Nitpick alert: I believe pianos used to be a lot more common. There was a time when they were a major source of at-home music. On the other hand, the population was much smaller then, so maybe the effects cancel out.
I wonder. Pianos are still really expensive. They’re very bulky, need skilled maintenance and tuning, use special high-tension wires, and so on. Even if technological progress, outsourcing manufacture to China etc haven’t reduced the real price of pianos, the world is also much wealthier now and more able to afford buying pianos. Another issue is the growth of the piano as the standard Prestigious Instrument for the college arms races (vastly more of the population goes to college now than in 1900) or signaling high culture or modernity (in the case of East Asia); how many pianos do you suppose there are scattered now across the USA compared to 1800? Or in Japan and China and South Korea compared to 1900?
And on the other side, people used to make music at home, yes—but for that there are many cheaper, more portable, more durable alternatives, such as cut-down versions of pianos.
Concert grands, yes, but who has room for one of those? Try selling an old upright piano when clearing a deceased relative’s estate. In the UK, you’re more likely to have to pay someone to take it away, and it will just go to a scrapheap. Of course, that’s present day, and one reason no-one wants an old piano is that you can get a better electronic one new for a few hundred pounds.
But back in Victorian times, as Nancy says elsethread, a piano was a standard feature of a Victorian parlor, and that went further down the social scale that you are imagining, and lasted at least through the first half of the twentieth century. Even better-off working people might have one, though not the factory drudges living in slums. It may have been different in the US though.
Concert grands, yes, but who has room for one of those? Try selling an old upright piano when clearing a deceased relative’s estate.
Certainly: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/arts/music/for-more-pianos-last-note-is-thud-in-the-dump.html?_r=2&ref=arts But like diamonds (I have been told that you cannot resell a diamond for anywhere near what you paid for it), and perhaps for similar reasons, I don’t think that matters to the production and sale of new ones. That article supports some of my claims about the glut of modern pianos and falls in price, and hence the claim that there may be unusually many pianos around now than in earlier centuries:
With thousands of moving parts, pianos are expensive to repair, requiring long hours of labor by skilled technicians whose numbers are diminishing. Excellent digital pianos and portable keyboards can cost as little as several hundred dollars. Low-end imported pianos have improved remarkably in quality and can be had for under $3,000. “Instead of spending hundreds or thousands to repair an old piano, you can buy a new one made in China that’s just as good, or you can buy a digital one that doesn’t need tuning and has all kinds of bells and whistles,” said Larry Fine, the editor and publisher of Acoustic & Digital Piano Buyer, the industry bible.
At least, if we’re comparing against the 1700s/1800s, since the article then goes on to give sales figures:
So from 1900 to 1930, the golden age of piano making, American factories churned out millions of them. Nearly 365,000 were sold at the peak, in 1910, according to the National Piano Manufacturers Association. (In 2011, 41,000 were sold, along with 120,000 digital pianos and 1.1 million keyboards, according to Music Trades magazine.)
(Queen Victoria died in 1901, so if this golden age 1900-1930 also populated parlors, it would be more accurate to call it an ‘Edwardian parlor’.)
We got ~$75 for one we picked up out of somebody garbage in a garage sale, and given the high interest we had in it, probably could have gotten twice that. (Had an exchange student living with us who loved playing the piano, and when we saw it, we had to get it—it actually played pretty well, too, only three of the chords needed replacement. It was an experience loading that thing into a pickup truck without any equipment. Used a trash length of garden hose as rope and a -lot- of brute strength.)
I was basing my notion on having heard that a piano was a standard feature of a Victorian parlor. The original statement of the problem just specifies a piano, though I grant that the cartoon version requires a grand or baby grand. An upright piano just wouldn’t be as funny.
These days, there isn’t any musical instrument which is a standard feature in the same way. Instead, being able to play recorded music is the standard.
Thanks for the link about the lack of new musical instruments. I’ve been thinking for a while that stability of the classical orchestra meant there was something wrong, but it hadn’t occurred to me that we’ve got the same stability in pop music.
I was basing my notion on having heard that a piano was a standard feature of a Victorian parlor.
Sure, but think how small a fraction of the population that was. Most of Victorian England was, well, poor; coal miners or factory workers working 16 hour days, that sort of thing. Not wealthy bourgeoisie with parlors hosting the sort of high society ladies who were raised learning how to play piano, sketch, and faint in the arms of suitors.
An upright piano just wouldn’t be as funny.
Unless it’s set in a saloon! But given the low population density of the Old West, this is a relatively small error.
That article treats all forms of synthesis as one instrument. This is IMO not an accurate model. The explosion of electronic pop in the ’80s was because the technology was on the upward slope of the logistic curve, and new stuff was becoming available on a regular basis for artists to gleefully seize upon. But even now, there’s stuff you can do in 2013 that was largely out of reach, if not unknown, in 2000.
But even now, there’s stuff you can do in 2013 that was largely out of reach, if not unknown, in 2000.
Have any handy examples? I find that a bit surprising (although it’s a dead cert that you know more about pop music than I do, so you’re probably right).
I’m talking mostly about new things you can do musically due to technology. The particular example I was thinking of was autotune, but that was actually invented in the late 1990s (whoops).
But digital signal processing in general has benefited hugely in Moore’s Law, and the ease afforded by being able to apply tens or hundreds of filters in real time. The phase change moment was when a musician could do this in faster than 1x time on a home PC. The past decade has been mostly on the top of the S-curve, though.
Nevertheless, treating all synthesis as one thing is simply an incorrect model.
Funny coincidence. About a week ago I was telling someone that people sometimes give autotune as an example of a qualitatively new musical/aural device, even though Godley & Creme basically did it 30+ years ago. (Which doesn’t contradict what you’re saying; just because it was possible to mimic autotune in 1979 doesn’t mean it was trivial, accessible, or doable in real time. Although autotune isn’t new, being able to autotune on an industrial scale presumably is, ’cause of Moore’s law.)
Nitpick alert: I believe pianos used to be a lot more common. There was a time when they were a major source of at-home music. On the other hand, the population was much smaller then, so maybe the effects cancel out.
I wonder. Pianos are still really expensive. They’re very bulky, need skilled maintenance and tuning, use special high-tension wires, and so on. Even if technological progress, outsourcing manufacture to China etc haven’t reduced the real price of pianos, the world is also much wealthier now and more able to afford buying pianos. Another issue is the growth of the piano as the standard Prestigious Instrument for the college arms races (vastly more of the population goes to college now than in 1900) or signaling high culture or modernity (in the case of East Asia); how many pianos do you suppose there are scattered now across the USA compared to 1800? Or in Japan and China and South Korea compared to 1900?
And on the other side, people used to make music at home, yes—but for that there are many cheaper, more portable, more durable alternatives, such as cut-down versions of pianos.
Concert grands, yes, but who has room for one of those? Try selling an old upright piano when clearing a deceased relative’s estate. In the UK, you’re more likely to have to pay someone to take it away, and it will just go to a scrapheap. Of course, that’s present day, and one reason no-one wants an old piano is that you can get a better electronic one new for a few hundred pounds.
But back in Victorian times, as Nancy says elsethread, a piano was a standard feature of a Victorian parlor, and that went further down the social scale that you are imagining, and lasted at least through the first half of the twentieth century. Even better-off working people might have one, though not the factory drudges living in slums. It may have been different in the US though.
Certainly: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/arts/music/for-more-pianos-last-note-is-thud-in-the-dump.html?_r=2&ref=arts But like diamonds (I have been told that you cannot resell a diamond for anywhere near what you paid for it), and perhaps for similar reasons, I don’t think that matters to the production and sale of new ones. That article supports some of my claims about the glut of modern pianos and falls in price, and hence the claim that there may be unusually many pianos around now than in earlier centuries:
At least, if we’re comparing against the 1700s/1800s, since the article then goes on to give sales figures:
(Queen Victoria died in 1901, so if this golden age 1900-1930 also populated parlors, it would be more accurate to call it an ‘Edwardian parlor’.)
We got ~$75 for one we picked up out of somebody garbage in a garage sale, and given the high interest we had in it, probably could have gotten twice that. (Had an exchange student living with us who loved playing the piano, and when we saw it, we had to get it—it actually played pretty well, too, only three of the chords needed replacement. It was an experience loading that thing into a pickup truck without any equipment. Used a trash length of garden hose as rope and a -lot- of brute strength.)
I was basing my notion on having heard that a piano was a standard feature of a Victorian parlor. The original statement of the problem just specifies a piano, though I grant that the cartoon version requires a grand or baby grand. An upright piano just wouldn’t be as funny.
These days, there isn’t any musical instrument which is a standard feature in the same way. Instead, being able to play recorded music is the standard.
Thanks for the link about the lack of new musical instruments. I’ve been thinking for a while that stability of the classical orchestra meant there was something wrong, but it hadn’t occurred to me that we’ve got the same stability in pop music.
Sure, but think how small a fraction of the population that was. Most of Victorian England was, well, poor; coal miners or factory workers working 16 hour days, that sort of thing. Not wealthy bourgeoisie with parlors hosting the sort of high society ladies who were raised learning how to play piano, sketch, and faint in the arms of suitors.
Unless it’s set in a saloon! But given the low population density of the Old West, this is a relatively small error.
That article treats all forms of synthesis as one instrument. This is IMO not an accurate model. The explosion of electronic pop in the ’80s was because the technology was on the upward slope of the logistic curve, and new stuff was becoming available on a regular basis for artists to gleefully seize upon. But even now, there’s stuff you can do in 2013 that was largely out of reach, if not unknown, in 2000.
Have any handy examples? I find that a bit surprising (although it’s a dead cert that you know more about pop music than I do, so you’re probably right).
I’m talking mostly about new things you can do musically due to technology. The particular example I was thinking of was autotune, but that was actually invented in the late 1990s (whoops).
But digital signal processing in general has benefited hugely in Moore’s Law, and the ease afforded by being able to apply tens or hundreds of filters in real time. The phase change moment was when a musician could do this in faster than 1x time on a home PC. The past decade has been mostly on the top of the S-curve, though.
Nevertheless, treating all synthesis as one thing is simply an incorrect model.
Funny coincidence. About a week ago I was telling someone that people sometimes give autotune as an example of a qualitatively new musical/aural device, even though Godley & Creme basically did it 30+ years ago. (Which doesn’t contradict what you’re saying; just because it was possible to mimic autotune in 1979 doesn’t mean it was trivial, accessible, or doable in real time. Although autotune isn’t new, being able to autotune on an industrial scale presumably is, ’cause of Moore’s law.)
Granular synthesis is pretty fun.
Agreed, although I don’t know how impractical or unknown it was in 2000 — I remember playing with GranuLab on my home PC around 2001.