musictech — Pianos

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?

Hugh SungApril 28, 2020ensemble, virtualensemble, pianotech, musictech, musicproduction, classicalmusic, moviemusicComment

Best iPhone/iPad Audio Settings for Musicians using Zoom

For musicians who need to have the best sound quality while using the Zoom app for online music lessons, they've been restricted to using laptops and desktop computer until now. Zoom just updated their mobile apps for iPad and iPhone (not yet for Android - hopefully soon!!), giving them the option to turn on "original sound" to eliminate automatic mic level adjustments that can cut off music and ruin the overall quality of music performance through the video conferencing app.

Hugh SungApril 13, 2020musictech, musiceducation, musicproduction, remotelessonComment

Cheaper Ways To Teach Online Piano Lessons

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.

Hugh SungApril 6, 2020pianotech, musictech, musiceducation, remotelesson Comments

How To Teach Online Piano Lessons

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.

Hugh SungMarch 15, 2020pianotech, musictech, musiceducation, musicproduction, app, equipment, remotelesson Comments

Flowkey tutorial

If you’ve always dreamed of playing your favorite song on the piano, you probably do what most folks do these days and go to YouTube. YouTube is an incredible resource for free piano lessons. In fact, I provide a pretty extensive series on how to play Clair de Lune by Claude Debussy on YouTube myself. YouTube is really great for providing free information. However, it’s not so good at giving you direct feedback. How do you know if you’re playing the notes the right way, the right time? It’s really up to you, right? And if you don’t know how to play the piano in the beginning, you can really waste a lot of time trying to figure out if you’re doing it right or wrong. Well, what if there was a way of combining the best of YouTube in terms of the video instruction and an instrument that could actually give you feedback and let you know if you’re doing it the right way?

I want to introduce you to an amazing app called flowkey. flowkey connected to an instrument like the Yamaha Clavinova can provide exactly what I’m describing, real video lessons that can dynamically tell you if you’re doing it right or wrong with feedback connected to a Yamaha digital piano like the Clavinova CLP-695 that I’m sitting in front of right now. So in this video I’m going to give a quick overview of the flowkey app and how to connect it to your Yamaha Clavinova, both wirelessly and with a wired cable, as well as how to set it up on an iPad and an Android smartphone. So let’s get started with flowkey.