Temperaments in perspective

[Ron Nossaman]

Hi all,

She is quite capable of speaking for herself, and surely will, but here's
what I thing both Anne and James are talking about.

People being what they are, markets are driven primarily by a combination of
ignorance and passion. The buyer heard somewhere, or was "taught" that a
piano must sound "so", or must be this size, that color, or have this
particular name on it. It must be of a certain age to be any good and they
must be able to play their "benchmark" test piece on it with minimum psychic
damage for it to qualify as a viable piano. If the potential customer
doesn't have the proper level of ignorance necessary to generate passion of
a sufficient wattage to make the decision themselves, they bring the piano
teacher to supply both the ignorance and the passion. 

This accounts for the "sameness" in sound among brands. They must fit into
the pre-prejudiced catagories that constitute the customers' shopping
criteria, or they won't sell. The only reason that pianos exist in dealers'
showrooms at all is so they can be sold for a profit. Any service to the
loftier aspects of music and the tender sensibilities of the serious
practitioners thereof, is strictly coincidental.

If, on the other hand, manufacturers started making pianos they thought
sounded great, by their own criteria rather than the sameness of the
industry standard, they would make a very small percentage of the consumer
market (those with knowledge-based opinions and passions) deleriously
happy... and starve. 

"Off the rack" pianos needent necessarily be poor quality. Trouble is, once
the good ones and the poor ones sound similar enough, the only judging
criteria left is price. If price ever becomes all that counts, the
industry's a gonner.   

This is the way I see it, anyhow. Hope I'm wrong.

Ron



At 09:26 AM 1/31/98 EST, you wrote:
>Anne writes:
>>Not that one should give up, but keep in mind that the general public has
>>no idea there's anything less than wonderful about Disney's Hercules movie.
>
>    Ok,  this wins the "most esoteric" post of the morning,  I give up,  I am
>lost,  I have no idea what this means............... please write the rest of
>the post
>thanks,
>Ed
>(if you nail one shoe to the floor, you can do your jogging inside)
>


 Ron Nossaman