excerpt from:
http://sonic-arts.org/darreg/piano.htm [Note: In all other cases Ivor's writings haven't any forewords. The vintage of Ivor's articles generally explains itself. Dates speak for themselves--no need to wonder why Ivor didn't mention digital synthesis in 1945.
But this article seems perverse unless we get a feel for the era in which it was written.
The original draft of Shall We Improve the Piano? dates from 1965. This final draft hails from 1967--though originally marked `Preliminary,' Ivor never updated the article...by the 70s Ivor realized that the entire premise had become obsolete.
Let's travel back 30 years...
In 1965 neither analog nor digital synthesis existed. The term `synthesizer' appeared only in obscure corners of radio engineering. (`Frequency synthesizers' generated RF test signals.) Digital samplers? The phrase wouldn't even have made sense--electronic engineers would have stared at you and asked `samples of digital what?'
The RCA Mark I Synthesizer underwent several incarnations twixt 1953 and 1958. It was not what we would today consider a synthesizer. Its oscillators? Mechanically-vibrated tuning forks! Its tone controls? Fixed formant filter-banks! Only the RCA Mark I's amplitude-envelope controls approach what today would be regarded as standard for a "synthesizer."
In 1965 Robert Moog's analog synthesizer languished on the shelf...a mere unfinished experimental breadboard. `Electronic music' still meant tube circuits, analog tape and creatively misused scientific test equipment. Serious hi-fi gear shunned transistors: 30 years ago most transistors were a germanium point-contact variety. Vulnerable to overheating and meltdown, their use was limited stictly to low-power applications--tiny transistor radios, for instance. Silicon transistors cost so much more and varied so widely form batch to batch that all high-fidelity audio equipment used vacuum tubes.
In 1965 stereo recording had been around for 7 years. LPs came in two versions--mono and stereo. Back then, stereo was still controversial(!) Some critics denounced the added expense of a second (stereo) speaker and a second mono amplifier and preamp--"Why would anyone want to listen to the same sound twice?" complained one columnist in High Fidelity Magazine circa 1960.
Die-hard audiophiles still mourned the passing of the 78 r.p.m. shellac disc, and lamented that the new 33 r.p.m. stereo process just didn't sound as good.
From the early 1900s through the 1960s pianos proliferated with wild abandon. You found pianos everywhere--in schoolrooms, in apartments, in meeting-halls, in churches, in homes far and wide across the United States. Anyone interested in music owned or rented one. Pianos were cheap. They were reliable. --Especially compared to fragile vacuum-tube-based instruments like the Hammond Novachord. introduced in 1939 and discontinued because its hundreds of tubes made it too unreliable and expensive for a public used to sturdy pianos. In the early 60s every music store stocked aisles of piano sheet music.
Today, in 1994, the situation has reversed. Piano sheet music can't be found for love or money. (As a kid I remember walking into a large record store. Half the aisles crammed with sheet music, the other half with LPs. And that was barely 30 years ago.) Music stores today sell digital recording media--prerecorded CDs, MiniDiscs, DCC tapes, etc. You won't find sheet music today next to the CDs or the cassettes. Guitar tablature rules the sheet-music roost--and the electric guitar has completely usurped the piano's place in 'musical' homes.
Today, digital technology gives us book-sized integrated circuit boxes that counterfeit the sound of a concert grand. In fact a friend mentioned that he found it embarrassing to listen to some classical piano CDs because the acoustic recording often sounded worse than the module in his studio.
Based on a handful of VLSI microchips, today's digital instrument is far more reliable than its acoustic counterpart. Digital modules stay in tune forever. You can kick the smaller boxes across a football field without harming them because they have no moving parts.
This has rendered moot Ivor's discussion of sustained piano tones. A digital instrument has envelope controls: one touch of a button and the tone hangs on endlessly. With MIDI, invdividual piano tones can be orchestrated, with sustained tones assigned to long notes and normal notes allotted to all other pitches.
But perhaps the biggest difference between 1993 and 1965 is hard cash. in the last 28 years piano prices have skyrocketed. Spinets now cost $2500 to $3000, while fresh-from-the-factory Steinway concert grands run $35,000-$50,000! And so in the 1990s almost no one buys new grand (or what Ivor would call `real') pianos. And hardly anyone can afford to have them tuned. A piano-tuner often charges as much as one of the cheaper used digital modules!
More and more piano stores are closing their doors...or selling the much cheaper digital instruments. Most of the digital instruments offer more than one timbre--near-perfect Rhodes electric piano, pipe organ and string section as well as Steinway, Young Chang and Boesendorfer samples.
It's become a real challenge to ferret out a store in a major city that still sells nothing but acoustic pianos.
This is more than inflation. There has been a vast increase in the real cost of pianos--over and above inflation. Consider: in 1950 the dollar was worth at least 10 times what it is today. A $2000 grand piano (1950 dollars) would cost $20,000 1994 dollars. But concert grands today cost at least twice as much. This means that in the last 45 years acoustic pianos have risen in price 2 to 3 times faster than the rate of inflation.
But a digital synth module costs about 300 1994 dollars. The cheapest equivalent--the tube-based electronic organs of the 1950s--went for about $600 in 1950. ($6000 in 1994 dollars.) Alas, the tube organs of the 50s sounded nothing like a piano... while today's digital widgets often surpass CD recordings of the real thing!
In short, the world has changed so much since 1965 that Ivor's article today is interesting mainly for its historical perspective. It provides fascinating info on forgotten byways of the piano's evolution. It also offers a vivid snapshot of the transition from acoustic to digital electronic instruments.
This process continues. Orchestras throughout the country are going bankrupt. The tremendous cost of live performers can't be sustained by any but the largest cities. At the same time, electronic instruments abound in film scores and popular music...and "live musical entertainment" almost invariably means digital keyboards and/or electric guitars.
How soon will digital instruments outperform their acoustic ancestors? Impossible to say. There's a long way yet to go. Remember: integrated circuits are still brand new (relatively speaking). The first integrated circuit was fabricated in 1957; the very first commercial digital synthesizer sold in 1980. Give digital instruments another 30 or 50 years and they will in all likelihood prove themselves more expressive, more subtle and more beguiling to the ear than their acoustic counterparts. [ B. Mclaren, August, 1993]
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