, as well as people decades older than me! However, when I was starting out making a living as a private piano teacher, I took all kinds of kids and adults as well. They didn’t all love the piano the way my students do today. I saw many different ways that parents dealt with their kids, some effective and some that were really counterproductive.

The first thing you have to understand about working at the piano is that practicing correctly is hard work.

So when you tell your kids they have to practice for 30 minutes or an hour, realize that, if they’re doing it correctly, it’s an incredibly intense experience. You must appreciate that. I remember my wife had a student, and the mother was always upset with her child for not practicing enough. Eventually, the mother started taking lessons, and then she finally realized how difficult it really was! So you have to appreciate that. To encourage your kids to practice, you have to think of it the way you think of so many other things in life.

Your kids, given a choice, probably wouldn’t clean their room, do their homework, or brush their teeth!

There are myriad things that your kids are kind of coaxed or trained to do, and piano practice must fit into that realm. So the techniques you’ve used to get your kids to do what they need to do are also appropriate for piano practice. But piano practice is not something that’s legally required, the way school is, or a matter of personal hygiene, the way brushing your teeth is, so they might feel there’s some wiggle room there. You must encourage your kids to practice by understanding and appreciating the hard work they do. Showcase their talents to your family and friends whenever possible. If they’ve been working really hard and they have a piece they can play well, when company comes over, let them shine. Give them a chance to enjoy the fruits of their labor!

You can encourage young students by bringing them to concerts and expanding their scope of music.

Bring them to classical concerts and other styles of music that maybe they haven’t been exposed to. I can’t tell you how many times people have said to me something like, “I hate opera.” And I say, “Have you ever been to an opera?” And they say, “No.” Well, how do you know? Seeing an opera performed by a great opera company, like the Metropolitan Opera, is just an astounding experience. You can’t get that experience by listening to music on a sound system. It’s not the same at all. That’s also true with classical music in general. Some types of music translate better to an electronic medium. For example, rock music is coming out of speakers, whether you’re going to a live event or not. But acoustic music sounds so much better when you’re listening to it live. It doesn’t sound the same coming through speakers. The sound of an acoustic performance in a great hall can’t be described or duplicated any other way. So take your kids to concerts! But you can also play them great recordings. Expose them to great music. They may just latch on to a few key pieces that could change their lives.

So remember to encourage your children!

Remember that it’s hard work to practice correctly. Expose your kids to great music, both live and recorded. Showcase their talents whenever possible so that they can feel appreciated for the hard work they do with the instrument. If nothing seems to work, condider finding a more inspiring teacheer. I hope this is helpful for you! Share your stories in the comments about what has worked for you or the challenges you have faced. Thanks again 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

How to Have a Piano While Traveling

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how to have a piano while traveling. Sometimes I go on vacation, and it’s frustrating not having a piano. I finally have time to devote to the piano, but there is no piano to play! What kind of vacation is that? Maybe you feel the same way. You’re busy all the time, and then when you finally have some free time, there’s no piano. Not that you want to spend your whole vacation practicing the piano, but you certainly want a piano you can play. How can you achieve such a thing?

Bring a digital piano with you!

One way you can have a piano on vacation is by doing what I do. I have a high-quality, very lightweight digital piano that I can take with me. It weighs just 24 pounds! If you have a simple folding X-stand, it takes up so little room. If you like, you can even take some headphones with you so you don’t have to disturb anybody. You can just put it in your trunk along with your other stuff. I’ve taken that piano with me to all kinds of places. What about if you’re flying? This is a big problem, but I have some tips for you!

Do you know that you can search Airbnb for places that have pianos?

You’ll find that there are some places you can stay that have pianos in them. There’s even a website that has places you can stay all over the world that have pianos in them. So that’s an ideal situation. Stay in a nice house, apartment, or condo that has a piano. Maybe you want the amenities and convenience of a hotel. Well, a lot of times, bigger hotels have pianos in them. I’m pretty brave in that respect. I will sneak into rooms and find a piano. You might get kicked out, but you might just be able to play for a while. People might even appreciate it! Sometimes there’s a piano in a bar or a restaurant, and you can possibly play it when they are not that busy.

There are different places you can steal time on pianos, if you’re lucky.

If you have any friends in different cities who have pianos, that is obviously a great way to get some time with a piano. Piano stores are probably not the best place to try to play pianos because they have an agenda of selling pianos. If you’re in there practicing or even playing, that’s probably not going to be conducive to their business. Sometimes a school will have pianos, but getting into schools can be tough. So I recommend finding hotels or Airbnbs that have pianos.

There is another option, but it’s not a very good option…Yet!

This is an option I’m hoping will improve over time, which is folding pianos. Yes, there are folding pianos. I have one. There are times when I’m traveling and I still want to do my teaching. If I’m traveling by plane, I obviously can’t take my digital piano with me. The good thing about folding pianos is how compact they are, but the bad part is that they have horrendously bad actions. It’s not possible to do serious playing on folding pianos. For memorization, music theory, composition, and even teaching, where you’re just demonstrating things, these folding pianos get the job done and are very inexpensive. I’m hoping someday somebody comes out with a decent quality folding piano you can fit in the overhead bin on a flight. Wouldn’t that be great? In the meantime, take the little tips I gave you. If you’re traveling by car, get a digital piano to take with you with an X-stand. Look for hotels or Airbnbs that have pianos. In a pinch, you could do some work on a folding piano. If anybody has any other ideas, let me know in the comments! Thanks again 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

Do You Need a Practice Checklist?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about why you need a practicing checklist. What’s this all about? A lot of my students want to have a routine in their practice to do a certain number of things in a certain order on a daily basis. And while this is commendable in one sense, a routine can sometimes work against you because you want to take advantage of the discoveries in your practice. You might go off on a tangent and think you’re spending too much time on something because you need to get to other things. So you might not take advantage of an exploration that could lead to an epiphany in your playing.

Instead of a routine, a checklist offers something really valuable for you.

When you practice, you might get to a point where you’re thinking, “What am I supposed to do now?” If you don’t have a routine, you’re kind of lost. But if you have a checklist, you know you want to do certain things every day. I offered this idea to one of my students, Jancarlos, in the Dominican Republic. I asked him to come up with a practice checklist for himself. I said, “You should come up with a checklist that has things you really want to do on a daily basis and then things you do on a weekly basis, maybe not every single day, but something that you don’t want to go too long without visiting in your practice.” So this is what Jancarlos came up with. See how many of these things resonate with you! I’d love to get suggestions here in the comments on LivingPianos.com and YouTube.

Jancarlos starts his checklist with memorization of new material.

I stress this all the time. Why is it so important to memorize new material on a daily basis? Because cramming memorization doesn’t work! Let’s say you’ve gone four or five days without doing any memorization. You think you can just make up for it in a few hours, but it’s not so easy. When you first learn a phrase, it’s not that hard. You learn the second phrase, and it comes along okay. But by the third or fourth phrase, it starts to get really taxing. How much can you cram into your head in one sitting? It’s tough. So take advantage every day when your mind is fresh to learn something, even if it’s just one phrase. You’ll be rewarded! Take a look at the score of whatever music you’re working on and figure out the smallest phrase that you could learn; maybe it’s four measures, and then multiply that by seven and then deduct any measures that are the same. You’ll discover that you might get a page or a page and a half of music learned just by doing a phrase a day. So make that a priority in your practice. What else should be done every day?

Reinforce material from the previous day.

Obviously, you need to solidify what you learned the previous day. You might have to relearn it. The good news is that you’ll be able to learn it much faster. Not only that, but if you learned four measure phrases the previous day, you might be able to learn eight measure phrases when you relearn it because it’s already there.

Another thing you really should be doing on a regular basis is playing scales and arpeggios.

If you’re not up to scales and arpeggios, you should at least do simple Hanon exercises to strengthen your fingers. If you learn one new scale a week or one new arpeggio a week, you’ll have them all learned in a year. That is a good foundation for your playing. And if you already know them all, solidify them. Take them to the next level in speed, different articulations, or doing them in contrary motion or in intervals. You can keep working on scales and arpeggios your whole life. There’s always value in doing so!

Another thing you should do is review your old pieces.

Go through slowly solidifying pieces you can already play. This is a great way to keep them in shape and to check your work so things don’t degrade over time. By doing this, you always have music you can play on a high level. Also, make time for free playing. Play old repertoire or improvise, just to keep your fingers moving. You can keep pieces in shape just by playing them, and improvising develops your ear and your connection to the keyboard.

Another thing that you can do on a regular basis is sight-read.

Sight-reading is a vital aspect of strengthening your reading because you might learn more and more music and still have a beginning reading level. So make reading something you do on a regular basis. Finding sight-reading material on the right level for you is the most important part. If it’s something you struggle just to get through a line or two, it’s not going to be that valuable. It’ll be painstaking for you, and you’re not going to want to do it. And you’re not going to get the fluidity and sense of reading and maintaining a tempo. Finding easy enough music for sight-reading is a challenge for many people because many people do become somewhat accomplished, yet they still have the reading level of a beginner. I was in that category when I was a pretty advanced player in high school because I didn’t do enough sight-reading. So make that a part of your regular study.

Go through theory on a regular basis.

It can be something as simple as just going through your sharps and your flats. You don’t want to just memorize by rote. That’s not that valuable. Frankly, it’s better than nothing. But you’re better off figuring out the intervals you’re playing. Why is this so important? Imagine trying to solve quadratic equations in algebra while not being fluent with your multiplication tables. That’s not going to work very well. You have to be pretty fluent with all your tables before you can approach higher mathematics. The same thing is true with music theory. You better be really solid with your key signatures and all your major scales before doing chords, intervals, and all of that. So spend some time with that on a regular basis.

Explore other styles of music.

It can be incredibly valuable to explore other genres, whether it’s jazz, salsa, pop, blues, etc. You’ll make discoveries, and you’ll understand the structure of music better. It ties in with music theory. All of these skill sets relate to each other. That’s why the more of them you do on a regular basis, the more productive your practice is.

Make a checklist for yourself!

Make a checklist so you never get stuck in your practice. If you’re not getting anywhere, change it up and do something different. You can come back to what you were doing the next day, and maybe it will resonate more genuinely with you at that time. Have your checklist on hand, either on your phone or on a piece of paper, so you can make sure you practice all these fundamental skill sets on a regular basis. Thank you, Jancarlos, for sharing this with everybody! Share your musical checklist in the comments here at LivingPianos.com and on YouTube! Thanks again 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

What Are Primary Chords? Why You Need Them

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about why you must know your primary chords. What are primary chords? Well, I’m going to break it down for you today. I’m going to show you something called diatonic chords first, because that’s how you can discover what your primary chords are.

Diatonic chords, simply put, are chords built on every note of the scale.

The simplest chords are triads—three notes arranged in thirds. What are thirds? Thirds are every other note of a scale. If you play every other note of a C major scale, you have a C major chord. If you go up the scale, you can play all your diatonic chords. So D-F-A is also a diatonic triad. E-G-B, and on up the scale forming all the diatonic triads. This is essential to understand, and it can help you immensely in digesting a score if you’re reading or learning it. It’s also valuable just for listening to music.

I’m going to show you what are referred to as primary chords.

If you are vaguely aware of this now, this is going to be a revelatory moment for you. So let’s go through. We start with the one chord, and you notice that you have four half-steps on the bottom between the C and the E. That’s called a major third. Now on the top, there are three half-steps between the E and G. That’s a minor third. When you have a major third on the bottom and a minor third on the top, that is a major triad. This is really fundamental to music. We’re going to go up and discover where the major triads occur in Diatonic Chords. So far, we’ve established that the one chord is indeed major. That is the first primary chord. Where is the next one? If you go to the two chord, on the bottom, you have three half-steps between the D and F, which is a minor third, and you have four half-steps on the top between the F and A, which is a major third. So that’s a minor triad. So the two chord is not a primary chord; it’s a secondary chord because it’s not major. What about the three chord? I bet you can figure this out now that I’ve shown you the secret. You have three half-steps on the bottom and four on the top, so that is a minor triad again. The three chord is also a secondary triad. The four chord has four half-steps on the bottom and three on the top, so it is a major triad. So the one chord and the four chord are both major triads; therefore, they’re primary chords. Are there any other primary chords? The five chord has four half-steps on the bottom and three on top. So that’s another major chord.

The one chord, the four chord, and the five chord are your primary chords.

The six chord has three half-steps on the bottom and four on top; therefore, it’s a minor triad, another secondary chord. We have one more left. The seven chord has three half-steps on the bottom and also three on top. What the heck is going on here? That’s not a major or minor triad. Two minor thirds forms a diminished triad. It’s the only place where a diminished triad occurs in a diatonic chord. To recap, you have your major triads, which are your primary chords, the one, four, and five; you have your secondary chords, which are the two, three, and six, which are all minor; and you have your leading tone, the seventh chord, which is diminished.

Why is this so important?

Those basic one, four, and five chords are intrinsic to Western harmony. It’s a classic, authentic cadence and a great way to establish the key. You can go through all your keys this way. It’s a great way to gain comfort in all the major and minor keys. It’s a terrific way to have your primary chords literally at your fingertips! It makes reading music, understanding the harmonic underpinnings of your music, and learning music much easier.

You should know your primary chords in all keys.

It will really help you to have a good grasp of the harmonic structure of your music. From there, you can expand to your secondary chords and all sorts of interesting chords. But you should absolutely cement your primary chords. I hope this is valuable for you! Let me know in the comments here at LivingPianos.com and on YouTube! Thanks again 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

How Many Levels of Pianissimo Are There?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about playing pianissimo. How many different levels of soft playing are there on the piano? By the end of this video, I’m going to reveal the answer to you!

There are different levels of quiet.

So many times, pieces of music are written to be played softly or even very softly. For example, Clair de Lune is written pianissimo at the beginning and stays pianissimo for a long time. Does that mean you should play that entire section as quietly as possible? I’m going to give you a little analogy. Just imagine you’re with someone who’s very dear to you, and you’re having a tender conversation. Maybe it’s late at night when other people are sleeping and you’re whispering. As you’re whispering, you’re saying very important, personal things about yourself. There’s some animation, and there’s tenderness. It’s all quiet, but there are different levels of quiet, aren’t there?

There must be nuanced expression in your pianissimo playing.

When you are playing quietly, there is nuance of expression, just as there would be in a tender conversation with a loved one. You must have expression in your playing. So the question is: how many levels of soft are there? And the answer is that there’s an infinite range of soft expression, just like dividing halfway between two points again and again and again. There is no limit to how much expression you can bring to a well-regulated piano while maintaining a pianissimo dynamic. I want you to try this with your music and see how many different levels of soft playing you can achieve, getting the maximum expression in your music. Let me know how it works for you in the comments here at LivingPianos.com and on YouTube! Thanks again 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

Should You Follow Metronome Markings in Your Music?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today we are going to discuss whether or not you should follow metronome markings in your scores. I’ve had students say to me, “I’m really trying to get this piece up to speed, and the tempo marked in the score is 160. I just can’t get anywhere close to that!” They’re beating themselves up, wondering how they can get it up to that speed. There’s a lot to this subject. I’m going to enlighten you about these metronome markings in scores. But first, I want to show you something that will shed some light on this whole subject.

How fast is Allegro?

I have my metronome here, and there’s a whole range of tempos marked “Allegro”. The very slowest Allegro is 126. That seems fine, but there’s a whole range of Allegro. 126 is the lowest setting that’s marked as Allegro on the metronome. 144 is right in the middle of what that’s marked as Allegro. At this speed, I think some pieces lose their elegance. But here’s what’s really crazy: according to this metronome, 168 is at the top range of Allegro. That is a much faster tempo than what you would generally consider to be Allegro. So that’s not much help, is it?

Are metronome markings in the score written by the composer?

You have a piece of music with a tempo marking. Did the composer put that in there? No. Composers almost never put metronome indications in scores. These are the editor’s suggestions that are put in the score. If you look at different editions, there can be drastically different metronome markings in the scores. So you really can’t go by metronome markings. I say ignore them! They are not of any value. They may or may not have anything to do with musical sensibilities.

If you really want to get a sense of what tempo is appropriate for a piece of music, listen to recordings.

Go on YouTube or Spotify and listen to great pianists playing the piece. Get a feel for the range of tempos. But sometimes you will find different pianists will play the same piece at drastically different tempos. For example, the Rondo alla turca movement of Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 11. Listen to Lang Lang play it, then listen to Glenn Gould play it. These are two noted concert pianists, and they are so drastically different in their tempos. You won’t even believe how different they are! So artists have very different ideas about tempo, but at least you get a range for what most people play.

Does that mean you have to play it at that speed?

Not necessarily. You might be able to make a convincing case for a drastically different tempo, as is the case in these performances by Glenn Gould and Lang Lang, who chose drastically different tempos than almost everyone else for that same movement. But you should know when you’re going against the grain because you’ll have a frame of reference. Listeners are used to a certain tempos for pieces, and if you’re drastically different one way or the other, that’s going to be a little bit startling for them. You have to have real conviction if you’re going to do that. And if you’re a student, you want to try to play somewhere in the range of what most people are playing to get a feel for what is musically accepted. Although, to be fair, what is considered appropriate tempo today is different from what it was in the early 20th century. A lot of players played faster back then than they do today. So these are stylistic norms that come and go. But knowing what tempo other players use is a good guide for you. The tempo markings written in the score should be ignored! They are most often not of any value.

I have an interesting story for you about this.

When my wife was going to music conservatory, she was working on a piece. It was a new piece with percussion, flute, and piccolo. The composer wrote metronome markings in it. So in this case, it wasn’t an editor; it was the composer! She was having the hardest time with one movement, trying to get it up to speed. She was practicing diligently, doing progressively faster metronome speeds, one notch at a time, trying to get this thing up to speed. Finally, the musicians had the opportunity to have a rehearsal with the actual composer of the piece. They started playing it, and the composer said, “No, that’s not the tempo. It’s much slower!” So she showed him the metronome markings in the score, and he said, “Oh, yeah, I put that in there. But I didn’t have a metronome handy when I put it in.” So even the composer didn’t take the time to put in the right metronome marking! Even if they do, it’s not etched in stone.

There are many valid tempos that can work for a piece of music.

Composers are not necessarily the best interpreters of their music. And artists sometimes take different tempos with the same piece of music in different performances. So you have to find what works for you in your playing, on your piano, and in the room you’re playing in. Tempo is definitely more art than science! I hope this is helpful for you! Thanks again 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