The one in that picture (from the article) looks like it’s a 6 1/2 foot baby grand - it might be the Knabe mentioned in the article. At any rate, I can’t tell anything about it’s present condition, but it was quite possibly a worthwhile instrument at some point in its life.
And no, I cannot stress enough, I am not a concert pianist. Concert singer, concert guitarist, yes; pianist, not fuckin’ likely, mate! 
My point about that the link I posted to is the high end of digital samples. $500 gets you four really top end pianos recorded in an excellent venue. Spend the money on a nice weighted MIDI keyboard with a good feel. Then you have a world of well-recorded pianos available to you, rather than just one sound.
My point of view is that of the sound engineer would would much rather get an excellent piano sound from a sampled instrument than having to mic one on stage, with all the attendant feedback, leakage and tuning problems. My view is mostly from the rock, pop, jazz and blues world, and I don’t have much contact with the classical world. But the world in which I work, I see a lot of shells that look like a grand piano, but collapse to fit into a trailer.
The idea of tossing out pianos just kinda bums me out. Keyboards are nice, they have some awesome samples (Got Sample Tank at home and it does rather well) but there is nothing like banging away on a baby grand. Even if you can’t play, like me.
On that note, I will at some point inherit a baby grand. It is a 1902 Steinway IIRC. My Mom has it now and she got it from her Mom. I am now the only musician in the family besides Mom so I will end up with it.
Slee
Even for pianos which have a chance of becoming rehabilitated – a Rhodes or (if you have forever to work on it) a Wurlitzer EP of some stripe – I don’t care much. I’ll always keep my 1976 Rhodes 73 stage – it’s a good one, with a good action – and my 19xx 720A Wurlitzer EP, also a good one. But I been through about two other Wurlitzers people bought off me just because they looked cool – good luck unless the new owners are going to replace pretty much every single part.
Acoustic Pianos? They get old and just plain worn out, is what I understand. It’s not like putting some need reeds/tonebars/tines on them – the string tension is so high that they just canna take it anymore. No, a digital is not the same, no matter what quality. It’s not the sound of digitals or high-volume samples that is a problem – it’s that you have to turn on your speakers+amp and whatever else. An acoustic, you can just get on it and go, even if it’s a POS. And it’s also the fingers coming right back to your ears. Maybe some multi-multi-thousand dollar sound amp+speaker can do it close – obviously no one gives a shit for live – I’m talking for the serious player looking to shed or just try for inspiration. Not happening.
But OTOH look at the bebop and hard bop cats recorded from home parties and stuff – they can make that shit sound good. I think kids are getting spoiled from having perfect (stretched) tune and same plastic action, and not learning how to get some music from a dog of a piano. It’s half fun and half frustration, but that’s how everyone else learned.
I call shenanigans. On a mastered recording, the works – c’mon. Ten years ago the best ears in the business couldn’t tell the difference between a sampled (GIGAsampled IIRC) Rhodes and the real thing set up by a real pro.
On a recording, you can’t tell shit. Not you personally, but anyone. Think. Think about it. Reverb. Compression at least at the mastering stage. You can’t be serious.
If anything, at any rate, it’s a single-blind test so maybe, maybe, the performer played a bit differently. You have no idea what the quality of the samples – and let’s even let sampling slide, let’s talk modeling as well which is, AFAIC, a mature technology – is today. It is fucking high. High quality. Better tone than, I’d bet, 96% of the concert pianos on the stage today back to Gettysburg. No “tricky” notes to avoid, no buncombe octaves.
ETA if anyone knows, it’ll be the performer. Any audience will know two things: jack and shit.
Sorry, but this is in the realm of audiophile-land, the land of $2000 speaker cables and Tice clocks. Having speakers and an amp is an advantage, not a disadvantage - it allows the player to play whenever inspiration strikes without the problem of disturbing the neighbors.
Again, a sample is a digital recording of a piano. Have you ever been moved by a recording by a talented player? Then you have been moved by a digital recording of notes. And that is all a sample is. The distinction is that the sample package is all the notes of a piano, recorded especially well, at varying distances from the instrument, at multiple velocities, with varying levels of pedal, with the lid open varying amounts - a huge amount of information.
only a limited number of people have musical ability. Only a limited number of those people have the ability to afford an expensive musical instrument. When quality apparently is 50 to 100 thousand fucking dollars, what do you expect?
or the older item because it’s older.
I totally get where Le Ministre is coming from. Again from a guitarist’s standpoint: 1950’s Les Pauls go for tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. Would an audience know? Nah - geeks would geek out but just be spouting geekery. In front of a big crowd, a decent modern Gibson Historic is more than enough.
But in a quiet moment, when you are alone, does a specific, special instrument matter? Jeez, oh hell yes.
I see the value of standard non- digital pianos the same way - they aren’t convenient but they have a special connection that a digital can’t replicate. Now, are those the pianos being destroyed? Hopefully not but I see my share of great old guitars that got compromised so nothing would surprise me…
it is even difficult to donate pianos these days.
the mini upright that my mother proudly bought in the late 70’s hit the untunable state. i ended up using it at a tv stand because there was no where to donate/sell/send it to the farm. it was way, way too heavy for me to move.
thankfully when i sold the house to a contractor he told me to leave anything i wanted. i do wonder how many people it took to take the piano out.
i do hear from time to time about cabinet makers who use old upright to make mantles and other furniture out of old pianos. unfortunately i didn’t find one for my piano.
I had the same experience with a Boesendorfer–playing a simple chord on one just about brought tears to my eyes. But the one I played was on sale for just over $100K. I don’t think there will be a time in my lifetime when exorbitantly-priced grands stop being made by companies like that–there is always going to be a market for high-end craftsmanship among the super-wealthy. And I’m pretty confident that there aren’t many Boeseys being busted up into firewood.
What’s really disappearing are the little consoles that just about every house had when I was growing up. A digital is going to be a better choice in just about every objective way…but I have a lot of nostalgia for those. I love that they all sound a little different, they all feel different, and even the way they’re always just a little bit out of tune or have a weak key or two. They have personality. Whenever I went to someone’s house I’d always try to find an excuse to sit down and play to get to know that piano.
The one I learned on belonged to my great grandmother, who got it from a church somewhere. It has had panels replaced and all sorts of jury-rigging done to it over the years. It sounds like it’s made out of concrete blocks. I love it.
All that said, I have a digital because I don’t really have a room in my house I’m willing to rearrange around a piano.
Sure you can. You just need to find Middle Sea.
Horseshit gaffa. I respect your experience, but we’re not talking about interconnects and AC cables – these are musical instruments. All I’m talking about is feel, sound, and how both those elements interact.
And more importantly there’s an ad one to acoustic for convenience – if I want to just jam on the Rhodes or the Hammond, tubes have to warm up. If just my little digital 88, I still have to flick on the powered monitor. There’s something good and convenient about just going when it’s all ready, and it is always ready if it’s an acoustic.
Please note I’m saying there’s zero advantage to “authentic” instruments from a sonic standpoint – it’s just for the convenience and comfort of the player. It’s kind of nice, and it probably teaches people how to play with limitations inherent to beat-out-to-shit pianos.
What Le Ministre de l’au-delà is talking about, sympathetic resonance (which occurs when you strike a key while the sustain pedal is depressed, allowing the strings to all vibrate freely), is not something that can be effectively sampled. Which is why modern sample libraries/keyboards model the sympathetic resonance. Just want to clarify.
Actually, they do that now. Not to argue that there isn’t an effective difference between a great piano and a sample library, but just to point out that they do get quite close. Frankly, the biggest ‘problems’ in getting it right are in adjusting the velocity sensitivity (which most people don’t bother to do, but which can be quite effective in coming closer to a ‘real’ experience) and in getting the feel of the sound radiating out from a giant wooden board in front of you. That one will probably remain out of reach for the ‘digital’ world.
But, at any rate, in this day and age a digital keyboard is going to be a much better choice for most casual players for reasons that are stated above. I started learning on a Yamaha digital piano (my parents bought me an ancient upright later in high school; not a great piano for classical because of how the action responds, but a sweet rocker), and I am very glad I had that instead of a small spinnet or poorly-kept upright. I’ve played on too many that have no key depth, no dynamic range, and can’t stay in tune over more than a few octaves. I probably would have given up on the instrument had I started with one of those.
I’m open to being convinced. Any particular piece of music that shows sympathetic resonance particularly well?
If you learn to play on an electronic piano, will you be able to play a mechanical piano as well as if you had learned on that? Does anybody know?
Well, learning how to “work” a tube amp is VERY different vs a digital amp, so I assume that the answer is yes - more nuance and idiosyncrasy.
If it’s an actual electric piano, meaning 88 keys, velocity, pedals, sustain/decay, and otherwise an emulation of a piano and not just a 32 key electric keyboard that may or may not have the say size keys as a piano… up to a certain point, yes. For casual playing it probably makes no difference. For professional concert pianist not so much.
For all of the “acoustic pianos are for people with money” types: brand new pianos can often be rented for $80-100 month. A decent digital keyboard will run probably around $1200, which is equal to a year of renting the “real thing”: that’s enough time to tell whether your kids will keep at it, and whether you want an actual piano in your house or whether a digital keyboard will suffice. Yes, you will need to pay to have the rented piano tuned, but that should only be required twice a year – and a standard tuning only runs ~$150.
In short, in most places money is not an excuse for not having a real piano in your house.
To expand on what Broomstick said: I learned to play on acoustic pianos, but in the fall of 1998 I bought a Kurzweil PC88 digital keyboard: 88 full-size weighted keys, sustain pedal, really nice sampling, etc. Basically I went into the store and said, “I want the closest thing to an acoustic piano that I can afford.” I think it cost around $1600 new. That’s all I played between then and March of this year: I started renting a Yamaha upright, and discovered that I’d lost much of my dynamics. The feel of the acoustic piano is only a little different, but it’s enough that I’m still working on getting my dynamics and expression back. And I am not a concert pianist by any means: I’ve been playing the piano since I was 7 years old, but am an intermediate player at best.
That kind of difference might not matter to some/most people, but IMO the simple answer to your question is “no.”
Money isn’t the main consideration; as I understand OK second-hand pianos can be had for little. Convenience is.
The difference is between an instrument that requires much effort by several adults to even move out of a room, and one that a kid could carry; between one that takes up a resonable floorspace permanently and one that can be put away; and between one that requires regular maintenace by specialists and one that doesn’t.
For most families, this is a major consideration, particularly as most who are not music specialists can’t really tell the difference in sound quality, and it is no wonder that acoustics are losing ground for them.