A lot of players seem focused on the feel of the keyboard, the weighted/nonweighted arguments go on seemingly forever.

And then there's the "which weighted keyboard feels most like a real piano" arguments.

I just sit there thinking about a day gone by when the pianist was at the mercy of whatever piano the club owned and how you had to adapt to the piano rather than the other way around, sometimes having to do that in seconds flat at the start of the first song.

There was this one Ski Resort where the baby Grand Piano was a rather beautiful thing, but for some reason the keys were, well, stiff. Every pianist in town and likely every pianist form out of town who had to play that thing would remark on that, but the venue owner or manager never seemed to get the message or get anything done about it. I think the keybed pins had rusted or corroded and were grabbing the felt bushings, but who knows for certain what was wrong with that thing. Still, everybody played their show on the darned thing. Kinda funny to watch the noob sit down at that thing, it was. Then you'd see if they had the wherewithal to figure out that there were not going to be a whole lot of fast scales and arpeggios tonight, or whether they would spend the whole set fighting the piano.

Fast Forward to today, we have so many great sounding options at so many different price levels that it is now a problem selecting which one to buy. For some.

Here's my take on the deal, whatever piano you end up with, you have to spend time getting to know it. Play it every day. Find out what you can get out of it that sounds good, find out what sound bad. Accentuate the good and don't get tied up in the fool's game of trying to make it do whatever bad thing it may do in a good fashion.

When I have a different Trumpet to play, gotta go through that same, "getting to know you" process.

Same thing with a different Guitar.

Same thing with a different Piano.

The Hammond Organs used to be as ubiquitous in jazz clubs as pianos, too. There are not two Hammond Organs exactly alike. This is due to the almost crazy number of electrical and electro-mechanical components hand built and hand wired inside the things. Also age, how its been cared for (or not...), the condition of the key switch to busbar contacts (there are 9 for each key under there), condition of the tubes, condition of the prerequisite Leslie and even *which type and model* of Leslie is attached to it. The 122 only has Stop and Fast spins if not modified, the 147 adds the Slow or Chorale but does not have full Stop unless modified to do so, the 145 originally was like the 122 as to not having Chorale speed, but a 145 spins up at a different time than the old 122 (original 122 circuitry for the Fast was slow in response, the organist would have to throw the switch at an earlier time to have it up and spinning by the time you got there in the song).

So I say, Get the Keyboard.

Play the Keyboard.

Every day.

Because at a certain point, the player must adapt to the keyboard as much as having the best keyboard you can find and afford at the time.


--Mac

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