the future of piano study

[Robert Wilson]

It's probably a healthier situation today.  100 years
ago children were automatically put to the piano,
whether they liked it or not,  as someone in every
family had to play.  There wasn't even radio in those
days.  Rich people had musical boxes and that was as
far as it went. You had to make your own music or go
without!   Generally, out of an average sized family,
one or two children may have stuck to it and succeeded
- but they may not have really wanted to do it.  They
didn't have much choice but to try and learn - and
they weren't meant to enjoy the experience either!

These days, children have a hard time with all the
studying required in their teen years, but in the UK
anyway there is a healthy interest amoungst youngsters
in learning the piano and they actually enjoy it and
are keen to do it.

At least you feel you have done something worthwhile
after playing the piano, instead of watching other
people do things on television or playing computer
games which are ultimately unsatisfying.

Bob Wilson
London



>   I'm curious to know what other piano tuners think
> about the future of piano study.  I can only guess
> that the number of children who studied piano 100
> years ago versus today is staggering.  I've seen
> some figures on the decline of piano sales as each
> decade passes, and that is a telling indicator.  
> 
>   I'm not a cynic by nature, and I am not overly
> concerned about the end of our profession coming too
> soon.  Still, I do think about it and wonder if
> other piano tuners are concerned.  Will the number
> of piano students continue to decline, or slow to a
> steady number of new students each year?  Is it
> possible in this day of sports, video games, TV, the
> Internet, and a million other activities, to reverse
> this trend?  What would it take to make this happen?
>  Should/what should we as piano tuners be doing more
> to try and reverse this trend?  I came across an
> interesting speech from Brian Chung, the senior vice
> president and general manager of Kawai America
> Corporation:
> http://www.pianonet.com/articles/artofwar.htm
> 
>   I'm just curious what other people think about
> this.
> 
>   Thanks,
>   Colin McCullough
> 
>   please visit the McCullough Tuning Tutorial, a
> free online resource for learning how a piano is
> tuned.
>   www.blackstonepiano.com/tutorial/tutorial.htm
> 
>    



	
	
		
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