{"id":22216,"date":"2016-11-07T20:12:21","date_gmt":"2016-11-07T12:12:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/?p=22216"},"modified":"2017-02-21T21:56:05","modified_gmt":"2017-02-21T13:56:05","slug":"the-piano-project-part-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2016\/11\/07\/the-piano-project-part-3\/","title":{"rendered":"The Piano Project \u2013 Part 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t have the faintest recollection of the purchase or delivery of our first family piano, 38 years ago from 1978. My mom did write in her diary though that the piano cost $3,950 \u2013 not $4,200 as blogged earlier \u2013 and purchased from Singapore Piano Co., and my first piano teacher, Mrs. Teo, even accompanied us to select the piano at the store.<\/p>\n

Our Yamaha U30BL arrived on Saturday afternoon. It was originally scheduled for a mid-morning delivery, but the delivery vehicle\u2019s breakdown led to a couple of hours wait \u2013 which thankfully was the only hiccup. The piano works great, and our notes and observations after two days and about a dozen hours on it:<\/p>\n

The piano \u2013 even at 26 years old \u2013 looks exactly like new on the outside, and the interior shows a well-cleaned and maintained unit too apart from some minor stains on the manufacturer steel plate attached near the sound board.<\/p>\n

Over the years I took my ABRSM exams, I remembered always being a little unsettled at how different the exam pianos sounded compared to what I practiced on. Neither my teachers\u2019 nor our family pianos were Yamahas, and they produced somewhat brighter tones. Our new Yamaha, likely because of the size of its sound board, produces fairly warm tones and similar to what to the Yamaha piano exam rooms.\u00a0 This would be a pretty important aspect of exam preparation for Hannah if she, at any later point, prepares for her ABRSM exams.<\/p>\n

The SG2 Silent Piano works as advertised and is simple to operate. Power on, connect one or two headphones to the audio jacks, set the reverb and volume knobs to preference, and play away.<\/p>\n

Playing with the Silent Piano mode on feels very different to playing with it off. Specifically, the latter requires a lot more delicate and careful playing, and a lot of concentration is required to hit the note with exactly the right amount of pressure to achieve the desired tone weight and volume. Playing on the Silent Piano mode on the other hand is a lot more forgiving, as the dynamic range seems slightly less wide.<\/p>\n

One trait of silent pianos though: there’s no soft-mute any more. It’s normal non-dampened acoustics or on silent mode all the way.<\/p>\n

The soft-fall hinge works as stated, and possibly maybe even too well. It takes almost 10-15 seconds for the fallboard to fully close with the hinge.<\/p>\n

The store\u2019s custom-designed bench is very comfortable with great support for one\u2019s bum. Unfortunately, the bench doesn\u2019t come with a storage facility, so we had to find space in the living room to keep the piano\u2019s maintenance accessories.<\/p>\n

\"Seriously
Seriously buffed and polished ebony exterior of the Yamaha U30BL.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"The
The keys were re-polished again from what I observed in the warehouse a week ago.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"The
The soft-fall hinge.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Hannah
Hannah has our music genes: she seems able to play by ear.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Next post on music, metronomes, and songsheets!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t have the faintest recollection of the purchase or delivery of our first family piano, 38 years ago from 1978. My mom did write in her diary though that the piano cost $3,950 \u2013 not $4,200 as blogged earlier<\/p>\n

Read More The Piano Project \u2013 Part 3<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22217,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7,11],"tags":[567,566,311],"class_list":["post-22216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-at-home","category-children-blues","category-music","tag-12-40mm","tag-e-m1","tag-piano","wpcat-6-id","wpcat-7-id","wpcat-11-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/blog-2016-home-OMEC1168-yamaha-piano-delivery.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}