Pianists, without a doubt, have the world's greatest solo literature. We have no end of things that we can play by ourselves. When we do collaborate, it's usually with one other person to play duets. We can have two people playing on piano or two people playing on two pianos. It's actually quite common. Beyond that, it's pretty rare to have more than two, three, four people playing at the same time. The only other exceptions would be when we play with other instrumentalists, when we play with string players, orchestra players, choirs and the like. But I wanted to try to do what we did with our online chorus and orchestra project about a month ago, mainly having a piece where everybody could participate, people of all different levels from absolute beginners too advanced.
What kind of a piece could we come up with that could accommodate everybody's differing ability levels, but not only that, also due to the fact that acoustic pianos go out of tune, what kind of a piece could we put together that could take that into account in and still sound okay?
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A few weeks ago, I posted a video showing 3 ways that piano teachers could teach their lessons online, from the most basic setup using just a laptop or a tablet, to an advanced multi-camera/multi-microphone studio with the ability to switch easily between hi-definition cameras and even a view of an iPad showing digital sheet music with annotations. While several folks have commented on how helpful the video was, others noted that the top level studio was way out of their budget. To address this, I wanted to share some ways that teachers could replicate the functionality of a top online studio without spending too much money on extra equipment.
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In this video, we’re going to explore how to teach piano lessons online. I’ve been teaching piano lessons online since 2009 when I created my YouTube series, Clair de Lune From Scratch, and since 2014 I’ve been teaching students all around the world through my Online Popular Piano School at Artist Works. We’re going to explore three basic ways for piano teachers to teach live one-on-one lessons over the internet. They’re going to vary in terms of the quality of the video and of the sound, as well as some of the capabilities of what you can teach and show through these streaming lessons. We’ll also touch a little bit on what’s going to be needed in terms of equipment for the students to receive those lessons.
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Many folks think that playing the piano is like using a typewriter: press a key, you get a note. But on a typewriter, there are two main limitations: 1. You can't change what each "note" looks like, and 2. You can't repeat that "note" very quickly. What makes the piano action truly remarkable is its ability to provide a nearly infinite range of volume and texture for each note, as well as its ability to enable incredibly fast repetitions, all with a minimum of physical effort. Despite less than half an inch of motion from the top of the key to the bottom of its stroke, the piano action can provide an incredible amount of power from the finger to the hammer that strikes the piano string. I like to call this, "bio-mechanical amplification"! In this video, we explore the inner workings of how the piano action works, and how that translates to provide the piano player with true 3D control of the piano sound.
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