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Finally moved somewhere big enough (thanks, baby daughter) for a boudoir grand and have a (Bechstein-made) W.Hoffmann T186 being delivered this Monday. I'm ridiculously excited. Been listening to my Gilels recordings of the Beethoven sonatas (God, they're incredible) in anticipation; watched Shine again yesterday, and have The Pianist lined up for a first viewing too. Only hope this drat snow doesn't last long enough to get in the way of the delivery. 
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Feb 4, 2012 21:19
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Bob Shadycharacter posted:Congratulations! Thanks! Been waiting for this for a long time, and am really hoping to knuckle down and put some effort in to improving again after having been so lackadaisical in my approach since turning 16 or so. Boudoir (or parlour) grands are basically mid-sized grand pianos, between about 5 to 5 and a half ft and 7 ft. Smaller ones than that are baby grands and larger are concert grands, going up to generally about 9 ft, though 10 ft 2 for the Fazioli F308 (which also has four pedals).
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Feb 5, 2012 00:12
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Alkan's a notoriously difficult piano composer. Liszt supposedly said Alkan had the best piano technique of anyone he knew... loving Liszt. edit: Those who said they find 3-against-4 polyrhythms particularly frustrating, the last movement of his "Concerto for Solo Piano" will give you nightmares for the rest of your lives. Along I imagine with almost anyone who tries to play it who isn't a piano demigod. OneSizeFitsAll fucked around with this message at 03:42 on Mar 20, 2012 |
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Mar 20, 2012 03:13
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As was the timing and close-in dexterity requirement. Generally true about the action, though pianos vary of course - some modern ones have very light actions, and remember Liszt and Alkan's time was when the fortepiano was giving way to the modern grand. Still, I remember the Wiki article on the Hammerklavier sonata suggesting that it wasn't appreciated until the 20th century, "possibly due to the difficulty of gaining a technically competent performance". Although their reputations and the supreme difficulty of some of their music give us a decent idea, it's hard to definitely judge just how good the technique was of great pianist composers like Beethoven, Liszt, and Chopin as obviously no recordings exist of them. Rachmaninoff is the exception, and he has topped a couple of polls of professional pianists as to the greatest player of whom recordings exist.
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Mar 20, 2012 13:28
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CowOnCrack posted:Anyone have any tips for interpreting / learning Mozart? I'm learning the Rondo in D Major K. 845, which seems to be your typical Mozart piece with the whole bag of tricks. My goal is to hopefully make it sound good instead of just get the notes. The tough parts for me are the quick scales and to a lesser degree the ornaments. Also, accompaniment patterns are a bit weird since I'm used to Bach - I could use some tips on speeding those up. When I hear most people play these scale runs, even if the score indicates "f" (or the editor in any case) people tend to play them very light. In fact playing them this light seems to be what makes high speeds possible AND seems to fit the bill with Mozart which is supposed to be light, airy, and dainty. I'm wondering if in fact I should keep the whole piece around p-mf with very few exceptions because that seems to be just what I mostly hear (and it sounds great.) Any ideas or suggestions for me? Thanks! While rarely throwing particularly difficult/complicated notation at you, Mozart's sonatas are difficult to play really well. There's generally nowhere to hide, so fluid, solid technique and proficiency with scales is a must. Practice the runs in the piece slowly and make sure you're doing them evenly, before speeding them up to the correct tempo. I agree (and my teacher says this as well) with your assumption that for sections marked "f" you should aim more for "mf", and indeed "mp" where "p" is written. Generally with Mozart a light touch absolutely is required, and the dynamics should not be nearly as dramatic as, say, in Beethoven. I'm currently learning his K310 in A Minor. It's one of his heavier and more emotional ones and, unusually for his sonatas, even contains a tiny bit of ff. But even with this piece I don't get too loud.
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Feb 15, 2013 15:55
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CowOnCrack posted:My first performance of a Mozart piece in class (Viennese Sonatina No. 1 in C, 1st Mvt): Had a couple of listens - your dynamics and articulation are good. Admittedly, not being familiar with the score I don't know if there's detail you haven't brought out, but you have a nice touch, and touch is a significant cornerstone of good technique. Don't worry about the mistakes - we all make them.
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Feb 22, 2013 20:20
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The Dark Wind posted:Anyone have any recommendations for short but somewhat flashy pieces? I'm thinking of anything along the lines of Etincelles by Moszkowski, for example. How about Solfeggietto, by C.P.E. Bach?
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Mar 13, 2013 15:16
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Ror posted:This piece is super fun to play. It's deceptively easy too, aside from cranking the speed up it's just one note at a time in fairly sensible chord arpeggios. Yeah, it's a blast, and it sounds quite flashy at high speeds while at the same time not being especially hard. The main challenge is in getting everything even.
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Mar 13, 2013 19:34
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The Dark Wind posted:Ah, that's a fun piece, I learned it a couple of years back along with the fugue it's associated with, very fun to play, and there's deceptively large amount of depth to both pieces, despite both of them having a pretty constant texture throughout the length of each piece. Definitely looking for pieces along that line. The Solfeggietto is fun but it's a little too easy/light in terms of what I'm talking about. I'd like something arguably pretty technically challenging, but without it being Feux Follets or a Toccata either. Fair enough - I'm not familiar with piece you mentioned, so wasn't quite sure the kind of level you were talking about. Elephunk's suggestions are great.
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Mar 13, 2013 23:22
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The Dark Wind posted:I've also played that piece for a recital a while ago! I'm currently working through the Black Keys Etude now, and I'm almost done with Op. 25 No. 2 as I mentioned earlier. Unfortunately the keyboard I've been practicing on is just terrible, but hopefully I'll be getting a new instrument this weekend, and then I will be able to fully flesh out some of these pieces I've been working on. Anyways, the point of my original post was to possibly unearth some more obscure virtuosic pieces that aren't too large. I'm not really trying to impress anybody, I just like challenging pieces. My attention span is all over the place, and when I try to learn something larger like say, a Chopin ballade, I just end up getting distracted half way through and start working on something else. Some of the shorter Etudes like the ones I mentioned at the beginning of my post work really nicely, they have one straightforward technical challenge and have a lot of material that repeat, so learning them is a matter of simply working on that one technique for a couple of weeks till you get it down. That's not including the interpretative aspect of the work which obviously takes a much longer time, but that's an entirely separate issue. Have you looked at Liszt's Grand Galop Chromatique? Think it might be a bit OTT in its difficulty, but could be worth a mention.
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Mar 15, 2013 17:45
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I agree with the suggestion that the difference is that while children pick things up more quickly, adults are far more focused. I started pretty young - around age 7. I stopped lessons when I was about 16 and from my 20s onwards played only sporadically. When I restarted lessons last year (aged 32) I had slipped from a close-to-Grade 8 (ABRSM/Trinity) standard at my peak in my teens to around Grade 6. Now I am about to do Grade 8 with Trinity Guildhall, at my teacher's suggestion. Obviously I had a good base to work with, but the fact is over the past year I have practiced not only far more diligently than when I was a kid (even though I have more responsibilities - including a toddler, dog and business - and less free time) but more efficiently and intelligently too. With regard to the staccato question, it's hard to know exactly what to suggest without hearing you do it. I'd keep the exercises you use for this specific practice pretty simple at first, though - maybe sticking with, say, a C Major scale for the moment, so you can really concentrate on the staccato without worring about anything else. Also try listening to professionals playing pieces with staccato in them, and also recording yourself practicing. Listening to both of these should help your mind understand on an intuitive level what it should be doing to improve. Your teacher should be the best person to help you out, ultimately, as they can see and hear what you're doing and give you direct advice based on that. There's no substitute for a good teacher, to my mind. I'd say this applies to Hanon too - there's value in the exercises, but much more so when done under the focused direction of a teacher. On their own they will only take you a little way.
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May 24, 2013 13:35
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I know we have some Marc-André Hamelin fans in here, so I thought I'd give a little mention of the concert I saw him perform this evening at Wigmore Hall in London. He performed Charles Ives's "Concord Sonata", and Brahms's Piano Sonata No. 3 in F Minor. I wasn't too familiar with either piece, even though I generally love Brahms. Given the atonal and rather challenging nature of the Concord Sonata, I intended to give it a few rigorous listens before going, but never got round to it. It's a huge, massively technically demanding and often experimental piece, with some interesting aspects to it. Harmonically it's... unrestrained, to say the least. Each movement is named after a prominent figure in the transcendentalism movement. There are a number of cluster chords in the second movement which require the use of a wooden block to play. It also quotes the opening refrain from Beethoven's 5th Symphony in a number of spots. I think I would have gotten more out of it had I familiarised myself with it more beforehand, but I was at least aware to search for colour in the piece rather than melody, and all in all it was an interesting, dramatic and fun experience nonetheless, and certainly impressive from a technical standpoint. The Brahms I adored. There's not too much to say, other than it was again a very technically demanding (though this time of course somewhat more tonal) sonata, with a grand and declamatory opening and a truly beautiful second movement (perhaps the highlight for me). The third movement scherzo was lively fun, and the slow fourth segues into a dramatic fifth and final movement. I thought it was a blast, and my sister-in-law, who accompanied me, was very taken with it as well. Hamelin got a wonderful tone from the Hamburg Steinway D in the venue - he was the master of the instrument with as much totality as I've ever seen from a live pianist. It did help that we were fairly central and close (Wigmore Hall is relatively intimate venue, too), but his pedalling, his touch and his dynamic control were something to behold, from the thunderous crescendos, which never came close to muddying despite the absurd amount of notes and sustain being played into them, to the most remarkably delicate pianissimos and pianississimos. As an encore he decided to scale things back somewhat drastically, and played Mozart's K545. While I would have preferred a bit of Beethoven, it was a nice light coda to the evening, and I've never heard that particular piece played so well; he also certainly gave it a fresh feel with some tasteful rubato. A wonderful concert and an inspiring experience, perhaps more inspiring than any other piano concert I've attended. We both came out severely itching to go and do a bit of practice.
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Jun 27, 2013 23:32
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So, I did my piano Grade 8 with Trinity College London last Sunday. Had to wait until I got back from holiday today to get my result (as they failed to email it to me as I requested). Anyway, I got a Distinction - just! They require 60/100 for a pass, 75 for a Merit and 87 for a Distinction, and I got 87. I'm so relieved, as I knew it was within my capabilities but I messed up one of the technical exercises quite badly and thought that had scuppered my chances. Then all the other paranoid rumination followed - did I miss some accidentals in the key signature for the sight reading? Just how good were my pieces really? How accurate were my responses in the aural? I spend half my time on holiday wondering if I'd even got a Merit. Turns out I was being hard on myself. Ideally I'd have got in the 90s, but after these past few months of hard work it feels incredible to have made it into the top category. Next up teach wants me to do the diploma qualifications! In any case I'm glad to be moving on to some nice shiny new pieces, as much as I enjoyed the ones I did for the exam. OneSizeFitsAll fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Jul 12, 2013 |
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Jul 12, 2013 19:25
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The sense I have is that at the beginning stages guitar is harder, but at the expert level piano is. When you're learning the rudiments, the completely linear pitch layout on piano is more welcoming than the rather more jagged setup on a guitar. Plus on the latter you have to learn different picking techniques, harden your fingers etc. Arguably the main difficulty with piano - co-ordinating two hands - becomes exponentially more significant the harder the repertoire, until you get to the monumental difficulty of some of the really hard pieces, with all kinds of (sometimes polyphonic) detail, articulation, dynamics, polyrhythms etc to co-ordinate between the hands. I'm very much a beginner on guitar, though, but this is how it seems to me. Some may disagree, I don't know.
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Jul 19, 2013 17:54
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Just had my ATCL oerformance diploma exam today. Close to two years work (should have been a bit less but events delayed things), leading up to 40 odd minutes in a church on a rainy and blustery day in southern England. Of course, the work was also towards the small matter of general improvement, and thus extension of my enjoyment of playing, but still... a pretty big event in my year. I think (as did my teacher, who was page turning, mainly because of the last piece, which was very high tempo and lacking any opportunities for solo page turns) that I passed, though I'm not holding out a great deal of hope for a distinction. Still, pretty cool to hopefully get a professional level qualification as a result of my amateur pursuit/passion. On to some new pieces and maybe think about my next set of medium term goals! kedo posted:
Hawkgirl posted:Soft pedal is called una corda because in a fancy grand piano, the hammers all move over a bit so they're only hitting one of the two-three strings each note really has. It gives it a different tonality that is pretty interesting. Some cheap upright pianos don't have true una corda pedals, they just move the hammers in closer so they don't hit as hard. The middle pedal has various functions - on an upright I used to have it also engaged the muffler and functioned as a practice pedal, but there are various other things they can do. On most grands that have one though it is a sostenuto pedal. Some high end uprights have sostenuto but it is less common. With the left pedal, due to the difference in action basically all uprights have the soft pedal where the hammers rest closer to the strings, and grands have the true una corda which actually changes the timbre. The biggest Fazioli concert grand can come with four pedals if you want - the fourth moves the hammers nearer the strings like an upright's soft pedal.
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Dec 1, 2015 02:40
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Sad to see so little activity in this thread. How are people getting on with their piano journeys? I started with a new teacher early this year after a lesson hiatus for most of last year. He's ridiculously detailed - our lessons are 90 minutes and we normally spend most of that time going over just a few lines. But it does really help to elevate my performance of said piece and bring out the detail. He's also smoothing out some of my technical deficiencies, which is tough at first, having built up certain bad habits over several decades, but feels great ultimately to make that progress, and puts me in a much better position to eventually move up the repertoire difficulty scale. Pieces we're working on are: Widmung - Schumann/Liszt Sonata No. 15 (Pastoral) - Beethoven (just the first movement so far) So what's everyone else up to?
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Oct 11, 2018 14:51
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On Terra Firma posted:My teacher is on tour in Europe for the near future so I've been left to my own devices. Trying to learn Prelude and Fugue in A minor from book one in the WTC. I was also trying to transcribe and learn Flux by Brad Mehldau. Quite the left hand workout. Quite a job with the transcription there - good luck. Hmm, what Mehldau does with Bach is interesting, but got to say I much prefer the Prelude and Fugue! Always such a challenge with Bach to bring out the different parts, weaving between the clefs. And though from two very different eras, exists as a similar challenge in the two pieces I'm learning, and often between fingers on the same hand. Tricky technique to learn. Stangg posted:Ive been having lessons for a couple of months now, its slow going as I dont practice much aside from getting in some Hanon everyday and doing a couple of simple pieces from the Thompsons book two over the course of a week. My internal metronome still sucks, my sight reading is semi decent according to my teacher. I can play Bachs Prelude in C albeit without all the musicality it deserves. I've just had to tell my teacher I need to take a break for monetary reasons so I'll try and keep doing hanon everyday and working my way through the books during the downtime, maybe learn some pop songs. Keep at it! You're right there's a lot to learn and there are no shortcuts - though never done Hanon myself - but the work pays off and the satisfaction and enjoyment is immense. Great that you're at least keeping it ticking over even though not doing lessons at the moment. John Thompson takes me right back. I learned on these in the '80s: 
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Oct 11, 2018 22:53
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Been putting work into developing my technique - it's hard to reinvent this/correct flaws after playing for 30 years, but it does feel good when it begins to become automatic rather than conscious and you can hear the difference it makes in your playing. Main issue has been not applying sufficient tension and stiffness to my fingers, and not enough of a "grip" on the keys, making it harder to achieve consistent pianissimo and also dynamic contrast in general between fingers/hands. The other thing related to this, which we began working on first, is getting better at combining arm weight and finger muscles to emphasise different "parts" in a piece. These are coming up a lot in the pieces I'm working on at the moment. I pay through the nose for my current teacher but I have to say, based on my improvements and his general attention to detail and ability to spot where my technique needs working on and great suggestions for doing just that, that I am not regretting it so far. That's my piano story for today.
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Jan 16, 2019 16:39
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Stringent posted:I've been wanting to get into the habit of posting recordings, but since it makes me nervous as hell I never seem to be able to get a decent recording. Realizing this isn't gonna get any better, I figure I'll just post because the thread could use more content regardless. It's weird in a way how making recordings is nerve-wracking, as you know there's nothing to stop you having another go, as opposed to playing live in front of people, but hey, I've found them to be tricky too. Enjoyed the playing, anyway, though I was a bit distracted wondering what the panel on the wall is.
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Feb 19, 2019 00:14
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Stringent posted:I think it's a fuse box? Dunno, it's a rented practice room. Yeah I probably should. Piano needs a tune but might look into it after that. Even if you don't share the videos, recording yourself is pretty beneficial from a self-improvement perspective. Wish I'd recorded my pieces from my last exam to have a record of how well I was performing them at the time - some of them have deteriorated a bit now, though I have been slowly working on revitalising some of them, particularly as some of the technique I'm working on now comes up a fair bit in them.
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Feb 20, 2019 13:23
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Stringent posted:So in addition to my adventures with Herr Burgmuller I'm working on new repertoire, but more importantly I'm working on unfucking my previously "learned" repertoire. So this is a Beethoven rondo that my teacher sprung on me as kind of a moon shot piece, and while I've memorized the notes and can sort of bang my way through it I had never learned to count it properly or gotten it stable. So I'm in the process of doing that and it's a long slog, but I am making progress with it. I make it through about three and a half minutes here before I crash and burn on the triplet 16th chromatic run, but even that would have been almost unimaginable a couple months ago. So here's where it's at now, I'm looking forward to getting the whole thing sorted eventually. What are you using to record yourself? Yeah the tempo is a bit uneven but that can obviously come with slow practice, likewise the section that tripped you up at the end. You sing when you play - reminds me of Glenn Gould/Keith Jarrett
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Mar 11, 2019 21:07
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:There's also walking through the measure as slowly as you need to, counting out "one-e-and-a two-e-and-a" (for sixteenth notes) or whatever level of breakdown you need to match the duration of the notes. Sometimes composers suffer brain damage and start pairing triplets with sixteenth notes or whatever and there's very little markup you can do that will help you make sense of that kind of nonsense. There's tons of this in Chopin - runs of e.g. 17 notes over triplets or quavers or whatever. I just find where the treble and bass notes actually coincide during these passages and make sure they do, then the rest just sort of comes together with slow practice. It helps to be fundamentally comfortable with basic polyrhythms, i.e. 3s against 4s, first, of course. uXs posted:When doing sight-reading (*), my teachers always told me that rhythm is more important than hitting the right notes. It's better to occasionally hit the wrong one or just skip notes or chords or even entire measures if that makes it easier to keep the rhythm and get back on track for the next part. Easier said than done, obviously. Definitely this. In an exam sight-reading situation you will be more heavily penalised for erratic tempo than getting notes wrong. Also it just makes sense if you're playing with other people. Wrong notes are one thing, but varying tempo just throws everyone out of whack.
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Mar 13, 2019 11:18
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So I recorded both the pieces I'm working on after getting in from work today. First stab of the day at each, though I did warm up a bit with some technical work. Not happy with either performance - both are a bit slow (probably because I knew I was recording and wanted to avoid mistakes) and have other issues, but who cares. 1st movement of Beethoven Sonata no. 15 "Pastorale" Widmung - Schumann-Liszt
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Mar 18, 2019 19:58
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Stangg posted:I thoroughly enjoyed listening to both of those. That's very kind of you to say!
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Mar 19, 2019 00:41
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Stringent posted:Hell yeah. Thanks for the comments Stringent, particularly on the melody in Widmung. It's tricky as not only does the melody switch across the hands quite a few times, but there are sections, particularly towards the beginning, where you're playing melody and accompaniment in the same hand and having to distinguish them. I have been working on exercises to improve these things, so it's really cool you noticed. I still have some work to do on it though! Yes, the piano is mine.
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Mar 19, 2019 10:24
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Stringent posted:I bought a piano! Nice piano - decent height too. I also like Kawais. Nothing better than getting a new piano. Happy playing!
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May 18, 2019 20:28
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Bob Shadycharacter posted:LOL, I know this feel. Congrats on finishing it, that's a major accomplishment! I've seen the WTC as a whole referred to as the Old Testament of piano repertoire, and Beethoven's 32 as the New Testament, which I think is not unapt.
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Jun 21, 2019 17:44
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On Terra Firma posted:I have a Kawai digital CA95 and it's almost indistinguishable from a grand in feel. It even has simulated let off. I think there is a lower model that has the same features with slightly different keys. They feel wayyyyyy better than any Yamaha digitals. I have a Kawai CA97 and I second this. Easily the best action on an electric that I've encountered and it does feel a lot like my acoustic grand. Sonically it's a different story obviously, but the touch is pretty drat close.
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Jul 7, 2019 12:06
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The weighted keys are more important than having 88 of them. You won't be playing repertoire that needs 88 keys for a while, but you will be developing your sense of touch at the outset. I'd still aim for both even for a novice, but if space is an issue and you might upgrade in a year anyway, it wouldn't be the end of the world to get one with fewer than 88, if they are weighted. Hell, I'd still get unweighted if it was a choice between that and not learning at all.
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Oct 7, 2019 08:58
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Congrats on the purchase - that's a great choice to start your piano journey with. Happy playing.
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Oct 10, 2019 11:28
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Had a fantastic trip on Saturday with my piano group to a period keyboard instrument museum in Kent (south east UK). It's run by a charity called Finchcocks and used to be housed in a huge manor house. It's downsized now, and they have a lovely collection of 14 instruments - mostly fortepianos (precursor to the modern pianoforte), but also a harpsichord and clavichord and some other bits and bobs. The 13 of us had the place to ourselves, and were well looked after by the staff with teas and lunch and stuff. We each went with a couple of pieces in mind to play, which we told them of beforehand so they could split us to allow us to play them on an instrument from the appropriate period. There were three tutors there, who told us all about the different instruments and advice on how to get a nice sound out of them, as well as general feedback on our pieces. I played the second movement of Beethoven's "Pastoral" sonata (op 15) and Liszt's transcription of Schuman''s "Widmung", which I think I posted a recording of me playing earlier in this thread. I played the former on a Clementi from 1822 and the latter on an Erard from 1866, the most modern instrument in the museum and easily the closest to a modern grand. A lot of the instruments had smaller keys than modern pianos, which requires some readjustment. Generally they required a lighter touch in order to avoid a harsh sound. Some, like the Pleyel, had a strange resistance when pressing the keys down, which was really awkward, and also strange insofar as these were Chopin's favoured instrument, and that resistance makes it quite awkard to play his repertoire. It made a nice sound when you got used to it, but was definitely my least favourite to play. You also get that kind of resistance with a harpsichord, because of the mechanism (string being plucked instead of hit), but that made more sense and also was less of an impediment to the kind of repertoire you play on them, taking into account particularly the lack of a need to incorporate dynamics and articulation. Some instruments had no pedals, one had instead a mechanism you operated with your knees (with the una corda and sustain on opposite sides to normal), and some had extra pedals which did other things, like create a basoon-like sound, or one which made a percussion noise. Anyway, here are a few photos:  Cawton Aston spinet, circa 1700  Square piano - not sure which of three they have this is  Jacob Kirckman harpsichord, 1756 Beautiful-sounding harpsichord this was. Heard 3 different Bach pieces on this and they sounded wonderful; Bach of course has that almost indestructible quality, sounding great at most tempos and with most timbres, but it's definitely at home on an instrument like this.  Michael Rosenberger Viennese fortepiano, circa 1795 This one had the knee mechanisms for sustain and una corda  Lindholm and Söderström Swedish clavichord 1806 This made the tiniest sound imaginable. You can see why they were mostly used for practicing and composing at home.  Johann Fritz Viennese fortepiano, 1815 The far right pedal made the percussion sound, a bit like a drum and cymbal together.  Clementi & Co grand piano, 1822 I played my Beethoven on this. Tiny keys and my knees wouldn't fit underneath the keyboard so I had to sit quite far back. Was nice to play on once you got used to it.  Conrad Graf Viennese fortepiano, 1826  Erard grand piano, 1866 Nice warm sound with a punchy bass, this was easily the closest to a modern instrument, as the year of construction would suggest. I played my Schumann-Liszt on this. All in all a fascinating trip and well worth the early start on a Saturday. Any UK goons should take a look as it's a great charity run by some really nice people who are passionate about these period instruments. There aren't a lot museums of this type - they get visitors from various foreign institutions, including music schools from places like Russia and Germany. I will definitely return at some point.
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Nov 11, 2019 13:22
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I don't get excited much any more... I'm getting older and more jaded, but also anhedonia stemming from depression can take the fun out of a lot of things. Things whose ability to bring me joy are not really affected by any of this are, first of all: my children. Second of all: music. Playing it in particular. Anyway I'm about to hit 40 next month, and have worked very hard developing my business over the last few years, to a decent degree of success. I've also practiced hard and made good progress with the piano. Finally, I've also over the last few years played a lot of pianos by the top manufacturers: Bechstein, Bosendorfer, Bluthner, Hamburg Steinway, Fazioli, Sauter, Grotrian Steinweg. All truly superb instruments, but none really made me determined to buy one RIGHT NOW DAMMIT. Then recently I played a Steingraeber 192 (around the size I am looking at; my current piano is 186cm so this is just a fraction bigger). The action was ridiculously good; the sound hit all the right buttons for me. Warm, colourful, with a seemingly endless range of expressive capability. The warmth of the sound would also make it less likely to fatigue my ears in our 16'2 x 13'7 music room. I went back and played it on a second day to see if the feeling was still there, and it was. So I pushed forward with it and I will very shortly be travelling to Bayreuth (between Berlin and Munich) to visit the factory as a guest of the company (they, or the shop I am buying through, are flying me there, and then putting me up in their studio flat on the first night; I am paying for a hotel for other two nights I am there). I will also play on two 192s, and hopefully choose one to buy, as a present to myself for my 40th! As mentioned, I don't get worked up over much these days, but I am absolutely brimming with excitement; it feels like I'm a kid again, and I can't think of anything more perfect to mark becoming a wizened 40-year-old bastard. I'm a bit of a petrolhead and would love a weekend sports car, or an upgrade to my daily driver, but not as much as a beautiful piano that really does it for me. So there we are. Just wanted to share my excitement in a thread where people will most probably understand. I will take some pics while I am there (including of the other points of interest in Bayreuth, such as the Wagner opera house and the Liszt museum), and if anyone is interested will post them in here. Now to practice!
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Nov 21, 2019 17:44
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cebrail posted:That sounds awesome! And yes, please post those pictures, here or in the Classical Music thread. The only two I've either seen or played were in this London shop: a 170 a couple of years ago (good for its size, but nonetheless way too small) and this 192. They only make about 80 grands a year and even fewer uprights, so they're pretty rare in the UK, and as I understand it even rarer in the US.
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Nov 21, 2019 18:41
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Meh
OneSizeFitsAll fucked around with this message at 16:43 on Dec 9, 2019 |
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Dec 4, 2019 18:14
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Didn't get any interest in my trip report to Bayreuth, but my Steingraeber B-192 is now here and I'm so excited and in love with it, so what the hell, these are some pictures of it in my music room. This is the piano for me - dark, warm, yet singing and clear when called for. The action is out of this world - I've been trying to refine my touch technique over the past year, and I'm already inspired by this to increase my efforts further so I can get the most out of it. Wish I wasn't in the office today, as it's calling meeeeeee...   
OneSizeFitsAll fucked around with this message at 13:11 on Dec 18, 2019 |
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Dec 18, 2019 13:05
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Thanks man. If it's any help on the jealousy front, I really, really, appreciate having this piano and am about as far from blasé about it as you could imagine.
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Dec 18, 2019 14:27
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VelociBacon posted:Onesizefitsall, is baffling only a concern in a room like that with blank hard walls if you're trying to record something? I would have thought you'd get some unwanted acoustics from not having baffling throughout the room. I think baffling would improve the acoustics in there, and it is something I may look at, but thanks to the carpet, the rug and the items that are in there, plus the inherent tone of the piano, it's fine. I think having the lid fully open for long periods might be a bit fatiguing, but at half stick and low stick there are no issues.
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Dec 19, 2019 10:45
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I need this: https://ideas.lego.com/projects/a4e4413f-8488-4551-ac9d-9e7f8c35154e
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Feb 4, 2020 13:32
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uXs posted:Well they are making it so hooray for you? Yes? I mean I posted it share a cool thing with other piano lovers, not to express angst.
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Feb 5, 2020 17:53
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DreadCthulhu posted:Any clever tricks for how to get better at using both hands at the same time? e.g. say I'm playing a really basic Hello Goodbye by the beatles, octaves in the left, chords in the right. It takes me way longer than I wish to get my left hand to aim and hit the right octaves correctly. Just a matter of grinding this again and again and eventually you're like a note sniper, and can hit anything you want right, and fast? The same answer as with most how do you learn most things on the piano: slow practice. Play as slowly as you need in order to be able to do it with no mistakes. Then increase the speed in increments, moving up a speed each time you have it consistently accurate. Your brain and muscle memory will gradually get used to the spatiality of the key layout. If you feel you need to, separate the hands first before bringing them together.
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Mar 4, 2020 13:33
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