Music Lessons in Burbank CA | Los Angeles Music Teachers

In this piano lesson, we are going to discuss one of the most basic concepts in music. What is an octave and what does it mean, and what does it look like on a piano?

Over the several hundreds of years the piano has taken to develop, the number of keys has changed dramatically, from as little as 32 keys when the piano was first developed, to up to 96 keys on a modern Bosendorfer Imperial. But why is this important to you when buying a piano today? Is it important to know how many octaves your piano has? Acoustic pianos usually all have the same amount, but when you're buying your first beginner piano for your kid you may only want a 61 key Keyboard instead of the full 88 key electric piano. There is no need for 88 keys until you or your child is more advanced. Those last 12 or so upper keys and 12 lower keys are rarely used except in classical music.

Generally, a piano has 7 and 1/4 octaves.

A standard modern upright, grand or digital piano has seven and a quarter octaves; seven full octaves, and three extra treble notes; B-flat, B and C. That's a total of 88 keys. There are variations, mainly in digital instruments, which we'll discuss in this article.

What is an octave?

​An octave is defined as a series of eight; the term is derived from the Latin word "octo," meaning "eight." The same reason an octopus is called as such; because it has eight legs. See the image above to see how it looks on the piano keyboard.

You can easily identify the 7 octaves on any piano by looking for the pattern of 2 black keys followed by 3 black keys. That is where every octave starts and ends. The note C is to the left of the first group of 2 black keys and then it ends on the next C. That is a full octave. Every beginning piano lesson starts with that discovery.

The word "octave" can refer to two different things in music; an interval and a scale. An octave scale is a series of notes, iterating through the seven notes of any particular scale until you arrive on the note you started on, but one octave higher.


G, A, B, C, D, E, F#, G.


You'll notice that we start on G, we iterate through all the notes of the G Major scale, and we finish on G. However, it's not the same G that we started on; it's the next G up on the piano. 

We refer to this as being an octave higher; essentially it's the next occurrence of the note you start on. This also ties into the octave as an interval; in the same way that a fifth is five notes apart, and a fourth is four notes apart, an octave is eight notes apart.

​On a modern piano, the very bottom note is A. There are seven more As on the piano, making for a total of 7 A octaves. Older pianos finished here and just had seven octaves; modern pianos have an extra three notes; a B-flat, a B and a C, to make seven octaves plus three notes.

Drum Rudiments are one of the most important aspects of drumming. They are the building blocks to every drum beat, pattern, fill, and solo. Whatever your skill level is on the drums, practicing your rudiments is a must. Even if you are an advanced drummer, it’s always good to go over some of the more technical rudiments. There are 40 drum rudiments; some more complicated then the other. Out of those 40, there are about 5 essential rudiments that are a must for practicing.

Many of you may be unfamiliar with the term Rudiments; however, do not worry. Drum rudiments aren’t a concept you aren’t aware of, maybe just a term you haven’t heard before. A drum rudiment is basically a sticking pattern. Every sticking pattern you play on the drum set is derived from different drum rudiments. Most are very common patterns that you are well aware of like the single stroke roll, double stroke roll, and flam stroke. Some are more complex and difficult to play. The next time you play the drums, you should look and see what rudiments you are actually playing. Drum rudiments are the essentials of drumming; they should be practiced by drummers to increase their stick control, speed and independence.


You may have heard of the 40 Essential Drum Rudiments before; this is the list of rudiments that are played. They say if you master the 40 essential rudiments you are on your way to becoming a professional drummer. This is very true; if you can identify and play each one of these rudiments you will have built up enough knowledge and stick control to be a very skilled drummer. However, this takes a lot of work. Here is the list of rudiments

• Single Stroke Roll 
• Single Stroke Four 
• Single Stroke Seven 
• Double Stroke Roll 
• Five Stroke Roll 
• Six Stroke Roll 
• Seven Stroke Roll 
• Nine Stroke Roll 
• Ten Stroke Roll
• Eleven Stroke Roll 
• Thirteen Stroke Roll
• Fifteen Stroke Roll 
• Seventeen Stroke Roll 
• Single Paradiddle 
• Double Paradiddle 
• Triple Paradiddle 
• Paradiddle-Diddle 
• Flam Stroke
• Flam Accent 
• Flam Tap
• Flamacue
• Flam Paradiddle
• Single Flammed Mill 
• Flam Paradiddle-Diddle 
• Pataflafla 
• Swiss Army Triplet 
• Inverted Flam Tap 
• Flam Drag
• Drag Ruff 
• Single Drag Tap
• Double Drag Tap 
• Single Dragadiddle
• Drag Paradiddle #1 
• Drag Paradiddle #2
• Lesson 25 
• Single Ratamacue 
• Double Ratamacue
• Triple Ratamacue
• Multiple Bounce Roll 
• Triple Stroke Roll

Drum Rudiment Practice

Practicing these drum rudiments are very important. The best way to practice these is to take a pair of drum sticks, a metronome, and a practice pad and start playing. Make sure you are playing with a metronome to keep yourself on time. If you do not know where to start, here is a list of the top 5 rudiments you should start with: the single stroke roll, the double stroke roll, the flam stroke, the paradiddle, and the double paradiddle. These are the top 5 rudiments you should start with, as each one will teach you speed, control, independence and endurance on your sticks. 

Most of the drum rudiments are variations of each other, meaning it is not too hard to learn all 40 rudiments. For example, if you can play a flam stroke, and a paradiddle pattern, you should have no trouble playing the flam paradiddle. In any case take the time to go over each one if you can. 

Drum rudiments are more than just sticking patterns you practice on a practice pad. They are designed to be played in common drumming applications. What this means is they are designed to be played in drum beats, fills, and solos. 

​If you're interested in taking Drum lessons on Zoom or In Person in Burbank, Glendale or North Hollywood, we have some of the  best drum lessons in Los Angeles. Our drum instructors are picked by interviewing hundreds of drum instructors and we have really high standards on both their teaching ability as well as their personality. If you'd like to talk to one of our instructors or set up a first lesson we have a guarantee that if you don't absolutely love your first lesson you don't have to pay for it. Please contact us at (818)902-1233 or on our website at https://www.losangelesmusicteachers.com/online-drum-lessons-in-burbank-ca.html​

1. YAWN-SIGH TECHNIQUE - For this quick vocal exercise, simply yawn (take in air) with your mouth closed. Then, exhale through your nose as if you are sighing. This will help relax your voice and improve its range.


2. HUMMING WARM-UPS - Humming is one of the best vocal warm-ups because it doesn’t put a lot of strain on your vocal cords. Place the tip of your tongue behind your bottom front teeth and hum up and down the major scale while keeping your mouth closed. Each note should sound like (hmmm) including the (h) sound is less taxing on your voice.


3. VOCAL STRAW EXERCISE - To perform the vocal straw exercise (also known as straw phonation), take a straw and hum through it. Start at the bottom of your range and slide up to the top slowly and evenly. Then, hum your favorite song through the straw. You can also place the straw in a partially full glass of liquid and blow controlled bubbles in the glass.


4. LIP BUZZ VOCAL WARM-UP - As far as vocal warm-ups go, lip buzz (or lip trill, as it is sometimes called) is very simple. The goal is to make a motorboat sound by making your lips vibrate as you blow air through your mouth and nose. You can incorporate pitch slides as well.


5. TONGUE TRILL EXERCISE - The tongue trill vocal exercise is difficult for some singers. It involves curling your tongue and rolling your R’s as you go through your range from low to high.


6. JAW LOOSENING EXERCISES - When singing, you want to drop your jaw lower than when you are just talking. With your finger, trace back along your jawline from your chin to your ear. That curved space between your jaw and your ear is where you want to drop your jaw.
Pretend you are yawning with your mouth closed and feel where your jaw drops. Avoid just dropping your chin.


7. TWO-OCTAVE PITCH GLIDE WARM-UP - For this easy vocal warm-up, make an (eeee or ohhhh) sound and gradually glide through the chromatic notes of a two-octave range. Glide up and then back down. This will transition from your chest voice to your head voice.


8. VOCAL SIRENS EXERCISE - Much like the pitch glide, the siren exercise takes an (oooo) sound and gradually goes from the lowest note of your range to the highest and back down, like a siren for an emergency vehicle. The sound is continuous and covers the tones between the notes.


9. VOCAL SLIDES TECHNIQUE - This technique is also known as a portamento, which is Italian for (the act of carrying) Much like the siren exercise, you slide from one note to the next in your range, but you don’t sing the in-between notes.

If you're interested in taking vocal lessons on Zoom or In Person in Burbank, Glendale or North Hollywood, we have some of the  best vocal lessons in Los Angeles. Our vocal instructors are picked by interviewing hundreds of vocal instructors and we have really high standards on both their teaching ability as well as their personality. If you'd like to talk to one of our instructors or set up a first lesson we have a guarantee that if you don't absolutely love your first lesson you don't have to pay for it. Please contact us at (818)902-1233 or on our website at https://www.losangelesmusicteachers.com/online-voice-lessons-in-burbank-ca.html​

To the uninitiated, tuning a piano may seem a simple, straightforward procedure, but it isn’t. The process is complicated by the sheer number of strings and tuning pins (more than 200 of each, the exact number varying with the model), by the high tension under which the strings are stretched, by the tightness with which the tuning pins are anchored in the pinblock, and by the friction points over which the taut strings must slide as they’re being tuned. All of these factors are obstacles not only to tuning, but also to creating a tuning that will be stable for a reasonable length of time, given the piano’s use and environment.

Tuning is also potentially made more difficult by the design element of modern pianos known as loop stringing. In loop stringing, each length of steel music wire in the treble actually forms two strings, which are separated by a sharp bend in the wire where the strings are anchored to the piano’s castiron frame. Sometimes these two strings sound the same note and are tuned to the same pitch. Other times, they are parts of adjacent notes, with one half of the wire tuned a half step higher or lower than the other half, the two halves necessarily held at distinctly different tensions. Because all parts of a single wire have a tendency to seek the same tension, loop stringing is a more challenging environment in which to learn how to create a stable tuning.

In addition to physical obstacles, there are acoustical obstacles to tuning. A paradox common to all fixed-pitch instruments, first discovered by the ancient Greeks, is that it’s impossible for all the intervals — thirds, fourths, fifths, sixths, etc. — within a perfect octave to themselves be perfect. This problem is dealt with by slightly expanding or contracting — tempering — each of these intervals so that, together, they will add up to a perfect octave. The tuner creates a temperament— a single octave of 13 notes at the center of the keyboard in which every note is tuned in its correctly tempered relationships to all other notes in that octave — and then copies those relationships to all remaining sections of the keyboard by tuning each note to be a perfect octave (or octaves) above or below the corresponding note in the temperament octave.

But even the phrase perfect octave is a bit of a misnomer. Vibrating strings give off harmonics — fainter tones whose frequencies are in a specific mathematical relationship to that of the fundamental, or principal frequency at which the string is vibrating. For a piano to sound right, the tuner must tune each string so that its harmonic and fundamental frequencies are all in tune with those of the other strings. Due to the stiffness of steel strings, the frequencies of their harmonics are somewhat higher than the theoretical ideal, a property called inharmonicity. In addition, the human ear tends to hear the higher pitches as a little flatter than they actually are. To compensate for these effects, the tuner must tune (stretch) the octaves a bit sharper in the treble and a bit flatter in the bass than would be the case were the octaves actually perfect. How muchsharper or flatter is both an art and a science, which is one of the reasons why some astute musicians may prefer one tuner over another.

To tune each note, and then to confirm its accuracy, the tuner performs certain listening tests. These tests require listening to faint, regularly undulating interference patterns in the soundwave, called beats, that occur when two notes that form an interval are played together, and harmonics of the two notes are at almost but not quite the same frequency. The tuner tunes one of the notes so that the beats are either eliminated (beatless) or occur at a certain precise rate of speed, depending on the particular test and the interval being tested. In addition, most notes on a piano are sounded by sets of two or three strings each, called unisons; to sound in tune, every string in a unison must be tuned at precisely the same pitch — that is, they must be beatless relative to each other.

When you combine tuning’s physical and acoustical obstacles, you can see why it takes years of training and practice to become an accomplished piano tuner.

What Tuning Does Not Include
Tuners often arrive at a service call to find a piano with sticking keys, hanging dampers, and/or broken parts. However, tuning involves only correcting the pitches of the strings. It does not cover cleaning, adjustment, or repairs to the mechanical, structural, or cosmetic parts of the piano, or voicing (tone adjustment). The tuner and client should discuss these other needs so that both clearly understand the work to be done and how much it will cost. That said, if a piano problem is caused by something accidentally dropped inside the piano, such as a pencil or hair ornament, and it can be removed with no more than a few minutes’ work, the tuner will often include that service in the tuning fee.

When contacting a tuner, be sure to let him or her know the piano’s brand and model, whether it is a vertical or a grand, when it was last tuned, and any repairs or adjustments you believe need to be made. This will allow the tuner to allot sufficient time, and to be prepared with the proper tools and materials for the job.

How Often Should a Piano Be Tuned?
This is the question most frequently asked by customers. The answer depends, first, on the piano’s use. In the most critical situations, such as in a recording studio, where the accuracy of the tuning will live in perpetuity in a recording, the answer is probably every day, or even several times a day. In concert halls and other performance situations, the piano is tuned before every rehearsal and every performance, and sometimes the tuning is even touched up at intermission.

For a piano used in the typical home, tuners usually state the recommendation in terms of so many tunings per year. Because a piano is always going out of tune, beginning as soon as the tuner has finished the job, the frequency of tuning will depend on the tolerance of the pianist to changes in pitch, the piano owner’s budget, the ability of that piano to hold its tuning, the consistency of the temperature and humidity in the room the piano is kept in, and in how skillful the tuner is in creating stable tunings. For most home pianos, the owner will be satisfied if the piano is tuned two or three times a year. For professional use or fussier owners, four to six tunings a year, or even more, may be appropriate.

Why Won’t My Piano Hold Its Tune?
First, we consider the physical condition of the piano, something of which many owners will not be aware — the instrument could be faulty due to age and wear. Various conditions, some described in terms of “cracked” parts and often confused by customers, may or may not be affecting the ability of the piano to hold its tune:

Pinblock — The pinblock is a plank of laminated hardwood, located beneath the cast-iron plate at the front of a grand or at the top of a vertical, into which holes are drilled for the tuning pins, and into which the pins are driven and tightly held. Over time, these holes can expand slightly from wear, age, and dryness, causing the tuning pins to loosen and no longer be able to hold the strings at their correct tensions. Cracks can also appear around the holes or between laminations (thus the term cracked pinblock). A worn or cracked pinblock is the most common structural cause of a piano’s inability to hold a tune.

Plate — The cast-iron plate or frame, along with the piano’s wooden case, is the primary structural support for the tension of the strings. On rare occasions, the plate will crack, usually rendering the piano untunable, and possibly unrepairable. This can happen due to a design flaw or a flaw in the casting, or due to extreme mishandling of the instrument during moving, such as dropping the piano from a height. Cracked plates are very rare; most technicians will see only a few in an entire career.

Soundboard — The soundboard is a thin wooden board, usually of spruce, that is partly covered by the cast-iron plate. The soundboard is made to resonate by the vibrating strings, thus amplifying their sound and transmitting it to our ears. Just about everyone has heard of a cracked soundboard. However, soundboard cracks have no effect on a piano’s ability to hold its tune.

Bridges — Bridges are strips of hardwood, glued to the soundboard, that transmit the strings’ vibrations to the soundboard. The strings are stretched over the top of the bridges and bear against them, held in place by bridge pins. Age, dryness, and the pressure of the strings against the bridge pins can, over time, cause cracks to form around the pins, which then loosen. Except in extreme cases in which a bridge is virtually falling apart, the principal effect of loose bridge pins is not on the ability of the piano to hold its tune. Rather, loose bridge pins provide insecure termination points for the vibrating strings, causing tonal irregularities called false beats that, when excessive, make the affected strings sound out of tune even when they’ve been tuned as well as possible.

Strings — Metal fatigue, rust, corrosion, pitting, and any history of liquid spilled into a piano can cause false beats and other irregularities, making tuning more difficult and less accurate. Due to the effects of metal fatigue, concert instruments may require restringing in as few as 10 years. Pianos in the home may benefit from restringing after about 25 years of use, though few receive that treatment.

Daily and, especially, seasonal variations in humidity are the most common cause of pianos without structural flaws going out of tune. The soundboard swells and shrinks slightly with changes in humidity, altering the tension on the strings. Wide swings of humidity can keep a piano’s pitch in a constant state of flux, forcing the tuner to radically change the pitch with each tuning. The further out of tune the piano gets between tunings, the less stable its tuning will be when it does get tuned. When making a large pitch correction, the tuner may tell the customer that the piano is too flat or too sharp for a stable tuning to be done in a single session, and that after getting the tuning close to accurate, he or she will have to return in a few weeks to retune the piano. If the customer fails to have the piano tuned regularly, it will seem to be always out of tune. I have many customers who, in order to keep their pianos as close to pitch as possible, have them tuned once a month. It’s not uncommon for pianos kept in the faculty and practice studios of conservatories to be tuned two or three times a month; concert pianos, even when not in use, are usually tuned once a week just to keep them close to pitch. Tuning stability can be greatly increased by use of a humidity-control system — for the entire home, for just the piano room, or inside the piano itself.

Counterintuitively, frequent service is particularly important with new pianos. Brand-new instruments can be very unstable as their new strings and soundboard continue to settle, and in their first year usually must be tuned four to six times. Most dealers will tune a new piano before delivery, and once or twice after delivery, often at no additional cost to the customer. Depending on how many times it was tuned on the dealer’s floor, and before that in the factory, this may or may not be enough to stabilize the piano so that the frequency of tuning can return to whatever the customer considers normal. Failure to ensure that the recommended post-sale service is actually done can substantially lengthen a new piano’s break-in period and make its tuning seem unstable.

A piano’s tunability is also a factor of its quality and price — when offering a piano at a particular price point, manufacturers take into account the sophistication and expectations of prospective purchasers. More expensive pianos can be tuned more accurately, and, given equivalent conditions of use, will usually hold a tune better than less expensive ones because of their superior designs, better materials, more robust construction, better workmanship, and more extensive preparation in the factory. Due to globalization and the increasing computerization of manufacturing, these differences are less pronounced than in former eras, but are still obvious in comparisons of high-end with entry-level instruments.

Lastly, the mechanical skill of the tuner is very important to the stability of the tuning. One of the greatest obstacles to tuning stability is the unequal tension that occurs between the vibrating and non-vibrating sections of a string as, during tuning, the wire is drawn over the friction points that separate those sections near the string’s two ends. As soon as the note is forcefully played, the tension will equalize and the string will go out of tune. To prevent this from happening during a performance or shortly after the tuner leaves, tuners use test blows — striking the keys at least as forcefully as any pianist would — to settle the strings so that they can be immediately retuned, if necessary, and stabilized. Another important mechanical skill is the ability to turn very tight tuning pins by minute amounts and without bending them — a bent pin will quickly unbend, and throw its string out of tune.

A highly skilled tuner working on a good instrument can tune so stably that when the humidity changes, most of the notes on the piano will seem to move sharp or flat together, and the tuning will continue to sound good for some time. In most cases, a skilled tuner can do a terrific job in 1½ to 2½ hours, sometimes less. Inexperienced tuners who take all day to tune a piano will move and bend the pins much more than necessary, producing an unstable tuning and possibly damaging the pinblock.

Electronic Tuning Devices vs. Tuning by Ear
Electronic tuning devices (ETDs) are now used by many piano tuners, even by some who can tune by ear. Unlike the aural (by ear) tuner, ETDs can “hear” only one note at a time; they don’t listen to intervals or beats, or tune the strings of a unison to one another. When using an ETD, it isn’t necessary to first tune a temperament. In theory, one could tune a piano with an ETD by starting at the lowest note on the piano and working upward to the highest.

A skilled tuner who has trained as an aural tuner can use an ETD to great advantage. The use of an ETD doesn’t eliminate the need for the tuner to develop superior listening skills, but it does allow the already skilled tuner to perform such tasks as pitch raising faster and more accurately, reducing the need to retune sections that have already been tuned. Use of an ETD also allows the tuner to tune for longer periods of time with less fatigue, and makes it possible to tune in noisy environments that would be difficult for an aural-only tuner.

For concert and recording work, an ETD is a more accurate pitch reference than a tuning fork, which can vary in pitch with temperature. This is particularly important when tuning a piano that will be accompanied by an orchestra, as many professional orchestras tune to a pitch of from A-441 to A-443, both of which are slightly higher than the traditional A-440 to which most pianos are tuned. (The numbers refer to the frequency, in cycles per second, of the A above middle C.) In an institutional setting in which two or more pianos must be tuned together, an ETD makes it easy to synchronize not only the overall pitch, but also the stretching of the octaves in the upper and lower sections of the keyboard.

​Problems occur, however, when novice tuners without aural skills are entirely dependent on ETDs. They can’t hear when they make a mistake, or when they need to override the judgment of the machine to get the best results. Also, an ETD cannot, by itself, create a stable tuning. The tuner must still know how to manipulate the tuning pins and strings so that the piano will stay in tune when the job is done.

If you're interested in taking Piano lessons on Zoom or In Person in Burbank, Glendale or North Hollywood, we have some of the best Piano lessons in Los Angeles. Our Piano instructors are picked by interviewing hundreds of Piano instructors and we have really high standards on both their teaching ability as well as their personality. If you'd like to talk to one of our instructors or set up a first lesson we have a guarantee that if you don't absolutely love your first lesson you don't have to pay for it. Please contact us at (818)902-1233 or on our website at https://www.losangelesmusicteachers.com/online-music-lessons-burbank-ca.html​

How Warmups Can Keep Your Hands From Hurting On Guitar
A lot of guitar learners are curious about how to prevent their hands from hurting while playing on the guitar. Truth be told, the simplest and easiest way to achieve this feat is by warming up. As with most exercises, it is always important for people to warm up first before engaging in any strenuous activity which can go a long way in helping to prevent them from hurting themselves. 
Warm-ups are essential for both novice and professional guitarists. Before doing anything on the guitar it is highly recommendable for players to perform a series of warmup exercises such as rehearsing, playing a gig or doing some recordings. Just so you know, many muscles, tendons, and bones are responsible for finger movements. This is why it is essential for guitarists to perform some warmup exercises before they even start flailing them around recklessly. 
This post is designed to enable you understand how warmups can keep your hands from hurting on guitar. Here are some important things you need to know about these preparatory exercises. 
They help to prevent injuries
Ultimately, warming up can be every efficient in helping to improve your playing skills and technique. However, it is also important to note that these little exercises can go a long way in helping to prevent injuries from occurring. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and tendonitis are some common problems that can occur as a result of not warming up before play. Just so you know, that are many guitarists that have been forced to retire from playing the guitar due to problems of this sort. This is why warming up before playing is important as it goes a very long way to help to prevent body injuries. 
Parting shot
Warming up should be regarded more like a precautionary exercise than an optional thing. There is no better way to avoid those nightmare experiences associated with hurting hands than this. Now that you know how warmups can keep your hands from hurting on guitar, it is imperative to ensure that you make these activities a norm. Don’t just grab your guitar and let rip without taking the time to do some warming up exercises. Medically speaking, it is advisable to observe some finger stretching routines before setting out to play the guitar. 
There is no need to cut your guitar playing dreams short due to your inability to perform proper warm up routines before playing which has finally messed up your hands. In fact, doing so doesn’t even make any sense. The main aim of engaging in warmup routines is to awaken all the necessary ligaments, tendons, and muscles needed for playing the guitar. This can go a long way in preparing the hand and even the mind for the vigorous playing demands you are about to engage in.

If you feel you need more help with some warm up techniques, you can call or message us with the links below. We have teachers ready to help you with your warmups with lessons online on zoom.