Piano Video Lesson: How to Make Money Playing the Piano

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, Robert Estrin here asking the question, can you make a living with the piano? Now you know that there are tens of millions of piano students just in China alone and in the world there are just countless tens of millions, maybe over a hundred million pianists in the entire world.

Not only that, but did you know that there are only about 200 pianists who really are doing the international circuits of concert pianists who actually perform in the great halls? About 200! When you consider that there are around 1800 music programs in higher education in the United States and each of these has piano majors graduating hoping to become concert pianists, many of them, you might be discouraged by the whole idea of making a living as a pianist. But hang on a minute because there are many ways to make a living with the piano.

Not only that, but you'll find that most people today who are making a living with the piano are people who are highly creative, not just in their art of playing the instrument, but in their whole approach to how they bring the piano to people. After all, the piano has been around for centuries in its form that it's in right now. It took hundreds of years to develop to get to this point, but it's been around pretty much like this since the latter part of the 1800s.

And naturally, in that time period, there were some phenomenal pianists from Liszt to Chopin, Paderewski, on and on, Rubinstein, Anton Rubinstein I'm talking about.

And then in the early 20th century, piano was still huge in the United States. It was the de facto home entertainment system.

So piano lessons and piano was just tremendous. And it's been on the decline, particularly in the United States, for over 100 years. Now China, piano is really huge. There are hundreds of companies making pianos. And as I said, there are about 40 or 50 million piano students in China.

So at least in one part of the world, piano has risen in popularity.

But getting back to how can you make a living or make money even as a side job with the piano? Well, there are many different ways. Obviously, playing solo piano concerts is tough. But even that, if you're creative and you can figure out the local series and what they're looking for, you might just be able to find some possibilities of performing to be able to hone in your craft and be able to exploit what you've been trained for and what you spent your whole life lovingly working on.

Beyond that, naturally, accompanying other musicians, collaborative playing in general, can be richly rewarding playing chamber music.

The piano quartet and piano quintet, that is piano with strings, there's some phenomenal repertoire. I got to perform the Schumann piano quintet a couple of years ago. What a great piece. Brahms, the F minor piano quintet.

Dvorak, I mean, there's just spectacular music and it's quite an art form. It almost sounds like an orchestra because you've got the string quartet plus a piano. It is one of the greatest ensembles if you haven't explored it. And there's many other opportunities for collaboration.

Violin and cello solo music almost all have piano parts that are fundamental to the works. Now there are some great solo music for strings. Bach in particular and Paganini and other composers did write solo music for violin and for cello. But the vast majority of solo music for strings have integral piano parts that oftentimes can be as demanding or even more demanding and intrinsic than the string part. And it could be richly rewarding experience, but it's not just string players. Do you realize that virtually every orchestral instrument that has solo music, the vast majority of it is collaboration with piano.

So people are always looking for pianists. Now this can be a daunting task to think of all the music to learn. Well, you might consider specializing. Maybe you'll just learn a lot of vocal accompaniments. Maybe you specialize in opera accompaniments or art songs. Or maybe you love the trumpet or the clarinet. Maybe you played clarinet and you're familiar with the literature and learning accompaniments to clarinet music. And you will find that virtually all instruments are looking for pianists to play their music with. So this is a great possibility. What other possibilities are there? In regards to performing, there are bands and there are different situations, whether it's musical theater, looking for somebody in the pit to play keyboard parts, or rock bands, folk, country, what have you. There are many different performing opportunities if you're versatile. And to be able to expand your styles that you can be comfortable with makes you much more marketable to find more opportunities to play the piano.

Even something like going into nursing homes or elementary schools that offer your possibility of playing for people or playing with people can be greatly appreciated.

What else is there? Teaching naturally is a tremendous way to share your craft.

And you don't necessarily have to get advanced degrees. Now if you want to teach at the university or college level, a master's is these days a prerequisite and a doctorate degree is very helpful because think about this. The hundreds, if not thousands of piano performance majors graduating each year out of conservatories in the United States and abroad are all looking for these positions. So you have to do something to set yourself apart. And I recommend not just getting advanced degrees, but try to do something that is original so you can be noticed from the hundreds or thousands of applicants that schools receive for these positions.

Something that is unique to you, some voice that you have or vision about the piano in society today, or specialty of repertoire, maybe you love contemporary music and you just want to help composers. Another great way to get performance opportunities, composers are always looking to have opportunities to have their music performed. If you love contemporary music and are willing to put the work in, you can find people who will pay you to play their music because they want to be heard and they need performances. Otherwise the music just sits somewhere and nobody gets to hear it except maybe a machine playing it. And what fun is that? Now private teaching, you don't even need degrees. You just have to have training in being able to know how to teach.

And there are people like myself who teach piano pedagogy, teach how to teach the piano. And you can get instruction in that and you don't have to be a concert level player to be a good teacher. In fact there are many concert pianists who are not necessarily great teachers, maybe they were child prodigies and they have no idea how they do what they do. Someone like yourself who maybe started later or is not particularly virtuosic in your technique may understand what it takes to learn a piece of music. And you could pass that on, it could be a tremendous experience helping people to develop their piano playing. So there are many ways in which you can share your music on the piano.

Media is another one. Being able to share music and offer music, original music perhaps, for websites, for films, for commercials, there's endless possibilities. Become adept at software and social media because this is the way of the world. Maybe a hundred years ago it was possible just to play classical piano concerts. And maybe in some places in the world today like in Europe, it's still something. But in this country it's much of a lost art to a great extent. And there are so many people vying for it. There are places like the Nixon Museum in Orange County that have people sending their CDs wanting to perform there with no fee whatsoever, playing for free. So it's a lot of competition. So you have to be creative. Think of all the different types of performances you can do, the different teaching you can do, what you can do with media, social media, and technology to be able to bring piano to more people and to be able to make money doing it. So that's my suggestions for you. And anybody who has other suggestions, please leave them here in the comments at LivingPianos.com, your online piano resource. Thanks again for joining me.

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