Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum Where is the new blood?

If Lang Lang fails to prop up the piano industry in the future, which
he apparently has at the moment, and not just in China, then you'll
see more musicians like me doing DIY work, especially the basics like tuning.

Agreed with Turandot: Trust your own ears!

Well, that's the problem. Millennial's aren't listening to Yanni, David Lanz, or Kenny G. Maybe their [grand] parents.

I do some regulation and repair, but tuning is something I wouldn't risk trying to DIY. It's just too easy to get bored and get on the wrong pin and break string.

Come on guys.. this is so lame..
There has never been a big public for classical or at least serious (good) music. Ok, there where some hypes but no, the common man never went to conservatory. In reality a lot of music before NOW was crap, also in the 20's, 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's.

And yes, there's plenty of young people "Millenials" (who invents these words, seriously?) who know quite a bit of music and play it using real instruments.

Just a couple of weeks ago there was a little concert during lunch in our company restaurant by students part of the VU (university) Orchestra in Amsterdam. Those were not people actually studying music for a career, they play it because they like it. And yes there were hipsters including the beards among them.

It was fun, the average age of the public was around 35-40 meaning it also included quite some younger people. They played Schubert and so on.

Every generation thinks they're better than the generation after them.
Always the melancholy: Oh this is lost.. oh that is lost, oh this was better, oh that was better.. Give me a break..

Get Tunelab Pro, and it's pretty easy to tune your own piano, once you get the hang of using the hammer and setting the pins, so your tuning is stable.

If you have a reasonably young piano, with young strings, you probably won't break a string if you are careful. It does happen, but then you should learn to replace strings anyways.....

That's not the issue here. The issue is the lack of jobs for working musicians. Each city used to have dozens, in some instances hundreds of clubs featuring live music. Today they're all gone. I can easily name 50 cities where I used to play that today have not one regular live venue, for ANY kind of music.

I have friends in Vancouver, Victoria, New York City, Chicago, Detroit, San Francisco, London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Amsterdam, Montreal, Saskatoon, Regina, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, Boston, Seattle, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, NONE of whom are working as full-time professional musicians any more. The clubs are all closed, gone out of business, the whole entire scene is kaputsky.

It's usually cyclical, but this time it's different. In the 70's, brass musicians were running all over North America like chickens with their heads cut off, chasing rumours of work. When it finally dawned on them that there wasn't any, they settled where they were, hung out their shingle, and taught for a living. That's why in the late 60's, early 70's, I had trumpet teachers like Bobby Hilton, Bobby Herriot, Joe de Bruyker, Len Whitely, and so on. The only reason I had them as teachers was because there was no place for them to play any more.

At that time, the bar band thing took over and replaced the dance and club thing.

But this time, the bar band scene has come to an end with NOTHING to replace it. THAT's the difference. It's not that things have changed this time. It's that the scene itself is gone.

The kids coming along aren't playing live venues. They're making videos.

The computer/video/Interweb scene is sucking the life out of both live music and the television industry. Television itself is on the way out. There are times when our local television stations are putting on public-service commercials because there are no paid ads to fill those slots.

The Interweb is the last big venue, and it is anathema to live ANYthing.

I agree in that respect that the working musician is replaced by a DJ.

This may be a little OT, but on occasion I will get invited to play the piano for an event at the small community college where I work; not that I'm all that good on the piano, but what little I can play is legible to an extent (people can recognize the song/tune).

I get a lot of comments from the audience that they enjoyed my playing and that I was good on the piano. Fact is, I'm not really all that good on the piano, but the audience is not used to hearing someone playing live music at an event, as a general rule. So, although my playing is mediocre at best, they still find it somewhat entertaining and enjoyable.

Where is the new blood? My 10 year old granddaughter is taking piano lessons (though not from me ) and there will always be an interest in the piano in particular and the arts in general.

Rick

There are young people starting careers in piano service in the USA. Probably enough to meet demand for some time. But probably not if everybody with a serviceable grand piano gets it tuned twice a year.

We are seeing a reduction in piano service support at most universities and colleges. There are signs of price competition among service providers. That should tell you something about the demand/supply curve.

Payback ….. is …….. coming.

.
.
.
.

Markarian, some of what you're seeing is simply demographics in the US. It crosses many occupations and industries. The baby boomers are a big population, and for a variety of reasons they aren't retiring at the age and in the numbers that earlier generations did.


gsmonks, it sounds like you don't know anything about classical music.

I can only speak as a classical guy, but the big change I've seen is with commercially recorded music. Now that everything is shared on youtube, there's absolutely no reason to buy recorded music (I'm not saying this is right - it's just the way it is). However, the great opportunity as I see it is to use youtube as a promotion vehicle for live performance. My impression is that the demand for live performance is just as solid as it's ever been with young people driving the trend. I think the trick is giving the audience something that has both quality and originality - even with the trusted war-horses of music.

Only my opinion - I hope I'm right!

BC

I don't know if there are less opportunities today for musicians then 20 years ago, but you can't say the system is broken because it's changed and you've stayed the same. "Making videos" - you mean YouTube, is a wonderful medium and those who know how to leverage it have created opportunities for themselves that probably wouldn't have been possible without it. There are many "YouTube Stars" that I know of, some I follow. Kyle Landry as an example, Sal Kahn (not a musician though), Hiromi Uehara I believe also got a lot of great exposure through YouTube. Even Rickster here seems to have a good following on YouTube, and I'm guessing he was born after 1980 and doesn't qualify as a millennial (if I'm wrong, please forgive me).

The bar band, EDM, these are all evolutions of music. They're not any less, though some will disagree.

The Internet is sucking the life out of those who refuse to adapt and learn new things. Everyone can make YouTube videos these days, even on your iPhone. Give it a try, maybe you'll get 300,000 views and be the next Justin Beieber!

Well, I'll never be a Justin Beiber, but one of my YouTube music videos has over 650,000 views!

It has certainly surprised the heck out of me...

Just goes to show that entertainment and musical proficiency are not the same thing. (Musically proficient I'm not )

Rick

Okay, a couple of things:

First off, I'm one of those kids making videos. I have one original song with 20,000 views. Not really much to brag about if you consider some more popular musicians out there, but still I think more people than I will ever meet in my lifetime. The song was even translated into Russian and performed live in Russia.

Which brings me to my next point, gsmonks. I have almost zero interest in live performance. I do not feel confident in my ability to play consistently enough for it to be worth the stress. There is a live music scene, at least in Seattle, I've been invited to many gigs, but have turned them down because I have confidence problems. I'm comfortable sitting in front of my workstation with a MIDI controller and Kontakt open, or playing my Steinway at 3AM with only the neighbors and my partner as my audience. Even with acoustic panels, the former have said they can hear the piano clear as day. Luckily, they have expressed enjoyment, rather than annoyance. Let's see how long that lasts.

I do lament that all those big bands of the 30s and 40s are gone. I adore that sound and yes, you have now met the former 28 year old who at one point played "40s on 4" and "Cinemagic" XM channels constantly in his car on the way to class.

As for demographics and terminology, the people who come up with these terms are marketing gurus, who write books on how to sell to a particular group of people. "Millennials" or "Echo Boomers" or "Generation Y" are generally considered those born between 1980 and 1994, depending on who you ask. Some of us caught a glimpse of the Berlin Wall falling down and all of us are old enough to remember 9/11. We were raised on the Internet, have an unshakable sense of entitlement, and we are searching for authenticity in an artificial world, whatever the crap that means.

The point of this thread is not to ask for help, not to complain. I did NOT want my piano buying experience to be a journey, but that seems to be the expectation here, something to aspire to. I just wanted a F-ing piano that fit my needs and I think I found it and can hopefully get back to my life. The point of this thread is to express concern that every piano industry person I have encountered, both in sales and service, are many years older than I and it makes me worry that I will not have sufficient resources to support my instrument as I go forward as a musician.

Reading many of these threads has become a safari, rather than a journey.

I have a 1929 Knabe 9 ft. grand. It has small diameter wire wound strings fairly far up the scale, and if I break one, it would be a special order, and it might not sound exactly like the rest.

Now, them is words I can understand.



The resources you will need to support your instrument consist of one skilled and honest technician and a fallback position if that individual is indisposed. At least in my neighborhood there are many popular techs under 50. One thing you should take into account though is that as piano ownership continues to decline, top-notch tech services will continue to increase in pricee.

Heaven forbid that you will need industry people of the sales variety to support your craft. The only thing they can possibly do for you is convince you that your current instrument falls short of your talent and that you need an upgrade. First-time buyers of brand new pianos are so scarce that selling upgrade fever is essential to keeping things going.

The reason that you encounter so many mentally and physically old and fatigued individuals in sales is that like most industries on the decline, the piano industry fears unconventional thinking. That is true at the manufacturing level, the marketing level, the distribution level, and the retail level. Fear of change seems perverse when you consider how badly the industry has slipped, but even at the higher levels, individuals who have failed elsewhere are recycled into new positions. A distributor may leave one company in shambles, only to be re-incarnated at another. Salesmen of the 'closer' variety whose approach to selling is a complee disconnect for current consumer behavior wander from dealership to dealership trying to recreate the world of fat commissions they knew 20 or 30 years ago.

The reason for the many inquiries here about piano quests is that the majority of members here are into classical music and many of those classically-inclined members are at least as much into the instrument as the music one can make on it. They equate the perfect piano to the Holy Grail that the Crusdaers wee supposedly questing after. Some actually become footsoldiers of particular retailers carrying their banners from thread to thread. On top of all that there are a disproportinate number of AWMB's in residence here. Hence the romantic quest, journey, adventure stuff.

What the hey? In the end they get their pianos and live happily ever after at least until the upgrade itch starts. Most of the real Crusaders had less pleasant outcomes to their quest.

What's that??

Anyway, your remarks on piano buying are spot on. I've learned the hard way. Heraclitus said you can't step into the same river twice. Similarly, you can't play the same piano twice. Yeah, you can check to make sure the serial number is the same, but the piano you buy at the shop will not be the piano that shows up at your house. Nor will it be the piano you play the next day. Pianos are organic. They are in a state of constant change. Find a good one that you can afford, stop analyzing and hand wringing and buy it.

... then start practicing.

A great performance on an old Story & Clark beats a ham-fisted performance on a Steingraeber E-272 every time.

Larry.