Or maybe it’s just that cars and pianos are inherently similar: They both have pedals, hood-ish mechanisms, make noise, and sit users at some manner of control panel. If that didn’t blow your mind, then, well, you probably understand art.
High end digital pianos sound great, and have come a long way over the years, but ask any professional musician and they’ll tell you they just don’t feel the same as a traditional baby grand.
The gradual, relentless digitisation of everything takes a little longer to seep into the more obscure technological quarters. The latest outmoded gadget to fall? The analogue player piano.
There’s no definition for the word worthless in the Hammacher Schlemmer dictionary, so these Fingertip Piano Gloves are “ingenious”; a portable subway piano concerto waiting to happen. Each glove plays an entire octave in the key of C, and the final three notes in the scale are achieved by pressing down on the palm. The gloves connect to a wire that connects to a speaker, which allows the whole family to enjoy. They ship on October 17 for $US70, but the epic symphonies your little one will make using these five-fingered feats of engineering will be priceless. Or not. Ever strangle someone in the key of C before? [Hammacher Schlemmer]
This Yamaha Disklavier Piano could be the most advanced piano we’ve ever seen, and we’ve seen several (forced piano lessons FTW). Not only does it have Wi-Fi to download MIDI files onto itself so it can play back songs, you can record performances—with vocals and other instruments—as well.
Looking like it belongs in Jeff Vader’s Coruscant bachelor pad, the hand-made Schimmel Pegasus has an ergonomically curved keyboard, over 200 strings under a total tension of 176,520 newtons, and a key assembly composed of 10,000 pieces. Only 14 were made ten years ago for people like Eddie Murphy, Lenny Kravitz, and granfunkmeister Prince. Now you can get into this exclusive club because there’s one for sale until March 15th. More pics and technical details after the jump. Updated with price and other information
This “suspension” piano by Seiler brings everyone’s favourite style of bridge indoors and gives it a soundtrack beyond the typical roar of automobiles drowning out the subtle splashing of suicide jumpers. A meticulously crafted mahogany piano suspended on a cast iron frame, we’d be afraid to even touch a key lest we induce the sound of metal shredding expensive wood. But our guess is that the piano’s quite literal delicate balance between fluid fragility and rigid stability is its entire appeal. [seiler via dvice]
According to its eBay listing, this $US20,000 piano “is not a piano at all” but a fully functioning computer with a hidden 26″ Philips LCD TV/monitor and a 6.8 GHz processor. Modded from a 1904 Chickering upright piano, the maker argues that it is not just “the world’s most beautiful computer”, but “the world’s oldest computer” and the “world’s highest security computer” as well. The description indicates that Compiano smells of rich mahogany, but we think we smell something else.
CDs may be headed towards obsolecence, but that doesn’t seem to stop manufacturers from coming up with unique new devices to play them. One of these devices, the Japanese made Cathay PK-24, may look like a miniature grand piano, but the only thing it can play is tunes from your CD or FM radio. The keys even act as the playback controls to add to the fun. Available in Asia for about $165 a pop —which is way too freakin’ much if you ask me. [Product Page via Technabob via Geekalerts]
Today at Yamaha’s line show in NYC, pianos took centre stage. Yamaha, one of the world’s biggest piano makers, has been innovating on the design for years. The current crop of radical, digital shifts forward:
• Disklavier 2.0 – $10,000 to $80,000 – Grand piano’s brand new software receives streams of digital player-piano songs over the internet, for geniune live piano via net radio. Its PDA remote control operates over Wi-Fi, so you can adjust the mood from the dining room table. • EZ-200 Keyboard – $150 – Learning keyboard for kids. Like many, it has light up keys to show you where to put your fingers. But this one will wait for you: it eases the tempo of the song down automatically to match your playing. • Modus H01 – $12,500 – Sexy “velvet rouge” reimagining of the traditional piano. It’s electronic, but with a natural feel. It contains a 40-watt sound system, and also comes in “amber glow” and “deep brunette.” • Clavinova CVP400 – $TBA – Do-it-yourself Barry Manilow workstation: sing into the mic while you play, and it automatically mixes voice and piano into a WAV that you can save on USB thumbdrive. galleryPost('YamahaPianos', 8, ''); With reporting by Jennifer Hooker
