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What Is the Most Common Note in Music?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to answer a question from a viewer: What is the most common note in music? In the English language, E is the most prevalent letter. Is there a note that is the most common note in music?

There are two things to consider.

First, we need to ask: what kind of note? It could be the pitch of the note or the type of note rhythmically. The first one I’m going to cover is the type of note because it’s so simple. There’s whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, 8th notes, 16th notes, 32nd notes, 64th notes, and it goes all the way up to 128th notes. Each of these can be triplets as well. This is so easy because the most popular time signature is 4/4 time. It’s so common that it’s referred to as common time! What does it mean? It means there are four beats in a measure, and the quarter note gets one beat. So yes, the quarter note is the most popular and most common note in music.

Pitch is a little bit more complicated.

Let’s consider a few aspects. First of all, of course, A is not only the first letter of the alphabet, it’s also the note that an orchestra tunes to. So there’s a great significance to that note, naturally. And then we can talk about different groups of instruments and what notes are really intrinsic to them. On stringed instruments, E is a very popular note. Think about the guitar. I don’t play guitar, but there are two chords I can play on a guitar: E major and E minor. In fact, the highest and lowest strings on a guitar are both E’s, so E is really common. The lowest note on a bass is also an E. All string instruments have E’s on them, as well as A’s. So there’s a case to be made for E.

For wind instruments, flat keys are really common.

For example, the trumpet is pitched in B-flat. So is clarinet, generally. Of course, there is earlier period music where the pitches of the instruments were not set yet. Saxophones are usually E-flat or B-flat, and trombones are B-flat. So flat keys are very common as well. So where does that leave us with all of this?

There’s one note that, as a pianist, you look at all the time.

That note is C. Middle C is right in the middle of your keyboard. It’s all over the place! C is the highest note and one of the lowest notes on the piano. And when you play all white keys, you’re playing a C-major scale. So C is really common. But there’s more to it than that.

I mentioned all these transposing instruments. That is, when a trumpet plays C, a B-flat comes out. So even though the instrument is pitched to B-flat, their score, written in C, comes out in B-flat. So it presupposes C as the standard, from which all the other transpositions are derived. It’s the same with a clarinet in B-flat. It plays in C, but it comes out in B-flat. For the French horn, all the repertoire before the horn had valves was written in C. The horns themselves would be tuned with a series of extra pipes called crooks. That is what would change the pitch of the instrument. The modern French horn is pitched in F, yet the parts may be written in many different keys like, E-flat, D, or others, but the part’s are always written in C. So C is the standard pitch. When a conductor looks at a score, all the transposing instruments are in C for the conductor, and they must figure out the absolute pitch relative to the transposition of the various instruments.

I’ve got to say that C is the most common note in music!

A good case can be derived for other notes, as I mentioned earlier. What do you think about this? Let’s get a lively discussion going in the comments here at LivingPianos.com! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store.

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

Which Takes Longer: Becoming a Pianist or a Doctor?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to answer a really interesting question from a viewer: Does it take longer to become a concert pianist or a doctor? Both of these fields obviously require many years of study. So I’m going to break it down for you and give you an idea of what each of these career paths entails.

You have to spend many years in school to become a doctor.

To become a doctor, you will first need an undergraduate degree in some field, hopefully related to the medical field, perhaps biology or something. That’s followed by four years of medical school. So there is a big chunk right there. But is that it? Far from it! After that, there’s a residency, which can be anywhere from 3 to 7 years. Now, unless you’re becoming a general practitioner, there’s also a specialization with a fellowship that usually adds another 1 to 3 years. So you have anywhere between 11 and 14 years of studying before becoming a doctor.

What about pianists?

Pianists typically start at a younger age than doctors. In fact, most concert pianists on the scene today started as children between the ages of 4 and 7. There are some outliers outside of that range, but the vast majority are going to be somewhere in there. From the time they’re very young children, they’ve been practicing every day for at least an hour or two a day. As they get older, they’re probably practicing 3 to 5 hours a day. Most of them will go to a conservatory or a university program specializing in piano performance in order to study with the best teachers. If they’re expanding their repertoire, it’s likely that they’re practicing for at least 3 to 5 hours, more likely 6 to 8 hours if they’re entering competitions and things of that nature, because the repertoire requirements are so immense. So altogether, they’re probably going to spend easily 15 to 20 years of private instruction; that’s even more than the 11 to 14 years typical for doctors. It’s a long haul!

What about the continuing studies in each of these fields?

Doctors are always learning from experience. They need to keep abreast of the latest technologies and procedures by reading journals and possibly attending conventions. Pianists, on the other hand, are constantly learning new repertoire. They can’t keep playing the same solo recitals again and again. They have to have new music so people keep wanting to hear their performances. If they’re collaborating with other musicians in chamber music or accompanying, they have to learn the music that people want to collaborate with them on.

Concert pianists are constantly learning new music.

If they have the opportunity to perform concertos, they have to learn new concertos. A lot of pianists will also have original contemporary works commissioned for them, which they have to learn. For example, concert pianist Jeffrey Biegel, who was one of my father, Morton Estrin’s students. He’s carved out a whole career getting works commissioned for him, and he collaborates with orchestras all around the world. He has been doing it for years. This entails a tremendous amount of work, and you don’t even have the benefit of listening to recordings to hear what the pieces that you’re going to be performing sound like first! My sister, Coren Estrin Mino, performs a lot of new works here in the Cleveland area, helping out composers so they can have their works performed.

There are many avenues for both doctors and concert pianists, but concert pianists have a longer haul, starting younger and working longer in order to carve out a career.

Even going through everything I outlined for becoming a concert pianist is no guarantee that you’ll be a touring artist. There are just so many people who are highly skilled at the instrument, and a very limited number of people ever get to do it. Whereas for a doctor, if they go through all those different courses, degrees, and residencies, then chances are they’re going to find some place where they can practice. However, no matter how nerve-wracking performing the piano is, nobody dies. So we have a deep respect for doctors as well as pianists for the rigorous training that’s necessary in both of these fields. Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store

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 WAS Living Piano?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is: What WAS Living Piano? I recently made videos, “What IS Living Pianos?” and “What ARE Living Pianos?” But What WAS Living Piano? Well, Living Piano actually predates Living Pianos by a number of years. It was a live show that I performed throughout the state of California dozens of times at universities, colleges, art centers, conventions, and even on a cruise in which I presented a historic concert experience showing the entire lineage of the invention of the piano, starting with the harpsichord, going through to the earliest piano of Mozart, the fortepiano, to the modern piano and beyond with cutting-edge technologies including my modular piano system prototypes.

I would dress up in period costumes and play the period styles on the instruments they were actually written for!

What was remarkable about the show is that I performed it for so many different people, from senior citizens to preschoolers, and everybody was fascinated. The piano is so ubiquitous, but most people never have actually experienced the development of the piano that took thousands of people over hundreds of years to achieve. Living Piano allowed people to hear how the piano evolved and what the music written for it at different times sounded like on these instruments. Not only that, but I gave the audience a chance to come up afterwards and inspect the instruments and try them out for themselves. People loved the show!

It was an incredibly impractical show.

When you become an early instrument specialist, you not only have to learn how to play the instruments and transport them, but you also have to learn how to service them. Every time you play a harpsichord, you have to tune it! It doesn’t hold its tuning very well at all. You wouldn’t even believe the complexity of what it takes to do a show like this. But I’m glad I experienced it. It was the impetus for Living Pianos. It gave me a chance to perform in so many different places including annual conventions of the Piano Technicians Guild and the Piano Teachers Association. It was really quite a show. If you’re interested in learning more, you can watch the Short documentary about the Living Piano live show! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store.

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

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about 7th Chords


Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today, you’re going to learn everything you ever wanted to know about 7th chords. I recently put out a video about triads. Triads are chords built on thirds containing three notes. 7th chords are kind of an extension of triads. A major triad consists of two different types of thirds: a major third on the bottom and a minor third on top. A minor third on the bottom and a major third on the top gives you your minor triad. A diminished triad consists of two minor thirds. An augmented triad consists of two major thirds.

7th chords contain four notes arranged in thirds.

Like triads, 7th chords consist only of major thirds and minor thirds. Major thirds are four half-steps apart. Minor thirds are three half-steps apart. It’s easy to remember triads because you have two sets of thirds, so there are only four possible combinations. But when you have four notes, how do you remember everything? I’m going to show you such an easy way. It’s kind of like a cheat, but it works, and you’re going to love it!

I’m going to show you the three types of sevenths that are used.

A major 7th is the seventh note of the major scale, a half-step shy of an octave. A minor 7th is a half-step smaller than that, and a diminished 7th is a whole step smaller. Those are the only kinds of sevenths that are used in seventh chords. The rest are just triads. A major triad with a major seventh is a major seventh chord. I think you probably can guess where this is going. A minor triad with a minor seventh is a minor seventh chord. A diminished triad with a diminished seventh is a diminished seventh chord.

Seventh chords, just like triads, are only built on the intervals of thirds.

So you always skip a letter when you see it written on the staff. It’s either all lines or all spaces (as long as the root of the chord is on the bottom). So indeed, the major triad is spelled C, E, G, B. The minor seventh chord is C, E-flat, G, B-flat. The diminished is C, E-flat, G-flat, B-double-flat. That’s right. Because it has to be spelled in thirds, and G-flat to B-double-flat is a third. If it was written with an A, it wouldn’t look right on the page. You wouldn’t identify it as a chord. When you see all the notes on lines or all the notes on spaces, you know it’s a chord. You just have to figure out the accidentals to know what type of chord. There are just two left that you have to learn.

If you have a major triad with a minor seventh chord, you have a major minor seventh chord, which is called dominant.

Why dominant? Because it is built on the fifth scale degree. If you play every other note of the major scale, starting on the fifth note of the scale, it forms a dominant seventh chord or V7. And in sheet music, when you just see 7, written after a letter, it indicates a dominant seventh chord. It is the most popular seventh chord and one of the most important for establishing the key.

There’s one more seventh chord called half-diminished.

How could it be half-diminished? It’s a diminished triad with a minor seventh. That’s your half-diminished seventh chord. It is found natively as VII7. You build a seventh chord on the seventh scale degree, and you have a diminished triad with a minor seventh. Incidentally, the diminished seventh chord is only found natively in the minor as the VII7, assuming it is a harmonic minor scale. The harmonic minor has a raised seventh. That’s where the diminished seventh chord is built. It is an incredibly powerful chord that can be built anywhere and can facilitate modulation and provide deceptive resolutions. It’s a fascinating chord unto itself. I have a video on the diminished seventh chord.

I hope this has demystified seventh chords for you!

Major/major is major. Minor/minor is minor. Diminished/diminished is diminished. Major/minor is dominant. And half-diminished is your VII7, a diminished triad with a minor seventh, VII7 in the major key. That’s it for today I hope this is enlightening for you! And I hope this makes it easy to remember all the seventh chords without having to think about all the possibilities of the three sets of thirds. This breaks it down for you in a very digestible way.
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/RobertEstrinContact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

What is Living Pianos?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s question is: What is Living Pianos? In a nutshell, it’s my life! And it’s your life too, if you have a passion for the piano the way I do. It’s actually a double entendre. There are two meanings to Living Pianos.

I have a video called What are Living Pianos?

That video tells about the restored American and European pianos that are so rare today, which we sell all over the world and have been doing so since 2006! But it’s much more than that. It’s really about living the piano. As a matter of fact, if you type “living the piano” in your browser, Living Pianos comes up!

I was lucky enough to grow up in a musical household.

My entire family is made up of musicians of one sort or another. Pianos have always been central. My father, Morton Estrin, was a concert pianist. He was my teacher and my sister’s teacher. He taught countless people, from Billy Joel to conductors, composers, and pianists the world over. My sister, Coren Estrin Mino, is also a pianist and a teacher. My uncle was a professional musician. The list goes on and on. My life is centered around teaching, performing, and media. This is what makes me want to get up in the morning!

My mission is to keep the piano alive in the 21st century, in the United States and around the world.

This is no easy task when you consider that the piano has been on a slow decline for over a hundred years. That’s why connecting with people like you who care about the piano is enriching. It makes me feel like there is value to my life. So I thank you all for joining me and encourage you to subscribe to LivingPianos.com and YouTube! You’ll find a treasure trove of content I’ve been putting together for many years! 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 Is the Most Important Finger in Piano Playing?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s question is: What is the most important finger for playing the piano? Of course, all of your fingers are important, and they each play a vital role. Imagine playing the piano with less than ten fingers. It would be really hard! It’s hard enough with all ten fingers. But there’s one finger that really is pivotal for playing the piano. Not only that, but it is arguably the most important finger that you have for everything.

The most important finger is the thumb.

Why are the thumbs so important? Naturally, being able to grasp objects with the thumb, because it’s opposing the other fingers, is incredibly important. And it’s in no small part how civilization developed. Our thumbs enable us to utilize tools. The thumb gives you control. In piano playing, there are three aspects that make the thumb vitally important. The thumb is your strongest finger. The third finger is pretty darn strong, but not like the thumb. Instead of having three bones like your other fingers, the thumb only has two. And it has a unique set of tendons and muscles.

How does this impact piano playing?

First of all, when playing scales, arpeggios, or any passages that go up and down the keyboard, because the thumb has the flexibility of being able to oppose the other fingers, you can use the thumb to cross other fingers. It can go under the hand to reach for the next note. Imagine trying to play scales without your thumbs. It’s really hard because crossing over fingers without using the thumb is awkward. Sometimes you have to do that when you’re playing counterpoint. You might have to hold a note with your thumb while other notes are being played on top. If the thumb is already engaged in playing a note, it can be necessary to cross with different fingers.

The thumb is vitally important for playing octaves and other larger intervals.

Unless you have very large hands, you probably can’t play an octave with your other fingers. Even if you had an extra finger like your other fingers instead of a unique finger like the thumb, you wouldn’t be able to get the control and power of the thumb. It’s the magic of the arch! You can get the power of the arch of the whole hand with the thumb. It’s the power of the arch that gives you control when playing octaves as well as chords. This enables you to get the balance you want. You utilize the rocking of the hand from the left to the right to balance the tone from one side of the hand to the other side. You can get a certain amount of that with your other fingers, but because the thumb has unique musculature, it enables you to achieve superior control. So when you’re playing octaves, for example, you can get the balance you want by how you distribute the weight of the hand. That’s also what enables rapid, powerful octaves.

That’s the power of the thumb!

It’s your strongest finger. It’s opposable, so you can cross it and easily get fluidity on scales, arpeggios, and other passages that go up and down the keyboard. And lastly, the power of the arch gives you control and speed on octaves and chords. 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