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Front Porch Chit Chat
- Thread starter Double R
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I'd love to play the piano like that....or even half as good as this pianist.
All it takes is a piano and practice.
Before my ugly divorce, I found a beautiful 120 year old piano, that was a wreck. I hired piano movers, who delivered it into my garage. For 3 months, I restored it to its original beauty and even gold plated the foot pedals. THEN, the divorce came. I left the piano with "her." The day she sold the house, I saw this beautiful piano cut up in pieces in the backyard. That was the end of my piano days.
Wow, I didn't mean to make such a depressing post, but darn, that piano had hundred's of hours of love into it!
Wow, I didn't mean to make such a depressing post, but darn, that piano had hundred's of hours of love into it!
Probably why she destroyed it.
Hate that things went sour and also that your hard work was destroyed. I put around 1500 hours into making a master violin so I know the love and spiritual journey that building or repairing an instrument can be.
I have two pianos and have been practicing. The pianos must be broken.
I love to watch a good player but I didn't care for the arrangement.
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I have a piano that needs a home. Haven't been able to give it away.
Pianos are going the way of the dodo bird in N. America. Electric pianos have taken over in a much smaller market. They are smaller, can use earphones and are light weight.
I don't like them even though some of the newer high end ones are fairly decent. No one can tell me the sound and touch are equivalent.
I don't like them even though some of the newer high end ones are fairly decent. No one can tell me the sound and touch are equivalent.
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Pianos, Organs, and sewing machines are becoming very cheap. More supply than demand. When I lived in Ohio in 2010 I could have taken a 16 ft trailer and gone to Dayton and from Craigslist alone filled the trailer with FREE pianos. No one plays and no one sews. It's a shame but I'm going to be picking up some sewing machines and probably a piano also. I already have an Electric organ. Lowrey I think? I cleaner it up in the shop tonight and will brin git to the house for a conversation piece anyway. Not much demand for we of common sense either!
I had one that was made in 1911 that was in great condition, well tuned and was made during the makers best years. It was an upright Grand and sounded amazing. Took a month but I did get a taker. They came to pick it up and didn't believe me when I said it would require 4 STRONG men to move it. We got it out and in the truck but it was definitely not easy.
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I should have seen all this coming. In 2007 my wife and I bought a 1923, Kingsbury, Saloon piano from Goodwill, in Tulsa for $50. We lived in Ohio, near Dayton (I know that sounds like I just said Ohio was near Dayton. lol) in 2010. I have room for one now again. I think I will check FT Smith Craigslist. They have a Kimball Piano dealer there and used to command a pretty good market. I'd pick one up just for the heck of it.
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Well, it's not even 9:30 and Pearl is pooped out!
Everyone have a good night, see you tomorrow!!
Everyone have a good night, see you tomorrow!!
Sweet dreams sweet folks 
Walked outside this morning to take a picture of this gun and found this on the porch
Zoom in
Zoom in
Is that your cat, or is it a neighborhood stray? Or did someone dump it off?
Careful... if ya feed 'em, they'll probably never find a better offer. LOL!!
I fed one... ONE... a couple of years ago, out of pity. This morning, there are twelve at the dish. One thing we don't have is a rodent problem, though, so they are useful. Ours are strictly barn cats, though. Never in the house, no $500 trips to the vet, none of that. They're here, they can stay as long as they're not destructive, and they can leave at any time. (And they do leave. They tend to wander off and don't come back. Some stick much closer to home. They're not really pets, though some are quite friendly.) We've had a couple that have gotten new homes (one of them a spoiled rotten house cat, and there are videos...), and a few that were rehomed as barn cats. They are very good hunters and we often see them with small rodents. Even occasionally see one with a full sized gray squirrel.
On your way to Wingnut's house, stop by my place so I can cuddle them!! How sweet!!
I never was one for human babies, but there is just something about kittens!!
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Pianos have gone out of fashion. Schools and churches try to give them away because they take up space and get used so little.
When I was growing up, I taught myself to play the piano when I would visit my friends. I went through a couple books, but would have loved to learn to play better. I had a piano for a while, but even though my home is almost 2,000 square feet, the rooms are small and it almost needed its own room, with these small ones. I ended up giving it away.
Drop it off at Frodo's house! Don't scare the kitties!
Unless it's something special (like a 6'+ grand), they are getting kinda hard to find homes for. And even for those big grands, generally someone has to want them badly enough and be a fairly skilled pianist to actually do what it takes to own and take care of one.
I used to work on 'em. Tuned, repaired, rebuilt. I suppose I could still be doing that kinda stuff if I wanted to but I really don't. There is still work out there for those who hang on to the real thing but it's getting to be more and more prevalent for some kind of electronic keyboard to have taken its place. And I can appreciate that. A real grand piano takes up a lot of space. A real piano needs tuned pretty regularly, sometimes several times a year for someone who is a serious player that wants it to sound top notch. Plus some more stuff.
Some of the electronic stuff is pretty darned good these days. I own several of those electronic ones. Then again, I do some "gigging" which means I move at least one of 'em around with me, along with some PA equipment. It's always in tune and I know exactly what it's gonna sound like. It ain't a real piano, I know. But it ain't too bad, either. The three I have are 80 pounds (don't like carrying that one anymore), 50 pounds (the new workhorse), and 30 pounds (a little too light duty and isn't gonna hold up over time to heavy use, but it's my "spare tire".) They all have many sounds but they all will play a better sound than a cheap uncared for real piano. $100k concert grand? No. But you need a crew to move it, a tech to take care of it, and a place to put it. Mine fits in a flight case with a handle I can carry or roll on wheels (like a large piece of luggage) and they would range between $1500 for the cheapest to $2500 for the most expensive of what I own. One of them is 19 years old and still plays very well and sounds good. Like the real thing, prices range from a few hundred dollars for stuff I wouldn't really wanna take too seriously to $10k setups that are worthy of studio level work, where a listener would not know it wasn't a real $100k instrument. Usually those expensive ones are quite heavy as well, though, and don't work so well for people like me who wanna move them around a lot.
Sometimes I miss working on pianos. But not too often.
I still play music, doesn't matter to me if it says Steinway or Roland. 
. 
One of the wife’s cats
My church has a Yamaha electric piano on a stand. I can't tell the difference between that thing and a baby grand and it cost around a thousand bucks. The church has a Roland electronic drum kit too. I haven't ever tried to play it, but it sounds good. I should give it a try sometime. I haven't been behind a drum kit since the late 90s...Unless it's something special (like a 6'+ grand), they are getting kinda hard to find homes for. And even for those big grands, generally someone has to want them badly enough and be a fairly skilled pianist to actually do what it takes to own and take care of one.
I used to work on 'em. Tuned, repaired, rebuilt. I suppose I could still be doing that kinda stuff if I wanted to but I really don't. There is still work out there for those who hang on to the real thing but it's getting to be more and more prevalent for some kind of electronic keyboard to have taken its place. And I can appreciate that. A real grand piano takes up a lot of space. A real piano needs tuned pretty regularly, sometimes several times a year for someone who is a serious player that wants it to sound top notch. Plus some more stuff.
Some of the electronic stuff is pretty darned good these days. I own several of those electronic ones. Then again, I do some "gigging" which means I move at least one of 'em around with me, along with some PA equipment. It's always in tune and I know exactly what it's gonna sound like. It ain't a real piano, I know. But it ain't too bad, either. The three I have are 80 pounds (don't like carrying that one anymore), 50 pounds (the new workhorse), and 30 pounds (a little too light duty and isn't gonna hold up over time to heavy use, but it's my "spare tire".) They all have many sounds but they all will play a better sound than a cheap uncared for real piano. $100k concert grand? No. But you need a crew to move it, a tech to take care of it, and a place to put it. Mine fits in a flight case with a handle I can carry or roll on wheels (like a large piece of luggage) and they would range between $1500 for the cheapest to $2500 for the most expensive of what I own. One of them is 19 years old and still plays very well and sounds good. Like the real thing, prices range from a few hundred dollars for stuff I wouldn't really wanna take too seriously to $10k setups that are worthy of studio level work, where a listener would not know it wasn't a real $100k instrument. Usually those expensive ones are quite heavy as well, though, and don't work so well for people like me who wanna move them around a lot.
Sometimes I miss working on pianos. But not too often.
Pop pop tUnless it's something special (like a 6'+ grand), they are getting kinda hard to find homes for. And even for those big grands, generally someone has to want them badly enough and be a fairly skilled pianist to actually do what it takes to own and take care of one.
I used to work on 'em. Tuned, repaired, rebuilt. I suppose I could still be doing that kinda stuff if I wanted to but I really don't. There is still work out there for those who hang on to the real thing but it's getting to be more and more prevalent for some kind of electronic keyboard to have taken its place. And I can appreciate that. A real grand piano takes up a lot of space. A real piano needs tuned pretty regularly, sometimes several times a year for someone who is a serious player that wants it to sound top notch. Plus some more stuff.
Some of the electronic stuff is pretty darned good these days. I own several of those electronic ones. Then again, I do some "gigging" which means I move at least one of 'em around with me, along with some PA equipment. It's always in tune and I know exactly what it's gonna sound like. It ain't a real piano, I know. But it ain't too bad, either. The three I have are 80 pounds (don't like carrying that one anymore), 50 pounds (the new workhorse), and 30 pounds (a little too light duty and isn't gonna hold up over time to heavy use, but it's my "spare tire".) They all have many sounds but they all will play a better sound than a cheap uncared for real piano. $100k concert grand? No. But you need a crew to move it, a tech to take care of it, and a place to put it. Mine fits in a flight case with a handle I can carry or roll on wheels (like a large piece of luggage) and they would range between $1500 for the cheapest to $2500 for the most expensive of what I own. One of them is 19 years old and still plays very well and sounds good. Like the real thing, prices range from a few hundred dollars for stuff I wouldn't really wanna take too seriously to $10k setups that are worthy of studio level work, where a listener would not know it wasn't a real $100k instrument. Usually those expensive ones are quite heavy as well, though, and don't work so well for people like me who wanna move them around a lot.
Sometimes I miss working on pianos. But not too often.
Doing that job is not a common job I figure you know most of the other people on that profession
I had a friend in Florida who worked on those huge pipe organs, was wondering if you know him or heard of him
Gary Etheridge hell of a good guy and funny as hell. We were sitting in his travel trailer ( he used during the week) and he says I was a dancer in the original Mary popping movie, I just rolled my eyes and said yeah ok
He pops in a vcr tape and there he is on the roof singing and dancing. Interesting guy
Probably because it is cheaper to buy a new one than to ship an older one. Unless you're looking at a Bösendorfer, Steinway or other high end grand. Now if THAT's what you are trying to give away, PM me. Please! The high end Bösendorfers can cost more than my house.
I have a Yamaha acoustic and a Roland digital. I prefer playing on the Roland. The Roland's sound - heard through quality studio monitor headphones (a big caveat) - is fantastic. Digital pianos do not sound good through their built in speakers, or through pretty much any external speaker in my experience. But through appropriate headphones, the sound of a high end digital can be fantastic. But "studio monitor headphones" are critical. These have a totally flat frequency response. Good studio monitor headphones do not have to be expensive. For $100 you can get a pair of Sony MDR-7506's. Chances are good that the movie you are watching, or the recording you are listening to, was mastered using these very headphones (or their earlier incarnation, the V6). They are a workhorse in the industry, and the headphones that I use myself. You also have to look at the polyphony of a digital piano. This is how many notes can sound at once. A cheap toy piano might have a max polyphony of 32, good ones have quite a bit more. Mine has 128 polyphony, and they go even higher than that. Which might seem like overkill since there are only 88 keys on a piano (a few more on a special edition Bösendorfer). But there are cases where you are using lots of sustain and playing glissandos where you may have the same note sounding in multiple contexts at the same time. So more polyphony is better. You want a note to stop sounding when YOU want it to stop sounding. Not when the digital piano runs out of resources to make it sound.
As far as the touch of a digital, that depends on the quality of the piano. Cheap ones that typically sit atop an X stand can be horrible (other than high end stage pianos, that also happen to sit on X stands for portability). Every piano's feel is different from every other piano, even within the same brand. With a digital piano, something that has "weighted keys" is certainly going to be better than something that does not (and if it doesn't even advertise weighted keys, it's just a toy). But there are horrible implementations of weighted keys and exquisite implementations of weighted keys. It depends on how they implement the "weight". Also, does this weighting vary along the octaves as it does on an acoustic piano? You also have to look at the pedals. Cheap digitals only have one - a sustain pedal (a.k.a. damper pedal). And even if a cheap piano has one of these, the stupid thing is a simple on/off switch. Real sustain pedals are not like that - they are a continuous spectrum - the further you depress the pedal the less damping you get. Then you have the soft pedal (a.k.a. una corda pedal). Despite the name of "soft", on a grand piano this is not just a "volume reducer" (but it is exactly that on some non-grand pianos). Each note on a piano is not a single string that is struck. It is a pair of strings. One some pianos, mostly from Germany/Austria, it is three strings on the lower notes. The soft pedal on a grand piano actually moves all the hammers so that they only strike one of the pair of strings. You can see this on a grand piano as the keys physically move to the side under your fingers. This can be disconcerting at first for new pianists. One string is going to make less sound than two strings, hence the "soft" name. But the character of the sound changes too. The piano sounds different with the soft pedal down, and not just because it's a little quieter. The third pedal is used by advanced pianists. This is the one in the middle. Named the sostenuto pedal. A lot of non-grand pianos do away with this third pedal since many pianists don't know how to use it. Or some pianos include it, but it's a dummy pedal that does nothing. So your piano looks like a high end grand, but it's just a fake pedal. You can think of the sostenuto as a "selective damper pedal". It only raises the dampers on notes that are currently being held down. The technique is: strike the chord, while your fingers are holding the notes down, depress the sostenuto pedal to sustain those notes, then you can play other notes after that and they will NOT be sustained (contrast this to the damper pedal that just raises all dampers unconditionally until you release it). Sostenuto pedal is an advanced technique, and a bit like rubbing your head while patting your belly. It is only needed for some advanced pieces. Debussy pieces can sometimes benefit from it, but it is not required - you can kind of fake it by "flutter pedaling" instead. You may notice this technique when the performers foot on the damper pedal is rapidly going up/down/up/down. It helps keep notes from "smearing" together. Which can sound really bad if they are adjacent notes. Very discordant.
Anyway, enough about piano design and implementations. My point was intended to be (before I got carried away) that a good digital piano allows all kinds of advanced techniques, has a wonderful feel, sounds great (through good headphones!), and is nothing even remotely resembling a cheap digital piano. Your starting price point for a good digital is multi-thousands. And they go way up from there. That $479 special at Walmart ... I wouldn't even call it a piano. It's a "kid's keyboard". Nothing wrong with that if that's what you are in the market for. But don't compare digital pianos against that standard. Also, buying a cheap keyboard for a kid "to learn piano on" may not be a wise investment. If they are actually learning piano and not just messing around, they will outgrow it and realize it is more of a toy than a piano within a year.
Somewhere around here there MAY be an 88 key weighted key roland electronic keyboard. The wife complained for years we didn't have a piano . I bought her a really nice keyboard, she played it ONCE. I learned I have ZERO musical talent . At least it's easy to store, wherever it is
. I bought her a really nice keyboard, she played it ONCE. I learned I have ZERO musical talent . At least it's easy to store, wherever it is 
