Piano Guidance
Piano Guidance
Photo: cottonbro studio
Pianos do not get better with age. The action has a zillion moving parts that wear out, the hammers wear out, the dampers wear out and don't work right. The pin blocks get loose and/or crack, the sound boards crack, lose their crown and compress. The strings get old, corroded and dead sounding.
Paris They moved the factory back to Paris and opened a new factory where they began introducing new pianos designed by famous designers. The red...
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Steinway pianos are typically quite a bit more expensive and can in some instances retail at twice the cost of Yamahas. So, if you're looking for a...
Read More »Re: Pianos - better with age? 266618 09:59 AM Joined: Posts: 1,278 Tomball, Texas J John Pels 1000 Post Club Member John Pels 1000 Post Club Member J Joined: Posts: 1,278 Tomball, Texas This is one of those great threads with so many intangibles that it is almost impossible to answer it effectively. Of course the question is how good was the instrument to start with? If one starts with mediocre or less, then what you will have 25 years later will be worse. If you start with a known quality then your odds are bettered. I know that the debate rages about soundboards. My experience has generally been very positive with old soundboards with two exceptions to date. A tech can generally tell whether the soundboard has flattened or lost crown, by the amount of bearing evidenced across the bridge. My opinion would be that if the piano evidences a lack of bearing, there are real problems and a new board is required. If the bearing is plenty adequate then it is not required. The soundboard is the heart of sound reproduction in the piano and hence if the board doesn't resonate, it's game over time. If it has adequate crown and bearing, then all other parts are maintenance items, and I tend to treat the instrument more like a car. Maintenance is required to keep it in top form, both cosmetically and functionally. Cars do not get better with age, nor do pianos. All of them are in a perpetual state of decay that that can be slowed and remediated as required. I played one of the Horowitz pianos and checked the bearing at the same time. It had what most techs would consider excessive bearing, to the point that one would assume the sustain to be shorter than desired based on the measurement in the upper treble, yet this was not the case. You have to evaluate each instrument on its own merits and develop a game plan for keeping it in top condition over time. Just because you paid $75,000 for it doesn't mean that a lot of maintenance will not be required to keep it in top condition. Ferrari owners don't think that $15,000 is too much for timing belt and water pump replacement on a $70K used Testarossa. Yet, I hear a lot of folks that assume that if you buy a high-end instrument that because of this, maintenance is not required, as if the latest greatest Yamasteinwin should somehow have been ordained by God or something. I own some old pianos and even though the soundboards still sing, I can assure you that everything else needed replacement/renovation, and they needed it long before I bought these instruments.
No matter when you begin piano, you can have the enjoyment of playing an instrument, plus all the great mental, physical, and emotional benefits....
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The 6 Best Piano Books for Beginners Alfred's Basic Adult Piano Course. Alfred's Basic Piano Library. Primer Level – Lesson Book: Piano Adventures....
Read More »88 keys As piano music developed and evolved, the keyboard compass was gradually expanded in response to requests from composers who sought a broader potential for expression. By the 1890s, today's modern keyboard had become established with 88 keys spanning 7¼ octaves (from 2A to C5; 27.5 Hz to 4,186 Hz*).
The piano that Bartolomeo Cristofori first invented in Italy had only 54 keys. As piano music developed and evolved, the keyboard compass was gradually expanded in response to requests from composers who sought a broader potential for expression. By the 1890s, today's modern keyboard had become established with 88 keys spanning 7¼ octaves (from 2A to C5; 27.5 Hz to 4,186 Hz*). The human ear can hear sounds in the range from approximately 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz, but the upper limit of frequencies that the human brain can discriminate is at the very most around 4,000 Hz. Even if the compass were to be expanded by increasing the number of keys on the piano, to the human ear, the extra notes at the bass end would become nothing more than a rumbling noise, and the added treble notes would be heard as an unpleasant dissonant noise with no sense of being in a tonal range, and thus, musically, would be almost meaningless. Boesendorfer is making 97-key pianos with nine additional keys in the bass segment of the keyboard (2C to C5). However, the strings for these nine keys in the lowest bass segment are really only there to provide a richer sound when other keys are played by resonating with them. In reality, the extra keys themselves are almost never played directly. * When A is tuned to 440 Hz. The pitch of the individual keys will vary depending on the tuning method.
That doesn't sound very exciting, but trust us... it's one of the most important features of music from the last 100 years! Let's do the basic...
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Interactive feedback Simply Piano has done their best to at least partially replicate this by 'listening' to what you are playing and offering...
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A good beginner, yet still pro quality, 10-hole diatonic harmonica is somewhere between $35-$90. A good quality, chromatic harmonica will cost...
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Power chords and barre chords have two completely different sounds that will serve totally different purposes in a song. Simple barre chords will...
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