Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum Piano with a built in screen

Screens are much less durable than pianos, so I'd like to see the electronic parts be easily replaceable here, but this looks neat:

https://www.facebook.com/baiwir/videos/10208562331403157/

That's very cool.

You'd think such a thing could be retrofitted to most pianos with a bit of work. Probably have to change out the fallboard assembly though.

WOW!!! When the sheet music popped up, I almost fell off my chair! That is super cool!

They could have made it with a touch screen, though (at least one of the multiple panels). The "keyboard" interface looks a bit clunky (pun intended).

It wouldn't be too hard to rig something up like that that wasn't quite as slick looking. The latest computers we're using where I work can take three monitors without any additional hardware or fussing around. That set-up looks like it might be two of the newer ultra-wide panels.

Having dealt with four-page fold-outs, I would find it difficult to read music spread all the way across the fallboard like that.

I took a look at my own piano with the idea of how something like this might be done. It would be easy to take the fallboard off. Unfortunately there's a support bar above the fallboard and between the two sides of the case that is set at the same distance from the back of the keys as the fallboard when it's up. That bar would need to go, and there doesn't seem to be any way to remove it without doing some damage, so I guess that's where my experiment ends.

Very slick!

This is a natural evolution, IMHO, of what has been a small but very cool trend within the piano industry. For instance, I believe my company was the very first to incorporate playback/arranging/ and sequencing capabilities, including a touch screen, into an acoustic piano. This version was hot for several years:

http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/1247594/1.html

Today we offer separate screens and custom capabilities, like in this video:



The FIND is pretty darn slick. For some reason I think this is just the screen that is being marketed, but I could be wrong. If anyone else knows more about this, please share.

In the end where going to look at screens all the time of the day :-) In the evening I already have headaches as a result...

I pull books of music off the shelf all of the time that are 30-40 years old. They work as well as the day I bought them, with every fingering and performance notation that I ever thought to add/change. I can see theoretical benefits to using electronic media (such as the ability to move page breaks), but I have no confidence in the longevity of electronic media.

Larry.

You can annotate electronic scores too. These days it's so easy to backup data in multiple locations, including the remote cloud, it's a more valid concern to worry about the longevity of books. They can be burned, water damaged, etc. Electronic media is as forever as it gets these days.

But I can understand people preferring the look and feel of paper - I certainly do.

I hear that argument all the time but, with due respect, I think it's fools' gold. My basement is full of obsolete electronic equipment and storage media, full of no-longer-supported software in obsolete, unreadable file formats. My Beethoven and Prokofiev from high school, however, are on the shelf behind the piano. Ready to go. I have more faith in the fire department than I have in "the cloud."

Larry.

One potential problem with touch screens is the "swipe" feature. If you swipe too quickly, you may skip a page or two as the pages slide by. Yet, when playing, you may have only a fraction of a second to swipe, so swiping more slowly may not be any better than turning the page of a printed score.

Regards,

So don't swipe at all....use this:
http://www.airturn.com/

We had it custom installed in all of our hybrid pianos.

I wasn't so much thinking of swiping for turning pages, as of touch screen to control the host of other features that seem to be accessed via the screen, but yes, that's a valid point.

Surely, however, it is possible to set some sort of auto-swipe either once the last note is played, or with a variable time before/after that event. If that can be managed on an iPad connected to a Clavinova...

(It seems to be indeed - based on Rich's post... which was made while I was in purgatory between one post and another).

Lol, you're showing your age there, Larry!

I can tell you that we are in a new age now. All files in use today are infinitely convertible to any new standard that comes along. They are the electronic equivalent of a sheet of paper - a grid with an image on it. It's incredibly ease to code and recode. The period you refer to was not a time of "open file architecture" it was a time of proprietary hardware and software and very limited compatibility and interoperability. It was also very immature technology so it was undergoing such rapid development that standards were not established like they are today. The humble jpeg image, for example, has been around for 23 years and it's still openable today. The fact that the world is now documenting every personal experience with the same technology ensures that such a format will never fall into disuse - and if we did adopt a new preferred format, it's incredibly easy to port it over.

But hey, you gotta do what's right for you.

It's in the wrong place, way too low. There are two problems. You have to look too far down, which is bad for your neck. It's where the fallboard should be, and is going to get fingernail scratches like fallboards do.

This should be an accessory than sits on the music desk, not a built-in.

I'll put my walker aside so that I can concentrate while you explain the universality of Henle Verlag's new digital file format (a publisher, BTW, that I love), that needs an app that won't run on any computer in my house, and wouldn't allow me to upload existing pdf files if I bought one.

Larry.

As you should......it's not uncommon that the 'cloud' fails, and plenty of people lose their data, revealing again every time that the cloud is actually "someone else's server," and should not be trusted.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of proprietary formats. PITA.

Larry,

Interestingly, the librarian for the Philadelphia Orchestra is a customer of mine. We have actually discussed the possibility of a major orchestra using Ipads and digital format for their music. His feelings? Never while he is in the position.

He is not afraid of technology, but he does not ever want to be responsible for some type of failure of a system. They have a tremendous library of music and they rent what they do not own. He feels that introducing digital formats would only bring with it more potential problems.