This spectacular Baldwin concert upright produces a sound that rivals a 7-foot semi-concert grand. If you are considering a Yamaha U5, Yamaha U3, or Yamaha U1 upright piano, you will certainly want to audition this handmade American masterpiece!

Call Dave today to schedule your visit to view this and other incredible instruments.

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In 1992 Steinway & Sons was so impressed with Kawai quality in Japan, Steinway chose them to build their Boston piano line.  Japanese made pianos are the single most popular pianos in the United States.  The Japanese reputation for constructing intelligently engineered automobiles, which do not breakdown and therefore have good resale value, helped Kawai and Yamaha solidify their top market position in the US

New Japanese made Kawai baby grand pianos sell for over $20,000.  At just $9,800 this is a phenomenal opportunity for someone to own an heirloom quality piano for a small fraction of its new cost.

Nearly 100 years later Kawai is not only the piano of choice by countless pianists, piano technicians, and piano teachers; they are Steinway’s piano maker of choice!  Nothing else must be said. 

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Japanese workmanship is synonymous with precise execution and attention to the most minute detail.  While Boston pianos are naturally equivalent to their Kawai counterparts, Boston pianos tend to be more expensive than Kawai.  This is due to the fact that there is an additional layer of markup, as Kawai does not build the Boston pianos out of the kindness of their heart. Kawai charges Steinway a sizable premium to construct the Boston. This additional layer of markup must then be passed on to the consumer.

A new Boston studio piano of this size retails for just under $10,000. At just $5,990 this is an incredible opportunity for someone to own a fine Japanese instrument for a small fraction of the new cost. If you are searching for a Yamaha U1, Yamaha U3, Kawai K300, Steinway upright piano, in the greater Tampa Bay area, you should certainly put this piano on your must-see list!

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1. Tune it Regularly

Even if you’re not playing the piano on a regular basis, it’s important to have it tunned around once a year. Invest in a reputable piano tuner who will be able to ensure your instrument stays in great condition and in perfect tune. If you have moved the piano recently, wait a few weeks and then have it tuned. This will maintain the health of your piano and keep the strings in good condition. It also keeps your instrument sounding fantastic.

2. Be Careful When Moving

If you need to move your piano from one property to another or even from one room to another, do not treat it like any other piece of furniture. It’s much easier to damage a piano or knock it out of tune. Contact a reputable moving company that specializes in moving pianos if you need to move your piano. Transporting the piano yourself or enlisting the help of a regular moving company could mean that you risk breaking parts of the piano or leaving it exposed to damage if it is not covered properly.

3. Monitor the Room Temperature

Pianos don’t require a huge amount of care, but one critically important thing is the temperature of the room it lives in. Your piano should be consistently kept at a temperature of around 65-75 degrees Fahrenheit. If you want to keep your instrument in great condition, it’s essential that the temperature stays consistent all the time rather than changing drastically throughout the year. Keep a thermometer in the room so that you can accurately monitor the temperature and adjust the heating or air conditioning as needed.

4. Clean Your Piano

Clean your piano regularly and remove any dust which has settled. Depending on the type and size of piano you have and the environment, you might find that dust settles quickly and in larger amounts. You should use a soft cloth to ensure the finish of the instrument is not damaged or compromised. Avoid using any liquids, wax, or cleaning agents on the piano, and instead, use either a very slightly damp cloth or a dry cloth. Rub gently but firmly to remove any visible marks on the surface of the instrument.

5. Keep It Away from Sunlight

Direct sunlight can damage your piano in more than one way. You should avoid keeping a piano near windows or glass doors where it will be exposed to direct sunlight. Instead, keep the curtains closed or ensure your instrument is out of the way of the sunlight.

Sunlight can cause the wood to fade and can also ruin pianos that have a glossy finish. Even just a few days in direct sunlight could leave your instrument permanently damaged. Leaving your piano under direct sunlight could also cause it to go out of tune, bringing additional costs to have it re-tuned.

Finding Your Perfect Piano

Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned professional, finding your perfect piano in Tampa has never been easier. Dave’s Piano Showroom has a wide variety of pianos available to buy, as well as piano moving services and restoration. It’s simple to find the instrument of your dreams and get all the piano services you need in Florida.

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The key lies in having consistency

The key to finding time to practice piano lies in balancing the responsibilities with piano practice. If you work out for a couple of hours on a single day of the week, it doesn’t help you. But if you can work out for 30 minutes five days a week it will make you stronger. If you are looking for steady results, you are going to need consistent habits. You will enjoy greater headway when you practice piano if you can take consistent efforts no matter how much time you can spend.

Establish a schedule

Nobody is going to give you the necessary time to practice piano. You will have to find the time yourself. Therefore, establish a schedule. You can set a timer for 30 minutes each day say after dinner. It sounds simple, doesn’t it? Otherwise, you can try and incorporate the piano practice time before your breakfast in the mornings. It can be perfect and consistent. After you play piano, you can move on with the rest of the day. As you have started with a creative and stress-relieving activity the day may turn out to be a great one. You can also use the lunch break, or early periods in the morning before the children wake up for practicing piano.

Develop a routine

This is similar to setting a schedule for practice time. Developing a routine for yourself is a useful strategy especially when you have limited time available for practice. If you are aware of what you will be practicing and for how long, it will become simpler to manage. In addition to that, you need to identify and isolate the things that create a skilled pianist. Developing and following a piano practice routine is a sure-fire way of achieving measurable success and targets during your progress. It will boost your confidence and raise your satisfaction level.

Get the entire family into it

When you are worried about spending family time on piano practice, just skip the worry and get the entire family involved in the endeavor. It is wonderful for the entire family to play music together and spend the time together as a single unit. In addition to this, you can let the family enjoy some of the fun aspects of playing the piano. You may get them motivated to start becoming serious about music more in their lives. You may end up having a family band.

One of the fastest ways of motivation loss when you practice piano is when you stress out during the practice and compare your skills with other popular musicians. Keep in mind that the key is in enjoying the sessions. You need to bring this feeling into playing the piano every time. These sessions should be like a game and not a daily chore. You may even end up becoming resentful of the instrument and even yourself. Avoid getting involved in this trap by not stressing out too much about these sessions. If you reside in Tampa and Brandon, FL area, and looking to buy a new piano, get in touch with Dave’s Piano Showroom for top services.

Picture Credit: Unsplash

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But Why Are Soundboards Made of Wood?

Well, the simple answer is that metal amplifies both low-pitched and high-pitched notes in the same way. However, wood amplifies only low-frequency sounds and reduces the high-frequency sounds.

The sound produced by piano strings is essentially metallic jangling noises. If the sound had to be amplified, the piano would end up as a giant noise generator. However, as woodcuts off the higher harmonic components, this doesn’t happen. It leaves only the sound components that are musical and sound good to our ears. It transforms them into richer and resonant tones.

Hence, soundboards are boards transmitting vibrations while also being a board that stops vibrations. This is the reason why the spruce family is highly valued for their soundboard materials specifically the Alaskan Sitka spruce which is commonly used in some pianos. This particular species absorbs high-pitched overtones effectively. They only transit pitches perceived as mellow and round in a specific rich fashion.

In case you are looking to buy a new or an old piano in Tampa, FL, check out the collection by Dave’s Piano Showroom. They have an exclusive range of pianos for all purposes and every budget. They also service pianos for their customers and you may even take their service if you wish to move your piano from one location to the other.

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Since 1992 Kawai has been the official builder for Steinway & Sons (Boston line). Steinway selected Kawai due to their long illustrious history and nearly 100 year reputation for constructing high quality pianos.

Since 1927 Kawai has been producing some of the finest pianos the world has ever seen, in Hamamatsu, Japan. Much like Lexus, Kawai does not believe in functional obsolescence, stagnation in design, nor adopts a philosophy of “good enough”.

Kawai has been perfecting the art of piano making for nearly a century; constantly innovating, pushing the envelope and challenging the status quo with their ground breaking designs.

Just as the ivory keytops, materials taken from wildlife proved to be less than an ideal material due to cracking, chipping and discoloration; so too are wooden parts in a piano’s action. Piano designers did absolutely nothing wrong 100, 200, 300 years ago. They utilized the available materials of their time. However, using wood in an action today is as sensible as breeding elephants for the purpose of fabricating keytops.

Kawai’s Millennium III action is a thing of beauty and art in motion. Traditional actions are comprised of thousands of wooden parts. Kawai embraces science and technological advancement in materials and design; thus utilizing carbon fiber, ABS Carbon ABS Styran, and other infinitely superior materials compared to wood.

These components do not flux with temperature change. Not only are they virtually impervious to fluctuations in temperature and humidity; these modern materials are significantly stronger, lighter and yield an action which is unparalleled in its repetition, sensitivity, uniformity and control.

That is of course to say nothing of Kawai’s warm melodic, singing tone. Dave’s Piano Showroom of Tampa Bay is the exclusive Kawai dealer for Hillsborough, Pasco, Pinellas and Polk counties. If you are a resident of one of these counties, visit DPS to receive an additional discount off of the listed price!

The post NEW Kawai GL-10 Baby Grand Piano – $16,295 appeared first on Dave's Piano Showroom.

Cristofori worked for the Florentine court of Grand Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici during 1688. His task was to look after harpsichords and other instruments. In 1700 as mentioned by Medici instruments, Cristofori invented an Arpicimbalo i.e. an instrument that resembled the harpsichord. It had a brand-new hammer and damper mechanism with two keyboards and a range of four octaves (49 keys).

Later in 1711 Scipione, a journalist and poet described this invention as “Gravicembalo col piano, e forte’” or Harpsichord with loud and quiet sound. It is here when pianoforte found its name.

Composers Felt The Need to Expand Their Range of Music

Just after people came across Cristofori’s amazing musical invention, composers started working on more and more music for the piano. However, the four-octave range of the instrument was limited which made piano manufacturers design new pianos having more keys to let composers like Mozart and Haydn write challenging materials for a fuller keyboard.

Later when Romantic composers such as Liszt and Chopin started writing music in the mid-1800s, pianos started to have seven octaves that allowed them to compose pieces having more ambitious range such as bafflingly virtuosic ‘La Campanella’.

The Invention of the 88-Key Piano by Steinway

By the late 1880s, Steinway a piano manufacturing company created an 88-key piano and since then this model has been the standard and still in use. This model had seven octaves and three additional lower notes (B, B flat, and A) below the bottom C. It comes with 52 white keys and 36 black keys (sharps and flats), with each octave made of seven white keys and five black keys.

Why Didn’t The Piano Manufacturers Go Beyond 88-Keys?

Most composers today write piano music fitting within the range of the 88-key model. The manufacturers also accept it as the limit because anything beyond it is considered too low or high for the human ear. However, there are exceptions. In 2018, Stuart and Sons came up with their 9-octave piano having 108 keys.

There is another piano with 97-keys sold by Bösendorfer having nine extra black colored keys helping to distinguish this model from the standard 88-keys. However, the additional keys are rarely used but their extra bass strings do add harmonic resonance contributing to the rich, overall sound of the instrument.

If you are looking to buy a new or a used piano in Tampa Bay, FL, contact Dave’s Piano Showroom. They have a wide variety of pianos for sale suiting almost any budget and requirements.

Picture Credit: Freepik

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Schimmel pianos are handmade in Germany. As a result, they are rated higher than Yamaha and in the upper echelons of the quality scale, as are all German-made pianos. This is according to all piano connoisseurs and aficionados, such as Larry Fine, author of “The Piano Book”.

If you are considering a Yamaha, Kawai, Boston, Essex, or even vintage Steinway baby grand piano, in a brown wood tone, you will absolutely want to put this piano on your must-see list; certainly, if you live in Tampa, Clearwater, St. Pete, or beyond!

New handmade German pianos can cost $50,000, $80,000 and even over $100,000! At just $12,500 this is truly an exceptional value!

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When Should You Use a Metronome?

While Learning A Song For The First Time
Using an online metronome is useful when you are learning a song for the first time. Setting the BPM at a really slow tempo is important. It helps in executing the rhythms in the song accurately and imprinting them in your memory. You should set its tempo as low as possible to ensure you can play the piano without losing time or getting stuck.

After you gain confidence, you should speed up the metronome’s tempo and consequently turn it off altogether. In case a particular section of a song causes issues, you can turn the metronome back to the slow tempo. You can also practice smaller sections while giving close attention to the timing.

For Improving The Sense of Rhythm
It’s important to have a good sense of rhythm as well as inner timing when you are performing. This becomes more important when you are playing with other musicians. Your ability to play and maintain a consistent speed ensures that you stay in sync with your bandmates.

To get the feel of playing a song along with a band and evaluate your timings, try playing along with the lessons. You shouldn’t worry if you cannot keep up with the timing in your first few attempts. It’s better to stay patient and give a few more tries.

Record To A Click Track
While recording different parts of a song, either at a music studio or home by using music production software, you would require recording parts to a click track. Your confidence matters a lot along with the accuracy to ensure your parts sound are good and in time with the remaining track. You should not get overwhelmed by the thought of playing the click track but practice playing with a metronome. Your timing would surely be great to lay down different parts as their time comes.

Playing Rubato
During a performance either as a solo performer or when improvising in a band, it’s not always great to play at regular speed. The impact of a song could be better if a player speeds up or slows down the tempo. The tempo is known as Tempo Rubato and to get a better idea of the way it works, you should try out specific lessons.

Concluding Remarks
Summarizing the entire article, it’s good to remind you that no musician on this planet has the perfect timing. Even the greats like Beethoven or Bill Evans may eventually speed up or slow down if they didn’t have a metronome. Thus if you are serious about playing the piano at high levels, you should spend considerable time playing along with full bands.

If you already own a piano and looking for servicing or restoring your old piano, you can consult Dave’s Piano Showroom. They have been serving clients all over Tampa Bay, FL for the last several years. You may also check out their collection of pianos for sale.

They have some of the best and well-maintained pianos featuring in both old and new categories. You may even rent out pianos on offer if you are looking to practice at your house. Also, if you have any questions or requirements for your piano, you can reach out to their experts and they will both help and guide you with the best solution.

Picture Credit: Unsplash

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