Tag Archives: robert estrin

What Is Anti-Practicing and Are You Doing it?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about anti-practicing. What is anti-practicing? Are you doing it? You may be. I’m going to give you 3 telltale signs today that you might be anti-practicing. What do I mean by anti-practicing? What I’m talking about are routines in your daily work that are destructive. Routines that actually build negative habits in your playing. There are many ways that you can be productive in your practice and an equal number of ways that you can be unproductive. One of the most telling signs that you may be damaging your work is playing too fast.

Playing too fast has so many negative repercussions in your playing.

One negative repercussion of playing too fast is changing your tempo. Let’s say you have a piece and it’s going pretty well. It’s fun to play it because it’s an exciting piece that you love, but there are just a few problem spots. So you accommodate by slowing down for those spots so you can enjoy playing through the music. Why is this such a bad thing to do? Occasionally you might want to try playing up to tempo to see how far you get and to see where the problem parts are so you can zero in and solve them. But if you’re in the habit of doing this on a regular basis, you get so used to playing it that way, making those accommodations, that it’s all but impossible to stop!

 

Obviously the metronome is an incredibly valuable tool. Find a speed at whcih you can play everything at that tempo and that will serve you really well. There are other techniques you can use as well, because you might not want to play all of it slowly all the time. Instead, play until you can’t keep up with the metronome and concentrate on those sections. You can simply do metronome speeds. Find the speed at which you can play the trouble passage, and increase by one or two notches at a time on your metronome until you get it up to speed. Or you can use other practice techniques, whatever solves the problems. Maybe you need to play hands separately. You can try stopping on a note that you always miss so you land on it a bunch of times accurately. Whatever it takes to feel secure in the parts that are giving you problems is worthwhile. Playing too fast is obviously going to be destructive if you do it on a regular basis without solving the underlying problems in the sections you can’t play up to speed.

The second telltale sign is going back just a little bit every time you make a mistake.

You’re playing through a piece and when you make a mistake you just go back and fix it. You think you fixed it, but of course you haven’t fixed it. All you’re doing is getting into the routine of going back slightly when you make a mistake. So during your performance you will do the same thing, because that’s what you’re used to doing. Solving this issue really takes multiple steps. You might think you solved it, but you haven’t. Because the next time, it’s likely to happen again. Those weaknesses are still there.

So how do you get rid of those insecurities?

First of all, when you have a little problem, you need to stop and get out the music to find exactly where the problem is. By the way, that’s the hardest part of all! You might think you’re the only one who has trouble finding where you are in the music. No. It’s hard even for me sometimes! But I take the time to do it each and every time because it’s the only way to know what the problem is and to clarify the solution in your mind. That way it’s not just a motor memory thing that you may or may not get, but intellectually, you understand the correction.

Once you can play the correction faithfully repeatedly, you get it up to tempo, it’s smooth, and you can play it at least three times in a row perfectly, are you done? No. You’re not done yet because you still have to put it into context. What I recommend is to go back a little bit first, maybe two measures before the part that you already got perfect three times in a row. Go back two measures before that and play that perfectly three times in a row. Finally, go back to the beginning of the piece or section and make sure you can think it all through playing accurately. Because strangely enough, even after cementing a correction, and even after being able to go back a couple of measures and get through it beautifully over and over again, you’re still going to find that when you go back to the beginning of the piece the same mistake will creep in again because you’re not used to getting there from that point. So you have to think it all through! Once you play through two or three times from the beginning perfectly, you’ve got it solved until the next part. So go to the next problem part and do exactly the same thing until you can faithfully go through the whole piece.

The third telltale sign is playing your mistake.

The 3rd telltale sign that you may be anti-practicing is playing your mistake. As soon as you make a mistake you wonder, “What did I do wrong?” So you go back and play it incorrectly again to understand what the mistake was. I know it’s so tempting to want to see what you did wrong, but all you’re doing is concentrating on the mistake. You’re cementing the mistake! This is the very definition of anti-practicing! You don’t want to think about your mistakes. You want to focus on the corrections!

Those are the 3 things to concentrate on!

Don’t play too fast! However, you can try your music up to speed, just to see where you need to focus your attention. Don’t just stop and go back a little bit and think you’ve corrected mistakes because you haven’t. You may think you have because you went back and played it correctly, but the same thing is likely to happen again unless you go back further and further incorporating the correction. And don’t ever try to find your mistakes. Instead, focus on the corrections! That’s what will be paramount in your mind and your performance will be stronger as a result. I hope these tips are helpful for you! Thanks so much 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

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Upright VS Grand – Can You Hear the Difference?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Can you hear the difference between an upright and a grand piano? Today I have another listening test for you! Last time we tested a Steinway versus a Chinese piano. People really enjoyed that little listening test. So today we will listen to an upright piano versus a grand piano! Can you really tell the difference? What are the preconceived notions about these pianos?

I dug through the archives of Living Pianos recordings and found an upright piano and a grand piano playing the same Chiarina movement of Schumann’s Carnaval. I took the second repeat in one of the recordings but not the other, but other than that they are the same. Both pianos were recorded in the same place with the same microphones, which is really great for this test. I’m going to reveal what those instruments are after you get a chance to listen.

Write down your answer!

As I said before on the Steinway versus Chinese piano video, I want you to write down your answer so that you don’t fool yourself. Because of course, we all want to be right and think we can tell the difference. So, write it down and commit to which one you think is the upright and which one you think is the grand. Here we go. Happy listening!

See video to hear for yourself!

Eleven years ago I made a video about uprights versus grands and you can check that out at LivingPianos.com and YouTube. I discussed the differences. There are some substantial differences, primarily in the actions. But what about these two pianos? What are they? I chose a large grand. As a matter of fact, the grand piano is a seven-foot 1998 Baldwin SF-10. It’s a semi-concert grand. The upright is also a Baldwin, to make it fair. It’s a 1987 Baldwin Hamilton, which is just a 45-inch piano. 45 inches compared to seven feet, you would think there’d be an astounding difference in sound! Yet they both sound quite beautiful, don’t they? So which one was which?

The first one was the seven-foot Baldwin SF-10! The second one was the studio Baldwin Hamilton upright.

How many of you got that right? I’m really interested! My perspective is playing these instruments and making the allowances to get the best sound out of each piano, which is the job of a pianist. Because after all, almost all instrumentalists take their instruments with them. As pianists we have to play whatever instrument is available, and instantly adjust. I’ve had the good fortune of being around many pianos. I’ve learned how to make those adjustments. So the question is, how did you feel about the sound of these two pianos? Did you choose correctly? I would love to hear from all of you! Let me know your thoughts in the comments! Thanks so much 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

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1987 Baldwin Hamilton 45-inch Studio Upright
https://youtu.be/hfSi_p35PZk

1998 Baldwin SF-10 7-foot Semi-ConcertGrand
https://youtu.be/yb9c924YbMI

Upright pianos versus Grand pianos – Uprights Vs. Grands
https://youtu.be/ZD1QxoxabMQ

Steinway VS Chinese Piano – Can You Hear the Difference?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Do you think you can hear the difference between a Steinway and a Chinese piano? Many of you probably think it would be no problem. But it may be surprising to you what you hear. There have been studies on wines. When people think a bottle of wine is expensive, they’re always going to choose that as being a better wine. There’s a subjective nature to the taste and the bouquet of wines. Well, the same is true of pianos! Now, I’m not suggesting one is better than the other. I’m going to leave it up to you to decide. I’m going to provide you with a blind listening test!

We will be comparing a Steinway to a Chinese piano in our blind listening test!

I went through the archives of Living Pianos, because we have hundreds of piano videos, and I found two grand pianos of about the same size, both in brand new condition. One is a Steinway and one is a Chinese piano. The Chinese brand shall remain nameless for right now. At the end I will reveal which is which. But don’t cheat! Don’t go forward on this because I want you to really critically listen. If you’ve got good speakers or headphones, use them so you can really hear the instruments. Then I want you to write down your answer. Write it down on a piece of paper. I’m serious about this! Because it’s easy to change your mind once you know the answer. But if you commit it to paper, then you can’t argue that you thought something different. It’s harder to tell than you might think!

I found recordings of the beginning of the second movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 7 in D major, Op. 10, No. 3. It’s the same exact piece of music you’re going to hear on both of these instruments. Remember, don’t cheat! I want you to really write down which one you think is the Steinway and which one is the Chinese piano so you get the most out of this. Here we go!

See video to hear for yourself!

That was an interesting listening experience. I bet many of you have very definite ideas and some of you may be wondering which one is which. Well first of all let me tell you what these pianos are and then I’ll tell you which one was first and which one was second. The Steinway is a 2010 Model O which is right around 5′ 10″ in brand new condition. The Chinese piano is the 2017 Hailun Model 178, also 5′ 10″.

So which one was which? Have you written it down on paper? I’m serious about this because it’s easy to cheat yourself. You don’t want to be wrong here, do you? Because there’s a drastic price difference. You could buy several of those Hailuns for the price of a Steinway. So which one is which?

The first performance you heard was the Steinway and the second performance was the Hailun.

I don’t know how many of you are shocked and how many of you got it right. But there’s no right or wrong answer because every piano has something to offer. Every piano is unique. If you play several brand new Steinway model O’s in the showroom, each one will have a unique character of sound, as do the Hailuns. All pianos are made of wood and other organic materials and are highly crafted.

Now, I should tell you that there was a slight difference in these two performances. The first one was made later in my studio where I had much higher end microphones. I had a pair of Neumanns recording the Steinway and I only had a pair of Audio-Technica 4033s, which are relatively inexpensive large diaphragm condensers on the Hailun. So they were recorded in different rooms with different microphones. So this wasn’t totally scientific. The Hailun didn’t have the benefit of expensive, high-end microphones. But nevertheless you can get some idea of the different characteristics of the sound of these pianos. It was an interesting playing experience. I can hear what I went for and what came out on these performances. But I’m more interested in what you heard! Be honest in the comments. I’m very interested in how everybody responds to this! Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

Steinway 2010 Model O Grand Piano – Living Pianos Online Piano Store
https://youtu.be/beWmW4C4y7U

New Hailun Model 178 Grand Piano – Living Pianos Online Piano Store
https://youtu.be/izQ-ZUSa0Jw
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!

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How to Avoid Injury in Piano Playing: Is Pain OK?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about avoiding injury in your piano playing. Is pain ever OK? You know they say, “No pain, no gain,” but I’m going to come right out and say no, pain is not okay in piano playing. There are some exceptions, but I want to make it very clear that pain is always a warning sign that something is wrong. I’m going to bring up the exceptions, but first I want to show you ways you can mitigate pain in your piano playing. Of course if you’re having any kind of serious issues, particularly anything recurring, you should see a doctor to find out what is going on, because pain is not good.

How can you avoid pain in your piano playing?

First of all, it’s incredibly important how you sit at the piano. Take the time to make sure you’re sitting at the appropriate distance from the keyboard. Use a seat that you can adjust to exactly the right height as well. You can use an adjustable artist bench, or put books or a pillow on the bench to raise the height if necessary. Being at the right height is really critical. Generally speaking, you want your hands straight with your arms parallel to the floor. This is very comfortable because your wrists are straight. You don’t want your wrists to be bent. Imagine sitting at the piano so low that your wrists are lower than your fingers the whole time you’re practicing. That stresses the nerves and the tendons and your wrists can become swollen and sore just from being in that position. So take the time to make sure you are sitting at the right height.

How far should your bench be from the keyboard?

Sometimes you see people sitting too close to the piano. This is extraordinarily tension-inducing, particularly when playing in the extreme high and low registers of the keyboard. You want to be far enough away so there’s a wide angle to your arms. You don’t want your arms right at your sides. You also don’t want the bench to be right up against the back of your knees because you have no flexibility for getting from one end of the keyboard to the other quickly, as you have to do in a lot of different music. So sitting in the right place and having the right angle of your wrists is vitally important.

Your piano and environment also play a role.

If you feel pain and you wonder why, there’s the possibility that your piano action might need work. Maybe you’re playing on a piano that has 65 – 70 grams of down-weight and it just takes too much effort to push the keys down. Regulation, lubrication and easing of key bushings can possibly get things moving better. Another problem is if your piano has a really dead sound and you’re trying to fill a room that is too large for the instrument. You may overcompensate in your playing. There may be ambient sounds of air conditioning or some other sounds you’re constantly trying to overcome. You may be playing way harder than you think even if your action isn’t heavy. That could really be taxing to your hands. So that’s another thing to be aware of.

Is pain ever OK?

I talked in the beginning about the exceptions, about no pain, no gain. Is there any truth to that? Well, there is a little bit. Any of you who exercise know that if you’re weightlifting or running, the lactic acid naturally builds up in your muscles and you feel a soreness that can possibly be described as pain. But it’s a pain that goes away as soon as you stop. It’s a normal part of the growth of muscles. In fact, the only way muscles grow is by tearing down and rebuilding. This is the physiology of exercise. A little bit of that happens in piano playing. If you’ve ever done wrist exercises or even scales, when you finish you will feel tired. You’ll feel a certain soreness, at least temporarily, in your fingers. Now, if that persists after a few minutes of rest, then there’s something wrong. But to feel a little bit of fatigue bordering on pain in your hands after a workout on the piano, as long as it’s akin to what you feel when you’re exercising, is a normal part of building strength. Knowing that distinction is important so you make sure you don’t cross the line!

At times I’ve practiced some really treacherous sections of Liszt. I alternate between doing the really virtuosic sections and the more poetic parts of the piece, going back and forth to make sure I don’t put too much strain on my hands. This is what you must do in your practice. If you feel pain or major fatigue, that achy feeling you get when your muscles are being worked out, give it a little break and come back to it a bit later. And make sure that it’s nothing that persists!

Be sure to stretch and take rest when you need it!

Generally, you never want to experience pain in your piano playing. But when you’re doing a major workout, you may feel a sense of relief when you stop for a little bit. So give yourself rest! I like to do stretching throughout the day. It’s really helpful. Because your neck, your shoulders, all need to function properly. Your nerves are part of a system that goes all the way to your brain. If at any point the nerves become infringed upon it can cause problems in your hands, neck, or back. So you must be limber. Doing yoga or other stretching is vitally important. I highly recommend it! I don’t know what I would do without my stretching. I may make a video about the stretching I do because it’s stuff that I’ve come up with that’s based upon yoga, but it’s my own personal routine that I can do anywhere. You might enjoy that as well. Let me know in the comments! Thanks so much 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

You can contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you!

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The Importance of Practicing With Raised Fingers

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about the importance of practicing with raised fingers. Playing the piano with raised fingers is a completely different scenario from practicing the piano with raised fingers. I want to qualify this right out of the gate so you don’t get scared that I’m telling you to do something that could lead to injury. This is a technique used judiciously to help you solidify your technique, but certainly not something you do in performance. You may wonder why you would do something in practice that you would never do in your performance? Well, there are very good reasons for this which I will explain now.

The physiology of the hands is such that it’s much easier to push fingers down than to lift them up.

If you want to prove this to yourself, just put your hands on a flat surface anywhere, and then just try to lift only your fourth finger. It’s hard to do because the tendons and the nerves are shared among those fingers. So it makes it tough to gain independence.

Why is it a good idea to practice with raised fingers?

Well, there are actually two reasons for this. One is that it helps to strengthen the independence of your fingers so you can practice the release of notes. If you’ve ever heard somebody play sloppy scales, one aspect is the evenness of the attack. But the other aspect is the evenness of the durations of notes, the space between notes. If I played a scale with all the notes hitting evenly, but don’t release some of the notes the same length as others, it would sound sloppy because some notes overlap and some don’t. It’s haphazard. And as I mentioned, lifting fingers up is so much more difficult than pushing them down. Also, it teaches your hands and your head which fingers are down and which fingers are up. So in slow scale practice, by raising fingers, you identify which notes are down and which fingers are up. So when you go faster you have the control of releases, not just attacks of notes.

The stretch you get is akin to the warm up of an athlete.

Stretching is so important! This is a great way you can stretch your fingers while at the same time teach yourself the release of the notes in slow practice. Naturally, when you play up to tempo, you abandon this because it’s not possible or recommended to raise fingers when trying to play up to tempo. It’s not only impossible, but it would not be good for your hands to do such a thing. But it’s a tremendous technique, not just for practicing scales. You can use this technique anytime you want to identify which notes are down and which notes are up so you can achieve a clean sound. With this kind of practice everything is exaggerated. So whatever sloppiness you have is eradicated because you really get to dig into the keys and feel every key that’s down and keep other fingers up and out of the way. And this is why slow practicing with raised fingers can be incredibly valuable for you!

Always be aware of how you feel and never do anything that causes you pain!

This applies not just for raised finger practice, but everything you do on the piano. How you sit at the piano, the relaxed nature of your shoulders. You must be aware of all these things because you want your hands to last your whole life because it is the lifeblood for playing the piano!

I hope you find this practice technique to be helpful for you. Try it out and see how it works for you! And when practicing with raised fingers, you don’t want to use a lot of arm weight. You want to just use the fingers. Teach your fingers which notes are down and which notes are up and you will have a cleaner technique to show for it! Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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Why Aren’t Keyboards Divided Into an Even Number of Octaves?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’ll be addressing a question from a viewer. Raymond asks, “On an 88 key piano, the lowest note is A and the highest is C. Why aren’t keyboards divided into an even number of octaves starting and ending on C or A?” This is actually a very good question because it seems so logical. In fact, if you ever look at five octave synthesizers and other portable keyboards, they almost always have an even number of octaves. From C to C, typically four or five octaves. So why aren’t pianos built that way?

Before the piano was invented, there were harpsichords.

Harpsichords had different numbers of keys and even different starting and ending points on the two keyboards, which is a whole story unto itself. The earliest pianos had a limited range of keys, typically around five octaves. You might wonder why. Well, it’s because those are the sounds those early instruments were capable of producing.

If you look at all the works of Mozart and Haydn, for example, they never really exceed that approximate range. It’s remarkable to think that all of the music they wrote was confined to this number of keys, because the piano just didn’t have more keys than that!

Beethoven worked closely with instrument builders expanding the range of the piano.

Expanding the range of the piano was no easy task! As you get higher, the tension of the strings becomes cumulatively enormous. So they started reinforcing the frame of the piano with metal, which eventually led to the full cast iron plate like we have today. Beethoven never reached the full 88 keys in his lifetime. But it’s interesting to see how the evolution of his music was affected by the capabilities of the instruments. Early Beethoven compositions had a much narrower range of keys than later Beethoven works.

How did the piano end up with 88 keys?

Late in the 19th century, most pianos ended at the highest A, and yet they went down to the lowest A. So there was a symmetrical keyboard in terms of the number of octaves! Eventually the high C became more and more common until it became the standard. So why doesn’t it go higher or lower? Well, to answer that question, there are a couple of instruments out there that do explore lower notes. The famous Bosendorfer Imperial Concert Grand, for example, goes all the way to C below the low A! It’s hard to discern pitch there, which is one of the reasons most pianos don’t venture below that low A. The lowest notes on the Bosendorfer Imperial Concert Grand sound a bit unearthly because the vibrations are so slow. You start hearing the separate vibrations instead of the pitch. Our brains almost don’t perceive it as pitch anymore! There is another instrument that also goes down to that low C and that is the Stuart and Sons from Australia.

Those instruments have those low notes, not just for those rare times when you want to take advantage of a lower octave. I know there are a couple of places in the literature where it would be really nice at least to have that low G or F. But it’s also because whenever you depress the sustain pedal all the dampers are released allowing those strings to sympathetically vibrate, giving more richness to the overtones of the sound.

What about the other end of the spectrum, going higher than the highest note of the piano?

Well, Stuart and Sons actually has a piano that goes higher than the high C. It goes all the way up to the high B, almost an octave above the highest C! Naturally the big hindrance with those really high notes, even the highest notes on any piano, is that they just don’t last that long. The notes die out in a matter of a second or two. Even the second to highest C on a piano doesn’t last very long. That’s why pianos don’t even have dampers for all those high notes. Dampers end on pianos somewhere in the D sharp to G range. Yamaha’s have dampers up to G. On Baldwins and Steinways, typically the last note that has a damper is D sharp. Do you need dampers on those high notes? Well, it does ring quite a bit. And you’ll find on different pianos, the dampers end in different places. But those extremely high notes have limited value because they don’t last long enough to use them melodically. They’re really just percussive little pecks of sound.

You can hear for yourself why they’ve settled in on A to C.

It’s a musically useful range of tones for the technology brought to bear. That’s the simple answer to your question, Raymond! Thanks for that very insightful question, I hope you’ve enjoyed this! Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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