My passion is to help others in the community, young, old, and everyone in between, find relevance and joy in learning, performing or listening to classical music.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Don't shoot the piano

Image by Cristian Bortes, from Wikimedia Commons
When people ask me why I chose piano over cello I often reply, "Because with piano I can always blame the piano for a bad performance." Having made the choice that I did, I have to deal with one of the biggest issues that we pianists have to face - being ready to play on the best and worst of pianos and sometimes even facing a myriad of piano-shaped objects (from here on out, referred to as PSOs).  I can hear the groans now and I know there must be tons of stories out there about what we've all had to deal with.  But before we proceed into the depths of pianistic wallowing, I'd like to throw out some thoughts about how I tend to view this challenge that is somewhat unique to our instrument.  

Personally, I love the challenge.  Give me a piano or a PSO and I will do my best to make some good music with it.  I figure it gives me something to keep me focused during a performance too which often comes in handy.  Forget the lady out in the audience wearing a dress with the most peculiar print or the student that seems more focused on texting than on listening - I need to figure out how to make this piano sing!  A note sticking?  Great, it's kind of entertaining to time everything right so that I have extra time to pull the key back up before having to play it again.  Sustaining pedal not working well?  A perfect time to try the old finger-legato technique and to shoot for extra flexible, pliable fingers.  A note severely out of tune?  Let's see how many times I can effectively displace that particular note to a different octave to avoid the unpleasant twang.  Piano missing some black keys here and there?  That's a supreme challenge and one that I've actually dealt with in a prison.  (Long story...and no, I wasn't in prison, just visiting.)  

I'm not being sarcastic - truly I'm not!  I find it all kind of entertaining, except for the prison episode.  When people apologize to me about the piano I am to perform on, my response is always, "No worries.  As long as it has black and white keys, all in the right places, I'm a happy pianist."  

Because I am.  To be playing music always makes me happy.  

As a pianist, I think it's important keep in mind that pianos to perform on are getting harder and harder to find.  They have all but disappeared in churches, being replaced by Clavinovas or electric keyboards  since they don't have to be tuned or given a climate-controlled environment.  Same thing goes for schools.  It's just too challenging and expensive to keep a piano going in that kind of setting.  And you know what?  I get all that.  I don't blame people for making those decisions.  So in my mind, if the choice is between having an electric PSO or nothing at all, if the choice is between making music or not making music, I say, "Find me an electric outlet.  We're gonna make this keyboard work!"   

Now does this mean I don't like performing on a fine piano? No, of course not!  When I have the opportunity to play on a well-maintained, well-built instrument, it's like playing in a dream.  But for me it's a gift, a blessing, and no longer an expectation.  

And my last thought is this - I've performed on a lot of "bad" pianos and on a lot of electric PSOs but in none of those situations have I had anyone come up to me afterwards to complain about the performance, even my audience in the jail way back when.  Those in the know will sometimes commiserate with me but those folks in the audience who may not have much experience with classical music and grand pianos (and I play for a lot of those folks) never say a negative word because they don't necessarily know the difference.  I don't mean that in a disrespectful way.  They are there to take in the whole experience and to listen to music - they don't have the expectation of hearing a concert grand, perfectly maintained and in-tune.

Music is music.  Good music is good music.  But good music doesn't need the ideal instrument, at least not in my mind.  I choose to make magic with whatever musical wand I've been given.   

Pianists - if you have any stories you'd like to share about experiences you've had dealing with unusual or particularly challenging pianos or PSOs, please feel free to share them here and to talk about how you dealt with it.  We can all learn from one another! 

16 comments:

  1. What a great attitude, Erica. Love it! :)

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  2. Thank you, Daniel. I definitely have attitude, lol! ;-)

    Erica

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  3. Yep, I get it. I wrote about this kind of experience here: (about halfway through, after the weird Taylor Swift clip)

    The piano is one of the most delightfully imperfect things around - even a perfect piano is one big compromise of tuning systems, unequal register balance, unreversable decay, etc.

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  4. I definitely remember that post, Michael. And reading it again, one of your concluding comments jumps out at me:

    "...that part of the joy of musicmaking is the thrill of negotiating the technical minefields any instrument presents."

    Sounds wonderfully familiar. It's comforting to know that I'm not the only pianist out there that actually looks forward to an imperfect instrument to play on because yes, it makes the whole experience all the more human, like you said.

    Thanks for reading, Michael and for sharing your post.

    Erica

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  5. Great philosophy, Erica. I'm with you; I do find it (maybe perversely) fun to negotiate the challenges of various pianos.

    As for electric keyboards, I have to admit they still annoy me. But this is a great thought to keep in mind that you wrote, "if the choice is between having an electric PSO or nothing at all, if the choice is between making music or not making music"

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  6. Thank you for reading and for your comments, Nancy. I do think we collaborators/accompanists in particular tend to have an unusual penchant for situations that require us to control something outside of ourselves. ;-)

    I've gotten to not dislike electric keyboards so much although there are a few things that drive me nuts - when they don't have a pedal or when they have a pedal that moves around every time you push it down. Still trying to figure out how to get around that problem. Duct tape might be the answer. I'll have to add that to my accompanist's first-aid kit.

    All the best to you and we still haven't had tea!
    Erica

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  7. Better than duct tape on moving pedals is gaffer's tape, available at most places you can buy audio equipment. Sticks nearly as good as duct tape, but won't leave any residue on the floor. We use it most weeks at my church, where the digital piano is the only option since we rent a building and have to pack everything up after the service. Sigh. Still, I'd take a good digital piano over a bad piano, and a good piano over anything else.

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  8. Vicki,
    That's fantastic info! Gaffer's tape is on my list of things to buy and add to my bag that's always with me.

    Many thanks for reading and for that advice :-)

    All the best,
    Erica

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  9. I'm always drawn to any piano and want to play it, but I was sad when my MIL's nursing home got rid of a little Chickering spinet they had, which was decent for what it was, and substituted THE worst digital I've ever played on. It was simply not fun to play, and after trying a number of times I gave up. I really could not play anything challenging on it (at least with my skills at the time). The people making these decisions usually know nothing about music or pianos, unfortunately. They just know that the digitals are cheap and don't require any maintenance.

    Another challenging piano is the performance piano at the school where I took lessons earlier this year and on which I also had some of my weekly lessons. It is a well-known high-end brand, a 9-foot grand, and I believe they have it serviced regularly, but it is not responsive and has a sort of spongy feel. I feel sorry for the visiting pianists, some quite famous, who perform on it. It's not that you can't play on it; it's just that it's limiting, IMO. (That school also had the Yamaha baby grand from He 1 1 in one of the studios. I will say no more.)

    I'm so much more of a complainer than you are . . . sorry!

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  10. That's ok to complain, Harriet. I get it and there are times when I'm right there with you too. And I'm sorry especially about your experiences, especially the digital piano one. I think I have been fortunate enough to have pretty good ones to play on. Only once have I had a bad one when I was expected to accompany an opera singer, a soprano, singing Puccini arias for a wedding reception using a stand-up keyboard, not 88 keys, and without a pedal. That was, to say the least, a miserable experience.

    Thanks for sharing your frustrations. Hopefully the people around you will make some better decisions regarding keyboards in the near future.

    All the best,
    Erica

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  11. Oh, I'm still trying to forget the time I said I could accompany a violinist for a wedding (this was years ago, before I was really practicing the piano much), and the wedding turned out to be outdoors, the piano a digital, and the speakers gigantic ones broadcasting every note I played far and wide. I shudder to think what it must have sounded like. (We played Mendelssohn's wedding march, among other things.)

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  12. A challenge- that's a very positive way of looking at it! I'll keep that in mind the next I worry about what kind of piano I have to play on. :)
    Usually my experiences with other pianos have been ok- because I haven't had a lot of experiences- mostly playing on my piano or my teacher's piano.
    Over the summer I went on vacation for 5 weeks and I had to practice on a keyboard. That was probably the most challenging instrument I had ever played on. I was really frustrated, but I couldn't survive 5 weeks without piano so I dealt with it.
    I've also had bad experiences with my exam pianos. Often when I use the sustain pedal and play a note, the note will not sound. I'm still trying to figure out why, because it happens during every exam, and to my friends as well!

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  13. ThinkGreen LovePurple,
    Thank you for reading and for your comments about your own experiences. That's quite a mystery about the exam pianos you and your colleagues have played on. The only thought I have is that perhaps if the sostenuto pedal was accidentally pressed down instead, that middle one that hardly ever gets used, it might have messed up the alignment of the hammers a bit? I don't know. I'm assuming these were acoustic pianos? If it was an electric keyboard, I suppose it could have been an electrical issue. Very odd! But a good excuse for whatever might have gone awry during the exam ;-)

    I hope that you have many wonderful experiences in the future with pianos. It can be those moments, playing on a really beautiful, responsive instrument that can keep us begging for more.

    Best wishes,
    Erica

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  14. Yes. Yes. Yes. If the choice is between making "bad" music and making no music, I'll choose the "bad" music every time. I bristle when I hear music education sophisticates disparage the performances of student musicians or school ensembles without knowing anything about the young people involved. As if "musical quality" can be judged in a vacuum. Everything in music has a cultural context.

    Thanks, Erica, for this post. It rally is uplifting to me!

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  15. Bob,
    Oh, I bristle right along with you, especially when it comes to kids who are just starting out on their music-making journey. Kids are so perceptive and I always worry that they can pick up on those negative and critical attitudes so easily. And when I think about how many of them are playing on non-professional instruments and on instruments that need a little or a lot of love, my heart sinks to think that some people are rating the students without even taking into consideration the circumstances. For me, I just love to see young people making music - period. Much more inspiring than watching them play video games, at least in my mind.

    Thank you for reading, Bob, and for your comment!

    Erica

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  16. Thank you, thats very interesting information. I need to share with my friends.

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