the future of piano study

[pianolover 88]

Keep to the topic, please.

Terry Peterson

<br><br><br>----Original Message Follows----<br>From: Susan Kline 
&lt;skline@peak.org&gt;<br>Reply-To: Pianotech 
&lt;pianotech@ptg.org&gt;<br>To: Pianotech 
&lt;pianotech@ptg.org&gt;<br>Subject: Re: the future of piano study<br>Date: 
Tue, 19 Jul 2005 19:22:06 -0700<br><br><br>Hello, Colin<br><br>I thought 
Brian Chung's title &lt;&lt;Riding Mowers, Dinosaurs and the Art of War 
&gt;&gt; was<br>very well chosen.<br><br>I don't see the competition for 
time as war.<br><br>Myself, I notice that I spend too many hours in front of 
a computer terminal,<br>(like now) and that my reading time is way down, and 
I don't spend as long playing<br>the piano as I used to.<br><br>I noticed in 
his long list of child activities, that they fell easily into two 
major<br>categories: physically active, mainly sports; and 
cybernetic-sedentary. Piano<br>playing is someplace in between. Aerobic it's 
not. I can see why people want to<br>get kids outdoors running around, since 
they spend so much time sitting down,<br>staring blankly at stuff.<br><br>As 
for the future: People are always projecting present trends, and then 
moaning<br>about the results. Present trends only show the past, not the 
future. Projections<br>are only useful if they take into account the big 
picture, and even so, something<br>can happen (like 9-11) which nobody 
foresaw, and which changes the whole playing<br>field.<br><br>OT: --start 
soapbox mode--<br>Picture everything you do, buy, eat, enjoy, etc. Now, 
remove about half of the physical<br>energy going into it. What is left? Are 
people just going to sit there and do nothing<br>about it? Can you predict 
how people are going to react to $7 gas, knowing that the<br>price and 
availability are only going to get worse yet? I can't.<br><br>The city 
paving crew is resurfacing all the streets for a few blocks around 
my<br>house, this week. They have some really big machinery, and they 
covered the<br>street with tar, felt, and asphalt, after cleaning and 
scoring the old surface.<br>They do it every few years, keeping the streets 
nice, but how many more<br>times are they going to be out there doing 
that?<br><br>What kind of sleepwalkers in Washington approved a bunch of new 
highway construction,<br>when almost nobody will have the gas to drive the 
interstates? And the railroads are falling apart, just as the fuel crunch is 
starting to make the airlines impractical. (Airplanes use many times the 
energy of rail, and trucks use several times the energy of rail, to haul the 
same stuff.)<br><br>Big new highways? Somebody on the web called them really 
spacious and luxurious bike paths.<br><br>Read &quot;Twilight in the 
Desert&quot; by Matt Simmons, if you believe the Saudis when they<br>say 
they have decades of supply ready whenever they want to develop 
it.<br><br>--end soapbox mode--<br><br>I honestly don't know how kids are 
going to be spending their days in five or ten<br>or fifteen years. All I 
can guess is that it's going to be way, WAY different than<br>how they spend 
them now.<br><br>At least our favorite instrument doesn't have to be plugged 
in.<br><br>The best way to help kids enjoy music is for the parents to 
actively make music themselves.<br><br>Susan Kline<br><br>