Earlier this year at NAMM I interacted with Mr. Hailun Chen – truly a privilege and honour to connect with such a humble visionary who has influenced and supplied more piano parts than we’re probably aware of. I greatly respect individuals who state "I have put my name on my pianos and on my company". Mr. Hailun Chen is the real McCoy where his name is his guarantee. Working with a translator, he showed me different concepts in his pianos. What caught my eye was this silver looking gleam under the keys on one of their upright pianos. As seen ...
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I was speaking with someone recently about this blog post on touch, describing it as "an interview with a piano mathematician". "There are piano mathematicians?" was the reply. If people only knew how many calculations go into the engineering of a single instrument, they would be astounded. Today we have the privilege of speaking with David Stanwood, a piano technician who also happens to be a published author specializing in piano touch metrology. (Metrology being the science of measurement). He has spent decades studying, pouring over data to understand what it is that we FEEL under our fingers at the ...
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I have to admit, I’m a duck to water when it comes to playing the piano. If I see a piano, I’m always curious as to how it sounds and plays. Recently someone said to me “y’know you really should do a blog about how to test pianos… I don’t have the slightest clue how to go about that”. It’s one thing I do instinctively and it made me stop and think about my procedure. Going back just over 20 years, I was a new upstart that just got hired by the local piano store. With 2 Classical degrees behind ...
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This year in sunny Anaheim, California, the NAMM show once again had a fantastic display of beautiful pianos. From inexpensive to opulent, there are pianos for everyone to see and enjoy. Present this year (in alphabetical order of brand): Baldwin, Bluthner, Bösendorfer, Brodmann, Emerson, Fazioli, Geyer, Grotrian, Hailun, Hallet Davis, Hardman, Irmler, Kawai, Kayserburg, Knabe, Mason & Hamlin, Mendelssohn, Niendorf, Pearl River, Perzina, Ravenscroft, Ritmuller, Samick, Sauter, Schimmel, Schulze Pollmann, Schumann, Seiler, Wilh. Steinberg, Steinway, Weber, Yamaha and Young Chang. In the eye candy department, there were incredibly artistic grand pianos from both Sauter and Fazioli. And these spectacular instruments ...
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Yamaha quietly introduced something this year at the NAMM show that caught my eye. It’s not a new process. In fact, it’s been going on since the 8th century with the Vikings in their ship building. Since the 1930’s, Scandinavian countries have also been experimenting with it. You might even benefit from it with the coffee beans that go into your brew. But it’s only been since the last decade that this has taken the guitar world by storm. What is it? The process is called torrefication (aka torrefaction). In its simplest form, it's a type of roasting, which involves ...
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