A word about your tool

When I was young, I practiced on an mid-upright Baldwin Hamilton piano that my parents bought for us. That piano was everywhere back then because it was sort of a happy medium between a spinet (an “upright” piano that was maybe only 4 feet tall) and a full upright which we all coveted but could not afford. (A grand piano was pretty much out of the question.) To this day, if you walk into a piano store, you will always find some used Baldwin Hamiltons in the back.

Four boys banged on that piano every single day for 27 minutes each (we were supposed to practice 30 minutes but could get away with 27). Make no mistake about it: the way I play now is light years from the vicious attacks I used to unleash on pianos. I played fancy stuff back then with a vengeance. One of my competition pieces was Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C# Minor which many of you know has so many notes that the last page uses four staves instead of two. No piano should have had to endure me practicing that piece on it. I undoubtedly played it badly but there is no question that I played it loudly.

After ten years of that brutal abuse, you can only imagine what that piano sounded like. But when I left home, my parents kindly offered the piano to me and I was glad to take it. I had no money to get anything else and I was not really interested in piano anyway. I was starting a career in software and for those first few years, all I did was work and sleep.

Eventually, as you know, I came back to music. I started practicing for a first recording on that same Hamilton. The ensuing recording itself was so bad that I don’t even have a copy of it myself and I hope no one else does either. But after that failure, I got the itch to do a recording right. This was 2001 (just before 9/11) and I had just left corporate life.

One day I woke up and realized that the Hamilton was holding me back. We were not wealthy but we had no debt, a retirement account and about $25K in a savings account. And somehow, I convinced Marla to empty that savings account on a piano. I just asked her today why she allowed it and she just shrugged. In retrospect, it makes no sense. I had no solid job and only a new unproven business to live off of. I had certainly not proven I could make money with music. (This was two years before Timeless Reflections.) And we are by nature pretty frugal.

It is impossible to imagine us blowing our entire savings (outside retirement) on a piano today. It seems unwise and crazy. But for some reason, then, we did just that…

Sometimes, questionable decisions work out because here is the rest of the story: if I had not have bought that piano, there would never have been Timeless Reflections. Furthermore, Timeless Reflections by itself has paid for for that piano many times over.

The truth is that the piano you play does affect your music in a big way. For me, getting off that Hamilton onto a grand piano changed everything. I started enjoying playing infinitely more. I started finding things in music I did not even know existed.

I strongly believe that the quality of your instrument (piano or otherwise) really matters. This is not a pitch for your local music store but I am telling you the truth. If you want to grow as a musician, yes you need to practice but you also need to get as good of an instrument as you can even if sacrifice is involved.

The main difference between good and bad instruments can be summed up in one word: nuance. Good instruments allow you to do very nuanced things. Bad instruments limit nuance. It goes way beyond just dynamics though that is one of the biggest categories of nuance I am talking about.

And make no mistake about it: for performers, it is nuance rather than technique that makes music. If you are interested in selling your music, your technique will help you sell to your friends and family but it is your nuance that will help you sell to the rest of the world.

The moral of the story is this: if at all possible, get an instrument that allows you to find nuance. I am not telling you to empty your bank account like I did but if you want to be a musician, don’t be too frugal either.