Tag Archives: music theory

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

5 Ways to Develop Your Sight-Reading

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to give you five ways to develop your sight-reading skills. Have you ever watched somebody who’s a good sight-reader play a piece of music they’ve never seen before, and it almost sounds like a performance, and wished you could do that? There are countless reasons why sight-reading is a joy if you can do it. In high school, I was a pretty advanced player, but my sight-reading was at an elementary level. I have a video about that. But today I’m going to give you practical tips that you can use to develop your sight-reading skills.

1. Choose pieces that are at your reading level.

I know it can be tempting. You hear a piece of music, and you want to play it so badly. So you try to read through it, and it’s such a struggle that it’s discouraging. More than that, you can’t really get a feel for the piece because you’re stopping and starting so many times. Accept the level that you are at and read pieces at that level. If you read enough of them, you will gain from the experience. Over time, you will grow and be able to read more complex scores.

TIPS FOR IMPROVING YOUR SIGHT-READING – SIGHT-READING PART 2

2. Play slowly enough.

You want to hear the piece the way it’s meant to be heard. Maybe the beginning isn’t that hard for you, so you take it at a comfortable tempo. But then you’re slowing down, speeding up, and stopping, and you really don’t get a feel for the piece. If you play slowly enough, it’s much more valuable. Even though it might seem frustrating at first, you will gain much more from the experience.

3. Have some pieces that are reading pieces.

I don’t know how many of you are like I was, but I used to memorize all my pieces. When it came to sight-reading, I just couldn’t do it. Well, an answer to that is to have some pieces that are reading pieces. Maybe there are pieces that you can’t really sight-read. You can read parts of it, but other parts are a struggle. Take those pieces and work on the parts you can’t read. Go through them, practicing hands separately, taking little phrases at a time, and get those sections so that you can read through them. You make it a reading piece that you never memorize. You always read it. You use the score, and you gain the confidence to be able to play the piece with the music. This is incredibly important if you ever want to play chamber music, because you’re not going to memorize every single thing that you want to read.

4. Look at groups of notes.

When you’re reading English, you’re not looking at letters; you’re looking at words. It’s the same thing with music. You don’t look at each individual note. You look at chords and clusters of notes, and you grab the meaning of the notes so you understand the essential structure. Instead of just painstakingly looking at each note, try to recognize patterns and intervals so you can grab groups of notes.

IMPROVE YOUR SIGHT-READING BY LOOKING AT CHUNKS OF MUSIC

5. Play with other musicians.

This is the most important tip of all, and this was my epiphany with reading. This is the way you truly learn to become a good sight-reader. Why? When you’re playing by yourself, when you miss something, it’s only natural to stop and make corrections. You’re programmed to do that in your practice. It’s almost impossible to keep going when you’re missing notes. But when you’re playing with other people, you have no choice but to keep going. So you learn to make that connection among the three aspects of what you see, what you hear, and what you feel.

THE 3 ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF SIGHT-READING

If you have any other tips for sight-reading that aren’t covered here, please leave them in the comments for other people. I know this is such an important subject for people. We all want to be better readers, and anything that helps is welcome. 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 Your Room Can Affect Your Piano: A Tale of Two Pianos

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.

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 Happens to Old Pianos?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The question today is: What happens to old pianos? I’m going to tell you right now that what I’m going to share with you today is very disturbing. For those of you who love piano like I do, seeing what I’m going to show you is really heartbreaking.

There are some companies, like Living Pianos, that restore old pianos.

Most companies that restore pianos specialize in Steinway and maybe a couple of other brands. Used Steinways command more money than other brands because everybody sees them on the concert stage. Everyone knows they are high-quality pianos. But most people don’t know about other high-quality piano brands that were around in the United States when there were hundreds of companies making pianos in this country. And many of them were great instruments.

The problem is that restoring a piano is extremely expensive.

Many top piano restorers get between $30,000 and $40,000 to completely rebuild a piano to make it like new again. As a matter of fact, I took a personal tour of Steinway. The CEO and all the people treated me like royalty there. They gave me a grand tour of the entire facility. And when we passed their rebuilding shop, they said, “It’s a lot easier to build pianos than to rebuild them.” Pianos that have never had any work done to them are actually easier to rebuild than pianos where some work has been done along the way because you don’t know the specifications of the matching parts.

There are resources for old pianos, such as PianoAdoption.com.

PianoAdoption.com is a great place to go if you have a piano you just want to get rid of and you don’t have the heart to see it go to the dump, which is what happens to many old pianos, unfortunately. This is something that happens on a regular basis all around the country. It’s heartbreaking to see what happens when pianos need more work than they’re worth. I have a friend who has a piano business. He revealed to me that this past year, believe it or not, he had to trash 170 pianos of his that he had in storage because there was no way he was going to be able to restore them.

You actually have to pay money when you have an old piano that you can’t get rid of.

You would think somebody would want these instruments. If you have a piano that looks gorgeous, somebody might want it just for the furniture. And there are some pianos that can be restored, thank goodness. But for every piano we take in to restore, sadly, we have to turn down dozens that just aren’t worth it because of compromises in the fundamental structure. There’s only so much you can do to bring life to older pianos. Some are excellent candidates, and you can get stellar results. Others, you just can’t get life out of them anymore. Sadly, those pianos end up in the landfill. Sorry to bring you down with this. But the good news is that we and other businesses restore pianos so that we have these treasures from when the United States was the epicenter of the piano industry. Unlike today, when only about 2500 pianos are built each year in North America. That’s why it is our mission to bring life back to old pianos and to spread the joy of the piano to you! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

Supplemental Content:
New York Times Article

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/arts/music/for-more-pianos-last-note-is-thud-in-the-dump.html