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Yes.

The majority of pianos being built today are -- by a significant margin -- being sold in the Chinese market.

ddf

There are many times less opportunities for musicians today. In 1978, a kid could take a few bass lessons and could be gigging, full-time, within a month, because the demand for bass players (especially GOOD bass players) was so high.

You can't tell me that anything resembling this demand exists today.

Yes, you can make YooToob videos. So what? That doesn't automatically translate into money. Regardless, people don't pay to view YooToob videos.

Wonderful. And how much money has this translated into?

Gsmonks,

With all due respect to your obviously extensive experience in music, you've kind of hijacked this thread and turned it into a nostalgic digression into the decline of live music over the last century, with the obligatory "You young'uns don't know what real music is!" You've provided a lot of insight, albeit with some questionable blanket statements, and I would kindly invite you to start a separate thread about it. I can't help but recall the opening lines to the theme for "All In the Family."

This thread is specifically about my worry that there are simply not enough new piano technicians and rebuilders entering the field to replace the huge slew of older techs who will at some point need to retire.

Adam, you raise a good point and I was going to mention the NBSS and the young people who are getting into their PT program! It does give me hope, but it would be nice to see these awesome techs and rebuilders with young apprentices in tow on their calls. And no, I am not volunteering--I'm far too impatient and fidgety to be a tech.

I was also going to mention the Asian market and how it is changing the industry. Most of buyers at my local dealership where I bought my original Steinway are well-to-do Chinese families, buying for their children. I have been told by several older people in the industry that East Asia is literally keeping the entire industry afloat right now. That may be true, from a retail perspective. So who is going to service these brand new Hailuns and Kawais in 30 years? Who is going to know enough about pianos to sell them to these little kids' own children in that amount of time? How will pianos be sold in the future?

Ando, I got another B. It will be here this weekend so I am understandably quite excited.

Not much, but more than I had before I posted the music video on YT...

Rick

Brilliant - hope you have a trouble free run with the new one. Congrats, and enjoy!

@Markarian: Congratulations!!

@gsmonk, let's see this from another perspective:

This might sound a bit sauer but: In the Netherlands our generation, "the Millenials", are paying for the generations before us. For example: Some recent calculations have shown that the average person born in 1980-1988 will have a nett loss of 180,000.00 EUR on taxes and pensions as apposed to the soixante huitards which have a nett profit of an equivalent or higher amount.. Everybody born before 1960 receives, everybody after 1960 pays. And still the older people are complaining that they're getting not enough pension and that there's not enough tax money going to culture and so on while they are the very wealthiest group in the Netherlands. They even founded a political party called 50+ which has only one argument: more money to people older then 50. They're the same generation that invented national debt, which we have to pay since the EU doesn't allow growth of national debt anymore.. (Nor would I want that)
This isn't exaggerated, maybe I haven't shed enough light on all aspects of the situation (yes there are also poor older people) nor do I want to make this all political but you get the point.

So, maybe it's a question of economics. One DJ per 200? 1000? 50000? people is a lot cheaper then a jazz band in a small venue. It is just economically not feasible to have so much people in entertainment..

BTW. This situation applies to the Netherlands, I don't know how it is in the US or elsewhere.

On music: They liked Caruso back then, Pavarotti was a big hit quite recent, there will always be hypes.. And I hate to say it but there is also a lot of Jazz music that I simply do not enjoy and think is crap from a musical point of view. There has always been bad music as has there always been good music.

On modern music such as atonal music: luckily the genre is dying.. It is great from an art point of view but my personal opinion is that it doesn't have anything to do with music (my personal taste).

Don't worry so much about the future.

Live in the present. Here and Now.

The techs will be there, and if not, they will
learn quickly, and on the job. It ain't rocket science.....

Oh and @Markarian, I do not have a single doubt that there will be enough techs and tuners in 30 years. It might be more expensive but I don't think the demand will completely die, so the supply won't either..

Both classical music and jazz jumped the tracks around 1963. Neither has progressed since then. There have been no movements in either field (which pretty much merged by ca 1963) since then.

Your average well-educated classical/jazz person of today is not the same animal as existed in ca 1963. In ca 1963 you were dealing with professional individuals who were part of musical movements. Today you are dealing with enthusiasts, part-time weekend warriors, who keep up their chops, write and play because they enjoy it, but are not part of any great social and academic movement- hence the term "taxidermists". The horse is dead, but they've preserved the hide, and with the help of animatronics, are "riding" off into the sunset, having convinced themselves that the horse is alive and well.

Here is a perfect example of the corruption and erosion of the academic world:

Back in the 60's, the canon was set by the composers, who were also the top academicians of the day. In 1960 Hindemith was still alive, as was Ligeti, Khachaturian, Shostakovich, Messiaen, and several others. Walter Piston, also a composer, was putting out his books on Harmony, Counterpoint and Orchestration. Piston was something of a fruit-loop, and as he got older, his publications, especially on Harmony, got nuttier and nuttier.

What kept him in check was other academics, many of whom were his fellow composers. But when they finally all died off, he gave his nutty-ness free reign, and out came his notions of "tonicization" and I 6/4 as appoggiatura, which it is not.

Piston's theory of secondary dominants was a brilliant teaching tool, but useful beyond that it was not. At some point he went overboard, bought into his own method (he should've got out more, but instead spent his final days committing intellectual incest), and pressed for nutbar theories which have done a lot of damage and which are still widely accepted today.

I've singled out the I 6/4 as appoggiatura example for the sake of brevity, but since the 1980's have had to break too many students of this mental bad habit to count. Where analysis is concerned, where every example of a possible I 6/4 as appoggiatura you can show as "evidence", I can dig up ten more examples where it does NOT act as appoggiatura. For Piston's theory to be true, I 6/4 would have to be hard-wired into the human brain, when it is demonstrable that listening habits are a matter of bias based upon familiarity, meaning it is a learned thing. It may SEEM true to someone immersed in 19th century and earlier Harmony, but one could just as easily come up with theories that are no less nutty, based on theories of everything from secondary sub-dominants to the secret order of those who look for meaning in patterns of substituted chords that imply a whole other kind of hidden Harmony.

Wind back the clock to ca 1963, pull everyone's head out of their arse, and you had real work being done by real theorists. Ligeti's Requiem and other works managed to cross the theory-to-practice barrier and are still widely known today. This was also the high-water mark for avante garde jazz.

There have been no big unified social and cultural movements that have occurred since then. The Interweb doesn't count because it's only a vehicle, and as a vehicle, its members are all working in isolation. The term "internet culture" or "web culture" is by definition an oxymoron.

Gsmonks,

Thanks for ignoring everything I said. I am going to be charitable and assume you're very knowledgeable and a tremendous resource for someone who is formally studying jazz. That being said, I can definitely say that those who are being creative on the Internet are far from working in isolation. I scored a film in Seattle with a film crew in California while their CG effects person was in Bulgaria. The Internet has a culture, a vibrant and dynamic one, and I'm sorry you feel left out of it. You can decry the decline of academia all you like, but you are sounding fairly bitter and incoherent to me from across this particular generation gap. In either case, thanks for the responses from those who actually took the time to read my OP and for your continued help. For now, things are way off track and I'm outta here.

Now, let us all enjoy a performance of 4'33"

Markarian,

With all due respect you are way WAY too young to have ever seen that show.

And even if you have watched it ironically a few times on YouTube in your hipster search for "authenticity" you don't really understand it because you didn't watch it the way it was DESIGNED to be watched. On a REAL 20" TV with a curved CRT that smelled of ozone, a manual channel dial,only 9 minutes of commercials per hour and absolutely NOTHING else to watch because there was only one. other. channel!

You Millenials just have no. frigging. idea. what it was like.




Just kidding, ok, abandon thread.

There has been an interesting series on PBS about new classical music being written for video games. Some of it is pretty interesting. It's being done with the internet. The composers are often in multiple cities, the orchestra is somewhere else, and the game designers in another remote location. All are communicating over the internet and working interactively. No need for a venue!

There is plenty of young talent out there, they just don't show up much in the conventional old venues. When I was young Community Concerts sponsored student tickets for $1 at some rather unusual venues. Try getting a seat at any venue today for less than $40. Ticket prices are driving the venue shrinkage not the lack of talent.

Can 4'33" be performed on a parlor grand, or is a full concert grand needed to truly do it justice?

Just wanted to reply to this remark. This thinking is extremely offensive to professional technicians who have worked for years to be proficient at concert quality tuning, regulation and voicing. It takes years to become a top technician. This is a huge problem because 30 years ago a young tech could work for dealers, and tune home pianos in the suburbs to get the experience they need to start to become proficient for concert work. Now most of the work is for much more discriminating clients who are professional musicians. On the job training is inadequate because the majority of the paying clients wouldn't want someone who was just starting to learn. With dealers becoming scarce, the sea of floor stock that needs servicing is just not there for the beginning tech who is sharpening their skills.

….and I've got rocket scientists who pay handsomely for superior piano technical work.

Brava Sandy!

Discerning musicians are not necessarily professional musicians.

Agree wholeheartedly, Sally. And I do recognize and appreciate the skills and knowledge of an experienced and skilled tech, especially when they are as kind as you have been to me.

Well, due to your sarcasm, I'm not going to be charitable. You've obviously either misunderstood all I said or ignored it.

There is no forward progress in music in "Internet culture". THAT's the difference. Yes, the Interweb as a thing unto itself is moving forward, but the music (to isolate that one aspect) is not.

The underlying structure of music across the board is at a standstill, and has been since ca 1963. You apparently haven't a clue as to the full import of what Academia is all about if you think you can dismiss it as unimportant or irrelevant in terms of the underlying structure of music itself. You evidently have even less understanding of social movements.

In terms of "new blood", this is just as important for music itself (the nuts 'n' bolts of what makes it go) as it is for piano makers and tuners. It would take only the emergence of a small handful of pianists to emerge as popular figures in the public consciousness to turn things around, big-time.

Case in point: rockabilly 3/4 basses with cool paint jobs are selling like hotcakes right now. They're not works of art in terms of craftsmanship and durability, but the mere presence of hot interest inevitably results in a climate in which more bass players exist, and simply by virtue of sheer numbers, a percentage of them are looking for quality, and are trying to broaden their knowledge of bass-playing, which sends them in search of better-informed teachers. In short, in some areas the acoustic bass is doing very well right now, which translates into lots of work for repairmen and technicians.

Clarinet sales were probably at their all-time peak while Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw were in their heyday. In other words, demand and public perception go hand-in-hand.

The piano just isn't a "cool" instrument right now. What it will take to turn things around is the piano-player's version of the Big Bang Theory, which inspired lots of kids to seek a career in physics.

One thing that HAS to change, in the public perception, is a shift in the notion that a grand piano is just a stage-prop for singers, something like a microphone that is just there temporarily for the purpose. There's a world of difference between that, and someone coming out on stage with a model of guitar that everyone suddenly just has to own. A good many people take a good look at the guitar and can identify it. The piano, however, for most people, is just a big, black piece of furniture. It could say "John Deere" on it for all they care.

I disagree with this, due to the Lang-Lang Effect!

The piano is VERY Cool, at the moment! Tons of kids are taking lessons, and not just in China!

All these techs and tuners owe Lang-Lang some gratitude!