I will admit it. I am biased piano man. But then, what is a piano man and how
did I become one. I guess I can loosely define a piano man as a person who
spends a great deal of his time around pianos, either working on them or playing
them or thinking about them and yes, writing about them. To some extent, my
piano bias has led me into the
gargantuan project of designing, writing and building a family of web sites that
collectively add up to being a piano portal for Colorado;
Anything Colorado Piano,
Colorado Piano
and
Piano Talk.
What is the importance of piano and music study in our culture and educational system?
As my goal nears for turning this site into a dynamic e-commerce, resource and
educational source for the people of this beautiful state and the Rocky Mountain
Region, I occasionally ponder the possibilities of having some positive impact
on our modern society and culture. This is where my bias comes in. I know for
instance that our society is currently lacking and sorely in need of a
reinstatement of music and the arts back to the pinnacle of all levels of our
education system from kindergarten through graduate school.
On my sites, I have written a number of articles in which I expatiate on this subject.
What does it take to learn
to play the piano?
What kind of expectations should you have for your child?
Insider tips on how to get the most out of your practice.
Music beats computers and
What is the value of music education in our children’s
lives?
There are so very many important benefits of a music education and playing the
piano. If I were to summarize these benefits into a sentence, it would be that
in the course of music study, what the child or the adult develops more than
anything else is the ability to use his or her mind for the purpose of creating
beauty in this world. And god knows, in this world, we need all the beauty we
can get.
Benefits of piano and music study.
Hand eye coordination
Reading skills
Developing the ability to concentrate
Thinking and processing
Develop the capacity for self critique
Multitasking
Developing memory
Patience
Dedication
A sense of esthetics linking to nature
Spirituality
This list can go on and on. There is no coincidence to the fact that most highly
educated professionals (doctors, scientists, etc.) studied music and remain active,
proficient musicians. Albert Einstein was an excellent violinist.Your musical diet
Music is very much like food. There is
healthy, healthful music, just as there is food. So in the course of music study
and appreciation, I believe that it is essential to stay on a healthy musical
diet. Paul Simon recently commented that Rap “music” has set modern music back
to the prehistoric era. Suffice to say, modern research and books such as the
Mozart Effect show that the kind of music we hear and have going through our
minds can elevate or degrade us. Mono tonal, static and deafening heavy metal
music can only dull the senses. In listening to
Mozart we hear beautifully conceived, well formed melodies, textured tonalities
and harmonies.
All quality Western music shares the following features.
Counterpoint, sequences, form, balanced tension and release from dissonance to
consonance, balance in texture and balance between melody and harmony, variety
in dynamics. In addition to diet, parental guidance and support is an essential
ingredient for the child to learn a musical instrument so family values are at
the very core of a musical education.
I like to think that my mold in life was cut more
from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries where musicians often tuned and
worked on their own instruments, much as do modern harpsichordists. My parents
were artists of the bohemian breed and I was fed art and music during my
childhood. I studied at the Settlement Music School and Temple University and so
on and so forth with a variety of teachers toward a Bachelors Degree in Piano
Performance. During the same period of time, I was introduced to piano
technology, ostensibly for the purpose of supporting myself through college. The
rest is history for me. I have been doing both for the past 35 years.How was Colorado Piano Buyers Guide conceived?
The site was conceived and designed on the following assumptions and working
principles that I have drawn from my 35 plus years in the piano world. Site Features
1. If the piano industry/business were considered to be in its entirety as one
business, it would be a minuscule sector of the economy. By considering the
piano business in its entirety, I will introduce to you the separate players in
the piano world. The piano manufacturers, dealers, rebuilders, movers,
refinishers, technicians, pianists, teachers, teacher organizations, music
schools, music stores and piano bars. If we were to glob all these various
categories together into a virtual single business called the piano business, we
would still end up with a very, very tiny industry as compared to most major
industries.
2. In reality, all the individual business professionals listed above are very
dependent on each other because we all work with different aspects of piano but
we all work with pianos.
3. If any one or more of the above categories were to fail, it would have a
detrimental effect on the other business. Our economic separateness is and
illusion and our economic dependence on each other is the reality.
4. Colorado Piano Buyers Guide family of websites attempts to do what all other
so called piano portals don’t do. There are piano mover’s sites, piano teacher’s
sites, piano dealers sites and so on down the line. These sites do not simulate
the reality of the piano business.
5. On Colorado Piano Buyers Guide, if you are a sponsor, you are one click away from a sponsor in
another category. So if a person from out of state purchases a piano from one of
the sponsored dealers, with one click, you can be found by that very same piano
consumer. In other words, only on Colorado Piano Buyers Guide, can you
instantly get a
customer from a sponsor in a different piano business. But then, that is often how it
works in the non virtual world, which is the reason I have designed the site in
this fashion.
6. Colorado Piano Buyers Guides gives you the ability to answer the consumer’s
questions in an instant. We provide reviews, buyer’s guides, on site video
presentations from musical performances to video buyers guides etc. As a sponsor
you can partake in an onsite auto responder marketing program where we develop
leads and contacts from people who visit the site and want ongoing info about
what you have to offer.
7. Compare all this to what the piano consumer currently has to do to get info
on your business. Do a search on Google and go through what often amounts to a
muddled list of sites that have sketchy, insufficient data and hope that you can
be found. And if you are found on a quasi-partial portal, the consumers will
often get only a sketchy hint of what you have to offer. If you already have a
good website that is optimized and being picked up by the search engines for the
keywords that you want, Colorado Piano Buyers Guide can help improve what you already have.
Whether you are a consumer or a potential sponsor reading this article, I hope
you enjoyed it and found it to be useful and informative. I look forward to and
would welcome your
input and participation.
Eben Goresko
Founder of Colorado Piano Buyers Guide