Mikes Music Room – Music Articles

All pianos are the same, right? They all have 88 keys, some black and some white, a couple of pedals and a bench. But no, that’s not all. Not all instruments are held to the same standards as a Steinway piano and it is for this reason that they are so popular. Solid craftsmanship and innovation are the backbone of the company. So what exactly is it that makes this instrument so special? A look into the evolution of the instrument and the company will tell you.

Family. History. Tradition. Craftsmanship. Innovation. These are the main elements that make up a Steinway piano.

A Story of Success

Henry Engelhard Steinway was a cabinetmaker born in Germany where he built his very first piano in his kitchen. As an immigrant in Manhattan, he formed the company Steinway & Sons in 1853. The first instrument sold under the company name went for $500, a mere portion of what they are worth today. With his five sons, Henry went on to develop one of the most requested and revered pianos in the world. Royalty and accomplished musicians alike prefer this instrument above all others.

Over the years, Henry and his sons developed and improved on their Steinway piano. They won awards and accolades world wide. When Henry died in 1871, his sons continued the family business and kept the tradition of making quality instruments. It wasn’t long before manufacturing plants were opened in London and Germany. Illustrating their drive for innovation, the family owns 114 patents, one of which is for a concert grand design.

The Product

Approximately 5,000 pieces are built each year and each one takes about a year to complete. With every style, each component is made from the best materials and each lends to the unique sound and design of the instrument.

The instruments are made of different woods to attain the strength and the sound, as well as the beauty each instrument is known for. Eastern rock maple is sliced into 18 layers 3/16 of an inch thick and is used for the rim of the grand piano while spruce is used for the Diaphragmatic soundboard because of its superior acoustic qualities. These are just a few of more than a thousand details in construction and design that make a Steinway unique to any other instrument. No component is used until it has been through rigorous quality control measures.

As a result of the dedication to quality workmanship and materials, the Steinway is the preferred instrument to around 90% of concert pianists who perform worldwide. While other companies mass produce their instruments, it is evident that people are willing to wait for quality. With only 5,000 being produced a year, they do not sit in the showroom for long. And, while they may be more expensive than their mass-produced counterparts, the old saying is really true- “you get what you pay for.” It also goes to show what a hard-working family can accomplish when they don’t compromise on their dreams. Because of their continual development in pianos, we get to enjoy some of the most beautiful music in the world.

Steinway pianos in Louisiana remark a tradition of quality pianos. Through years of commitment to excellence our knowledgeable keyboard department staff is ready to help you find the right digital instrument to meet your needs. Explore the fine line of Steinway pianos at http://www.hallpiano.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Andrew_Stratton

Steinway Piano (Category: Musical Instruments )

Platinum Grand Piano – Steinway Grand Samples – Kontakt, Halion, SF2, Reason

£1.49 End Date: Friday May-25-2012 17:30:05 £1.49

Beautiful Steinway model O grand piano for sale

£10,995.00 (1 Bid) End Date: Friday May-25-2012 22:55:16

Big Hits Vol 2 (Steinway Piano Library) Fox, Dan (arranger)

£7.99 End Date: Saturday May-26-2012 1:17:52 £7.99

museum-grade Louis XIV Enamel color artcase STEINWAY B semi concert grand piano

£60,102.54 End Date: Saturday May-26-2012 3:37:54 £60,102.54

Steinway & Sons Grand Piano – model 170 cm

£14,000.00 End Date: Monday May-28-2012 15:02:23 £14,000.00

BILLIARD TABLE MAKERS STEINWAY PIANOS ORIGINAL VINTAGE ADVERTS 1905 THURSTON &

£9.95 (0 Bid) End Date: Monday May-28-2012 15:23:57

5000 pages ab. piano-forte/pianoforte: Steinway .:1838+

£10.90 End Date: Monday May-28-2012 23:01:30 £10.90

100 PIANO CLASSICS TO GROW ON Steinway

£15.99 End Date: Tuesday May-29-2012 17:52:25 £15.99

Boston Steinway Grand Piano GP 156 hardly ever used looks brand new

£5,000.00 (0 Bid) End Date: Tuesday May-29-2012 19:05:28 £7,900.00

100 Piano Classics To Grow On (Steinway) Piano teaching material

£19.95 End Date: Tuesday May-29-2012 20:16:24 £19.95

When I was a child, there was not as much competition for my time as there is for kids now. I realize that, but I believe that practicing the piano should be a habit. A habit like brushing your teeth everyday, exercising, doing homework.

In the beginning having a child practice Monday-Friday at least 15 minutes a day not only shows consistent advancement, but also decreases anxiety over practicing.

For example, ever parent expects their child to do their homework every night and every child accepts that and it is worked in as part of their daily routine. When piano lessons are started your child should add piano practicing as part of their daily routine.

If you plan exactly when and what time the piano practice will take place, then anxiety and fighting over practicing is eliminated. In return, the child knows what is expected of them and their reward is the confidence and fluidity of playing that comes from practicing.

Here are a some tips:

1. Sit with your child in the beginning and watch them practice. Then be in the room and listen to your child practice. It is very important to children that parents praise and listen to them when they practice.

2. Help make practicing a habit by doing every day and if you can at the same time every day. For some the morning is better, for others the afternoon, and others right after dinner. By doing this at the beginning, you will save having to remind your child to practice when they are older. I personally, tell my child to practice before any t.v. or video games.

3. It takes about 3 years of practicing before a child begin to appreciate how s/he can play the piano and at this point will not want to stop. The first year is fun. The second is more challenging, and the one that requires constant practicing and encouragement. In the third year, your child becomes confident in their ability and your child will be considered a “musician.”

4. Your child may want to quit from time to time. This is normal. Music lessons can go through difficult stages at times. It is at these times, discontinuing lessons may seem to be the obvious solution. Children, who are allowed to quit, rarely return to lessons. I have never heard an adult say, “I’m glad my parents let me quit.”

Children complain about homework but parents turn a deaf ear, sometimes with the piano, the same thing has to be done to get a child through the second year.

Parents wouldn’t think of letting their child show up for school without their schoolwork done, and that same attitude should be carried over to music lessons.

Copyright2006JDean

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jerrie_Dean

Learn How to Play with step-by-step piano lessons

Supported by video and audio files. Rocket Piano is organized into 3 high quality books taking you on a journey from beginner to advanced in your gospel piano playing.

Click here to find out more

“…Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, and Liszt all excelled in improvisation, which was then referred to as extemporization…”

Classical music is a sophisticated art form where talking during performances (much less to the musicians) is frowned upon. Yet in jazz, it is very common for the audience to speak to musicians during performances as a way of complimenting their improvisational skills.

Elements of jazz can be found in gospel, country, pop, R&B, movie soundtracks, and other musical forms. However, when the average person uses the word “jazz,” they may not understand the culture or the language.

Many people associate improvisation with jazz and vice-versa. However, improvisation has been an integral part of classical music history, stemming back to the medieval period in Gregorian chants. These chants used additional melodies above the Cantus Firmus (fixed melody in Latin), which were improvised by Medieval musicians to glorify God. In the later periods, improvisation was used in performances outside of churches. J.S. Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, and Liszt all excelled in improvisation, which was then referred to as extemporization. Bartok’s “Mikrokosmos” were originally improvised as were Beethoven’s famous sketch books (which he later used in formal works).

Near the beginning of the 20th Century, improvisation disappeared in the Romantic Period as performers began mastering composers’ works note for note; the art of improvisation was eventually lost. Schubert’s impromptus, contrary to their title, were not improvised but written out methodically. Playing classical music well is a skill requiring great discipline and talent, but the same can be said for jazz. Both disciplines use the same musical alphabet, yet have somehow managed to create different nomenclatures for each respectively.

Historically, jazz music has not been associated with higher education. However, the great Scott Joplin, an African-American jazz composer of the late 19th to early 20th century, took formal lessons with a classical German-born piano teacher and the Creole performers of New Orleans were often Conservatory-trained in Paris.

Both classical and jazz music are disciplines requiring creativity. The classical musician, after mastering the techniques must interpret the score and bring the written notes to life in a performance. The challenge of a jazz musician is to use, simultaneously, both improvisational talent and the technique required to perform unplanned music for a live audience. To draw an analogy, a classical musician is like an actor with a full script – having to memorize and master it, then bringing the character to life. A jazz musician is like an actor with no script, only a few guidelines to follow, yet charged with creating dialogue and instantly performing in character. In its purest essence, technicality must be mastered. One would argue that the task of learning and memorizing a sonata (15-60 pages) or concerto (often exceeding 100 pages) is a phenomenal task! The best classical and jazz musicians must both be proficient in technique, but the more challenging task is for them to able to augment their technical skills in a performance to move their audience emotionally. All musicians need to play from their hearts to truly affect their audience in a meaningful way.

Jazz Studies at Juilliard, Yale, Stanford, Harvard

Recently, Conservatory Canada has implemented a new examination category implementing jazz idioms, nomenclature and styles. The Royal Conservatory has for several years used a popular syllabus for their studies selection. In addition to the previously mentioned Jazz Studies program offered at Juilliard, Ivy League schools have also shown their support; Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and Berkley currently offer or are implementing jazz programs. These institutions have embraced an original approach in combining classical and jazz instruction.

We cannot claim that one art form is more or less sophisticated than another. Classical musicians may not fully comprehend jazz culture, just as jazz musicians may not fully interpret classical culture. However, because music is a universal language, the understanding of its different forms and dialects are beneficial. These new “bilingual” musicians are able to better communicate with their audience in various ways. Following the same “early education” concept used for spoken languages, we need to educate children in both classical and jazz music. Children who study classical and jazz at the same time will be able to understand both cultures and fully realize their musical potential.

Oakridge Music Studios is a music education centre based in Vancouver, BC. The following music lessons are taught: piano lessons, guitar lessons, violin, cello, voice, singing, saxophone, trumpet. Music disciplines taught are: jazz, classical and pop music. Young musicians are encouraged to learn both classical and jazz – simultaneously – to excel and advance their music education. This unique bilingual teaching methodology of learning classical and jazz music disciplines is offered in a creative and imaginative environment to actively engage and unleash the young musician’s hidden music ingenuity and skills.

Please call us if you seeking music lessons in the Vancouver, BC area. —–
Oakridge Music Studios-a Vancouver music school
Original article posted at OMusicStudios.com – Jazz Improvisation Improves Classical Music Skills
497 West 40th Avenue, Vancouver, BC, Canada, V5Y 2R5
tel: +1.604.321.1551 fax: +1.604.321.1555

Learn How to Play with step-by-step piano lessons

Supported by video and audio files. Rocket Piano is organized into 3 high quality books taking you on a journey from beginner to advanced in your gospel piano playing.

Click here to find out more

The average person considers music to be a singular language. It is one of the oldest vehicles of communication, capable of expressing emotion and often having a profound effect on its listeners. However, the ability to appreciate music in its multiple forms is often ignored. We agree that bilingual people have an advantage over those who only know one language. In October 2001, the Juilliard School of Music, renowned for its unparalleled classical instructors and performers, added jazz to its academic curriculum. The world’s finest music institution is only one of a growing number of supporters backing a combined education in both classical and jazz for children and young musicians.

To express oneself in any language, one must first understand the language phonetically (learning by ear) before learning to read and write. To read and write a language, one must be familiar with its structure. In parallel, someone foreign to a language may have a more structured and scientific understanding than a native speaker. As a child, I was always fascinated when my uncle, a doctor of linguistics, would ask me, “How do you say that in English?” He was asking how to express the language colloquially and with English as my first language, it was natural to me.

Children learn foreign languages naturally by ear. On the other hand, adults tend to learn languages logically and methodically, referring back to their native language for comparison. It is obvious which method is easier; if one is brought up in a specific culture, it is easier to learn that culture’s language via naturally rather than via studious reading. Furthermore, when one understands and grows up in their native culture, one can understand the nuances of its language. For example, English speakers have varied dialects that differ depending on geography. There are noticeable differences in dialects between people from Canada’s west coast, east coast and the prairies. They all speak the same language but exhibit nuances that are inherent within their cultural structure.

Understanding music requires a similar method. Before learning to read or sight-read, one should be familiar with pitch. However, this is rarely the case in music education where the emphasis is on reading and not listening. Both classical and jazz artists employ a musical alphabet, but they use it in different ways. Jazz is a sophisticated language that is commonly overlooked in lieu of a “traditional” classical music upbringing. Growing up as the only Korean children in school, my sister and I were told by our Grade 1 teacher not to speak Korean at home, supposedly as it would confuse our understanding of English. Nevertheless, our father spoke English to us, and our mother spoke Korean. As a result, we can both understand Korean but not speak the language. This example demonstrates why I firmly believe children must learn both musical languages – that is, jazz and classical.

Oakridge Music Studios is a music education centre based in Vancouver, BC. The following music lessons are taught: piano lessons, guitar lessons, violin, cello, voice, singing, saxophone, trumpet. Music disciplines taught are: jazz, classical and pop music. Young musicians are encouraged to learn both classical and jazz – simultaneously – to excel and advance their music education. This unique bilingual teaching methodology of learning classical and jazz music disciplines is offered in a creative and imaginative environment to actively engage and unleash the young musician’s hidden music ingenuity and skills.

Please call us if you seeking music lessons in the Vancouver, BC area. —–
Oakridge Music Studios-a Vancouver music school
Learn Classical & Jazz Music
497 West 40th Avenue, Vancouver, BC, Canada, V5Y 2R5
tel: +1.604.321.1551 fax: +1.604.321.1555

Learn How to Play with step-by-step piano lessons

Supported by video and audio files. Rocket Piano is organized into 3 high quality books taking you on a journey from beginner to advanced in your gospel piano playing.

Click here to find out more

If space and cost were not a constraint almost everybody would have loved to own an acoustic grand piano. The grand piano is a majestic instrument and not only does it looks good it sounds great as well. But unfortunately not everybody can afford one as everybody has a limited budget and space. Besides everybody needs the features associated with a digital instrument. This is what makes the Digital Piano so popular among a lot of people.

A digital piano was developed as an alternative to the acoustic piano but the sound producing mechanism in a digital piano is totally different. Digital pianos use high quality samples to produce piano sounds. The better the samples the more expensive the digital piano becomes.

Another important factor is the keyboard touch & feel. A Digital piano needs to have keys which feel almost like real keys of an acoustic piano. The better digital pianos come with graded hammer action which simply means that the keys are heavier on the bass side and get gradually lighter as you move to the right of the keyboard. This is how the keys feel on an acoustic piano.

A few other digital pianos have the look of a digital keyboard and they are designed to be portable. They are lightweight and can be easily moved around. They are used by gigging musicians and are referred to as stage pianos.

All the Digital pianos have a slot to connect a headphone so that you can practice without disturbing others. Also, there are no maintenance & tuning activities needed for a digital piano.

Suresh Bist

http://www.know-your-keyboard-piano.com
“Useful information to help you become a better musician”

Digital Piano (Category: Musical Instruments )

Korg LP350 Digital Piano (Black) (NEW)

£799.99 End Date: Thursday May-24-2012 9:10:29 £799.99

Casio Privia PX735 Digital Piano

£599.00 End Date: Thursday May-24-2012 11:40:35 £599.00

Yamaha YDP161 Digital Piano – Free Bench and Headphones

£874.00 End Date: Thursday May-24-2012 12:09:14 £874.00

Korg SP-170 Digital Piano, Black

£299.00 (0 Bid) End Date: Thursday May-24-2012 12:41:31

Upright Compact Digital PIANO-Hammer Action-88 Key-NEW

£399.95 End Date: Thursday May-24-2012 13:42:33 £399.95

Yamaha YDP141R Digital Piano | Rosewood Finish | Incl Bench, Headphones & Badge!

£749.00 End Date: Thursday May-24-2012 14:19:08 £749.00

Korg LP-350 Weighted Hammer Action Digital Piano – WHITE

£469.99 (0 Bid) End Date: Thursday May-24-2012 15:22:12

KORG SP250SB DIGITAL STAGE PIANO.

£399.00 (0 Bid) End Date: Thursday May-24-2012 15:35:55

YAMAHA NPV-80 76KEY DIGITAL KEYBOARD PIANO+H/PHONES+STAND+P/SUPPLY+FREE DELIVERY

£373.00 End Date: Thursday May-24-2012 16:17:27 £373.00

YAMAHA P95B BLACK DIGITAL PIANO KEYBOARD 88 NOTES free p/p+ FREE STAND+H/PHONES

£489.00 End Date: Thursday May-24-2012 16:17:28 £489.00

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