New answers tagged piano
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I'm a pianist for a contemporary church, and 90% of the time, I only have chords to work off. The main elements are broken chords and rhythm. I will seem a bit dictative here but I don't want to talk too much and feel free to experiment around. (Will use C Major as an example, / = rest)
When you play a song with just the piano, you have to fill out every ...
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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 ...
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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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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 ...
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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," ...
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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, ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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, ...
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The back of the piano is effectively the sounding board.So, the listener will get the most benefit by being behind it. This is not practical in many (house) rooms, as space is insufficient. Also, it's hard to see the player. However, in a hall or large stage, the audience will get a better sound when the back of the piano is facing them. If the top is open ...
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You should place the upright almost agaist the wall but depending on your room size you could move the piano somewhere between de middle of the wall to one of the corners. Moving the piano to a corner will enhance the lower sounds. It is for the same reason that you should not place speakers in corners when you want to create a natural sound.
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Because upright pianos are usually placed against a wall with a few inches of space behind them, they are designed to sound best that way. You can hear the difference if you visit a piano shop that has some pianos against the wall and some in the middle of the floor.
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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To play arpeggios like this without all the figuring out you need to practise the common arpeggios by reading them off the page. What you are trying to get is an instant eye to hand recognition of common patterns. You can't achieve this by practising arpeggios from memory.
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I would think that playing uses muscles even if they are relaxed. So my comparison here would be with someone training to run a marathon. You need to train for the long practice sessions.
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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You're probably going to have to explain this in more detail:
My goal to be able to play a piano piece, however intricate, at first sight, even if my lack of dexterity forces me to play it at an uneven/halting tempo, and/or in an utterly mechanical way.
Playing it haltingly is not playing the rhythm and possibly wrecking the harmony. Rhythm is often ...
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I also have to secondate slim, but would like to add a bit. Im my opinion piano is the worst common instrument to learn sight-reading, since there are so many notes. (Harp would be similar and organ would be worse with the additional pedal voice.) So to come down to a managable amount of information you have to abstract significantly like, "oh we are ...
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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" ...
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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 ...
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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, ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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You don't mention what model you have, but if I read your question correctly, the volume of the sound on a specific key is louder than the sound from other keys. Often in digital midi equipment, one can manually adjust midi triggers such as minimum velocity and gain. If you increase the min velocity on a specific trigger, the device might see a "soft press" ...
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Did one key always sound louder than the others, or did the problem develop recently?
When did you purchase the keyboard? Is it under warranty?
Have you checked with Kurzweil to find out where you can take it in your area for Kurzweil-authorized repair work? Where do you live?
It is doubtful that there is anything you can do to repair it on your own; you ...
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It is important to remember that in learning any instrument some skills have to be reinforced on a regular basis, as without constant repetition they deteriorate. These need to be done during most practise sessions alongside learning new repertoire.
Scales and arpeggios are important for key recognition and finger patterns, they need to be practised for ...
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