After a year of looking around I have finally taken the plunge: Earlier today I paid the deposit on a new grand piano.

My Piano

It's a bit shorter than I was originally hoping for, but it fits the space and it plays wonderfully. Also it's a bit lot cheaper (by half) than the one I was originally looking for (which was standing next to it in the shop (Forsyth's in Manchester) and really, really isn't worth twice the money). Even so, apart from a house (and including cars) this is the most expensive thing I've ever bought, hence the "gulp"!

Delivery due (if we can get the room ready in time) late June.

(I think) (possibly!)

I'm sure you'll think it's worth it once your new baby is settled in.

Yes, there's plenty of room to fit a baby changing mat on top of a grand piano with the lid down .

Wow, well done! The piano looks lovely and I am sure that you will have so much pleasure in playing it.

... my fingers have already started to "tickle" in thinking about your new purchase...
Congratulations.
hero

What do you have to do to the room? Throw out the sofa? Tint the windows? Hope it will be insured!

I shall be thinking of you as I raise the plastic lid on my old faithful and pretend.....

Enjoy your new baby when it arrives (blast it )

Mel

New window, redecorate, new laminate wood floor, new rugs, new light, new furniture. Oh yes, and new piano!

Looks wonderful, may it give you hours of pleasure.

I'm green with envy. Enjoy it.

Looks very nice. Will you be nipping back to the shop for a quick fix every so often until it is delivered?! Enjoy...

How I look forward to maybe one day having the space/money for a grand piano!

Good grief! No wonder you didn't get the other one. You might have had to knock a wall down to get it in!
(I presume that's why you need a new window - although if it was me it would be enlarged to make absolutely sure everybody could see it - shallow? me?)

Mel

It's a big room (in a big Victorian house: 5x7 m x 3.5 high), so no need to knock any walls down!

looks gorgeous! make sure you have lots and lots of fun playing it.

Well done you! It looks lovely and I am sure it will be worth every penny in enjoyment. The room sounds like it will be lovely too.

I am hoping to start looking for a new piano soon, it was planned last October half term but then my Mum became seriously ill and has been living with us since. Thank God she is now on the mend, a miracle in itself, and should start to go home for visits in a couple of weeks just at the weekends where my sisters can take a turn. I am hoping then that we can start looking for a new piano for me and I will also be able to get the chance to play on the existing one. Unfortunately, my piano is in the same room as Mum so my piano playing has been limited and it has made such a difference to how I was coming on with it as I used to be on it for a few hours a day, these days I am lucky to get half an hour.

I don't think I will be going for a grand though! I think I am going to look for something from Yamaha and in black.

ET

Your new piano looks amazing. I'm very envious.
Is that you in the photo - sitting on the white sofa?

Congratulations! I am insanely jealous!

Very very jealous! You're a lucky man!

Finally, we have a delivery date: 23rd June. The rest of the room is almost done - the front part rebuilt, the whole thing redecorated, new floor coming next Tuesday, with new light fitting a week on Monday. New curtains somewhere along the line too, then a fortnight on Monday . . . ooh, can hardly wait!

Great to share your anticipation, Robodoc! I hope it's even more wonderful than you think.

Waa, that's a great piano. Well done, if you could afford it and have the room for it WHY NOT!!!! Congrats. Update us with details when it is delivered. i remember, when i had my piano coming i did not sleep at night, and mine was a normal upright second-hand piano, i'd wonder if it was one like yours, what i would have done!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! have fun!

Ohhh beautiful....I got an upright Konzert in December and loving it!!! I knew these pianos were good but still the action and tone quality went beyond my expectations. Happy playing!

[quote name='pianosb' post='706495' date='Jun 7 2008, 06:46 PM']
[quote name='Robodoc' post='687269' date='Apr 10 2008, 05:36 PM']
After a year of looking around I have finally taken the plunge: Earlier today I paid the deposit on a new grand piano.

How exciting to see this all coming together - and then to have a lovely piano to top it off! Have you started crossing off the days on the calendar (like I used to do towards the end of term at school?

I am assuming that you do have a door that it can get in through???????
And that it is not dropped en route???

wow gorgeous piano. Hate that advert though - and that little girl is holding her wrists far too low. I am sure you'll make much better use of it!

When are they going to start putting proper pianists in adverts? - the lady in the Yamaha adverts is terrible too - she looks like she's stroking a cat.

Wow I've just checked out those wrists....How on earth can she play with her wrists so low?? Annoying when they set up the pose and get the position so wrong!!

You think that's bad?
I've seen ads for piano/keyboard teaching which include good posture in their list of things they teach which are MUCH worse than that!

Posture is such a variable thing: I know we are all taught a "right" way to sit and a "right" position for the wrists, but have you ever seen a video of Glenn Gould and looked at his position? He looks like (and probably was) the model for Dr Bob in the Muppets! Brilliant he may have been, but as well as not copying his tempi don't copy his posture . . .

. . . On the other hand, who am I to criticize Glenn Gould!!

(N.B. Piano Day, -9)

PD-8

If you are brilliant enough you can get away with anything. Look at how Hurricane Higgins played snooker. But you would not copy it! Not if you have any sense. I'd make two points about these unorthodox techniques. Gould passionately believed that a low seat, hence low elbows and low wrist was a more "correct" way to play - resulting in pulling the keys down from below, rather then pressing them down from above. Most pianists would disagree. It is possible to be sitting too high, and to correct that fault, without going to Gouldian extremes.

1. If you change one part of the "orthodox" technique you have to change everything else to compensate. Would you also copy Gould's habit of swaying his upper body in a clockwise circle, or "singing" while recording? If you plan to copy Glenn Gould at all copy his defiant originality (i.e. be yourself), his love and understanding of Music, or his sound.

2. Unorthodox techniques are fragile. If it goes wrong it is much harder to repair. Again - in the world of snooker it is Steve Davis and Steven Hendry with their classically correct cue action that have had the long careers.

A good musician and pianist with a fine mind!

PD-7!

I hope you've booked next Monday off work!


New pianos tend to be delivered by specialist piano movers who know what they're doing (or at least should!). When mine was delivered last year, I cleared three possible routes into the room, and they managed to deliver it through what I thought would be an impossibly small space.


Worse still - the literature which comes with Steinways tells you not to put containers of liquid, such as cups and vases on top of your piano, yet one of the pictures shows a piano with a vase of flowers on top of it

I arrived at church last week to find that someone had done that.........
They didn't stay there for much longer.

PD-6

I blanche at the very thought: Anyone putting anything other than music on the new piano will . . . Actually, words defy me for that: How about: . . . they'll wish they jolly well hadn't!

I suppose if it's a grand then you will won't to open it and won't have the same temptation to put things on it. My oboe (+ reed-making equipment) and recorders live on top of my upright.

My husband's grand-father used to know Eric Satie and apparently, towards the end of his life, he used to sleep on top of his grand piano because there was no room in his flat for a bed.

Now this gives me an idea as I live in a teeny tiny flat myself

So he really was as bonkers as he's made out to be?!

Apparently
(And apologies to Robodoc for hi-jacking the thread).

Whilst Valhalla isn't a teeny tiny flat, had I purchased a grand piano it would have had to double as a dining table.


This gives me an idea for a new thread! Link to follow...

Edit: What's on top of your piano?

Hi Rob

This reply has nothing to do with your original post, but I was just wondering how you find the time generate over 1000 posts on this forum. I note from your footer that you say you are in medicine (doctor I assume). I'm a doctor also doing some NHS but mostly private work, and in the three or four years, I forget, that I have been active on these forums I've managed to generate very few posts. I just don't have the time as a very busy doctor. I think I was last on here in January apart from my post of today. What's your secret??

I'm a consultant surgeon but with little or no private practice. I only sleep about 5 1/2 - 6 hours a night and I rarely watch TV

I don't think we'll be seeing his name appearing on the forums quite so much as late June, and the all important delivery date of his beautiful Schimmel are just around the corner....I reckon he'll be far too busy making wonderful music!!

Explain to me the trick in surviving only on that little sleep please - I simply can't do it - if I have that little sleep one night then I sleep for ever the next couple of nights!!!

I've brought my tent and a camp stove and am going to squat here until it arrives.

There will probably a queue of 1 plus any Druids on their way home after the solstice but I promise not to crack open the fizz or cut the cake until the piano is safely docked.

Can you sleep through an all-night drum roll doc?

dldldldldldldldldldldldldldldldldldldldldldldldldl.......

IT'S HERE!

(see new thread!)

New thread link