Piano Video Lesson: What Makes a Piano Great?

You're watching LivingPianos.com. I'm Robert Estrin. Today the subject is, what makes a great piano? What makes a piano great? You know, here at Living Pianos, I have probably come across, I don't know, how many thousands of pianos in my life.

I mean, I literally grew up with pianos. We had four pianos in my home growing up because my father, Morten Estrin, was a concert pianist and a Baldwin artist at that.

So we had three Baldwins at one time, a Steinway, we had a Sommar. It kind of shifted different pianos at different times, but I grew up with all those pianos. I got to try out my dad's pianos before recitals in New York recitals in Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall and his recording sessions whenever he'd take a break. I'd play these magnificent instruments prepped to such a high level.

So, and with Living Pianos, I started selling pianos actually after graduating from music conservatory. I was teaching piano and would you believe it? That so many people calling me for lessons didn't own pianos. The first question I was asked is, do you own a piano? Half the time people would say, no. I'd say, well, you know what? You're better off with a piano and no lessons than lessons and no piano. How can you learn if you don't have an instrument to play on or to practice on a regular basis? Oh, we have one at church I can go to sometimes. Not good enough.

You know what? It's hard enough to find the time to practice. If it's sitting in your own living room, if you have to get in your car and drive somewhere to see if a piano is available, good luck with that. It's really hard to be able to craft enough time in your schedule to be able to do that even when it's sitting in your own home. So I wouldn't take students who didn't have pianos and I was losing out. You know, I was just starting my career. So that's why I started seeking out pianos that were worthy of restoration. Inexpensive pianos, mostly big, tall, old uprights, consoles, spinets, that sort of thing. And of course, the need for that was so great that my entire life I've always kind of had pianos in my home and eventually outgrew it and even had stores and such. But mostly just out of our live work loft. And here we have a building with four different stories and we have two showrooms and a piano shop in the back and we live here on two floors above. So I've always literally lived with pianos. So I have a real perspective on what makes a great piano. And I'm going to share with you some tips. If you're looking at pianos, you wonder, is this a worthwhile piano? Well, of course, there's a lot to that subject and condition is paramount. What I'm talking about is not really condition of piano because, you know, we take pianos in that are thrashed, that need complete rebuilding, that could take six months to a year, yet some of them are good candidates because I can tell the seeds of greatness are in there and some of them just don't have much potential. So how do you know such a thing? Well, first of all, the condition of a piano has to be such that it's good enough that you can tell unless you're an expert or have vast experience with pianos. If it hasn't been tuned in 10 years, the strings are rusty, you know, you might have no idea if it's got any kind of potential at all if you're thinking about rebuilding or restoring the piano in some way.

But, you know, here's an interesting story for you and I'm going to tell you a little bit more how you can tell on any piano you encounter.

I remember a few years ago I did a repeat engagement for the Piano Teachers Association and on stage were two brand new nine foot concert grand, I won't mention the name, the brand new piano, but two brand new concert grands and I sat down in one and it was an absolute dream. The other piano, nothing special, really didn't have the magic. So what is that magic? What makes one piano a gem and another one not so great? Just even if it's prepped, even if everything is in tune, it's regulated, it's voiced, some pianos new out of the box have more potential than others and here I'll first tell you why and then I'll tell you what to listen for and how to check the potential of your piano.

Soundboards are hand -built and even though there are specifications for how they're built, no two trees are the same and soundboards are usually tapered on the edges, they're also built with an arch in the middle that they refer to as crown and they're always different. Can you measure crown? Yes, but you know what, that's not going to tell you very much. You can run a string under the soundboard, see this little gap in the middle to see if you have that arch, but you know what, the tone of the piano is how you tell how good the crown of a soundboard is.

Now if you've been around a lot of different pianos and particularly really old pianos, a large old piano might have a thunderous bass, but it's in the treble that you most often lose the sustain of the tone and this is key and sometimes you'll have it in one register and you would be lacking in another register. So simply playing a single note with no pedal, you can tell the potential of a piano. Now this is a 1930, late 1930s Steinway S, the smallest baby grand that Steinway makes. My grandfather bought this piano for my father and we rebuilt it a number of years ago. It's got the original soundboard without even a hairline crack in it, just lucky I guess, having grown up in a number of environments and yet it has a pretty amazing sustain and projection. Listen to a single note with no pedal.

I don't know if you can tell, it's still going.

Now when you get to the really high register, that's where a lot of pianos really just lose it.

That's pretty remarkable amount of sustain without even depressing the pedal.

Now if you go to a piano that maybe is not prepped very well because there's all sorts of techniques that could be employed to try to increase the sustain of the tone. First of all you could restring a piano if the strings are old and tired. Just tapping down the strings at the point of termination at the bridges to get good clean contact from the metal to the bridge can really help, but if you play note to note to note and none of them have really good sustain, you're probably not going to get very good results, but if you find some of the notes have good sustain and others don't, there's hope. So you can play a slow chromatic scale.

Now in the lower register you'll almost hear a plume to the sound. That is, the sound seems to almost get bigger after the initial attack on a great piano.

You hear that how the note kind of opens up after the initial attack.

Instead of going da and dying away, it goes da.

That is the sign of a great piano and if you have that in all registers, you're in great shape. Now if you're looking at a piano that has not been prepped and you're looking to buy one and you're wondering what potential does it have, maybe it looks good, it sounds okay, but it's not great overall, listen for several different notes in various registers and if some of the notes, a good number of the notes, have that sound, but if you have a whole register that really is lacking in that expansiveness of the tone and the sustain, you're probably never going to get great results out of it. Now sometimes you can replace a soundboard and bring that vibrant life back to a piano, but of course that's very expensive because it involves rebuilding the whole piano and the soundboard, just the soundboard, can be in excess of $10 ,000. So that's how you can know what is a great piano. Now obviously a great piano is one that has the potential and has had the work and everything is in magnificent condition inside and out. Then you have the ultimate piano.

So I hope this has been helpful for you. Thanks for joining me on livingpianos.com. Robert Estrin. I love having all you subscribers and at Patreon you can get custom videos just for you. So you can consider subscribing there as well. See you next time.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/what-makes-a-piano-great/

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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