the miracle piano teaching system electronic keyboard

Player piano rolls in the early 1900s played the keys for you and often included follow-along guides to help you learn the notes. A turn-of-the-century ad for the gadget tantalized with this promise: 'The Clavier Offers Relief to Your Neighbors (from that nerve-wearing practice that makes them feel piano playing is a nuisance instead of a delight), Your Piano (from the wear that depreciates its value), Your Purse (from exhaustive demands in paying for lessons by the old way of getting at results).' Each time a key was pressed down or released, the key would click, thus allowing a student to detect inequality of touch. The Virgil Clavier of the 1880s started out as a table with keyboards painted on both sides, then progressed into a 90-pound 'portable' device that didn't play music but did do a lot of clicking. Without sound, it was easy to fool your friends into thinking you were one wicked tickler. The Vandre silent keyboard was invented in the mid-1800s. Mozart evoked from the piano an enviable sound.Ī brief list of short cuts to the concert stage might read like this: Kalman Detrich, founder and director of the Museum of the American Piano in New York City, figures there has been a steady stream of such ideas since the 1790s, when one Mr. 'Īnd there have been plenty of devices like the Piano Stick, proud of the fact that it's designed 'for those who want to learn to play piano or any keyboard instrument without learning any theory or how to read music.' ' but then goes on to suggest 'access to a piano is important.' And then, seven pages later, acknowledges breathtaking progress: 'With six pages of theory behind us. There have been books, such as Win Stormen's 1956 Popular Piano Self- Taught, which admits on the first page, 'True, you will not sound like Art Tatum or George Shearing.

And the piano in particular is susceptible to this.' This world is made up of con men and women. But, boy oh boy, if they could ever play it, they'd be the life of the party. 'People go over to the instrument and realize it isn't user-friendly. 'Ninety-nine percent of the people who pull up to a piano bench, they've got themselves a problem,' Silverman says.

The piano 'is susceptible to this garbage because it's the social instrument of the music world,' suggests Robert J. Most fizzled out overnight, so there is no unabridged inventory.

There have been thousands of whiz-bang contraptions, color-coded notes and keys, and E-Z-Lessons-for-Even-the-Most-Tone-Deaf.

The miracle piano teaching system electronic keyboard