Piano Guidance
Piano Guidance
Photo: Elina Sazonova
Despite the declining industry in the United States, the piano is one of the most popular instruments in the world and nowhere is it more popular than in China.
After six months of piano lessons For many people, after 6 months of piano lessons, they find that they can read most of the notes on the staff and...
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March 1, 2022 by Emily Hughes. The terms 3/4 and 4/4 refer to the time signature of a piece of music. 3/4 means that there are three beats per...
Read More »Despite the declining industry in the United States, the piano is one of the most popular instruments in the world and nowhere is it more popular than in China. I was fortunate to attend the recent Music China convention in Shanghai and it was an eye-opening experience on just how vast the piano industry is there. Many of you have seen Chinese manufactured pianos in local piano stores, but this is such a small portion of the industry and what is currently going on there. Consider these facts: There are more companies making pianos in China than there are piano stores in the USA! The largest piano manufacturer in China (Pearl River) has three factories in China, any one of which produces more pianos than all the new pianos sold in the USA each year. The difference in the size of the industry is staggering and the innovations are remarkable. Pianos with touch screens on the fallboards, pianos with butterfly lids that open in both directions, pianos that are made out of plexiglass and even pianos with two keyboards, one on each end for a dueling piano! The Chinese have taken to the piano like people did in this country over a hundred years ago. It’s an exploding market and it’s incredibly popular with younger generations. The Chinese purchase ten times the number of new pianos than Americans and that’s why the export market is only a small fraction of their output. Most of the pianos produced and sold are uprights like in the rest of the world because of smaller homes than in the United States. However, they produce plenty of grands and even concert grand pianos. To put things into perspective, the biggest show in North America (The National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) show in Anaheim, California) has only one main room upstairs full of pianos easily covered in about 20 minutes. The Music China show has over three huge field houses full of pianos; I didn’t even have enough time to see all the instruments in the course of several days at the show! So why is the piano so popular in China? Western culture wasn’t widely available to the Chinese until after the cultural revolution in the 1970’s. Today, the emerging consumer class in China are enriching children with piano lessons by parents who never had the opportunity to learn themselves. Every time I would sit down at a piano at the show, dozens of people crowded around me taking videos because it was a spectacle to see someone my age performing the piano! I will be returning to China for performances, master classes as well as being an industry advisor. I hope to share the enthusiasm they have for the piano there to people in the U.S. and around the world. Thanks again for joining us here at Living Pianos. If you have any questions about this topic or any others, please contact us at: [email protected] (949) 244-3729
As It Was is written in the key of A Major. According to the Theorytab database, it is the 4th most popular key among Major keys and the 4th most...
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A diamond shape around a number indicates that the chord should be held out or allowed to ring as a whole note. Conversely, the marcato symbol ^...
Read More »The Piano's Ancestor was a Monochord Instrument Those categories are string instruments, wind instruments, and percussion instruments. The piano's ancestry can be traced back through various instruments such as the clavichord, harpsichord, and dulcimer.
Although the piano can be classified as a string instrument due to the fact that the sounds come from the vibration of strings, it can also be classified as a percussion instrument because a hammer strikes those strings. In this way it is similar to a dulcimer. The dulcimer is an instrument that originated in the Middle East and spread to Europe in the 11th century. It features a simple resonating box with strings stretched on top of it. Much like a piano, a small hammer is used to hit the strings, which is why the dulcimer is considered to be a direct ancestor of the piano.
Historically, composers like Mozart used the harmonic minor scale to do exactly that. Using the harmonic minor instead of the natural minor allowed...
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Since 2 years of age is a younger-than-typical age to begin piano lessons, it's important to evaluate whether or not your child is truly ready to...
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There are certain symptoms when you're trying to shift that will let you know that you're getting close. Some of these symptoms include feeling...
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Small physical obstructions or tight key bushings can often be repaired while keeping the keys intact. If a key needs to be replaced, we use only...
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