This continues a series of guest columns on how technology is reshaping hobbies and passions – basket weaving, rugby – whatever.
This time it is good friend, Mike Laven, currently COO of Traiana. Over the two decades I have known Mike I have seen him involved with more startups and turnarounds than any other tech exec. I have also had a drink with him in more cities around the world than any other tech exec. Widely traveled in every sense of the word. Here he talks about his "musical travels".
"It started five years ago when I transferred my large collection of classical, opera, jazz, blues and rock CDs to a hard drive. Vinyl lovers could not bear the loss of fidelity in moving to CD, but I’m too clumsy to care for LPs, so CDs were a godsend. The move from CD’s to a personal, searchable, indexed database was straightforward but time consuming. CDs compress the soundwave and eliminate the extremes of the sound spectrum--think of a sine curve with the highs and lows lopped off. Moving from CDs to digital audio standards like AAC, MP3 and MP4 involves a further compression and loss of perfection. Maybe, maybe you hear it when Maria Callas hits a high C, but you certainly don’t notice in Led Zeppelin.
Now I can listen to 14 different versions of Summertime from Angelique Kidjo to Leontyne Price. (For audiophiles I’ve got a mid to high-end system with most components from Linn, a small UK manufacturer and speakers from B&W and all sorts of cable and filters). Then I linked the system directly to the internet, added downloads of all kinds, podcasts, internet radio, a little box that records from radio, artist sites and on and on. Congolese music—no problem, daily from Kinshasa.
Having avoided my day job thinking intensely about problems of indexing classical music, I got the bug and decided to leave the recorded world and ‘go live.’ As a child my grandmother’s grand piano occupied half our living room. She studied at the Conservatory and played daily. Though the piano bench was full of serious classical sheet music, all I really remember is the Gilbert & Sullivan she played in her ‘80s. I never had formal lessons and for my last ‘big birthday,’ I started piano lessons.
I once had a Board member who had been a professional athlete and whose Board wisdom was, ‘Everybody wants to win, I want managers who want to practice.’ Learning is about practice (and lots of it), but resources and knowledge are about Google and web sites. Web sites for music theory with on-line practice, web sites for jazz and blues chords, web sites for downloadable sheet music and practice pages, web sites with video clips of great performers, web sites with on-line music notation programs with fill in accompaniment, web sites for comparing piano vendors, web sites for finding piano teachers and Wikipedia for just about everything.
After a long search and trial period I ordered a piano from a small German manufacturer, Steingraeber in Bayreuth. On their web site Steingraeber asks, ‘Is computer-generated production demonstrably superior to human craftsmanship? Are there still secrets left in piano building that can be heard or felt?’
I figured digital piano was the way to go. With the headphones plugged in I could save my family and neighbors the pain of listening to my learning. Digital pianos store sampled and recorded tones from each key on a traditional acoustic piano to be replayed when the key is struck. Better digital pianos like Yamaha approach acoustic fidelity and build ‘piano feel’ into the keys. But I found the loss of any fidelity and ‘touch’ intolerable no matter how imperceptible, so Steingraeber is right - there are still secrets. Score one against technology advances.
Years ago, I heard Bobby Short at the Carlyle Hotel on E 76th St and said, ‘I want to do that!’ Technology has advanced my access to know how, speeded up finding a piano teacher, informed the selection of a piano and video conferencing has released me from some travel for practice but nothing makes getting a perfect 12 bar blues progression come any faster."
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