Hot answers tagged piano
16
It's all about the size, and therefore the length of the strings and the size of the vibrating surface of the wooden soundboard.
Even a baby grand at ~5 feet is longer than a typical upright is tall. A concert grand at 7-10 feet is much, much longer.
I can't do any better than what Wikipedia says, so I'm going to quote wholesale:
All else being equal, ...
12
The fatter bass strings move a lot more air when they're hit with the hammers in the piano, so they produce more volume of sound.
The short thin strings at the top do not, so having more of them compensates. Also, they sound richer when more are played. Think of an orchestra - not many double basses, but quite a few violins.
With one thin string or ten, ...
8
They are assuming you are using finger 4 on the top D#.
The reason to switch from 2-1 is that if you ended up with 3rd finger on the G# and 4th finger on D# above, it is too far of a stretch. If you are playing the high D# with 5th finger it won't feel so uncomfortable, but then you can't connect the melody notes with finger legato. The finger switch ...
7
All pianos benefit from being in very stable environments, not too dry, not humid, and a static temperature. This will help to keep it in tune for longer. Realize though that playing the instrument will knock it out of tune and the more you play the faster it will happen. Also, if the pin block is shot, it will go out of tune fast no matter what you do, ...
7
I'm no expert.
From what I understand, the idea isn't to make your hand stronger. The idea is to play so relaxed that playing a long time feels like a breeze.
So don't work on tempo until you've got the relax thing down.
The relax thing will only get burned into place from slow exact careful practice and (many) good night's sleep(s). Practice is the ...
6
You probably do need to commit some pieces to memory, and here's why.
As a fluent reader of English, when you see the word "penguin", you don't process each individual letter in your head. You see the whole shape of the word, and immediately get a mental image of a black-and-white bird.
When you were a child, learning to read, you did process each ...
4
In addition to Tim's answer, a correctly tuned piano actually de-tunes the group of strings on each note a teensy bit. This leads to resonant energy transfer back and forth among the strings, which improves sustain as well as sounding more pleasing to (most) ears.
Keep in mind that "volume of air moved" does not translate linearly to "volume of sound," ...
4
The first step in learning to sight-read is to read music, a lot. If you feel like you don't need the music anymore after a few playthroughs, test that assumption by writing out the whole piece from memory. I would encourage you to continue to look at the music while playing even if you do have it memorized though.
Having a deep knowledge of theory will ...
4
You can get a climate-control system installed in the piano. Dampp-Chaser is one brand. It has both a water system to increase humidity and a header to decrease humidity, and works automatically to increase or decrease as necessary. In addition to helping the instrument stay in tune, it will help prevent sticking keys. The cost is several hundred ...
4
Adding to the above, this is the reason why upright pianos went from having strings vertical to being overstrung. This means the strings ,particularly the lower ones, are diagonal across the soundboard.It makes them longer, with the above advantages, but still not as long as those in a grand. 36" on the bottom string of one of my uprights, compared with 42" ...
4
Having the piano with the back against the wall will slightly boost the treble frequencies, but not much. Loudness is the main factor. The piano will be quieter with the back directly against the wall because you're closing off the sound board which is on the back. Leaving a few inches of space between the piano and wall will significantly increase the ...
3
In addition to ecline6's answer: In very dry places (large appartment houses typically), you can place couple glasses of water into the piano to keep the humidity at a bit higher level. You obviously have to add water to the glasses from time to time, it usually lasts about a month.
There are 3 reasons:
Wood in general doesn't like too dry places.
During ...
3
The action makes a grand better.
In a grand, gravity helps the key return so you can play faster stuff.
In an upright, the action goes sideways and has to be helped out by, umm, don't quote me on this, springs I think?
And the sound, too.
The sound is more of a subjective thing. But in almost all cases, a long enough grand will sound better due to the ...
2
The pitch of a string is roughly inversely proportional of its length, the square root of its mass per unit length, and the square root of its "average" tension (the term "average" referring to a complicated weighted average, as opposed to an arithmetic mean). In order for the pitch of a string to remain reasonably constant as the vibrational amplitude ...
2
I endorse Slim's answer. Knowing the main scales( major and natural minor,perhaps look at harmonic minor) will enable you to put the right hat on for each tune.When you see 3#,and they'll always be the same 3, you know it's in A maj. or F# minor.In A, for example, there'll be maybe more A notes and the tune will generally have F# C#and G# instead of F C and ...
2
Generally, warm ups on the piano are very similar to things you might do on other instruments. Playing through scales, arpeggios, chords, or Hanon exercises are all traditional warm ups. These exercises are basically to get your fingers moving and get the blood flowing.
Other people, in the interest of warming up, will just run the hands under some hot ...
1
I don't warm up when I play the piano, but I have several exercises that I go through to help with various parts of my playing.
Playing phrases with runs (a la Chopin). I play the melody in accented staccato, starting slow then getting faster. This helps a lot with accuracy as accurate staccato is a lot harder to play than accurate legato.
To build finger ...
1
I don't think it has to do with legato, at least not in the way ecline6 suggested, because if you're using 4th finger for the top d#, the f#-d# stretch would still be a problem (at least it's for me), and the switch should be marked on the first beat instead of the second. In fact, the only working fingering for using 4th on d# I can think of is to use 1-1-2 ...
1
In order to sight read music you need to build up a learned repertoire of common finger patterns. The best way to start to do this is to practise playing scales and arpeggios, however you must read the scales and arpeggios off the music when you are playing them. For sight reading it is very important to get a good eye to hand recognition, and if you play ...
1
I'm someone who is currently learning the piano.
For Grade 8 AMEB, I slacked off quite a bit, I barely practiced in the beginning of the year (learnt songs around March), just the 1 hr a week in lessons, then did at most an hour a day for 4/5 days a week towards crunch time. Examinations were in November. Assuming I had 35 weeks to practice, I would've ...
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