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It's Fun to Play the Piano ... Please Pass It On!
very interesting.. this is probably more info than most of you want to know, ...
recently i had a mastectomy. I play the organ and notice that my 'exposed' ribcage noticeably vibrated with the low 16' notes of the organ. I checked my other side of the ribcage and felt it vibrating too. I check it all the time.. i can feel vibrations of louder music through my hands, particularly on the piano.
there is a certain resonance.
check it on yourself and see.
accompanist/organist.. a non-MTNA teacher to a few
Pianos merely create soundwaves. So do electronic instruments, albeit in a different way.
It is the MUSICIAN that creates this resonance, emotion, feeling, that sense of being overcome by the music. I have felt it with pianos, the human voice, the violin, Aeolian pipes, and yes the electric guitar, and occasionally even electronic keyboards in the hands of great players.
Betty - you agree because it is what you want to hear I suspect. But open your mind and you may discover a different perspective.
I was interested in the Amsterdam details - thank you for that. My son is in fact at school in The Netherlands. He has had guitar lessons for a year (and learnt next to nothing from a truly hopeless old school teacher who is obsessed with technique) but is prgressing well now with a bew young guy. I have sat with the piano teacher and students for an hour or two. He is a nice guy - also rather old school so he is obsessed with note accuracy at the expense of enthusing his students. His own expressive ability is not amazing and I would say his ability pretty much tops out at ABRSM grade 8 equivalent. I am not sure how the Dutch music diploma system works but finding good teachers in Holland is incredibly difficult in my experience.
I would get my son to learn piano if I could find a brilliant teacher. I will teach him more advanced guitar myself when he is a bit older - and if he gets the bug.
Back on topic - it is pointless kidding ourselves that acoustic piano has much of a future. All we can do is try to keep some appreciation of it alive through our children.
The vibrations of the musical instrument are a gift to us from the universe. One needs to have some knowledge of the "Music of the Sphere's" in that the universe vibrates constantly everywhere, we just are not hearing all of it.
From your own instrument that you play, you are bathed in vibrations potentially condusive to your well being. In the other direction the instrument will provide harmful resonances to you: think of startling noises, horns in cars, crashes, airplanes overhead, earthquakes rumbling, etc. Noises of the modern world. Shopping malls, restaurants alive in distracting, clashing sounds.
How wonderful to find respite with a good instrument in a soulful voice and what good it can bring to us. Espressive, controlled, beneficial playing on a quality instrument - and you are a quality instrument, too.
If you (addressed to anyone) have no idea what I am talking about you might consider resourcing to create a balanced information bank with which to speak from.
Playing the piano well will bring these vibrations up through your fingertips as you play, but you have to linger on the key in anticipation for a second to feel the transfer.
Please read my Plato signature and imagine this is still true for our world. I believe it is.
This comment, I think, needs some rethinking IMHO...
Quote
The piano is possibly in terminal decline in popular music. It will inevitably persist in classical music but that is bound to be a minority market.
My experience, life, career, profession, and passion lead me to rephrase that quote into something like this:
"The piano will "possibly" be in terminal decline if we persist in trying to teach the majority of interested students classical music at the expense of popular music."
I'm sure that comment will probably start a firestorm here on the forums, which is not my intent at all...
My point is simply that the entire reason I have the career I have hosting an Emmy Award winning television show (we're going in to shoot seasons 11 and 12 in couple of months) and producing the books, videos, and other educational things we do, is because of the HUGE desire people have to play piano.
I categorically reject the notion that there is a lack of interested warm bodies able to sustain a healthy piano market. (and BTW, who cares if it is an acoustic or a digital, as long as we're creating lifelong happy music makers?)
The issue is that the huge desire a majority of these potential piano buyers have is to be taught how to play music of the modern era on the piano as opposed to classical techniques and repertoire.
Good or bad, right or wrong, (and we can debate the reasons ad nauseam,) the fact is that only a minority of these potential piano buyers have a desire to learn to play classical piano. Yet, to this day, the vast majority of piano education available to beginners funnels students right down the path toward "classicalville."
Accordingly, it should come as no surprise that guitars sell so well as they allow players to play music of our modern era fairly quickly. Go to a beginning guitar class and they have everyone playing some recognizable pop tune right from the start.
Give that same promise and ability to piano students and there will be no shortage of enthusiasts.
Thanks Scott, I was hoping you would chime in on this thread. Based on the success of your show and your products, I was pretty sure there is still a lot of interest in the piano.
I'd also like to address some comments made earlier in this thread.
It's true our 35,000+ registered members are not all "active" because many of them drop by to get some information and move on. (By the way, over 26,000 of them elected to still receive our newsletter, and all 35,000+ are still registered [they haven't chosen to leave]).
But what is that information they seek? Often times it's help decided what piano to purchase, or if their's is worth fixing, or where/how to get lessons.
Does this make them any less enthusiastic? I think not.
And while we don't have 35,000 people on the forums every day, we do have over 10,000 unique visitors EVERY DAY (actually over 11,000 unique visitors a day in September).
Our page views run into the millions every month.
These are all people with an interest in the piano. Sure, sales of acoustic pianos are down over years past (but digitals are up). Even so, many people who start with a digital move to an acoustic later in life.
And as for the comment that it takes "thousands of hours" to learn the piano, I think Scott might refute that statement.
It may take thousands of hours to become a professional, but it doesn't take much more time and effort to learn the basics than it does to learn to skate board or get good at computer games.
Those who insist on a negative view (the piano is dead) are not helping. Luckily those of us with a more "glass is half full" positive view can still help spread the joy of playing.
Piano Parties are one way, shows like Scott's are another. If you play piano, share it with your friends, invite them over, and let them know they could do it too if they really wanted to.
Every time I play for a group of (non members) people, I hear "I wish I could play like that", or "I've always wanted to play the piano".
My Keyboards: Estonia L-190, Roland RD88, Yamaha P-80, Bilhorn Telescope Organ c 1880, Antique Pump Organ, 1850 concertina, 3 other digital pianos ------------------------- My original piece on BandCamp: https://frankbaxtermrpianoworld.bandcamp.com/releases
Me banging out some tunes in the Estonia piano booth at the NAMM show...
However, making effective use of these amazing tools requires training in music theory combined with the ability to play the piano. I suspect there is precious little of either in today's pop music world and the results speak for themselves IMHO.
Starting Over,
I'll agree wholeheartedly with that. It drives me nuts when people infer that digitals are toys that require little more than pushing a few buttons. They present different challenges than acoustics, but there are challenges.
Probably the technology is running ahead of the ability to utilize it effectively. We can only hope that greater sophistication among listeners will demand higher standards. In the meantime, you could always change your membership to a different gym.
Frank - my thousands of hours reference was specifically for classical piano. It does indeed take that long to get to the point where desirable Concert Pianist repertoire begins to become accessible.
I also think you are to a degree deluding yourself with some of your statements about forum statistics. You make a point, for example, of members rarely leaving, stating that they have "chosen" to remain. This is obviously nonsense. Many of them, having dipped in, have simply chosen to ignore the forum and their membership rather than take the trouble of leaving. This applies to all active forums. Forum owners like to make reference to the iceberg of inactive members below the tiny peak of active ones - but the reality is that iceberg is frozen and most of those members are gone forever.
I also think that daily hits statistics have to be treated with great care as they can be hugely misleading. Those of us who are often approached to place internet advertising are well aware of some of these facts.
And there is a difference between having an optimistic view and a realistic one. Realism is not necessarily negative (as you have chosen to portray it) but simply recognizes practical reality.
The acoustic piano industry faces numerous hurdles in its struggle to survive. As well as musical fashion, economics, competition from cheap imports and digitals and so on, the reality is a dwindling customer base and minimal repeat business from people (such as most of those on here) who already own pianos.
Lots of folks on here like to chat about pianos - but only a minute percentage buy more than one or two in a lifetime.
Originally posted by Piano World: Luckily those of us with a more "glass is half full" positive view can still help spread the joy of playing.
Piano Parties are one way, shows like Scott's are another. If you play piano, share it with your friends, invite them over, and let them know they could do it too if they really wanted to.
Every time I play for a group of (non members) people, I hear "I wish I could play like that", or "I've always wanted to play the piano".
You know what? You can.
Indeed!
And I'll add that it's never too late. A common misconception is you must start as a child. I started at age 40. Sure, Carnegie Hall isn't begging me to appear but a music career of fame and fortune is not the point. Making music is the point, for yourself and for others around you.
Sure learning to play pianos is hard work, but it's immensely satisfying.
Originally posted by theJourney: Unfortunately, the piano store has all but disappeared from the high street in Amsterdam during the last 3 years. Cristofori, majestic on the Prinsengracht, with its funky emphasis on (unsellable for 99% of customers) electic German/European manufacture and active concert and master class scene is gone. Ypma and the Steinway Centre have moved from their prominent, plush, parquet-floored place on the Spui to a cold, low-rent concrete mall in a North Holland cheese town's cow pasture. The myriad of smaller tuner/technicus/one brand stores that were once scattered all across the city have mostly closed their doors.
What is left in Amsterdam proper? One very commercial and uninspired Yamaha dealer next to the ugliest concrete parking garage monstrosity ever built on the edge of the historic centre and one older, wildly unpredictable, on-the-edge-of-Alzheimer's dealer just south-east of the Albert Cuyp market. There are, however, signs of life: Bosendorfer has opened a renewed one-brand store across from the last-named store, there are several smaller businessmen who have started mini-showrooms off the visible path (e.g. behind the Spiegelgracht antique stores street) for Chinese grands with limited opening times of 2-3 days/week max. with the rest of the time being rented to piano teachers and for weekend concert series. Finally, there are several talented and dedicated piano restorers with their own workshops on the canals or in the new harbour development on the IJ.
As far as education is concerned, Amsterdam and Holland have found themselves in the last decade hurtling uncontrollably down the dead-end road of perdition of Anglo-Saxon-inspired utility theory and free market worship: privatising, pragmatising and reducing to soulless monetary terms all that comes in their path.
One must bear in mind that the Dutch have always considered school a place for academics, period. Sports, music, drama, etc. are seen as more appropriately taking place in charities, associations, clubs and private institutions. The public school associated but separate music schools have provided for decades quality, heavily subsidised music edcuation to school-age children of all socio-economic classes. However, government subsidies and support have been greatly reduced as part of the fashionable American philosophy and therefore access to music education has been greatly reduced. Making music on the piano or in a string trio, like reading the classics, or playing field hockey is more and more seen to be an elite activity where the rest of us just need to put our nose to the grindstone and focus on a pragmatic, job-oriented, narrow technical training so we can...MAKE LOTS OF MONEY!!! so that our grandchildren might be able to become rounded, renaissance individuals who can have the luxury of learning a musical instrument.
I agree with you 100%. What you said applies to Spain as well. Musical education is seen as some "useless" knowledge that is not necessary in the "real world". I for one, if/when i have children, will definitely encourage them to study music from a very young age. The benefits of this are so many , i think it is a actually a gift for the kids to have music loving and encouraging parents. Education standards , in Europe, are going downhill. I recently rejoined university to finish my second degree and you would not believe the spelling some of these soon to be graduates have. Absolutely outrageous. The elimination of the Music subject from high school programs is a sign of this educational system deterioration. We will end up having doctors who kow about Medicine but cannot spell right, culture is seen as some kind of unnecessary "plus" . I think that is absolutely terrible.
Having said all thsi , i still think the piano will outlast pretty much any other instrument, These days, dp s are affordable, and let s face it, if people learn piano on a dp, they will go for an acoustic (providing they can afford it) sooner or later.
categorically reject the notion that there is a lack of interested warm bodies able to sustain a healthy piano market. (and BTW, who cares if it is an acoustic or a digital, as long as we're creating lifelong happy music makers?)
The issue is that the huge desire a majority of these potential piano buyers have is to be taught how to play music of the modern era on the piano as opposed to classical techniques and repertoire.
Good or bad, right or wrong, (and we can debate the reasons ad nauseam,) the fact is that only a minority of these potential piano buyers have a desire to learn to play classical piano.
Yes, Scott! Yes!
You have gotten to the crux of the issue at hand, I think.
By the way, many of these beginners who go into piano to learn pop stop right there. But many develop a desire for more. As an analogy, nobody I know started drinking single malt whiskeys at 18 and enjoyed them. For many, classical music is a delicacy that needs to be accessible to them. Without somewhere to start from, a desire to hear or play classical music will not be there.
BUT - start playing the piano, begin to experience how cool it is, and some of those people will develop a taste for more. Some of those people (your students included Scott) have bought grand pianos from me and have gone on to "live" teachers. My wish (and I am a fan of yours Scott) is that you could expose people to just a little more carefully chosen, easily mastered classical music.
IMHO, it is not that classical is boring or hard to listen to (although some of it is) it is that so many people today have no frame of reference for it.
As an example, I took my daughter to a concert last night - all Haydn - which included a concerto for piano and a concerto for violin and piano. There were lots of kids there. This was a great show for kids because the music is easy for them to listen to. My daughter (and other kids there that I chatted with) loved the concert!
I would not have recommended an all Wagner evening to so many parents.
What these kids are doing is developing an experiencial base that can be built upon. They are developing a taste for music that they may otherwise never be exposed to. This is a challenge that every music teacher has to deal with on a consistent basis.
This is something that many adults (who may have grown up on Billy Joel and Bruce Hornsby) do for themselves or with a little prodding from a good teacher or mentor.
Unfortunately, I do not have the time to put into this post that it deserves, but I will check in later.
Originally posted by AJB: Frank - my thousands of hours reference was specifically for classical piano. It does indeed take that long to get to the point where desirable Concert Pianist repertoire begins to become accessible.
I also think you are to a degree deluding yourself with some of your statements about forum statistics. You make a point, for example, of members rarely leaving, stating that they have "chosen" to remain. This is obviously nonsense. Many of them, having dipped in, have simply chosen to ignore the forum and their membership rather than take the trouble of leaving. This applies to all active forums. Forum owners like to make reference to the iceberg of inactive members below the tiny peak of active ones - but the reality is that iceberg is frozen and most of those members are gone forever.
I also think that daily hits statistics have to be treated with great care as they can be hugely misleading. Those of us who are often approached to place internet advertising are well aware of some of these facts.
And there is a difference between having an optimistic view and a realistic one. Realism is not necessarily negative (as you have chosen to portray it) but simply recognizes practical reality.
The acoustic piano industry faces numerous hurdles in its struggle to survive. As well as musical fashion, economics, competition from cheap imports and digitals and so on, the reality is a dwindling customer base and minimal repeat business from people (such as most of those on here) who already own pianos.
Lots of folks on here like to chat about pianos - but only a minute percentage buy more than one or two in a lifetime.
Were you hit in the head by a grand piano lid when you were a child AJB? I have to wonder why you insist on refuting anything positive anyone has to say about pianos.
You also insist upon shooting down anything positive I say about our forums, yet you have chosen to make over 2000 posts yourself.
Perhaps we should have you recruiting for us, as you seem quite found of hanging out here.
I appreciate your warnings about the numbers I throw around. Having spent the last 10+ years building these forums, and working as an Internet Marketing consultant, I'm pretty familiar with how it all works, and what statistics are relevant.
Click the Statistics link at the top of the forums and you'll find that for the past 10 months the forums have been averaging over 2 million page views a month (except for a dip in Aug. when we switched over servers and lost some counts). That's just for the forums, not the other 1000+ pages of Piano World. And yes, they are true Page Views, not "hits". (Our hits run in the 28-30 million a month range). We generally transfer about 240GB of data a month.
As for how many people remain "active" in the forums, hard to tell. You see, the majority of people choose to watch rather than participate.
As an example, earlier this morning there were only 89 logged in users, but 460 "guests". Often times those "guests" are a combination of members who didn't bother to log in and people checking us out.
So, how do I really know how active our forums and our site overall are? I check my server logs every day, I read the AwStats reports on activities (unique visitors, pages viewed, paths taken, time spent on site, average number of pages per visitor, etc.), and I read the reports generated by our Google analytics.
I also monitor our position in natural search results on the major search engines. We enjoy top 10 rankings for tons of search terms related to the piano.
You see, for years PW was just a hobby for me, my livelyhood was from developing and marketing web sites with a special emphasis on Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, Statistical Analysis, and Ecommerce.
I developed and managed multi-million dollar projects for McGraw-Hill (the publishing giant), and consulted for companies like EDGAR online.
I know what Piano World is doing, because it's my business to know.
And by the way, you are correct that advertisers want to know what kind of traffic they can anticipate. And yes, there are sites that will try to inflate their numbers. That's a losers game because your advertisers will quickly learn you can't deliver, and leave.
And yes, I do sell advertising on PW. And you know what? Our advertisers are very happy with the results, to the point where I often hear "whatever you do, don't let our ad run out".
And the bottom line is, watching our traffic continually grow tells me we are seeing more and more people interested in the piano all the time.
My Keyboards: Estonia L-190, Roland RD88, Yamaha P-80, Bilhorn Telescope Organ c 1880, Antique Pump Organ, 1850 concertina, 3 other digital pianos ------------------------- My original piece on BandCamp: https://frankbaxtermrpianoworld.bandcamp.com/releases
Me banging out some tunes in the Estonia piano booth at the NAMM show...
That is quite a defensive reply Frank! It is because I knew that you make a living as an internet consultant that I was surprised that you make statements (for example) about people staying as members. It is true but it does not present a fair picture.
I am indeed a piano enthusiast: that much is pretty obvious from my large post count. However, I am also a businessman and a realist. Anyone can post statements about how everything in the garden is rosy - or at least pinkish - but we are deluding ourselves if we believe this stuff.
The acoustic piano industry in Europe and America is shrinking because demand has dramatically diminished. Very few dealers do anything positive to stimulate demand other than being reactive.
Let me tell you a personal story. A couple of years ago I tried to donate a good quality and immaculate eight year old grand piano to a local state school. I would have paid for delivery and I offered to do a deal with a tuner to maintain it properly for 5 years. The purpose of the piano was to enable pupils to take lessons and to provide support for school plays etc.
The school was concerned about finding piano teachers as their sole qualified music teacher was not a skilled pianist.
I tried to interest two reasonably local piano shops in sponsoring the deal by subsidizing some lessons and providing some music work books. The quid pro quo for them was that they could develop an opportunity to sell pianos (acoustic or digital) to parents of pupils taking lessons. I was trying to create a virtuous circle.
I also sold the idea to the parents committee, who were willing to allocate a few hundred pounds to a lessons fund.
Both dealers declined the opportunity as there was no clear link to sales.
The school declined the opportunity unless I would undertake to find teachers and underwrite funding if demand was low or parents defaulted on lesson fees. They also wanted me to insure the piano (which I was gifting to them). There is no legal requirement to insure the piano so to my mind they had nothing to lose.
I gave up at this point as it was clear that i was pushing water uphill.
I have tried pretty hard to do something positive to encourage piano education locally. I don't think I have ever posted about it here. This experience is one reason why I feel that chatter on forums such is this is simply the converted gossiping with the converted. We can all bask in a rosy glow but it is not doing much to deal with the decline.
That said I do think, Frank, that your forum is a positive thing (and I do not agree with an ex poster here who runs his own forum and who reckons PW damages the business).
Until dealers start to adopt a more lateral thinking approach to the business, I think the business will continue to shrink. It needs building up from the childhood level. Selling a few pianos to middle aged adults coming back to music, is not really a long term solution.
Both dealers declined the opportunity as there was no clear link to sales.
The school declined the opportunity unless I would undertake to find teachers and underwrite funding if demand was low or parents defaulted on lesson fees. They also wanted me to insure the piano (which I was gifting to them). There is no legal requirement to insure the piano so to my mind they had nothing to lose.
This is the kind of conservative thinking that holds many organizations back. It is quite common in schools, especially if administrators have little independence from central control. In my area, at least, most school principals are a little more entrepreneurial. I think your proposal might have flown.
Frank,
I too thought your post a touch defensive. You have made some good points about how to understand traffic on a website, but I don't think a good case is strengthened by adding weaker arguments or hyperbole. Over the years you have repeatedly used the member count as a signal of PW's strength. Yes, we really don't know exactly how many of those people are still here, but I think any reasonable person would regard that member count as a wild exaggeration of the real membership here. Continuing to report it as though the number itself has meaning (though many of those members joined eons ago and have left eons ago) just weakens the rest of your quite good case.
Frank B.I wish to thank you for this wonderful website.I hope you make lots of money here because you truly deserve it.Some people seem to think that providing a great service and resource should be just an altruist endeavor and nonprofit.I feel that I have been given great advice and knowledge here from many experienced posters and have not been pressured to spend a penny.I have found a couple of great books for my son through your posters and advertisers but I searched these out myself.Please keep up the good work.
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