Piano Video Lesson: Piano Quiz - How Much Do You Know About the Piano?

Hi, and welcome to livingpianos.com, your online piano resource. Today, we have a piano quiz. You can take the quiz, it should be a lot of fun. It's not very long, it's not very hard. If you have a pencil or if you can remember, there's just five questions on here.

The first one is a true and false question. True or false, I should say. If you buy a new Steinway piano, it will go up in value. True or false? We're going to move on. I'm going to do all five questions very quickly, then go back and give you the answers, all right.? You can see how well you've done on this. Also, you can email me and let me know any thoughts you have about these questions.

The second one is, number two, concert pianists practice scales and exercises for many hours every day. True or false? All right, we're moving onto the third one. If you see the Yamaha name on a piano, you can be assured that it is a good quality mid-range instrument. True or false? That's an interesting one, huh? All right, just two more left. The next two are multiple choice. Why are there repeat signs in music? A, it provides performers with flexibility and timing for programming, B, it saves paper, C, it helps composers increase their output without having to do extra work. All right. Finally, the last question, number five. Ideally, how often should your piano be tuned? A, twice a year is perfect because of seasonal changes, B, having your piano tuned once a month keeps it in tune best, and C, your piano should be tuned constantly, every time you play it.

All right. Well, those are the five questions. Now we're going to go back and see how well you did on these questions. The first one, once again, if you buy a new Steinway piano, it will go up in value. True or false? Now, this is a really tough question. If I just have a choice of true or false, I would say true. Now, you might wonder, how can this be? Well, you think about it. My father, for example, my father's father bought my father a Steinway baby grand in 1939, I believe it was. He paid $900 for it. That same model Steinway now I think is around $80,000. So yeah, if you keep it long enough, it's going to go up its value, but one thing to consider is inflation.

Now, of course, condition is paramount. Now, that particular Steinway of my father's I rebuilt, so it's obviously worth quite a bit. Now, if a Steinway is completely thrashed over the years, if it's been subjected to the elements, it can have very little value and might not go up much. So it's really kind of true and false.

Here's where it's really false. If you go out and buy a brand new Steinway and then, let's say ,just a few years later you want to sell it, you're going to take a big bath because it's going to take a long time for the incremental increases, the yearly increases in the list price and the sale price of Steinway pianos to overcome. Kind of like driving a car off the parking lot at the dealer, you know that it's going to lose a tremendous amount of value immediately. The same is true with pianos. But if you keep it long enough, hey, the new ones keep going up so you could be pretty good shape, provided you take really good care of it.

Okay, move to number two. Concert pianists practice scales and arpeggios for many hours every day. True or false? Now, a lot of you are going to be really surprised in this one. The answer is false. You might wonder, "What? Don't they practice exercises and scales a ton, and arpeggios?" Well, I would say this. At some point in every concert pianist's life, they have spent countless hours working with scales, arpeggios, octave exercise, thirds, trills. This goes on for months, more likely years. But with touring concert pianists, they are so busy learning repertoire. Think about being on the road. They get such precious time to practice, so little time, when they're practicing, they're going through their programs, their concertos, their chamber music. Sure, they're going to spend some time with scales and arpeggios and exercises, but the vast amount of the time is rehearsing and practicing for their next performances. They don't have vast amounts of time to practice exercises and scales every day. I don't know how many of you are surprised about that one.

Let's go on to number three. If you see the Yamaha name on a piano, you can be assured that it is a good quality mid-range instrument. True or false? Well, this one actually is false. Yamaha is such a large music company. In fact, they're the largest music company in the world. They have pianos on every conceivable level. Sure, most Yamahas you'll find out there are good mid-range pianos like the U series uprights, the CX series grands. They're good quality pianos for the money and they have a sweet spot, so they're very popular. But there are also Indonesian-made Yamahas that are really entry-level, promotional-level pianos, bare bones instruments. Well made, of course, but they are not what I would call really high-end instruments. I mean, far from it. On the other end of the spectrum, did you know that there are series of Yamaha pianos that are more expensive than Steinway? That's right. They're handmade, meticulously, to the highest possible standard you could imagine. So, yes, the name Yamaha doesn't tell you much about the level of piano you're looking at. That's surprise to some of you, I bet.

We have two more, these are the multiple choice. I'll read the different answers for you. First, number four, why are there repeat signs in music? A, it provides performers with flexibility and timing for programming. Well, this is true. Think about how many performers, some of them take repeats, some of them don't. That can be useful. It saves paper. Well, that's B, it saves paper. A lot of you might scoff at that, but hey, it really does. And C, it helps composers increase their output without having to do extra work. Believe it or not, the answer is B, it saves paper. Now, you might think is that serious? Well, it is.

Here's the thing about repeats. Did you know that sometimes you'll have one edition of a piece with repeats and you'll have another edition of the same piece, but they'll actually put the repeat written in the score. Now, if you saw that written in, you would absolutely play it, you wouldn't even think about leaving it out, but repeat signs, somehow people get the feeling they are kind of optional. But repeat signs are really an intrinsic part of the composition and composers do it not only to save paper, but think about composers back in the day when they had to write with duck quills, that was no easy task. Anything to save time was really a godsend for them. I'm a firm believer in take the repeats. By the way, if you find a piece of music where the repeats don't make sense and you think, "Oh, this is just too long," consider that maybe your tempo is too slow, because the repeats are put in there for a reason and they really make the structure of the piece gel.

All right. Now finally, for the last question. This is number five. Ideally, how often should your piano be tuned? A, twice a year is perfect because of seasonal changes. Well, I make this suggestion to people all the time, because it's true. When you go from heat to air conditioning and then back again later in the season, your piano is going to go out. The whole pitch could change, even if it sounds good. So really twice a year, I consider it to be a minimum. Now, B, having your piano tune once a month keeps it in tune best. My father always tuned his pianos once a month, and yet, by the end of the month, hey, they were out of tune. Remember, this question was ideally, how often should your piano be tuned? C, your piano should be tuned constantly every time you play it. Believe it or not, the answer is C.

Think about this. You might think that this is crazy, but we'll go to a concert and there's a guitar player playing. Between each song they're tuning it up, it's going out little by little. Well, so is your piano. It's just not practical to have it tuned constantly, but I'll tell you this, at recording sessions of my fathers as well as many other pianists, the tuner is there, touching it up every time they take a break. If they hear any notes going out of tune, which can happen at any time, they will take a break and have the tuner touch up the few unisons that go out.

In a perfect world, if I ever become a billionaire, I'm going to have a guest house with my piano tuner and my piano is going to be tuned every day. When it goes out of tune, I'll call him in and have him go ahead and tune it up. That might be a surprise to some of you. I know that at recital hall, at music conservatory, the pianos on the recital hall stage were tuned every day and we came rock solid. That's probably the most practical element for regular tuning is daily, but man, to have it tuned constantly would be great, every time you take a break.

Those are five questions. Wondering how all of you did and your conception of these answers, if any of you have different ideas about this. I know a lot of these are subjective, it depends how you answer it. I made myself answer some of those true or false questions just to make the quiz more fun for you. I hope this is enjoyable for you. I thought I'd do something different. Once again, I'm Robert Estrin here at livingpianos.com, your online piano resource. Keep those questions coming in by the way. I really appreciate it. See you next time.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/piano-quiz-you-can-take-the-quiz/

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