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Before I begin I want to preface this by saying that I intend this to be a civil and insightful discussion, and that I bring this up with only the utmost respect for those who have provided me help and guidance in my journey to find an instrument.
As some of you may know, I have been on a bit of a roller coaster ride in my process to secure a piano that will be my "forever" instrument, the piano that is still sitting around during my wake. I have talked to numerous dealers, sales reps, factory reps, rebuilders, technicians, enthusiasts and other piano people. I won't go into a lengthy narrative of my experiences here because that's not the point of my thread.
I'm a Millennial. I'm probably younger than the average Steinway buyer, especially one looking at B's and D's. I grew up on the Internet and was raised by Nickelodeon, Nintendo, and Netscape. I was not raised with a piano in the home, and had to make do on keyboards and digital pianos until now. At 31, I finally have a unique opportunity to pursue a career as an independent composer--a rare gift, to be sure.
During my experiences in the world of pianos, I have noticed that the entire community tends toward a much older crowd. The youngest person I met in my journey was a local sales rep who was well into his mid-40s. Countless times, I've been regaled with anecdotes of the glory days of a mythical beast called Sherman Clay in times when I was still in diapers and the world was not yet ready for Devo.
During all of this, I am left wondering where the younger techs, reps, and craftsmen are. I realize the economy has been particularly rough on my generation's efforts to launch their careers (see above) and that acoustic pianos aren't exactly the centerpiece of home entertainment anymore, but the fact remains that I have been left feeling uneasy for two reasons:
For starters, when you're relatively young and spending more money than you ever have in your life is intimidating enough. When you are constantly dealing with a parade of colorful characters--some whom strongly disagree with each other--that are old enough to be your father it can make the experience even more daunting. Now there is something to be said for wisdom and experience and I have received that in excess. For that I am very grateful.
But the second, and perhaps most pressing, issue is the quiet question of who will take up the mantle of maintaining this industry when those involved become so old they can no longer work. I am surrounded by great techs in this area, but who will service my Steinway when I myself am 50, even 60? Who is going to work on Lang Lang's D when he goes on tour in 2040?
Now it could be that I am simply seeing a narrow cross-section of the piano industry, based on my location and the type of piano I was looking for. Could these younger sales reps, technicians, and rebuilders be lurking in less expensive, less competitive metro areas?
My point is that I would love to both have more people closer to my age in this journey I could relate to, as well as feel secure in knowing that the network of support and knowledge will continue to be there for me for as long as I play. As for the former issue, I know of only one person on this forum who is the same age as I, and my hat's off to him for reaching out to me way back in November.
And to all you out there who have helped me, and who continue to help me, you have my sincerest gratitude and respect.
Last edited by Markarian; 07/22/1403:55 PM.
2012 NY Steinway Model B | Kawai MP11 | Nord Stage 3 Compact | Moog Matriarch | ASM Hydrasynth 49 | Sequential Circuits Prophet 10 Rev4 | Yamaha ModX 61
The millennials are working at tech companies that Netscape founder Mark Andreesen funded or are working on Wall Street, not retailing or rebuilding pianos.
It's not just the piano industry where this is a problem (not enough younger people interested in the field/trade); it's also a problem in other industries and the trades. I suppose there are lots of reasons the younger generation is not interested in some of these fields/industries.
As for me, I fall into the older generation you speak of... I'm on the downhill side of life, but having a ball with my pianos!
Rick
Piano enthusiast and amateur musician: "Treat others the way you would like to be treated". Yamaha C7. YouTube Channel
I'm 34, and I've met some piano techs and salespeople around my age. I suspect my tech is probably younger than me - I haven't asked her. I don't know anyone who owns a piano though. I would expect more young people in the industry if demand were increasing.
Maybe there's another "Moog" inventor yet to come along and perhaps the technology will be so great by 2040 that instead of a 9 foot grand, there'll be some spacey looking carbon fiber electronic thing on stage. There's been recent posts showing us actual projects not far from that description.
Take the printing biz. I could name you dozens of print craftsman positions that simply don't exist now, hence, no apprentices either. Maybe the piano will never undergo a "technological revolution" and 100 years from now, pianos will look exactly the same (with some minor tweaks), I hope so. Still, you have to take your hat off to a product so complex, it has more parts than your car and we're discussing a design that goes back centuries. That's pretty cool and says something about the engineering. What's it all going matter if there's nobody left to sell or maintain them?
I would be pretty hard pressed to see why anyone, of the generations you're speaking too, would pursue this field. There'll always be someone, as Mark mentioned but I wonder what this market segment will look like decades from now? Yeah, good question..........blob
Some 500+ of us attended the PTG Annual Convention in Atlanta last week. I gave two classes to an audience whose average age was probably forty something. Since there were several approaching my age in the group that means there were also several who were considerably younger.
I've been going to these things for better than forty years and, while I expect that the average age of the group is some higher now than it was when I started, I still see a good smattering of younger people as well. And that, by the way, includes a smattering of younger women as well as younger men. (And that is a welcome change from the early years.)
ddf
Delwin D Fandrich Piano Research, Design & Manufacturing Consultant ddfandrich@gmail.com (To contact me privately please use this e-mail address.)
Stupidity is a rare condition, ignorance is a common choice. --Anon
I can't cite the statistics of the piano industry … then again no one else can either since they don't exist! Nonetheless, I think there are some general characteristics of an industry like this that are at work.
First off, as everyone knows the piano biz is in decline. This has been true for quite some time. But it once had a more solid employment base. I think this is an almost canonical example of a bottleneck of existing labor (everything from techs and wood workers to sales people and executives). Some of these people can move into other lines of work more easily than others, but in general the decline of the industry likely has created this blockage that has shifted the age distribution of the people we run into in this industry. It'll shake out over time, but there may be a period when the younger end is rather underrepresented, and that may very well be today. On top of that, entry into a retrenching industry isn't really most young people's cup of tea. I suspect we'll get an oscillating situation. At some point the retirement of the oldsters will create a dearth of qualified labor (beware the shysters of 2025 ), and that shortage may pull in some younger workers over time.
My tech is around my age, so I'm probably OK for a while.
There is hope in "niche" markets. I am not an organist, but among very few acquaintances I know two pipe organ builders, one a few blocks away, and another within driving distance (he tuned my piano). The part-time piano tuner is in great demand; he's less than 30. Apparently both are working hard and being paid for it (the senior organ builder is the only person I know with a heated driveway: 1000 feet of concrete!)
Despite the utter demise of the home spinet organ, and the tendency of newer churches toward electronic organs (or no organ at all), there must be pipe organs somewhere and someone is (apparently) paying these guys to build and maintain them.
On the other hand, my Main Man piano tuner is probably in his mid-50's and he had to cancel my tuning date today 'cause he had to take a detour to the hospital. The Best Tuner in our area had to quit recently due to hand arthritis.
My mother in Phoenix speaks reverentially of the lost age of Sherman Clay. She just had her Steinway rebuilt (the rebuilder is in his 70's). If you want an heirloom for your children, I imagine the cheapest way would be to find a good "new" rebuilt Steinway or Mason & Hamlin. The tuners are out there: I can think of 3 that I would trust with my Petrof: two are under 40 (and one's a lady!)
Are you married? Is she? Do you want to be sure you have the same tech for the rest of your life? ;-)
If she were single, let's just say I don't think she'd be interested!
This thread has caused a corny, faintly arrogant country song Jerry Lee Lewis did, "Who's Gonna Play This Old Piano", to get stuck in my head. Thanks a lot. :p
The phenomenon you're referring to has been underway for a long time. What you're referring to is actually the tail-end of a process that has been ongoing since the end of WWII.
The first thing that happened is people stopped going out. People went out BIG time in the 1910's, 20's, 30's and 40's, but after the War, all those big bands that had been a staple since the 1920's suddenly found work harder and harder to come by. This process continued until the mid-1970's, when the last of the big bands finally packed it in.
However, even as big bands became extinct, the bar band scene was on the rise and became the live venue of choice. But they too experience a slow decline, until the bar-band scene finally petered out altogether, leaving almost nothing in terms of live music.
The classical music scene croaked at the same time as the avante garde jazz scene, in circa 1963. By the early 70's, all the big-name composers had died off, and as in the jazz world, there simply was no new generation to take over.
This isn't to say that no one is writing jazz and classical any longer- they are. But they're a generation of wannabees and wankers who aren't breaking any new ground, aren't doing anything original, and are more taxidermists and weekend-warriors than real musicians.
Miles Davis went to a big rock concert some time in the 60's, watched bands like Tower of Power, and realised that the music scene was in a bad way. The new generation of musicians, and their audience, didn't know anything about music. By that I mean you suddenly had people writing music who didn't know the first thing about how music works. They're just bashing and thrashing around, doing everything by rote. Same kind of thing you hear in a "Blues" club, where old bar-band musicians wank out on 12- and 16-bar, b.s.-ing the night away.
By the 90's, the younger audience-members were drifting away, big-time, because most of them hated live music. They hated it for two reasons- one, it was all an older generation playing the live music (just look at the Stones, Sabbath, ACDC, all the other geriatric bands out there), and because THEIR generation was listening to Karaoke-like rectal spew, sung to prerecorded synths 'n' sequencers, with one or more pretty people angsting and whining and pretending away on-stage.
Frank Zappa prophetically warned of the "pretty" trend many years ago. He wrote "I'm So Cute" as a result. That's all the country scene is now- pretty people lip-syncing soap-opera schlock.
Young people today are in the same situation guys like me were in around 1970. As a brass & piano musician, I thought my future lay in playing live music. The brass gigs suddenly vanished, I had to buy an electric keyboard and learn to play bass, FAST, in order to land jobs, and my last regular gig was around ten years ago. That's all she wrote. There simply are no regular live venues to keep musicians working full-time, or even part-time in many locations.
I know musicians all over the UK, Europe, Canada and the US. We're all in pretty much the same boat.
There is still some work out there. I'm in the process of buying a 23-passenger bus & trailer, the trailer to be converted into a portable stage. This, for playing the Folk, Fringe and Jazz Festivals from coast to coast. The money's poor, you only get to play part of the year, but it's that or play only a few gigs a year.
The phenomenon you're referring to has been underway for a long time. What you're referring to is actually the tail-end of a process that has been ongoing since the end of WWII.
The first thing that happened is people stopped going out. People went out BIG time in the 1910's, 20's, 30's and 40's, but after the War, all those big bands that had been a staple since the 1920's suddenly found work harder and harder to come by. This process continued until the mid-1970's, when the last of the big bands finally packed it in.
However, even as big bands became extinct, the bar band scene was on the rise and became the live venue of choice. But they too experience a slow decline, until the bar-band scene finally petered out altogether, leaving almost nothing in terms of live music.
The classical music scene croaked at the same time as the avante garde jazz scene, in circa 1963. By the early 70's, all the big-name composers had died off, and as in the jazz world, there simply was no new generation to take over.
This isn't to say that no one is writing jazz and classical any longer- they are. But they're a generation of wannabees and wankers who aren't breaking any new ground, aren't doing anything original, and are more taxidermists and weekend-warriors than real musicians.
Miles Davis went to a big rock concert some time in the 60's, watched bands like Tower of Power, and realised that the music scene was in a bad way. The new generation of musicians, and their audience, didn't know anything about music. By that I mean you suddenly had people writing music who didn't know the first thing about how music works. They're just bashing and thrashing around, doing everything by rote. Same kind of thing you hear in a "Blues" club, where old bar-band musicians wank out on 12- and 16-bar, b.s.-ing the night away.
By the 90's, the younger audience-members were drifting away, big-time, because most of them hated live music. They hated it for two reasons- one, it was all an older generation playing the live music (just look at the Stones, Sabbath, ACDC, all the other geriatric bands out there), and because THEIR generation was listening to Karaoke-like rectal spew, sung to prerecorded synths 'n' sequencers, with one or more pretty people angsting and whining and pretending away on-stage.
Frank Zappa prophetically warned of the "pretty" trend many years ago. He wrote "I'm So Cute" as a result. That's all the country scene is now- pretty people lip-syncing soap-opera schlock.
Young people today are in the same situation guys like me were in around 1970. As a brass & piano musician, I thought my future lay in playing live music. The brass gigs suddenly vanished, I had to buy an electric keyboard and learn to play bass, FAST, in order to land jobs, and my last regular gig was around ten years ago. That's all she wrote. There simply are no regular live venues to keep musicians working full-time, or even part-time in many locations.
I know musicians all over the UK, Europe, Canada and the US. We're all in pretty much the same boat.
There is still some work out there. I'm in the process of buying a 23-passenger bus & trailer, the trailer to be converted into a portable stage. This, for playing the Folk, Fringe and Jazz Festivals from coast to coast. The money's poor, you only get to play part of the year, but it's that or play only a few gigs a year.
And that's pretty much what's out there.
Jesus, tell us how you REALLY feel! But I can definitely see the trend.
Myself, I am more influenced by film music and more adult contemporary stuff like Yanni, Jim Brickman, and David Lanz. My dream is to write for film and I've already scored a couple of indie shorts.
I notice in my generation a rebellion against the artificial and inauthentic and a draw back to the kind of folk and prog rock of the 1960s, but unfortunately without the musical foundation to back it up, as you mentioned. These hipsters, if you will, are exactly the kind of people who, disillusioned with the idea of sitting in a cube like their dads, might go into some quieter, artisinal field that is more rewarding and less stressful. I fervently hope to see some bearded 29 year old in a headsock showing you how to shape hammers on YouTube. These guys may be our only hope. Have you techs and rebuilders out there thought of taking on younger apprentices, maybe taking advantage of government subsidies for work study, etc?
Last edited by Markarian; 07/22/1410:52 PM.
2012 NY Steinway Model B | Kawai MP11 | Nord Stage 3 Compact | Moog Matriarch | ASM Hydrasynth 49 | Sequential Circuits Prophet 10 Rev4 | Yamaha ModX 61
There is still some work out there. I'm in the process of buying a 23-passenger bus & trailer, the trailer to be converted into a portable stage. This, for playing the Folk, Fringe and Jazz Festivals from coast to coast. The money's poor, you only get to play part of the year, but it's that or play only a few gigs a year.
I would love to both have more people closer to my age in this journey
If you're a good enough musician to make a living from composition, I would advise you to have as few people as possible accompanying you on your journey. Zero is the ideal number.That would include the young and the old, the retailers and the industry types, the brand advocates and the bon vivants who frequent here,
I'm always leery of the notion that buying a piano is a jounrney, a quest, an adventure, etc. A lot of the people who come here for advice use those terms. But most of those people do not play at a level where they can trust themselves. When you are trying to match a piano to your needs and taste and you are already a player, you have all the tools you need to get the job done. Those tools are on the sides of your head and at the ends of your arms. That's even more the case when you have the ear of a composer or arranger.
The time to enlist the help of others is when you have decided what suits you best. Then you can ask opinions of your choice before you commit that large sum of money that intimidates you. The more specific the question, the more helpful the answer.You can ask the techs about build qulaity and any historical trouble spots. You can ask everyone about the offered price. You can sample people's opinions of whether the brand's long-term future is viable in the face of the indsutry consolidation that is inevitable in the next decade. You can pay for a technical inspection even if the piano is new. You can ask some musician buddies to play it and give their impressions. If it's almost dialed in in your estimation, but not quite, you can communicate what it is you find lacking and see if the shop technical staff can get it there.
In this post you're basically saying" This is so tough.Help me". The only thing you'll gain from that is more uncertainty and confusion.
When you're choosing a washing machine or a dishwasher, You can't take your soiled clothes or dirty dishes to the shop to audition the machine. You have to rely on others if you want to get beyond appearance and specs. That's not the case with a piano regardless of its price range.
Keep it simple. Trust yourself to know what you want more than you trust others to know what you want.