Tag Archives: robert estrin

Why Don’t They Make Pianos Like they Used to?

This is Robert Estrin with LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store with a viewer question. “Why don’t they make pianos like they used to?” So many of the magnificent, American pianos from years ago are just names stenciled on the front of Asian production pianos today. Names you don’t even hear about anymore like AB Chase, Knabe and Chickering were wonderful pianos years ago. There were well over a thousand companies producing pianos in the United States and dozens of companies were making stupendous pianos! You might wonder why they don’t make pianos like they used to.

Have you ever gone downtown and seen a beautiful old car and asked yourself, “Why don’t they make the ‘57 Chevy anymore? It’s such a cool car! I wish they would make Corvettes like they used to!” With cars, it’s pretty obvious. As technologies move on, mileage and safety standards have generally made cars better. But what about pianos?

Have pianos improved?

Not necessarily. However, they do make pianos the way they used to, just in very tiny numbers. Steinway and Mason and Hamlin are both manufacturing a limited number of pianos in the United States very much like they used to. However, Mason & Hamlin is utilizing newer technologies in their actions using synthetic materials in place of traditional wood parts. There are some new rigs and new robotics utilized in manufacturing, but for the most part, American pianos utilize Old World style of wet sand cast plate, hardwood rim, and a tremendous amount of handcrafting. Indeed, many of the great German and other European piano manufacturers from over a hundred years ago are still building pianos like they did centuries ago with the addition of some computer-aided design and manufacturing techniques for more exacting standards of production.

The vast majority of pianos today are made in Asia with a very different methodology from American and European pianos.

You might wonder why. Just look at the difference in the price of a Bechstein or a Steinway compared to a Kawai or a Samick. Asian companies produce pianos that are fully functional and quite good for a fraction of the cost of hand-crafted pianos by utilizing different technologies. Take a company like Pearl River. There aren’t too many companies like them!

Pearl River made over 140,000 pianos last year!

It’s a mind-boggling number. There is no way they could be producing pianos the same way Steinway does. Steinway made a little over a thousand pianos last year. It is just not a scalable manufacturing process.

In order to be able to produce a large number of pianos on a consistent level, it is necessary to be able to utilize newer technologies and newer materials in order to accomplish that. Is this a bad thing? Not necessarily. If you want that Old World style of piano building, they are available if you’ve got the bucks to pay for them. But, vast amounts of resources have been opened up to people who couldn’t afford those pianos. Some of the modernization and new techniques of making pianos in a way they didn’t have before opens up a whole segment of the market to pianos. In China, where they bought 450,000 new pianos last year, obviously those weren’t mostly hand-built instruments. It would be impossible!

That is why they don’t make pianos the way they used to. It opens up markets at different price points. Yet, those Old World style pianos are still available in very small numbers for very high prices. I hope this has been interesting for you. I’m Robert Estrin and this is LivingPianos.com.

info@LivingPianos.com
949-244-3729

Can an Out of Tune Piano Have More Sustain?

Hello, this is Robert Estrin from LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store. The question today is, “Can an out of tune piano have more sustain than a piano that is perfectly tuned?” The simple answer to this question is, believe it or not, yes! Here is an explanation of how and why this is.

If you look inside a piano you know that all the notes have more than one string except on the lowest notes. Most notes have three strings. If you know something about the acoustics of vibrating strings, you understand that if they are vibrating perfectly with one another you’ll get a certain level of sustain. But if one string is just ever-so-slightly out of tune, there will be a slow wave created. If that slow wave is about the same length of time or slightly longer than the sustain of that note, it will actually enhance the sustain of the note more than if it was absolutely dead-on in pitch!

I once talked to a piano tuner who claimed that they purposely de-tuned the piano precisely to get the maximum amount of sustain. I’ve talked to other piano tuners who said that this was total nonsense! My feeling is this: striving to tune a piano is hard enough. Once it is in tune, it is going out of tune little by little. Even if you tried to make the piano perfectly in tune, with every unison phase locked in perfect tune where they didn’t drift at all, in a very short amount of time, some of the notes will still drift slightly sharp or more likely flat. This would cause that slight detuning which could add sustain as long as the tuning doesn’t become so great that the wave cycle is shorter than the length the note sustains naturally.

Indeed, a slightly out of tune piano where the wave cycle is less than the sustain of the notes will sustain longer than a perfectly in tune piano. However, I wouldn’t try to de-tune your piano to get this effect. Believe me, it will de-tune itself soon enough just from playing it! Thanks for all the great questions and keep them coming in to:

info@LivingPianos.com
Your Online Piano Store.
949-244-3729

Why Can’t All Music Be Profound?

I’m Robert Estrin and this is LivingPianos.com. The question today is, “Why can’t all music be profound?” Wouldn’t that be great if everything you listened to was enlightening? Is that possible? Is that even desirable? Naturally, there are many different purposes music serves. Going to concerts and having a truly uplifting experience is certainly a very important aspect of music, but what about parties? What about dancing? There are times when profundity is the least concern when listening to music. You just want to have something that you can move to, something that feels good. Let’s focus for a minute on concert music.

Should All Concert Music be Profound?

Before I answer this question, I’m going to bring up a parallel. Have you ever seen a band perform and they were playing with really high energy, fast and loud? At first it’s like, “Wow, this is impressive.” But as the night goes on, everything they play is fast and loud. After a while, you end up tuning out the music, and nothing seems energetic at all! How can this be? The energy level becomes your new baseline. Let’s say, you go to the same club on a different night with a different band playing, and this band plays with extreme dynamics. They take the music up and then they come down – way down. They play whisper-quiet, and then it comes up again. It’s enriching! So what is the lesson here?

Something Can Only be Exciting if Something Else is More Relaxed.

The same exact truth is evident with how profound a piece of music can be. More than that, if a performer tries to make every phrase of a piece of music profound, nothing is profound. It becomes labored and self-indulgent. You have to let some music speak naturally. It’s the places where you focus attention that molds a performance. This way, the entire work will have a profound nature, not because every single phrase is played to the nth degree of what can be done with the music.

Great composers and great performers understand this, and they bring out parts of the music that draw your attention at just the right moments. Not everything is profound, but when you get done listening to the piece, you’re left with something really meaningful and special that stays with you. That’s why all music can’t be profound.

If Everything is Profound, Nothing is Profound.

This is applicable not only for composition but also in your musical performance.

Thanks for joining me once again. This is Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store.

info@livingpianos.com
(949)244-3729

Is there Muscle Memory in Piano?

Hello this is Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.com. The question today is, “Is there muscle memory when playing the piano?” This is a great question and I’m going to ask a question of all of you right now. Tell me if this rings true. Have you ever had a piece you’ve played a million times and you find yourself playing the piece and instead of “spacing out” you find yourself “spacing in”? You realize that you weren’t thinking about what you were playing at all! Maybe you were thinking about what you were going to do later. Yet, your fingers keep going. You wonder how that could possibly happen. Indeed, there is a high degree of tactile memory playing the piano.

If you’ve ever watched a toddler getting up for the first time trying to walk, you’ll see them discovering the whole process. They are concentrating and you can see in their faces that they are focusing on how to stand and put one foot in front of the other. For the next few weeks and months, you’ll see how they get more and more comfortable and acclimated to walking. When you or I go out, we can be thinking about anything when we are walking. We don’t have to think about walking at all. Indeed there is muscle memory at work here! Obviously playing the piano is much more complex than walking, depending upon what music you are playing. Yet, if you play a piece many times:

Your fingers will keep on going all by themselves without you even thinking about it!

Is this a good thing? Yes and no. While on one hand, it is not something you want to rely upon too heavily, without a degree of muscle memory, it would be virtually impossible for a pianist to get through an hour and a half recital playing on a high level if they couldn’t free-wheel some of the time. Being able to allow the music to continue when performing even when there are inevitable distractions is essential. If your fingers wouldn’t keep going and there was silence, it would be a complete disaster!

It is good that we have muscle or tactile memory. However, you can’t depend upon muscle memory entirely. Think about this. Most music you play goes from section to section with repeats of different sections. You must know where you are in the form. You have to have that part of your brain looking down on the rest of you lovingly making sure you don’t take a wrong turn. One of the best ways to accomplish this is by practicing away from the piano where you don’t have the benefit of tactile memory. If you can play your music by just thinking it through in your head, you really know the score well.

Your muscle memory in conjunction with your cognition of the score in depth is invaluable for securing your performance.

Yes, there is muscle memory at work when playing the piano. Thank goodness there is! But remember, you can’t depend upon it all the time. Practice away from the piano. You can practice with your score, going as far as you can, and when you find a hazy part, refer back to the score. You might have to move your fingers when playing away from the keyboard just to be able to do this at first. It is an extremely valuable skill so that you don’t fall into the trap of taking a wrong turn in a sonata (for example) and finding yourself either leaving out 2/3s of the work or going all the way back to the beginning and having no idea how to handle the situation. This is where muscle memory can play tricks on you. You can depend upon it to a certain extent while reinforcing intentional understanding of the music.

Thanks for the great questions! Again, I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store.

info@LivingPianos.com
949-244-3729

What is the Farthest a Piano has been Moved?

Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store, with a really interesting question. What is the farthest a piano has ever been moved? Here at Living Pianos, we move pianos all the time. So, this question is very close to my heart.

Going across the country is around 3,000 miles from Maine to California. When you go overseas, of course, it is a much greater distance. We had the opportunity to sell a concert grand to the Royal Theater in London. That is almost five and a half thousand miles away! Interestingly, that move was a piece of cake until the last couple of miles. When you get to the inner city of London, it actually cost more for the last couple of miles than the entire rest of the move including crating the piano! This is their way of limiting traffic in the city.

How Far Have We Delivered Pianos?

We also have had opportunities to sell pianos to China. Shenzen is about 7,200 miles away. So, that is certainly far away. We’ve never moved a piano to Australia – at least not yet. If we have the opportunity, it will be over 8,100 miles away. Is that the farthest a piano can be moved? You’d think it would be since it is on the other side of the planet. Actually, no!

We’ve sold pianos to Singapore which is about 8,800 miles away.

That is the farthest we have moved pianos. But what is the theoretical limit a piano could be possibly be moved? Unless you are just taking a piano for a ride around and around the world, which could be endless, half-way around the world at the equator is the greatest distance at about 12,500 miles. So, that is the theoretical limit. Or is it? Did you know:

There is a piano on the International Space Station!

It is actually a digital keyboard. But, it is a piano nonetheless. For the sake of discussion, let’s talk about that. Once again, orbiting the Earth again and again could be many thousands of miles. But you would be just taking a piano for a ride and not actually moving it from point A to point B. The International Space Station is only about 300 miles away, straight up at the point at which it passes over you. So, the final answer is, if you are going halfway around the world at the equator, that would be the farthest you could move a piano which is 12,500 miles.

It’s interesting to wrap your head around what it takes to move pianos and how far they possibly can go. I hope this has been fun for you. Keep those questions coming in and you’ll see them in future articles and videos! Thanks again, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store.

info@LivingPianos.com
949-244-3729

How Long Does it Take to Rebuild a Piano?

Hi, I’m Robert Estrin. This is LivingPianos.com. The question today is, “How Long Does it Take to Rebuild a Piano?”

There’s a very wide range of time, and there are many aspects to this question. Let’s say you have a piano you want to have rebuilt. Perhaps you have a Steinway, you want to have restored and you decide to send it to Steinway to rebuild. You’re probably going to wait over a year to get your piano back. It can take that long! Now, does that mean they’re taking the entire year to rebuild it? Well, yes and no. They might do parts of different pianos simultaneously. However:

It takes at least months to rebuild a piano.

Now, the other aspect of this question is, what does it mean to rebuild a piano? There are different parts of a piano that can be rebuilt. For example, are you replacing the sound board or repairing the old one? Are you creating a new key set, or are you staying with the original keys? There are different parts of a piano that can be utilized in rebuilding in most instances. Unless you have a piano that’s a complete disaster, you’re going to utilize a lot of the existing parts, so it can take different amounts of time depending upon how much work is required.

Let’s say, for example, you have an unusual piano from the late 1800s with a pre-modern action and it’s an art-case with beautiful scroll work, and some of the scroll work is missing. Perhaps other parts of the piano are destroyed as well, such as the music rack or one of the legs. It could take a very long time to match the woods, to hand-carve the beautiful intricate parts to make the piano match the way it was originally manufactured.

It could take longer than a year.

But I would say that any kind of even the most basic rebuilding that keeps the original action and replaces only some action parts, replaces strings, perhaps pin block, refinish the case, re-guild the plate, has got to take an absolute minimum of two to three months, if that’s all they’re working on. It is a big job. Not only that, you don’t want to rush through it because a piano needs to settle in, and a great part of the work of rebuilding a piano comes after the rebuilding in adjusting everything to play on a high level. On top of that, it’s important to make sure everything is stable.

If a piano has just been rebuilt and hasn’t had fine work performed, it will sound horrendous!

It takes tremendous refinement to get a rebuilt piano to play on a high level. It’s best to let the piano sit, play it, and have technicians work on it, and, of course, even over the next year or two, a rebuilt piano, just like a brand-new piano, is not going to be really settled in and stable for at least a year or two. You must play the piano and have it serviced on a very regular basis until it becomes stable.

So it’s all part of the process. I hope this has been helpful for you. If you have a piano you’re thinking of rebuilding and you want any advice, you’re welcome to contact us here at info@livingpianos.com. Thanks again. I’m Robert Estrin. We’ll see you next time.

949-244-3729