Tag Archives: music theory

How to Practice Bach: C Minor Prelude Well Tempered Clavier BK I

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today, I’m going to show you how to practice Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in C Minor from book one of his Well-Tempered Clavier. First, I’m going to play it for you. Then I want to zero in on the fast section. The whole thing is 16th notes, and then just towards the end it gets fast. It’s a great prelude. I want you to hear it first, and then I’m going to show you a bunch of ways you can practice this prelude. Stay until the end, because the last technique I’m going to show you is the ultimate technique!

Some people spend countless hours learning exercises.

Instead of learning tedious exercises, you might as well use music to develop your playing. That’s exactly what I’m going to show you how to do here. I’m going to show you a whole bunch of ways you can practice this prelude. These methods are really valuable. It kind of turns this prelude into different exercises that have great value, not just for playing this piece but for developing your technique.

First, let’s talk about the obvious things you can do.

Turn the metronome on. Find a comfortable speed where you can play it accurately. At first, when you’re playing slowly, articulate each note with gently rounded, raised fingers. This way, you get precise release of notes so the notes don’t blur together. Take the tempo up one notch at a time. As you get faster, make the fingers more gently rounded, and stay close to the keys. Of course, you don’t raise your fingers when playing fast. It’s only a way to help you practice the release of notes when playing slowly. When you get faster, lighten up and stay close to the keys.

Another handy way of working on this is with different articulations.

For example, try playing with staccato fingers. Or you could play one hand staccato and the other hand legato. There are also different accents that you could use. You could do four-note groups. You can play with different rhythms. You can play with different dynamics in the two hands. Naturally, there are other things you can do—other rhythms or accents. Some people might even want to accent the offbeats. See the video for examples of each of these techniques!

You could just spend hours, days, weeks, months, or even years with this one prelude, turning it into hundreds of different exercises!

You can use these different practice techniques with your music instead of learning hundreds of different exercises, and you get the same value. Plus, you get the added benefit of learning a piece inside and out as a reward for your hard work.

As I promised, here is the ultimate practice technique.

I love this practice method because it really trains your hand and your brain to be able to play this piece by practicing different note groups. First, play through the section broken up into four-note groups. Then, when you get comfortable going through the whole section that way, you can practice playing groups of eight notes. And then you can play groups of 16 notes at a time. You can focus on sections that need work, and identify the precise group of notes that need to be solidified.

Zero in on the parts that need work.

You don’t necessarily have to go through the entire section with all these different methods I’m showing you. Maybe you can play a good deal of it cleanly, but you keep missing one part. Try the various practice techniques on that part. Zero in where you need it. You shouldn’t just do an equal amount of practice on all of it because you might not need equal amounts on all of it. Now, at the beginning, you may very well need to work on all of it. That’s why a great starting point is playing it with the metronome with raised fingers, articulating everything, and making sure you get it all clean. Do some metronome speeds just to get it under your fingers, then strategically use these practice methods. That way, you can take the parts that are weak and make them strong. Build note groups upon note groups, and strategically use all these different techniques to help you master not just this Bach prelude but any piece of music! It will help you develop your technique on the piano. I hope this is helpful for you! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For the sheet music for all the exercises mentioned and demonstrated, please visit: https://a2f360.myshopify.com/products/bach

How a Piano Move Put My Wife Into Labor

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I have a wild story for you about how a piano move put my wife into labor. This is a true story that you have to hear to believe!

I had a good friend at the time who was also a pianist and keyboardist.

This was at a time when keyboard technology was advancing rapidly. We were both totally enamored with the latest synthesizer gear. We were always buying new keyboards and other things, and we would get together to compare notes and just have a blast jamming together all the time. His mother had a Knabe grand piano. She was having some work done in her home, and she had to store the piano somewhere. So he asked me if I could possibly help with that. The only place we really had room for a piano was our living room, because at this time we had 27 pianos in our 1100-square-foot house! So we put it in our living room, and it was fine there. She also had a nice dining room table, and she asked us to store that too. We got rid of our junky dining set to make room for it. So we had her dining table and piano, and everything was fine.

At a certain point, she suddenly decided she had to have her piano back.

It was really weird because we knew each other really well. One time, we had her over to our house when my mother was visiting. We all had a good time together. I even played for her on her piano! But for some reason, she suddenly freaked out and absolutely had to get her piano and dining set back right away. I let her know that my wife was in her ninth month of pregnancy, and we wouldn’t have a table to eat at. But she was adamant about getting her things back. So we made arrangements to have the piano moved as soon as possible since she was so desperate about the whole situation for some unknown reason. So the move was arranged. At the same time, there was another piano that I needed to move.

On the same day, I was playing music for a wedding, so I couldn’t be there for the piano move.

I couldn’t be home for the move, but it wasn’t a problem because my piano tuner was also a skilled piano mover. But at the last minute, the people he usually used to help with moves weren’t available, so he had to get some other people to help with the move. That’s where the trouble began. They showed up to move the piano. My wife, being 9 months pregnant, was trying to keep our 2-year-old daughter away from the move. My friend was a really good piano mover, but he wasn’t much of a communicator.

At a certain point, nobody was holding onto the piano, and it started to tip over.

My wife saw the piano starting to fall and caught it just in time! Who knows what would have happened if that piano had been damaged. This woman was already really upset for no reason that we could ascertain. But fortunately, everything worked out. I got home, and we had a late dinner. Then, at 1:00 in the morning, we were about to go to bed, and my wife went into labor with our second child! The epilogue to the story is that everything worked out great. We have two wonderful, healthy children, and that woman got her piano back. So that story had a happy ending! 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

27 Pianos in an 1100-Square-Foot House

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to tell you the story of how we had 27 pianos in an 1100-square-foot house. It’s actually the story of how I got into selling pianos. It all begins with how I started teaching piano.

I started teaching piano when I was still in high school.

I assisted my father, Morton Estrin, with his teaching, as my sister did before me. It was my part-time job throughout my conservatory years. Teaching has always been a mainstay. People would call me for lessons, and the first question I would always ask was, Do you have a piano? If they didn’t, I would tell them, honestly, you’re better off with a piano and no lessons than lessons and no piano. So I was turning away students right and left, and I couldn’t really afford to do that. We were kind of struggling financially. I was driving my Pinto all over the county and beyond! This was in southern Indiana since I graduated from Indiana University in Bloomington.

Eventually, I bought a big old upright and moved it myself.

I ended up moving hundreds of those big, tall uprights. Thank goodness I lifted correctly and fortunately, never hurt my back. So the next time somebody called for lessons, I asked if they had a piano, and they said no. I said that I had one they could try out. And sure enough, they bought the piano! I got another student, and everything was good. So I was bold and bought two more. But my piano technician came in and told me that the bass bridges on both pianos were cracked. I always checked out the pianos. I would look at the hammers and the soundboards, but I never thought of taking out the kickboard. Sure enough, the bass bridges were cracked on both pianos! My technician said he didn’t do that kind of work, but he recommended another tuner. So I called them up, and they came over. I didn’t really have the money to fix it. So I asked if there was any way he could do the work, and then when I sold the pianos, I could pay him and split the profit. And he was nice enough to agree to that. So we did that. Sure enough, both pianos sold, and they both made a profit. So I realized that this was something we could scale (pun intended!).

Before we knew it, we had five pianos, then seven pianos, and we topped out at 27 pianos!

We had a walk-out basement. I also had my recording studio down there. I’ve always been into music technology. We had a lot of the pianos upstairs because, among those pianos, six of them were grand pianos! We had two young children at the time. Eventually, we topped out at 27 pianos in an 1100-square-foot house! That’s right. This is real. It’s not just clickbait. We actually did that. Since that time, we’ve always had pianos in our home. And we still do right here in the Waterloo Arts District. This beautiful historical building was originally built in the 1860s, if you can believe it. We have two showrooms down here, and we live on the two levels above. Down in the basement, we have our ping-pong table. We play almost every night! The other half of our pianos are up the street at Treelawn Music Hall, where they have a phenomenal jazz program in a small venue and a large music hall where they have a 9-foot concert grand Steinway we sold them. We have our pianos there in what used to be a bowling alley. So we literally live with these pianos, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Now my teaching is all online, and it’s a joy. Teaching and pianos, along with performing and recording technology, have been the mainstays since my high school days. 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

The Greatest Challenge of Moving to Cleveland


Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today, I’m going to tell you what the greatest challenge has been with moving to Cleveland. Believe it or not, it’s finding enough great piano technicians! We started LivingPianos.com as the world’s First Online Piano Store in Orange County, California, in 2006, doing over 80% of our business out of the area. We were in one of the most expensive places in the country. And we lamented that we had to spend so much money to do business there when we were selling most of our business out of the area.

My sister, Coren Estrin Mino, is also a pianist.

She graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Music years ago, and she settled here. She’s a pianist and a teacher. So I’m no stranger to Cleveland. But think of the arduous task of moving our store with dozens of pianos. We had a recording studio. We even had an Airbnb we rented out. Not to mention our home. Moving was a huge undertaking, but it has been incredibly worthwhile!

We loved Southern California.

We were 20 minutes away from Laguna Beach. We have friends there who we loved to visit. But coming home, if it was after 2:00 pm, we would be stuck in rush hour traffic. We had to plan our whole day around the traffic. I don’t miss that. Of course, the weather in Cleveland cannot compare to Southern California. But there are a lot of great things about Cleveland.

Cleveland is a great place to live!

We’ve got the second-largest playhouse district in the country! The real blessing is having the Cleveland Orchestra 10 minutes away. There’s a necklace of metroparks around the city, and we are 10 minutes from the lake. So spread the word! If there’s anybody you know who works on pianos who would like a new life in a place that has a rich cultural history, Cleveland is the place. And it’s very affordable to live here. Come join our team of great technicians! 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

Why You Must Practice in Chords First

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to tell you why you must practice your music in chords first. There are so many benefits to this! I’m going to dive right in and show you. One obvious example of how a piece can be reduced to chords is Bach Prelude in C Major from The Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1.

The entire prelude is just a bunch of broken chords!

By practicing in chords first, you will get it into your fingers and your head. You’ll understand the harmonies. It’s much simpler to initially learn each phrase of this piece in chords first. You can discover the best fingering and understand the structure of the music. There are many other examples of this that may be less obvious. For example, an Alberti bass in Mozart, like in his famous K 545 C major Sonata. The left hand can be reduced to chords as you learn each phrase. This will help you to digest the score.

There’s much less to learn, and then you can break it up after you’ve learned it in chords.

There are some other examples that may be even less obvious to you at first glance. For example, the very first Grieg Lyric piece. That one is basically just chords. It’s so much easier to learn it when you just reduce it down to those chords. I’ll give you one more example. This one is a little bit harder because you can’t necessarily reach the chords; at least my hands are not big enough to reach them. But it’s still valuable to play it in chords, even if you have to break them. The first Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood) of Schumann. Once again, you can break it down into chords. You don’t want to necessarily play the whole piece in chords. But as you learn each section, first playing in chords will help you learn the music.

You can utilize this technique in your practice of so many different pieces of music!

It will save you time, you will develop good fingering, and you will understand the harmonies in a much deeper way. How many of you practice this way already? I’d love to hear from you! 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.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Why You Must Accept Your Limitations

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about why you must accept your limitations. I don’t want to bring you down. As a matter of fact, it’s quite the opposite! Anybody who’s accomplished anything great, it’s because they accept their own limitations. You look at people who are masters at any craft or art, and you think everything must just come easily to them. What you don’t see is the hard work that goes into it. I can’t tell you how many times I have students who think they’re the only ones for whom piano is so hard. It’s actually really hard for everyone!

Different things are difficult for different people.

Some people excel at some things, and some people excel at other things. But the key to being able to accomplish anything is to accept where you’re at and what it takes to advance. And it takes way more than you think it does. This goes for everything. When you see a beautiful painting that’s absolutely photorealistic, you’re in awe of the quality of the work. You can’t imagine how it’s done. You might think the artist is just a genius and it comes naturally to them. But if you lived with that person, and watched them work, you’d realize the countless hours they spent working and crafting that painting to look like that. It doesn’t just happen. They accepted what it took to create that masterpiece. The same is true in your piano practice.

The learning process takes time and dedication.

It’s very easy to dismiss things and think, “I should be able to get this. Why can’t I get this?”. It’s because you’re human! I have a video that hasn’t come out yet. The editing has been mind-bogglingly difficult because I wanted to put the score in the whole video. I sat down for a while one day and practiced a piece that I had very briefly studied years and years ago. I just showed how I practice. It’s a Mozart fantasie, and there’s a fast section in there. I practiced just that part of it. It’s about a 40-minute practice session. I knew it was too long for anybody to watch.
So I have parts going in fast-motion. It shows how long I take to learn something—to really get it under my fingers and into my head. Just because I can play all this music from memory doesn’t mean that it just comes easily to me, It’s a meticulous process.

You can see for yourself how I learn a new piece of music!

I have a video I did years ago. I flipped open the Chopin Mazurkas randomly, found a mazurka I’d never even heard before, and started memorizing it. You can watch that here. You’ll see what it takes. So don’t beat yourself up! Accept that this is what it takes. Then you decide if it’s worth the effort or not. But to think that it should come easily—you’re not going to get anywhere with that type of thinking. You’ll just get frustrated, and you’ll think less of yourself. Just accept your limitations, and from there, you can accomplish almost anything! That’s the message for today. I hope it’s inspiring for you and not discouraging. 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