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Old and New Technology in the Land of None
ninthwave writes "The Guardian has this article on the adventures of piano tuners in the Amazon. I think it is a nice lesson in the age of technology to see the perceived hardships of using technology in areas where the natives are quite happy without. More impressive is the old wooden piano seems to survive better than the new synth but that is horse of a different colour."
Who in their right mind needs a piano in the amazon? I'd be concerned with bug repellant than hearing Mozarts 5th.
I almost didn't get to read this story on old technology, one of the tubes in my computer died.
Trolling is a art,
The piano? Or the guy who delivers a baby grand piano into the Amazon...
"More impressive is the old wooden piano seems to survive better than the new synth but that is horse of a different colour."
I found this statement a little lacking in depth. The 'synth' isn't there to replace the piano specifically, it's there to provide a wide range of sounds. The keyboard interface is a very practical one for a classically trained musician to pick up and play. If it were here to replace the piano, it would have to not only faithfully recreate the sound, but it'd also have to provide the same feedback a piano does. When you play a piano, you can feel the hammers hitting the strings. This kind of feedback make it more natural to play. That's why it still has it's place.
Sorry for the rant, I just found the comparison a little silly. Kind of like comparing an alarm clock to the clock in Windows.
My comment about the 'keyboard interface that any musician can pick up' reminded me of something kind of interesting. Have any of you seen how the sound for the Simpsons is mastered? The sound guy has a guitar hooked up to a computer. He uses it to time when sounds take place. I thought that was a very unusual use for a guitar, but that's what he could play! I thought that was pretty cool.
Anyways, I might as well try to say something half-ways intelligent...
We often take technology for granted, assuming that lack of understanding is some sort of mental or cultural deficiency, whereas our general and almost complete in ability to survive if left in the middle of a rain forest without help is somehow a noble mark of civilization. Those who hunt and provide for their own food are somehow throwbacks in a technological society.
To ensure that this ties into News for Nerds, I'd like to point out that the juxtaposition of high and low technology is one of the central concepts to Firefly. I find it funny when people complain about the rediculousness of low-tech firearms on a spaceship... on the frontiers of civilization.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
If that article had a point, I never got to it. I was too bored and stopped reading at "Do you have any idea how much those things weigh?".
It must be a slow news day.
What, Amazon needs piano tuners? I know they've got a big line of products, but shipping on pianos has goto to be expensive!
Oh, we're not talking about Amazon.com?
I disagree whole heartedly! I think there is great beauty in this story.
And the choice between an incredible music instrument or the "luxary" of bug repellent?
I desire more out of life than a little reprieve from insects
I have great faith in fools; My friends call it self-confidence. Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1845
The case was full of insect eggs; she thought that perhaps cockroaches had done the damage and spent a few minutes chasing one adult through the innards.
Can you imagine when someone plays Beethoven's 5th?
DONG DONG DONG (squish)
It only has to WORK WELL, with whatever is at hand.
Inuktitut writing looks cryptic. Yet it was devised by whites, and designed to work well with the writing implements available to the inuit: bones and stones. They weren't forced to use the roman alphabet which they could not transcribe properly.
Good design and engineering works by using what's available, not shoving down foreign and/or scarce technologies.
BBC radio reported this in November. Read it here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2477663. stm
But if any of us had been expecting half-naked, blowpipe-wielding savages, we were disappointed. The American missionaries who converted the tribe in the 1950s taught them Christian modesty, and they now favour shorts and T-shirts, largely supplied by visitors and aid agencies. The footwear of choice is the plastic flip-flop.
A tribe that small, in that remote of a location, and Christians still feel the need to impose their religion on them. Quite sad.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I wonder about people when they consider a people who care for music, and treat an instrument properly "savages", yet the piano in my college residence is ruined with misuse and ugly graphiti carving.
Who are the savages? Do people in the Amazon write on public pianos too? "For a good time call Zanthia." --- "Hey Zanthia, wanna have a good time!"
--"NO. And stop calling for me!"
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
The American missionaries who converted the tribe in the 1950s taught them Christian modesty, and they now favour shorts and T-shirts, largely supplied by visitors and aid agencies. The footwear of choice is the plastic flip-flop.
No comment necessary?
"And like that
You're supposed to put a STARBUCKS in a neighborhood when you want to increase the TIF funding attractiveness, not a piano!
Why does this remind me of some sort of
"Catholocism spreading to the brutes" scenario of a few centuries ago? Oh, wait, because it is that.
I guess them savage folks needed to understand the Word of God, I mean, it's our duty to inform them that they're going about living all wrong.
-- The truth is the only thing that nobody will believe.
I remember reading an article years ago about people in Japan donating old pianos, mostly to southeast Asia (There had been a boom in piano sales in Japan a while back, when many parents were signing their kids up for piano lessons, but with the boom over, most of these pianos sat unused in Japanese homes).
The problem was that pianos made for sale in Japan didn't handle the humid climate of southeast Asia and often became warped, as the one in the Amazon did.
I think it also mentioned some kind of treatment that can be done to the pianos at the manufacture time, to help strengthen them in humid climates.
People want PIANOs that can produce a wide range of sounds. That's why synths exist. Here are some features on modern day keyboard that prove my point:
weighted keys: so that it feels the same as a piano. You can't feel the hammers hitting the strings, you can only feel how hard it is to press the keys. Modern synths have this.
touch sensitivity:Harder hit means more sound...like a piano.
88 keys:There's no reason that a synth should have so many keys, since it is usually portable, and thre isn't a lot of synth-only music (meaning that the range could be dictated by the instrument). Unless, of course, its a replacement for the piano.
This doesn't apply to all keyboards because all of these features are rather expensive. But most good keyboard players get their keyboards with all of these features. Saying they're not the same is like saying that a piano wasn't a replacement for the harpsichord (which could only play one volume).
Interesting how we name our keyed instruments - based upon whatever feature they have that the previous instrument didn't. Pianos where originally called "forte-pianos," and synths...
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
I'm sorry, but you are mistaken in saying that the feedback of hammers hitting the strings cannot be reproduced. While I might be healthcare, i also play classical music on the piano, and for 2500 you can get a digital piano that has as good if not better feedback as your standard uprights in the same price range. Granted a grand piano is better, but what percentage of people are able to afford a 15k to 20k grand piano?. A digital piano such as a korg for instance never requires tuning, has excellent feed back and record and play back. I suppose you may have been talking just about synths that have keys but no feed back, but i wanted to respond to the misconeption that you can't get great feed back with digital.
A bunch of half-naked savages have no interest in tickling the ivories. What the heck maybe there will be a Wolfgang von Bushman?
/.'s anonymous posters.
Damn straight. Just like a bunch of half-naked morons have no interest in tickling the keyboard. Ooops. My bad, that'd make up most of
The more interesting question is why didn't they deliver the piano via helicopter? A much more efficient way to have done it.
So our intrepid travelers return and are greeted be the villagers that have apparently just been shopping at Target. Flip-flops, shorts, and even the occasional T-Shirt that has the phrase, "I'm a lion hunter. If you see me running, try to keep up," on the back.
The cheap-clothing aside, the veteran piano-tuning-commando-squad makes the exhausting 8-mile trek through the jungle to finally visit the prize instrument and to taste the sweetness of the evolved musical talent that should have developed over these past years.
What they found is that the piano that was donated has almost cracked in half due to the fact the generous donation turned out to be little more than someone deciding not to sell the thing for $5 at a garage sale. (They must have decided they didn't want to move the thing out the front door every Saturday for a month while trying to get rid of it.) The instrument itself was infested with insects and their eggs, probably due to the fact that they generally kept the piano in a storage shed until visitors with cameras decided to show up. This explains all the Target type clothes since it appears that they are really cannibals that would eat visitors without cameras and take their clothes.
In the end, the savages did learn how to belt out a few Bach and Beetles tunes, but then just wanted a fricking Korg keyboard, "Like we asked for in the first place." I don't see why they didn't just ask for a PC and a net connection so they could just use Kazaa and download all the Bach and Beetles MP3s they wanted!
Unless the Christian missionaries put guns to their heads, I don't see what's sad about it. They opened their minds to a crazy new religion, which the Wai Wai seem to have adopted. They gave them durable clothing. Big deal.
It may be not enough to say just Amazon, once it's a jungle, not a country. The facts depicted in the story took place in Guyana. Amazon jungle spreads along several countries, including Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador.
If you can read this, thank an english teacher.
My family owns a baby grand and we love it. On the subject of it surviving better, of course it does. I play the violin and have a fairly old insturment (over 200 years old) and it works great. Not one of those new cheap insturments they make in sweatshops in asia. Very nicely made insturment. Just proves, that something that is made well will last a long time...
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
What a STUPID article. Can you waste more electrons? Remember, conserving electricity still wastes electrons.
Maybe we, living in what we call "civilization" already have everything. We have all the basics like a safe and warm home, food everyday etc. We only have to work to get richer. We're not so much hunters as we are frantic gatherers and traders, scooping up everything we can, even lots of stuff we don't need. Maybe we haven't had many challenges yet. Life is boring. We destroy pianos, subways, walls, cause we can and cause "someone else will clean it up anyway". Maybe we're spoiled, we have everything and don't really have to work for it.
Isn't it horrible how people think cultures that integrate changes have been destroyed?
I can't tell whether the strange tone of this piece is characteristic of British writing, or just this author.
Anyway, the story really should have been about getting the piano to the tribe. If I was writing a short story, the piano would have been the main character--
An aged instrument is torn against its will from a diginfied, but meaningless twilight in luxury, portaged by sweaty, cursing soldiers through the steaming jungle mud, and deposited amongst a people at whose foreign touch it cringed.
But, over the course of two years, even as its cladding peeled away in the humidity, and insects came to violate its works, the instrument found a new purpose, straining against its own years to learn a new repertoire, and inspire its new people, as it had long ago inspired its own.
Ok, bidding for movie rights starts at $20,000. All proceeds to benefit the Indigenous Peoples' Keyboardists' Club.
Machines take me by surprise with great frequency. -A. Turing
OK, I'll bite.
I used to watch Lost In Space when I was a kid. I knew it was hokey, but as long as I accepted it on its own terms, it was good enought for TV.
Then one year I came home from college, and I was channel surfing, and I stumbled across an old episode. The Robinsons were trapped on some alien space craft, and they were shooting their way out, firing those laser pistols they always carried, and then one of them starts lobbing grenades...and I'm just sitting there thinking...
Take It Nicely Or Face Eternal Perdition
So in other words, "Take It Nicely Or Face Nothing At All". Perdition (ie, eternal damnation) requires you believe in Christian ideas of hell, the soul, and the ability to be forever 'damned'. As the previous poster said, Christian missionaries do not hold guns to people's heads. If you accept their beliefs (or appear to), they -will- give you gifts. But that's your choice.
in the morning! And in the "old days" we didn't have to waste time and money *adding* lights to our computer cases.
You want "eerie glow?" I got yer eerie glow right here buddy.
Plus you could use them to keep your bagel warm and nicely soft.
Of course you couldn't use them to mill grain like you could with a Babbage machine. There are always downsides to new technology.
KFG
Trying to use computers here is a joke, they break amazingly fast. The trick is to use it all the time, so the circuits stay warm.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
I live in Belem, the largest city within the Amazon Rainforest, with two million inhabitants. For about nine years, i also played piano and almost became a classical pianist. But then i left in order to have more time to spend at the computer.
There are two piano tuners in my city. One has serious hearing problems, which is weird. The other one looks weird, because hes not brazilian, but russian. But i heard hes a good tuner.
Keeping a piano is a challenging task. The climate has much air humidity, the wood helps changing its sounds. Also, we have problems with the extreme heat... But anyway, thats not impossible.
There were two piano factories in brazil, and the most popular, Essenfelder, got bankrupt. The remaing, Fritz Dobbert, still exists. There are in my city two music schools, Carlos Gomes and the Federal University of Para Music School (EMUFPA). I used to study at the later one. They still have a really beautiful Yamaha piano there. When they were about to buy, i've heart they had to make a poll to choose whether to buy a white or a wooden one. Thank god, the wooden is there.
Disclaimer: I have nothing against people who think theyre trendy about white pianos, but sure Def Leppard making a Video with a white piano is a shame
poop
openDK() lets you use your *NIX system to takedown out-of-tune piano's.
thankn you
n/t
KFG
A whole nation of people like my Mom. Hmmmm.
"But I could never track down the fault, let alone fix it. I wrestled with the Korg on and off for more than a fortnight, right until the eve of the fundraising concert, when one of the Wai Wai somehow got it working."
...
Hmm, all these uber-geeks and no one else found it curious that an unknowledgable aboriginal fixes an electronic device that they couldn't possible understand? Anyone care to explain? Btw, no, I don't buy the "gave it a good whack" excuse.
yet another x-file
Our culture infects YOU!
First of all, the "savages" are not half-naked, but in fact prefer shorts, tshirts, and flip flops. Second of all, the tribe itself asked for a piano for their christian services on sunday, so yes, they are interested in "tickling the ivories."
read the article, you insensitive clod
Ah hell, I'll just link to it: "Missionary: Impossible"
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
seen so many posts from people who haven't read the article. Looks like only 3-4 posters have taken the time to READ it! It's quite an interesting read and I really enjoyed it.
I hadn't immediately noticed it was written by the Brittish, and when they mentioned it was a sweltering 30 degrees I thought Farenheit! didn't seem that hot to me. Luckily I'm not 100% ignorant, and I figured it out. (I'm not going to tell YOU though, since you didn't read the article!)
CONTAINERS!
Yes, the lowly BAG. Hunting and gathering really, really sucked when you had to jam those tubers up your ass in order to free your hands to pick more.
The mighty BAG made it possible to carry your stuff around. Unfortunately, it made warfare and plunder possible, as it made it possible for other people to carry your stuff around, too.
Forget this fancy-schmancy "fire" stuff. BAG all the way!
For about nine years, i also played piano and almost became a classical pianist.
It doesn't take 9 years to play classical music. What were you playing all that time?!
No, it was all part of the great Wai Wai:
"Lets see how far we can string these stupid brits along for great comedy".
Which of course started with:
"I bet you can't get them to bring a piano out here."
"Bet you I can!"
"Nah, no way."
"Yeah I can! And I'll even up that, I'll get them to bring a GRANDE Piano, AND we'll tell them our village is flooded!"
"Hahaha, there's no way they'd be that dumb."
But of course, my favorite part of the whole story is where all they thought they would have to do is "shout at them" to move the piano.
"Wai Wai strong, British Weak!"
We just purchased a used piano for our daughter to learn on. In the small amount of research I did before we purchased, I found that there is some consensus that any piano over about 50 years old is not worth anything. This is due to the large amount of moving parts to wear, and the fact that the wood becomes dried out and brittle (as the piano in the story).
Our 35-year old studio console cost only $1000 from a reputable dealer, including cleaning and tuning.
Something like this would certainly have made more sense take into the Amazon than a decrepit old grand that was probably donated to keep from having to pay to have it removed! (easier to move too-only about 400 pounds)
See John Mason's recent novel, "The Piano Tuner" for a treatment of this exact same topic, except the piano is transported by hand and boat to a doctor in a Victorian-era Burmese jungle, and the piano tuner is British. But the topics of shipping difficulties, culture conflicts, colonialism, and the hazards of humidity to tropical pianos all are nearly the same as this excerpt from the Guardian.
And some MadPlayers. I'd love to see what folks raised on tribal rhythms could do with those.
--- Ban humanity.
one of the tubes in my computer died.
Given that the only "vacuum tube" in a modern PC is the cathode ray tube in a traditional display, you might want to try looking into an LCD panel with twice the life (even longer if you replace the internal light) one-third the footprint, one-third the weight, one-third the power consumption, and one-third the eyestrain of a CRT. Even though an LCD may cost more up front, you will save money in the long run by going with an LCD.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The temperature was in the 30s...
In the jungle? Oh wait, that's metric.
Within an order of magnitude, how many piano tuners are there in the Amazon?
Why do you assume that the people who live in the Amazon are not able to choose their clothing/lifestyles for themselves? You may wish that some people stay nice and "natural" (perhaps you mean "primitive"?) but I'm sorry that these people who live in the Amazon are probably not as interested in living as museum displays for your pleasure.
Opporknockety strings.
Why?
Opporknockety only tunes once.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
You didn't read the part of the article about where they carved graffiti into their piano:
'Wai Wai Rulez!'
'For a good time dial Bong Bong Bing Bong Bong'
'Tinkatu is a Fag'
Probably because the whiteys who jetted to the amazon were piano tuners and not electricians.
As for touch sensitivity, it's an actual enhancement that does not increase the overall size of the unit (as an 88-key board would). It adds expressiveness, as well as more customization options depending on the synth you're using (such as Korg MS2000, which has things like LFO speed and Cutoff patchable to velocity). Support for this hypothesis can be found in that of Aftertouch, which is another key-related parameter. Velocity sense (touch-sensitivity in your case) is how fast you press the key, Aftertouch is actually how hard you press the key, and can be modulated after any velocity effects have taken place. You can't do that on a piano, but it's still key-related.
People seem to think that synthesizers are just electronic pianos, but they are not. You can use them that way, but you lose much of the incredible sonic potential at your hands.
Wrong. Most piano players get their keys with all of these features. The majority of synth players are just that - synth players. Perhaps they've had some classical piano training or experience, but when one migrates to a synth, one has to change playing styles as well. Compare a violin to an upright bass. They appear to be the same instrument, only one's 50x as large. Playing styles tend to differ, wouldn't you agree? Just because the interface is similar on a superficial level doesn't mean it's the same thing
I am a synth player, and I don't like weighted keys because their response isn't as fast, limiting playing. 88-key boards are also quite cumbersome - 49 or 61 key boards are excellent for range & space. A piano player has (basically) one sound to work with, and has plenty of control over that sound. A synth player has even more control options and usually at least 128 base sounds to work with, some so radically different they may require a different play style of their own.
A synth no more a multi-sound piano than is an upright bass an oafish violin.
Filo
Your brain is not a computer.
But what of the prime directive, man!?
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
I am a former piano tuner before joining the ranks of hackers, crackers, and geeks. I've been asked to work on pianos of this condition and worse , but never at the end of a canoe trip. One woman in KY kept her's on the front stoop, uncovered and in the open.Couldn't figure out why after years of alternating hot and cold, snow and rain the damn thing didn't work. Not to mention the cat pee on it too. Now I live in Florida and have seen what high humidity and bugs do to a fine piano. My favorite story is when after examining a new piano I found that mice had chewed up small springs, felts, and other parts of the action. I told her mice had done the work. She replied that she didn't have mice. At that very instant a mouse ran out of the piano and across her shoe tops! LOL!.
I'm in a hot and humid country (Malaysia) and in many pianos you put a electric piano heater in to help keep the temperature right.
Might help in your case.
Not a bar heater - it's kind of specific for pianos.
How do you propose to help people by leaving them well enough alone? Or are you saying it's fine for others to help but not Christians?
l /Biography/0 1/08.html
Maybe you think the tribes don't need help? Or they don't need more friends in the world? Demonstrate your love for those people, then I will believe that you have their interests at heart if you tell me they don't need our help. I may not agree with you, but at least I will respect you.
Christians preach love. If we do not show love how can we be Christians? Christianity is about love - God so loved the world that he sent his beloved Son down to die for us.
If there are tribes turning to Christianity in the Amazon that's usually because Christians are helping them. They aren't stupid, they know a good tree bears good fruit. A useless tree that looks good but bears no fruit or bad fruit is often chopped down and burnt for firewood.
As far as I see, most missionaries are far from unhelpful or obnoxious. In fact the people they try to help may be unhelpful:
http://www.hillsdale.edu/dept/Phil&Re
As far as I know, it's the missionaries that build schools, hospitals and educate people. It's the secular commercial traders etc who come bearing cannons and opium. You rather the traders reach the natives first?
In many countries including mine the elite schools are the missionary/christian schools, due to the legacy the "foreigners" laid down. Even the non-christian rich battle to send their children to those schools.
If he once again pushes up his sleeves in order to compute for 3 days
and 3 nights in a row, he will spend a quarter of an hour before to
think which principles of computation shall be most appropriate.
-- Voltaire, "Diatribe du docteur Akakia"
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