Blogs Are Boring When Life is Good

Happy St. Patrick's Day! I celebrated by locking myself in the bedroom with my piano and playing for three hours while Jess went out with friends. It was heavenly, the most time I've had on my piano down here at any one sitting.

In Pittsburgh I've got my Disklavier, a 48" Yamaha U1 that is a fantastic practice instrument. You can read the entertainingly old version of the story of how I won it here.

At my apartment in D.C., however, I needed to get a piano and didn't want to damage the Disklavier by moving it, so now I have a beautiful little Kawai CE-7 that I bought off of craigslist last spring.


I think I had more fun searching for a good used piano than I've had buying anything ever. I scoured craigslist every night, e-mailing people with instruments that looked promising. I would check brands and models against posts at the PianoWorld forums, which was very helpful in avoiding a number of models. (PianoWorld is THE website for piano people... very fun).

I tried out a little Kimball upright that had about as much musicality as a couch pillow. I tried out a solid but poorly-maintained Baldwin Acrosonic at the house of a lovely old couple who, after hearing me play on their piano, came to one of my concerts in NoVA. (A side note: The only piano my grandfather Adam Spitznagel ever owned was a Baldwin Acrosonic, which to me is sad because A) He deserved to play on a real instrument and B) No one ever thought to record him playing anything.) I flirted with the idea of going to a dealer, but knew instinctively that I'd get a lot more piano for the paltry sum of money I had to spend ($1200) if I foraged in the private-seller woods than I would hacking away in the weeds of a dealership.

I finally found, after three weeks of searching, a 42" Kawai upright in walnut, made around 1980.

There is something comforting about wood that is older than you, you know? The piano was at a house out in Reston, and when I went to try it out I found out the house was for sale and the piano was the last big piece of furniture to be moved out. Sweet bargaining position for me, I thought, channeling my grandma's hawkish flea market eye. The house was enormous, one of those million-dollar deals, and the piano was tucked away in the same room as the washing machine. Illustrious, I know. It was, far and away, in the best condition of any piano I had looked at, though. It was like finding a mint '98 Honda Civic in a lot full of '81 Corollas.

It was out of tune, of course - the shudder that piano technicians get when they get the "I bought a piano on craigslist" call is an extremely well-documented and justified event - but as most people who own a piano know folks usually only tune a piano when they are shamed into doing so, and it's not the end of the world. I play professionally and my piano hasn't been tuned in over a year, so I try not to judge people, though this Kawai must have gone 5 or more years without going under the tuning hammer. It's like a car in that way. It's meant to be driven, and when it's not being driven you can spring all kinds of leaks.

No such problems with this piano, though. I knew what to look for: cracks in the pinblock, worn felt on the hammers, keys that didn't work. None of it. Everything was like-new! I pretended to deliberate. I did. Not afraid to admit it, but on the inside I knew I'd found the right piano for me.

The fun part was getting it for $750, knowing that it was easily worth three times that. Pianos are horrific investments unless you buy one of the fancy brands (i.e. Steinway or some such), losing a huge percentage of their value each year. This is bad news for new piano owners but great news for impoverished musicians looking for quality instruments. I only know one professional pianist who owns a Steinway grand, and it's because his partner has a "real job" that brings home real money.

The Kawai is a great practice piano. Nice firm action, really takes some energy to play, and it's solid. I never considered myself a "Kawai" kind of guy, but my experience thus far has been awesome. It holds a tune brilliantly (and I beat the hell out of it), it has a great sound and action for such a little thing, and it makes a lot of sound. The CE-7 has been praised by technicians as being Kawai's best-sounding console... me loves me that solid-spruce soundboard... and the whole point of buying a real acoustic piano instead of a digital was that I wanted to keep my fingers strong in the months where I'm not performing, and in spite of having to dance around the schedules of the neighbors upstairs and down, it was totally a worthwhile purchase.

Pianos are one of those curious things that are more than the sum of their parts. For me, the piano is a freedom machine. I consider it one of the great pleasures of my life, one of my true luxuries, that at any moment I can sit down and transport myself to that melodious pasture called Joy. I wish there was some way to communicate that feeling to the kid who hates piano lessons, the kid who, like I did, just wanted to play the fun music. Keep walking the path. The journey only gets more amazing...