Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how a room can affect your piano. This is an incredible story that I would love to share with you. My sister is also a pianist, and a couple of years ago, we were playing a two-piano concert together. At that time, my sister lived in the Cleveland area, where she still lives. But we were in Southern California. So we didn’t get to rehearse together until she came to California.
At the time, I had two spectacularly great Baldwin SF-10 seven-foot pianos.
While they were both great pianos, there was one that was clearly the better instrument. One of them was a high-gloss black. The other one was satin black. The high-gloss piano was a magical instrument. The other one was very good, but that high-gloss black was my go-to instrument. I loved playing that piano. Since she was coming and we wanted to rehearse in advance of the concert that was going to be at the nearby Bowers Museum, I decided to go ahead and move the two pianos into our recording studio, which was right next door. Here’s where it gets really interesting.
After the pianos were moved, I sat down with them, and I couldn’t believe it, but they switched!
The great piano was now the satin SF-10! The high-gloss one was good but didn’t have the same character and warmth as the other one. It was the same two pianos, but in two different rooms. One was clearly the better piano in one room, but as soon as they went to the other room, because of the different acoustics, it was exactly the opposite. They were both still fine pianos, beautifully regulated, nicely voiced, and in tune. But one was so much nicer and warmer, and it was the opposite of what it was before. So how does this impact you?
Where you place your piano in your home can make a tremendous difference in how it sounds and even how it feels.
Did you know that a piano with a brighter sound can feel like it has an easier action? Sometimes a piano can have a heavy action, and yet it doesn’t feel heavy because it has a bright sound. The opposite can also be true. Sometimes a piano has normal action weight, but if it’s voiced on the warm side, you have to work more to get the tone out, so it feels heavy. Room acoustics can play the same tricks on you—these psychoacoustic effects. You can try treating your room, and that can actually make a big difference. You could put a rug under your piano or hang curtains to deaden the sound. Or to liven up a room, you could put a flat piece of wood or even plexiglass under your piano to get the sound from underneath the piano to reflect out because half the sound of a piano comes out from the bottom.
Think about the challenge of trying to buy a piano.
Going from showroom to showroom, or even within one store, going from room to room, how do you know what these pianos really sound like? It’s like the situation I described—how these two pianos swapped. Which one was the great one, and which one was the good one. There is no easy answer to this question, but it’s something to be aware of.
Think about what room to put your piano in, how to treat the room, and where to place the piano in the room.
I’ll give you one more example. I was once in a recording studio with a vaulted ceiling. There was a piano in the room, and we tried moving the piano around. My natural inclination was to put the piano where the ceiling was low so it would project into the room. But it’s exactly the opposite! Putting the piano in the high ceiling part of the room and projecting into the lower part, in that case, sounded much better. So there’s a lot to consider. Acoustics is both a science and an art. The acoustics of a room have a tremendous effect on the sound of your piano. Share your experiences with pianos and acoustics! Have you ever moved your piano and noticed a change in the sound or feel of the instrument? Let us 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.
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10 thoughts on “How Your Room Can Affect Your Piano: A Tale of Two Pianos”
It sounds like a potentially scary situation.
You buy an expensive Steinway that sounds great – everything you could ever want – in the showroom. But then you get it home and it’s a dud by comparison?
What do you do then?
If the overall sound was pleasing to you in the showroom, fine voicing in your home, could potentially give you desired results. That’s why we always include servicing with all the pianos we sell, not just tuning but fine voicing to make the piano sound its best in your home. Sometimes changing acoustics in the room with rugs or curtains, can also change the acoustics to get a more desirable sound.
Thanks so much for that very interesting session. I can only have an upright piano in our living room and it has to be close to a wall on the left and open to the right. I have had both a Kawai K3 48″ and over the past 5 years a Boston 46″. For several years, both would give “buzzing” sounds with certain notes, that was very frustrating (I also have tinnitus). I tried angling the piano to the wall, sound absorbers on the side and back and nothing really worked for very long. I was also continually moving the piano slightly to try different angles and distances from the wall.
Here is what finally worked: Probably the most important was changing the tuning from 440 to 432 Hz at the suggestion of a piano tuner. But the other may be simply not moving the piano! It sits at a slight angle to the back wall (about 1-1.5 inches further on the right), but it has not moved for over 2 years, and the sound is finally what I have tried to get with no more buzzing notes. I also note that a similar Boston piano sounded great in the large showroom, but the new one I got about 4-5 years ago still had the problems when it came to my home. So another story about piano acoustics!
Finding buzzing sounds from pianos can be incredibly difficult. Sometimes it can be something in the piano or hardware on the piano. Other times it can be something in the room sympathetically vibrating. You need two people to track these things down, one to play notes that cause the buzzing, while another one goes around trying to locate the sound.
I initially had my wonderful Baldwin SF-10 (purchased from you, Robert, online) in a room with glass windows and a lovely view. The sound was acceptable but lacked the warmth I expected. Turns out , more than the windows, it was the fact that the room was above a tiled bathroom with little insulation that was creating the somewhat brittle sound. Once I moved it to a larger space above a bedroom, everything changed. The tones became warm, rich …incredible. I trusted your judgement , Robert, in purchasing the Baldwin online, and am so very happy I did. It’s a tremendous instrument. And to your point, placement in the home is a major—critical —consideration. Thanks for your thoughts.
So glad you’re enjoying your piano and found the perfect spot for it!
I have a baby grand from Young Chan and we do have a rather thick carpet from floor to floor in the living room where the piano is. However, the sound of the piano sounds exactly like in the show room in the store, where no carpet was found.
It’s possible because the store was undoubtedly a far larger space than your home, that the piano sounded as quiet there as it does in the smaller room on carpet.
Grazie Robert! Interessantissimo. Io ho sempre avuto un grosso tappeto sotto il Bosendorfer 225. è impossibile fare diversamente, scoppia la casa!! Un caro saluto, Roberto Beltrami, Italy.
Here is the translation: Thank you Robert! Very interesting. I’ve always had a big carpet under the Bosendorfer 225. it’s impossible to do otherwise, the house explodes!! Best wishes, Roberto Beltrami, Italy.