Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum Will Accoustic Piano Ultimately Go Away Like The Typewriter?

Hello Turandot,

Thank you for your response.

You don't believe that the successful pianists I mentioned have influence on the future of the instrument. Oh, but they do, indeed, have great influence on the tastes of other working pianists (I respectfully exclude you from their ranks). When Oscar Peterson raved about Bosedorfers and insisted on performing on them, piano students who admire his work will 'check out' that maker when they have the opportunity to hear for themselves what Peterson was talking about. That is real influence. When someone like Keith Jarrett writes the introduction for Larry Fine's "The Piano Book" and effectively advocates a level of elitism not approached by any of the posters here, his fans likewise take note and are influenced accordingly.

The world of the working pianist is not necessarily the grim existence you seem to imply. Not for me, anyway. Yes, I have had to play on mediocre pianos with a pit-band in a show, but it did not destroy me, or make me miserable, or shift my values. Yes, I have had to accompany singers or ensembles on pianos with broken strings, and/or howling out of tune. But I am still here, unbowed. So what? I relish the wonderful pianos I do get access to, and rejoice in those opportunities. The good and bad are all mixed in quick succession. That's the way it goes for a working musician.

Thank you for referencing my teaching. If we are not entirely on the same page, we are partially regarding education of those students who are working toward full-time professional careers. Although I always and repeatedly compare/contrast with students the attributes of various electronic instruments on the market, with no less intensity I compare/contrast Steinways with Bechsteins, and Yamahas with Webers. Students deal with it all, and that is par for the course. But the actual survival skills I teach (in addition to a killer technique and the usual music theory) are facile sight-reading, transposition, playing by ear, improvisation, and arranging. Those are the every day skills that have been required of me for the past thirty years, and on what instruments I employ them is secondary to the reality of the business at hand.

Like Oscar Peterson and Keith Jarrett, yeah, I prefer a real piano, thank you, and I cannot think of one single, solitary working-pianist I know here in New York City, or have ever known, whether classical or jazz oriented, who prefers otherwise.

Best regards,

Jonathan

A piano/music boutique of sorts was tried in downtown Chicago for a few years. There was Carl Fisher, and about 3 piano stores. They had lunchtime concerts that were really nice.

However, I like the idea of having a shopping center with a Best Buy, Sam Ash, Guitar center, and piano stores selling Steinway, Yamaha, and Kawai. In addtion add a teaching studio, dance studio, karate school, a couple of nice places to eat, maybe a book store.

The reason car dealers congregate together is to share advertising and allow the customer easy comparisons. In my market, the Yamaha store is a 35 min drive in good traffic from the Steinway and Kawai stores, which are a 10 min drive apart. Putting them all in the same strip mall, would probably be mutually beneficial, I would think?

piano row in NY?

The reason car dealers congregate together is to share advertising and allow the customer easy comparisons.

I don't know about that. I've always seen clusters of car dealerships in industrial type areas where real estate is cheaper; that makes sense since they need so much space.

------

Like Oscar Peterson and Keith Jarrett, yeah, I prefer a real piano, thank you, and I cannot think of one single, solitary working-pianist I know here in New York City, or have ever known, whether classical or jazz oriented, who prefers otherwise.

You might need to make a distinction between practice pianos and performance pianos. I'm sure the Oscar Peterson's and Keith Jarrett's of the world have no problems with their neighbors when practicing at any hour of the day or night. We mere mortals, thank you, tend to live in apartments, townhouses and row homes (I never understood the difference between a row home and a townhouse) and have neighbors to think of.

Why we're at it, since you are placing yourself in such great company, it would be great to hear samples of your playing. While I've made my living by playing I would never start a paragraph with ... Like Oscar Peterson and Keith Jarrett, yeah, I prefer .... but that's just me.

Jonathan,

Thanks for your response, but to be honest, I don't see musch there except an affirmation of your personal preferences. It's hard to find a way to interpret your comments about Debussy, Chopin, Beethoven, and Art Tatum as anything but testifying for the first three and putting down Art Tatum.



I don't really believe that you find noisy brassy uprights a delight. Do you?

Now you've added the obligatory reference to 'real' pianos.



That's fine, but did a waiter ask you to order for the house?

I don't dispute that the choices of popular artists have a bearing on the choice of pianos by their fans. Love of classical music, its composers, and its artists is the biggest reason acoustic pianos have had such a long ride. Your Oscar Peterson/Bosie reference is a good one because Peterson's music was not an obvious fit for Bosie's highbrow image, and no doubt he widened the Bosie sphere of influence. However, I don't feel that Chopein sells Pleyels today, that Beethoven sells Broadwooods. or that Tatum sells noisy uprights. They sell the acoustic ideal. Same for Keith Jarrett. The huge stable of Steinway artists no doubt helps their branding, just as aggressive free-agent signings help your NY Yankess,but I doubt that many consumers show up at a Steinway shop asking for the Keith Jarrett model. If there's a parallel to Peterson/Bosie today, it's probably Herbie Hancock's endorsement of Fazioli. It's not an obvious fit either.

Anyway, I'm not accusing you of anything or trying to fight you tooth and nail here. It's par for the course on these
'potential acoustic demise' threads for members to state their preference and display their passion. Why not? It may not alter the empirical data though.

I do very much want to correct your perception that I'm painting a grim reality here. Personally, I don't see it as grim at all. I love all acoustic pianos that are in good shape. There's nothing quite like then. I love some unpretentious ones more than some pretentious ones, some short grands more than some long ones, and some verticals more than some grands, but deep down I love them all if they have their own voice and are in decent shape. I had only an Acrosonic spinet for more than ten years and don't have one bad thing to say about it.

I love the intimacy of a good digital with a good pair of phones. There's nothing quite like it. I don't regard arranging and improvisation as survival skill like you do since my own bag is orchestration, arranging, and composition. For that reason I don't consider the skill set necessary to fully exploit digital functions a survival skill either.

I love the fact that the future will be full of surprises -- bring it on -- and that music is being written now specifically with digitals in mind. Some of the most creative stuff that I hear these days is coming from that camp. It may be raw, but it's creative. So I'm not glum and I don't see the future as grim except for the fact that as acoustic sales continue their decline, choices will be fewer and prices will be far more expensive.

No animosity at all, just a different perspective.

Making predictions is difficult, especially about the future (Samuel Goldwyn).
Especially about the demise of APs (bennevis).

As long as the instrument can play piano music, does how it produces the sound really matter?

How it produces sound probably does not matter.
What really matters is HOW it sounds and feels.

Snag with forums like this is that we are a bunch of enthusiasts corralled together. We don't really want to contemplate the demise of our favoured instruments so a realistic appraisal of the situation may escape many of us.

The decline of the acoustic and the digital piano, is an inevitable function of changes in societal education values, leisure priorities and the availability of alternatives. Pianos of all kinds are already in a small niche market.

However, lots of very successful businesses operate successfully in small niche markets - once they wake up to what that market really is.

The piano industry is presently afflicted by substantial oversupply coupled with weak demand. So the focus of most people is on low prices.

Eventually the industry in the west will shrink such that those who are willing to pay for premium brands have a small choice but at premium prices. Everyone else will have access to cheaper (but eventually no longer "cheap") Chinese made instruments of acceptable quality.

The Chinese domestic market is still growing and manufacturers will primarily service this, but with some higher margin exports to the west. Eventually sensible currency balancing will push the prices of Chinese exports up - especially when indigenous western industries have died.

The very best piano dealers will survive. Many more will go bust. Consumers will need to travel further to buy acoustic pianos - but serious enthusiasts will not mind this.

We may see a resurgence in the secondary market for cheap oldish acoustic instruments for a while, until they wear out.

This is what I think is already happening to the market - we are about half way through it. Feel free to disagree - the beauty of economic forecasting is that it can only be tested with hindsight.

Adrian

Before the electric guitar it was down right dangerous playing the steam powered guitar, but I agree with your statement.

Turadot -

That you refer to a full grand as "pretentious" gives away your game...

My game??????

Here's what I posted



. Read it again. If you still don't understand, ask someone to explain it to you.

My reply to you was courteous and thoughtful, and this is your response---that I am playing a game????

I'm sorry you take it that way, but there's nothing I can do about it.

Oddly enough I can see exactly where Turandot is coming from here.

For close on 30 years I have collected electric (mainly) guitars. For most of my life I have played guitar more than piano. Some guitars are worth more (by "worth" I mean in the collectors market) than any top class grand piano you can think of. Think double the price of a Stuart.

And yet, some years ago, I bought in a guitar shop, a second-hand Fender "custom Shop" strat, that some idiot had altered. The body was gold, which I hated. But the neck was sublime. So I bought it for about $1,000. It is among the cheapest guitars I own.

Ninety nine times out of one hundred, if I play guitar at home or live on stage (in my amateurish way), I pick that one. I have others that are far more valuable and supposedly better. But in reality some musical instruments just "fit" us. They sing. So we should cast aside everything but that.

Same logic applies to pianos, I think. I learnt to play on my parent's old upright. I don;t actually know what make it was. Probably a Broadwood I guess. I expect I would look down on it now. But it suited me as a five year old and was plenty good enough to take me to ABRSM grade 8 a few years later. I never played on a grand throughout that time.

The truth is it's not the piano. It's the player.

Hence, Turandot has an extremely valid point. We enjoy most what suits us best.

Adrian

"Turandot" - You clearly have experience with "pretentious" pianos. I never knew that musical instruments could be pretentious, but I fully accept that you have encountered such musical beasts, and I assure you that if you play any of the pianos here in NYC that they are all quite modest and accommodating, actually, in their social and professional relations with pianists.

David Horne - distinctions between practice and performance pianos is not, to my knowledge, a matter of contention. A pianist practices and performs on what is available at hand. Simple enough. "Will the acoustic piano go the way of the typewriter?" is the valid question of this thread, and I already addressed the issue of sonority as I hear it. As for Oscar and Keith, whose reference you found disconcerting, I will rephrase it thus: Like Beethoven, I would rather play a massive Broadwood over a spindly 5-octave Viennese piano any day of the week. Thank you! I always seek out the best musical company I can find, past or present.

Jonathan,

It seems that you are entitled to post a very clear pecking order of your preferences as some sort of objective reality, but I am not entitled to say in neutral generic terms what I like without ticking you off.

You have written that you compare and contrast all acoustic pianos. Have you ever had the experience that a current line of pianos from a prestige manufacturer leaves you flat -- or -- that a certain model from a prestige manufacturer leaves you thinking it's a sub-par effort from that maker? It's not about poor prep. The feeling is based on playing several samples. The piano(s) may be built like a tank with gorgeous casework. It may have contrasting veneer, inlays, whatever -- the whole nine yards. It will most definitely have the requisite action from the world's most famous action maker. But somehow or other its performance just doesn't stack up, either to other competitors in its price class or to other efforts past or present from that manufacturer.

Conversely,have you ever had the experience that a current model piano with a very modest pedigree, a plain-jane case, and a fairly modest price surprises you with its even action response and its ability to produce a fair degree of color throughout its dynamic range (even though that range might be limited at the power end)? Have you ever thought "Wow, this piano can compete above its class"?

Does that help you to understand?

If not, or if you're just lathered up about some perceived slight to you, your profession, or to New York City of all things, send me a PM and we'll sort it out. You're pushing buttons now that go way way off topic. Even though this thread has had its ups and downs. it has stayed on topic, remarkably so for a thread of its length.

Turandot -

Regarding paragraph 1 of your post, above: of course, I have my preferences, as you have yours, but I don't think your preferences are 'bad' or 'less than' in any sense. And regarding your next two paragraphs I have had exactly the same impressions and experiences, it seems, fourteen trillion times. No disagreement there!

Perhaps where I expressed myself poorly is in the matter of performing, say, Schubert lieder with a singer on a piano with virtually no singing tone; there is an example where any pianist is instantly going to morph into a elitist with a bad attitude simply out of frustration, because at that point, from the pianists counterpoint, he is merely giving a bad pantomime of the music.

Or, say (and this drives me truly crazy) where the hammers have been so fluffed up that it is physically impossible to achieve more than a mezzo piano - no forte to be had - none. That leaves nothing but the tempo, and perhaps out of desperation, an exaggerated tempo rubato, which again ends up being a parody.

Last week I was obliged to play on a 9-foot Baldwin so badly mangled in its voicing that I would have traded it for an upright Yamaha. These things happen all the time, of course, but not every time. So I would say that trying to advocate for standards often feels like an uphill struggle, particularly with managers of halls or theaters who regard such matters as prissy elitism by difficult artsy-types. But I do not want to give a lopsided impression, there are terrific, fabulous pianos all over town, often found in 'modest' locations, not necessarily in the 'best' clubs or halls.

But I am starting to ramble off-topic, which is whether or not acoustic pianos will become extinct. I think I agree with many posters here that that is not imminent on the concert venue, but practice pianos definitely have competition from electric keyboards for the legitimate reasons of price and thin walls. And I cannot rail against that, although I prefer acoustic piano for the type of music I play for a living. If I were working at the synthesizer creating, say, New Age music or a variety of other styles that depend on recording for their realization, then I would probably have a significantly different outlook.

regards,

Jonathan

2 years on and I have to confidently say... NO.

If you have played all sorts of pianos, you will know that no digital piano comes even close to the satisfaction of the feel the sound of an acoustic provides. Also, I have found the digitals to be lackluster in sound, and I own two and play them regularly.

I heard some 12,000 figure pertaining to 2012 or 2011 grand sales in America. If true, the grand is going strong to obscurity... in NEW sales. Obviously there is a market for used grands. The grand piano will become something akin to a yacht or swanky sports car: few will have them and they will be for wealthier and more-dedicated players.

It's too easy to get and play and move a digital piano when learning and poor. They are excellent solutions for this damaged economy. For people that play a lot and enjoy piano playing, the acoustics will always be honored.

If the lights stayed out for more than a few hours, we'd all have many more problems than where to play music. (But you did say there were other reasons, too).

This has been proven. Trinity Church on Wall Street has a mammoth virtual pipe organ, featuring an impossibly elaborate, gigantic speaker system. The claim is that it's extremely hard to believe that you're not listening to a real pipe organ.

No.