Posts from — October 2009

Here’s another perspective on inspiration, written by my great musician friend, Paul Mueller

If you have not yet  experienced the joy of improvising in your piano playing, you are missing out on a great experience. Imagine an artist who does not know how to draw or paint without tracing or copying another’s work, and you get the idea.

Yet, many piano players lack the ability to improvise on the piano! This is caused by years of rigid piano lesson/structure and a lack of proper guidance.

Many piano players rely on sheet music to be able to play, which would be like an artist only copying another’s art work and never creating something unique. Improvisation is a fun process. It enables the pianist to bring out the latent potential of creativity and expression inside them.

One thing that will help any piano player to improve on the art of improvisation is to allow unstructured creative time during one’s piano practice hours.

Time to just sit down and make up music on the piano is crucial. No agenda, no structure, no goals to accomplish. This process is extremely important in the world of piano playing.

In order to allow the inner expression to come out, one needs to let it reveal itself. A good example of this is in how young children play piano. If you can observe a child learning the piano do so. Very often, young children are able to reach a creative and fun play "scheme" without any guidance at all. Similarly, any piano player should allow 15-30 minutes of "free play" without worrying about hitting the wrong notes.

Traditional piano lessons emphasize the ability to read notes. Reading ability is no doubt one of the most important skills any piano player can possess. This emphasis, however, has created some "lopsided" players who can only play piano by reading. Eventually this type of player will lose their interest and passion for music.

Many young children drop out of piano lessons as a result of struggling with music reading. Children who are younger than 5 or 6 are discouraged from traditional piano lessons due to the fact that they cannot yet read musical notes properly.

Music is commonly referred to as a "language." There are many ways of learning language. Young children master the language skill by frequently talking and interacting with their peers and care-takers as well as imitating other people. The ability to read comes a little later in their life. A similar approach needs to be taken to foster the love of piano music among young children. Sometimes by just allowing young children to make up music on the piano without placing emphasis on playing the correct notes can be just as important.

 So, as mentioned in our last post, the significant cost and undertaking of rebuilding a piano  requires deep consideration of whether or not it’s truly warranted in your piano’s case. Here are some of the instances where rebuilding makes sense:
1. You are rebuilding a fine grand (or really incredible upright) whose worth will well exceed the cost of the restoration once the work is completed.
An example would be rebuilding a Steinway grand that is only worth about $10K in it’s present run-down condition, but which will be worth over $40K after being completely refurbished. Obviously, the cost is worth it, and if it’s properly rebuilt, it could result in a piano that sounds as good, or better, than a comparable new model of the same make. I have performed many of these full restorations on fine older pianos of every top brand name imaginable (and a few lesser-quality brands, which leads us to instance #2.)

2. You are rebuilding a piano, grand or upright, that will NOT be worth a lot of money after rebuilding, perhaps even a bit less than what it costs to rebuild it, but the piano has sentimental value for you – a family heirloom perhaps – and you have no intention of replacing it with another piano, so you must restore your treasured instrument as best you can.

3. You have a “special” instrument – a rare antique or highly ornate piece of furniture – with worn-out parts and sound, which, due to its age and old design, won’t sound that great even AFTER it’s rebuilt. But you have the wherewithal, and want to restore it as a special piece of furniture or conversation piece, for your mansion:) That may seem frivolous, but you’d be surprised how many rich customers have hired me to do just that. Restore some weird, off-brand antique piano, one that, even after restoral, will produce thin, poor tone quality when compared to any modern grand. This is especially true of the dreaded “square grand,” a long, rectangular box of a grand with strings running side-to-side instead of front-to-back, sitting on four legs instead of three. It looks a bit like a coffin, and sounds just as dead, due to the tiny soundboard and bridges and an amazingly poor action design. Major piano makers, even Steinway, produced these from about 1840 to 1900, and blessedly stopped after that. I rebuilt two of these, and that cured me of it…never again!

So there are definitely times and reasons for investing in full restoration of your piano. But here’s a caveat and an admission you may not expect from someone who can make tens of thousands of dollars every year, restoring pianos:

Rebuilt pianos, even ones restored by master rebuilders, rarely sound and play as great as they did originally, and almost never as good as a new one.

I’ve been a tuner-rebuilder for over 35 years. I’ve played many, many older Steinways, Baldwins, Bosedorfers, Bechsteins and Bluthners, restored by the finest rebuilders in the country, including pre-1940s Steinways rebuilt by Steinway themselves, at their factory. Truth be told, even though they all sound and play ten times better than when they still had their old parts, and get “close” to how they sounded new, they fall short of the level of touch & tone excellence available in a well-built, well-prepped new instrument. I’ve simply never played a finely rebuilt Steinway or Bosendorfer, then gone to the dealer and played well-regulated-and-voiced new Steinway or Bosendorfer, and felt the rebuilts were nearly as resonant and wonderful. That’s just the way it is with new parts in an older piano. Even if you replace everything but the plate and cabinet, it’s still older, and something is still missing, still falls short, when compared to the new ones. So I will contnue to rebuild fine pianos for all customers citing any of the reasons above, but these days, I tend to recommend, “Get a new one” a lot more often than, “You should rebuild the one you have.”

Or Purchase A Rebuilt/Refurbished Piano?

Should You Rebuild Your Piano, or Purchase A Refurbished Piano?

When families, piano students and players need a good-sounding, well functioning piano for their home or studio, they actually have 4 choices:

1. Buy a new piano with full warranty
2. Buy a used piano in its present condition
3. Buy an older used piano that’s already been completely rebuilt
4. Buy an older used piano in poor or run-down condition and pay to have it rebuilt yourself.
And of course, if you already own a piano that is older, and most of the parts are wearing out, causing poor sound & touch, you can add a fifth possibility to our list of choices
5. Rebuild your existing piano

Obviously, the first two choice are the easiest to undertake. Choice 3 can also be easy enough as long as you can verify the competence and quality of the rebuilder and his work.
Here, as in our earlier post about buying a used piano, one caveat cannot be overstressed: Take an expert technician with you who has the experience to accurately gauge to rebuilders skill level and qulaity of their work.

But choices 4 and 5 are tricky, and require deep assessment to determine whether or not any given piano warrants rebuilding.

First, let’s clarify what is meant by rebuilding a piano. Rebuilding a used piano, also reffered to as piano restoration or refurbishing, is the process of gutting the instrument of all it’s worn out parts, and replacing them with fresh new parts.

There are different levels of rebuilding. In some cases, simply replacing the hammers, dampers, key & action felts, and all the strings, is enough. In the restoration of much older instruments, it may also be necessary to replace many wooden action parts like the hammershanks, wippens, springs, damper levers, and even the wooden keys or keyframe, as well as cutting, fitting and drilling a new tuning pin block.

So rebuilding often may start with gutting the piano all the way down to the bare cabinet, iron plate, soundboard and bridges. As mentioned in the earlier post, full soundboard/bridge replacement is rare for most “piano shop rebuilders,” usually a factory job.

Rebuilding usually takes place in the piano technicains shop, for considerations of space, noise, messiness, and the tech’s access to all his heavy and technical tools. But, if it’s strictly an easier-level rebuilding job (just restringing and action-parts replacement) with no refinishing of the cabinet included, some rebuilders will offer to bring their tools and parts to the home and carry out the work there, saving the owner back-and-forth cartage fees.

Obviously, this is a LOT of work, usually consuming 4-8 weeks and costing from $3,000 to $10,000, depending on the type of instrument (old upright or fine grand) and depth of restoral needed. And that’s just for the inner restoral; we haven’t added the thousands for professional refinishing of the case.

With those kind of figures, it’s obvious that full piano rebuilding only make senses in a few instances. In our next post, let’s take a look at when rebuilding is warranted.
 

Beyond regular tuning, there are several other adjustments that should be performed regularly or semi-regularly on any fine piano. Here’s a brief list, ask your tuner for more detailed information about the care of your specific instrument:

Action Regulation:
A good grand piano has approximately 9,000 parts, most of them moving parts!

When you strike any piano key, you send between 15-20 parts into motion, just to make sure the hammer strikes the string properly, falls away properly, and the key goes down smoothly and to the right depth under your finger. All these parts are adjusted to exact measurements and specifications to insure that every note strikes correctly, and that the touch of every key feels precisely like every other key up and down the piano.

After many hours of play and practice, these settings start to go out of adjustment, little by little. Depending on how much you play, after several years, the settings will need to be rest across the whole piano action. This process is called “action regulation.” It is a precise skill, to be performed only by a well-experienced techinician. He will need several hours to do the work, and will charge approx. $250-$350

Voicing or Tone Regulating:
The srings are struck by egg shaped felts called the hammers. The tonal color and beauty of any piano is extremely dependent on the condition of these felts. If they are too hard, either from being “packed down” after years of hard use, or from old age and drying out, they will produce a very strident, unpleasant sound. If too soft, the piano will sound dull and lifeless.  A fine techinician can immediately detect the condition of any piano hammers and their effect on the tone. At some point, so much of the original hammer felt may be worn away that the only remedy is replace them all with a fresh set of quality hammers.

But if there’s still plenty of original felt left, and the hammers have just gotten hard or deeply grooved, a skilled piano technician trained in proper tone regulating will know how to “voice” the hammers back to a beautiful tone. Often this requires shaving off some of the old top layer of felt (a very precise process, as hammer’s striking point must stay properly shaped to strike all the strings at an exact point) and using a needle to soften or release tension on specific areas of each hammer. How often your piano’s hammers need this will be determined by how often and hard you play, and the quality level of the original hammer set. Professionals who practice many hours every day will need some hammer voicing every month or two. “Average” home players, practicing 45-60min. a day may find they can go several years in between hammer vocings. Voicing is not a job for newbies; if your piano needs voicing, get the best tech you can find, period.

Some parts that may need replacing:

Aside from the aforementioned hammers, which may need replacing in anywhere from 10-35 years depending on playing frequency, another felt component that commonly needs replacing are the key bushings. Each key has two holes that straddle two guide pins as they go up and down. The pins are metal and the key is wood, so there wood be constant knocking if not for 4 little pieces of felt separating and cushioning the metal pins from the wood. These are called the key bushings. The constant up & down motion of each key rubs against the metal pins, eventually wearing away the felt, causing the keys to fell very loose and noisy. When this occurs (somewhere between 5-25 years, depending on quality of the piano and playing frequency) a good technician will rebush your keys for about $250.