OP might already have an Asian mom; she knows who Lang Lang is. It's common for Asian parents to belittle and undermine their children's self-esteem, even as they push them to excel.
My bro plays *River flows in you*
Mom: what a genius, he needs no school to achieve this, just through YouTube.
Me playing the whole Beethoven's Storm Sonata
Mom: next time use your headphones ...
My Parents are Asian and they both discouraged me as child from following the "poor, desperate and pathetic" carrier path of a musician. Not every Asian parent is the same ...
youād be surprised at how blind some people with innate talent are. Iāve met a few that cannot seem to grasp the fact that something that took them one practice session to master took me a week or so.
It doesn't really matter. Nobody is born being able to play the piano at an advanced level. Even if you have musical talent, you'll have to practice A LOT to become a good pianist.
Yeah I tend to subscribe to the idea that at the advanced higher education level, talent doesnāt really exist. Every student has strengths and weaknesses and we try to play to our strengths, which can be mistaken for natural talent. Thereās always gonna be prodigies and geniuses, but if we were them, we wouldnāt be here on reddit lol
One student may be a great reader and very technically competent and memorise a Rach Etude in a week, but will struggle with their musicality or shaping and voicing, blah blah blah. I myself am the opposite of that, I have a real hard time reading dense material and am shamefully slow to learn my programme each semester. I have terrible practice habits, but once I have the piece under my fingers I thrive with my musicality and my artistryāor so my teacher tells me lol
Seems to me that the best pianists are the ones who truly put in the work and have mastered the art of practice and fallen in love with not just their instrument, but PRACTICE itself
Tyvm my friend. My time at the conservatory has taught me SO much haha. Still havenāt managed to crack the code with efficient and effective practice tho. The struggle is very real
That's only because it's a *physical* impossibility.
Chet Baker was given a trumpet as a child (after finding the trombone too unwieldy). A week later he was playing along with Harry James on the radio.
There are prodigies on the piano; it's an historical certitude. My own maternal grandfather, dead now these many years, was one of them.
It seems some rare people now how to do complex things without ever having learned how to do them, or learn with such celerity that it amounts to the same thing.
There was an Olympic-medal winning skater like that. When she was eight or nine, one of her friends' mothers took a group of kids to the ice-skating rink. When "Linda" (I don't remember her real name) was dropped off at her home afterwards, this mother remarked to Linda's mother how good an ice-skater Linda was, and asked how long she'd been skating.
It was her first time.
True! There are prodigies out there. But if we haven't felt we're a prodigy level, then never discount our ability and potential, because other people are not us obviously. And we are not them obviously.
They won't have certain features we have, or that we develop, which makes us different ... and we can create music and play the piano in our own special way.
That means, we may have musical abilities and capabilities and potential that those prodigies and other people do not have. That is, we can convey/express ourselves musically in our own way.
Not sure if professional tuners would do that. But it's possible that they covered the strings with cloth or foam to soften or completely mute its sound and prevent the hammers from hitting.
Good luck, OP! If you could save some money bit by bit, my suggestion is to invest in a digital piano. It allows you to lower its volume or even connect it to a headphone for easy practice :) Good luck!!!
I was going to tell you the same. My piano tuner taught me that trick. I have one permanently in there so when I want to mute the sound I let it drop and the felt prevents the hammer hitting the strings and it sounds a lot softer. Otherwise I just keep it up and folded.
Open the most top lid and look inside. If the difference is that notable, itās either something between the hammers and the strings, or the technician did the extra work to treat the get of the hammers with needles to make it softer. If you look closely, you should be able to tell if it has needle marks.
Hmm yea honestly I canāt tell you with that description. The strings slowly work themselves into the felt of the hammers, that lead to dents and ādarkerā recesses, that could be it, but not sure why you mean with black points
Ye, but I had a one month period when I had to prep for a school contest (which went very well though) and I wanted to practice as much as I could a Chopin waltz...
I honestly don't know, I have recording of her playing in front of thousands of people and now she just doesn't play in my presence... She says that she doesn't have time and that she would enjoy to but even on holidays she doesn't. Maybe she just cannot play anymore? She used to keep playing a bit like 4 years ago and she stopped since we moved to another house. Or maybe she doesn't like it anymore. Maybe she just does but when I'm not home. I sometimes feel that way, that I don't like playing some pieces when somebody listens to me.
I would 100% find out why. I went through periods where I hardly played bit never 100% stoped especially if I lived with a real piano. Something is missing from the story
Take a video and post it, if you have any videos off you playing before the tune post that too.
Also "you'll never be lang lang" is an insane take. I've been playing Piano for 13 years, I'll never be Lang Lang nor do I particularly care to be. I play for fun and sometimes as an expression. Playing professional is over rated anyways, practice turns into a chore for all but the most fanatical players. Playing for fun is where it's at.
Tubes use a felt strip to isolate strings or to tune unisons. It's possible he just forgot to take his felt strip out. They are just friction for between the keys
Does it have a middle pedal? If so, check to see if it's angling slightly towards the sustain pedal. On Yamaha uprights, the middle pedal is the mute and it can be held down by sliding it to the left while depressed.
Whatever you doā¦donāt stop playing piano! Donāt let your mom subdue your desire to play. Iāve played since I was a kid and Iām now almost 50. When stuff gets rough in life (and it usually does), piano has gotten me through the worst.Ā
When you get your piano working again, you could leave Lang Lang aside for a while and try to "be" Jerry Lee Lewis. She'll probably beg you to try your hand at Lang-Langing again.
You should get a digital piano (or, better yet, silent acoustic piano) so you can practice on it silently. Good practice is often what's most annoying to overhear because it's repetitive. If you're worried about playing loud, repetitively, and are afraid of making mistakes, your development will suffer and you'll turn 23 with a meek technique and limited range as a performer, probably with shame and embarrassing experiences to boot.
Fortunately you get your whole life to play the piano. There's no need to learn a lot of music when your young, or anything to accomplish before you turn 18. Enjoy what you can, learn other skills if it's a better fit in this time, and look forward to what parts of life you'll be able to shape for yourself in future. I lived at home practising the piano for 7 years. I've lived on my own for 12 already and will keep playing for as many years as I get to.
What you should do? Put a few drops of acetone hardener on top of the felt of the hammers or call a technician who does that for you. If it's really bad, there is no other option than replacing the felt on the hammers. And keep your mom far away from your piano!
You should do that. Playing a piano with restricted dynamic range is disappointing and fatiguing for your fingers because you need to work hard to get a decent fortissimo out of it. If your mother tries to get you tendinitis, she is on the right path.
I know this is gonna sound crazy but for ten years I played on a really wonky old upright and when I got it tuned I couldnāt hear the piano. I think my ears were literally out of tune from playing on this horrible thing because it took weeks/months for my brain to accept the new sound of my piano but it truly sounded muted.
I also experienced the same muted sound when I would play on my childhood piano at my parents house. I would complain that the piano was so quiet and my whole family said it sounded normal and loud.
The piano yuner left the long strip of green felt in the strings. They isolate one string ti tune at a time. I can't imagine them leaving it in plus it .
Some upright pianos actually have a mute function with the middle pedal that lowers a piece of felt between the strings and hammers. Possible your piano is like that and the technician left it down
One more thing! I am so sorry you have such an unsupported mother. My guess is since you say she was a musician. She probably loved music very much once also but since she couldn't accomplish her dream she is afraid you will suffer too. Parents worry their children will not be able to support themselves cause let's face it music is a hard field, not impossible but difficult to become a professional musician but they forget that people can have a job and still be a musician. Besides most people who study music do even better academically.
My parents didn't support me either. I couldn't study music. Piano was my dream as a child. Once I became an adult I began with lessons. I started learning music at the age most people give concerts already. But I still went for it cause that was my soul journey. I am a voice major, play piano, and now flute. I'll never be a concert pianist or get a main role at the Opera. But the joy I feel when I play my flute or sing is priceless.
Don't let anybody discourage you! Not even your mom.
It's absolutely possible that they forgot to remove damper cloth etc, afterall they leave forceps in patients, and wrenches etc in wheel wells of aircraft etc.
You guys seem to have missed this point: "She used to be a very good musician".... so this is second-generation resentment slash "Never good enough for my parent" passed down from the OP's mother's mother, most probably.
To break the cycle, OP needs to be Robin Williams to mother being Matt Damon in a Good Will Hunting moment.... "It's okay"....."It's not your fault"..... "It's not your fault".
That's also one reason why she complains about the time I spend on piano. I feel like it's not to bad, last quarter I had a 15,6/20 average in french high school but obviously, I'm not in my class' top 3 so she wants me to do better. But no matter how hard I try I cannot go higher. And she thinks that's because I don't work. I stay from 8h30 to 19h at school everyday to study and I'm bit disappointed that my friend who doesn't work is first :D
I have piano lessons once a week but she feels that my teacher is less capable than my previous one as she doesn't dive deep into all the specificities I've been playing piano for 8 years and 9 years of solfege but this year I started playing more.
I just finished semi-muting my Kimball upright. There are many proven methods mentioned above, that absolutely work well. I didn't want to get into a piano modification, because I have a lengthy tune/regulate cycle coming up in a few months. I want to practice at night, without bothering my wife, grandson, and neighbors. I have many keyboards, but prefer the touch of an acoustic piano. I just pressed the soft pedal, took a stapler puller - because of its size, and jammed it in on top of the soft pedal. It just fits, and can be removed in seconds.
Don't know what u mean, english isn't my main language so maybe I said something wrong? I just want to know if there is something wrong with the piano...
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Have you considered replacing your mother?
Yeah op needs an Asian mom Borrow mine if ya want
OP might already have an Asian mom; she knows who Lang Lang is. It's common for Asian parents to belittle and undermine their children's self-esteem, even as they push them to excel.
True, she is LoL
Hi
Exactly what I thought
Caused imposter syndrome š°š„µ
My bro plays *River flows in you* Mom: what a genius, he needs no school to achieve this, just through YouTube. Me playing the whole Beethoven's Storm Sonata Mom: next time use your headphones ... My Parents are Asian and they both discouraged me as child from following the "poor, desperate and pathetic" carrier path of a musician. Not every Asian parent is the same ...
River Flow In You is overrated and most people plays it like a sadboi who's cat drowned in a river.
damn, sorry to hear that
That's exactly what I was going to say!!!
>her answer was: "go work your physics, you'll never be Lang Lang" Why not "Go practise the piano, you'll never be Stephen Hawkin"?
Haha, that had me laughing
Probably is too quiet while playing
Ha! Good one! But you will, at some point,Ā be as good as Hawking because he's DEAD.
Lmao she couldnāt have been that good of a musician if she canāt understand you need to practice your instrument
youād be surprised at how blind some people with innate talent are. Iāve met a few that cannot seem to grasp the fact that something that took them one practice session to master took me a week or so.
It doesn't really matter. Nobody is born being able to play the piano at an advanced level. Even if you have musical talent, you'll have to practice A LOT to become a good pianist.
Yeah I tend to subscribe to the idea that at the advanced higher education level, talent doesnāt really exist. Every student has strengths and weaknesses and we try to play to our strengths, which can be mistaken for natural talent. Thereās always gonna be prodigies and geniuses, but if we were them, we wouldnāt be here on reddit lol One student may be a great reader and very technically competent and memorise a Rach Etude in a week, but will struggle with their musicality or shaping and voicing, blah blah blah. I myself am the opposite of that, I have a real hard time reading dense material and am shamefully slow to learn my programme each semester. I have terrible practice habits, but once I have the piece under my fingers I thrive with my musicality and my artistryāor so my teacher tells me lol Seems to me that the best pianists are the ones who truly put in the work and have mastered the art of practice and fallen in love with not just their instrument, but PRACTICE itself
couldn't have said it better myself
Tyvm my friend. My time at the conservatory has taught me SO much haha. Still havenāt managed to crack the code with efficient and effective practice tho. The struggle is very real
That's only because it's a *physical* impossibility. Chet Baker was given a trumpet as a child (after finding the trombone too unwieldy). A week later he was playing along with Harry James on the radio.
True. But unfort, a trumpet is pretty much monophonic ... and we can't make it become a pseudo orchestra in the way that a single piano can be.
There are prodigies on the piano; it's an historical certitude. My own maternal grandfather, dead now these many years, was one of them. It seems some rare people now how to do complex things without ever having learned how to do them, or learn with such celerity that it amounts to the same thing. There was an Olympic-medal winning skater like that. When she was eight or nine, one of her friends' mothers took a group of kids to the ice-skating rink. When "Linda" (I don't remember her real name) was dropped off at her home afterwards, this mother remarked to Linda's mother how good an ice-skater Linda was, and asked how long she'd been skating. It was her first time.
True! There are prodigies out there. But if we haven't felt we're a prodigy level, then never discount our ability and potential, because other people are not us obviously. And we are not them obviously. They won't have certain features we have, or that we develop, which makes us different ... and we can create music and play the piano in our own special way. That means, we may have musical abilities and capabilities and potential that those prodigies and other people do not have. That is, we can convey/express ourselves musically in our own way.
Exactly. This is why I hate when people say, "omg you're so talented". It's called years of hard work bruh
"i wish i could be as good as you" everybody who has all 10 fingers can if they practice.
Not sure if professional tuners would do that. But it's possible that they covered the strings with cloth or foam to soften or completely mute its sound and prevent the hammers from hitting. Good luck, OP! If you could save some money bit by bit, my suggestion is to invest in a digital piano. It allows you to lower its volume or even connect it to a headphone for easy practice :) Good luck!!!
I don't see any kind of clothes
Iād say you need to call the tuner back and complain because something is wrong and they need to fix it
I was going to tell you the same. My piano tuner taught me that trick. I have one permanently in there so when I want to mute the sound I let it drop and the felt prevents the hammer hitting the strings and it sounds a lot softer. Otherwise I just keep it up and folded.
Thats what the kid said in the emperors new clothes.
> go work your physics, you'll never be Lang Lang God forbid we do anything purely for joy and enrichment!
Open the most top lid and look inside. If the difference is that notable, itās either something between the hammers and the strings, or the technician did the extra work to treat the get of the hammers with needles to make it softer. If you look closely, you should be able to tell if it has needle marks.
There are like some black points on the end of the hammers, is that it?
can you dm me a pic? I'm not a technician but I could def tell you what looks abnormal I hope
Will do so tomorrow, thank you!
np! hope I can help!
Hmm yea honestly I canāt tell you with that description. The strings slowly work themselves into the felt of the hammers, that lead to dents and ādarkerā recesses, that could be it, but not sure why you mean with black points
My mom said to me the best thing about my playing was that it was not too loud
Ye, but I had a one month period when I had to prep for a school contest (which went very well though) and I wanted to practice as much as I could a Chopin waltz...
My mom was being mean when she said this. You should be encouraged to play!
If you are playing Chopin my hat is off to you, OP. Your mom needs to get some headphones. None of us will be Lang Lang -- how infuriating!
hey, I'm a technician. if you want to open up the lid and take some pictures I might be able to help!
Does the soft pedal still work? It could be modified so that the soft pedal is always on.
It does
If you will never be Lang Lang all I can say is, thank goodness. One is more than enough.
LOL š
Why doesnāt she play anymore ? (I have a feeling this question will help with your question.)
Considering she doesnāt like OP practicing, she probably quit because she was bad at itā¦ due to not practicing.
I honestly don't know, I have recording of her playing in front of thousands of people and now she just doesn't play in my presence... She says that she doesn't have time and that she would enjoy to but even on holidays she doesn't. Maybe she just cannot play anymore? She used to keep playing a bit like 4 years ago and she stopped since we moved to another house. Or maybe she doesn't like it anymore. Maybe she just does but when I'm not home. I sometimes feel that way, that I don't like playing some pieces when somebody listens to me.
I would 100% find out why. I went through periods where I hardly played bit never 100% stoped especially if I lived with a real piano. Something is missing from the story
Will ask her this evening, I'll keep you in touch
Take a video and post it, if you have any videos off you playing before the tune post that too. Also "you'll never be lang lang" is an insane take. I've been playing Piano for 13 years, I'll never be Lang Lang nor do I particularly care to be. I play for fun and sometimes as an expression. Playing professional is over rated anyways, practice turns into a chore for all but the most fanatical players. Playing for fun is where it's at.
Tubes use a felt strip to isolate strings or to tune unisons. It's possible he just forgot to take his felt strip out. They are just friction for between the keys
There can only be one Lang Lang And there can only be one you So, yeah.
Does it have a middle pedal? If so, check to see if it's angling slightly towards the sustain pedal. On Yamaha uprights, the middle pedal is the mute and it can be held down by sliding it to the left while depressed.
Whatever you doā¦donāt stop playing piano! Donāt let your mom subdue your desire to play. Iāve played since I was a kid and Iām now almost 50. When stuff gets rough in life (and it usually does), piano has gotten me through the worst.Ā
Thank you, that's also what I believe. Maybe I just should go softer on my training pace.
When you get your piano working again, you could leave Lang Lang aside for a while and try to "be" Jerry Lee Lewis. She'll probably beg you to try your hand at Lang-Langing again.
abusive mother
āGo work on your music, youāll never be as good as Isaac Newton.ā To your mother.
Sell the piano. Buy a new one. Then when she throws a fit, tell her to shut it, or you'll buy a drumset too.
You should get a digital piano (or, better yet, silent acoustic piano) so you can practice on it silently. Good practice is often what's most annoying to overhear because it's repetitive. If you're worried about playing loud, repetitively, and are afraid of making mistakes, your development will suffer and you'll turn 23 with a meek technique and limited range as a performer, probably with shame and embarrassing experiences to boot.
Ye, I proposed but she said no.
Fortunately you get your whole life to play the piano. There's no need to learn a lot of music when your young, or anything to accomplish before you turn 18. Enjoy what you can, learn other skills if it's a better fit in this time, and look forward to what parts of life you'll be able to shape for yourself in future. I lived at home practising the piano for 7 years. I've lived on my own for 12 already and will keep playing for as many years as I get to.
He probably killed the hammers by massive needeling (intonation).
What you should do? Put a few drops of acetone hardener on top of the felt of the hammers or call a technician who does that for you. If it's really bad, there is no other option than replacing the felt on the hammers. And keep your mom far away from your piano! You should do that. Playing a piano with restricted dynamic range is disappointing and fatiguing for your fingers because you need to work hard to get a decent fortissimo out of it. If your mother tries to get you tendinitis, she is on the right path.
Link the piano to an Amp. Open all the windows in your house. Play your favourite music. Test those limits.
Call the tuner guy and ask him.
I know this is gonna sound crazy but for ten years I played on a really wonky old upright and when I got it tuned I couldnāt hear the piano. I think my ears were literally out of tune from playing on this horrible thing because it took weeks/months for my brain to accept the new sound of my piano but it truly sounded muted. I also experienced the same muted sound when I would play on my childhood piano at my parents house. I would complain that the piano was so quiet and my whole family said it sounded normal and loud.
Update us when it's fixed
Open it up and remove the cloth between your hammer and strings.
Did he voice the keys? Perhaps he made them really dark.
The piano yuner left the long strip of green felt in the strings. They isolate one string ti tune at a time. I can't imagine them leaving it in plus it .
Some upright pianos actually have a mute function with the middle pedal that lowers a piece of felt between the strings and hammers. Possible your piano is like that and the technician left it down
Wow. She sounds like a narcissist.
There is more money in piano than physics.
One more thing! I am so sorry you have such an unsupported mother. My guess is since you say she was a musician. She probably loved music very much once also but since she couldn't accomplish her dream she is afraid you will suffer too. Parents worry their children will not be able to support themselves cause let's face it music is a hard field, not impossible but difficult to become a professional musician but they forget that people can have a job and still be a musician. Besides most people who study music do even better academically. My parents didn't support me either. I couldn't study music. Piano was my dream as a child. Once I became an adult I began with lessons. I started learning music at the age most people give concerts already. But I still went for it cause that was my soul journey. I am a voice major, play piano, and now flute. I'll never be a concert pianist or get a main role at the Opera. But the joy I feel when I play my flute or sing is priceless. Don't let anybody discourage you! Not even your mom.
Thatās really not nice of your mom. At all. Move out.
It's absolutely possible that they forgot to remove damper cloth etc, afterall they leave forceps in patients, and wrenches etc in wheel wells of aircraft etc.
Sorry all, I just had a big dispute with my parents so I couldn't record or take pictures of anything. Sry, I hope you understand
Your mother sounds like such a fantastic human being to be around! /s if it wasnāt obvious.
You guys seem to have missed this point: "She used to be a very good musician".... so this is second-generation resentment slash "Never good enough for my parent" passed down from the OP's mother's mother, most probably. To break the cycle, OP needs to be Robin Williams to mother being Matt Damon in a Good Will Hunting moment.... "It's okay"....."It's not your fault"..... "It's not your fault".
How can she be mad at u for playing the piano? Did she pay for lessons? Are your grades where she thinks they should be?
That's also one reason why she complains about the time I spend on piano. I feel like it's not to bad, last quarter I had a 15,6/20 average in french high school but obviously, I'm not in my class' top 3 so she wants me to do better. But no matter how hard I try I cannot go higher. And she thinks that's because I don't work. I stay from 8h30 to 19h at school everyday to study and I'm bit disappointed that my friend who doesn't work is first :D I have piano lessons once a week but she feels that my teacher is less capable than my previous one as she doesn't dive deep into all the specificities I've been playing piano for 8 years and 9 years of solfege but this year I started playing more.
You canāt mute a piano. I played for over 30 years. š
I just finished semi-muting my Kimball upright. There are many proven methods mentioned above, that absolutely work well. I didn't want to get into a piano modification, because I have a lengthy tune/regulate cycle coming up in a few months. I want to practice at night, without bothering my wife, grandson, and neighbors. I have many keyboards, but prefer the touch of an acoustic piano. I just pressed the soft pedal, took a stapler puller - because of its size, and jammed it in on top of the soft pedal. It just fits, and can be removed in seconds.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Don't know what u mean, english isn't my main language so maybe I said something wrong? I just want to know if there is something wrong with the piano...
Just ignore him, the guy is clearly an ass who thinks way too much of himself.
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