UrLicht

Wow, was it really 20 years ago? As a kid my family lived in the Summit at Warner Center townhouses in LA. One night my friends and I saw a bunch of movie trailers pull up and of course we just had to see what was going on. We watched for hours(!) completely enthralled as Dan Aykroyd stood on top of a car passing a wallet back and forth through a window. It really gave me an appreciation of the level of perfection that producers of movies demand.

The working parts, no. The iron frame, yes. But getting the frame out can be pretty rough.

The tuning pegs might become stuck to the side of the pegboard holes they are in. Also, if the strings are not kept at the correct tension, there is a real possibility of the iron frame becoming warped or even breaking.

Compared to pianos, violins are really, really simple machines. You have strings, a bridge, a sound box with some holes in it and a couple of posts inside, some tuning pegs and that's about it. A single key on a piano has way more parts, and most of them move.

The design and construction of string instruments like violins is pretty much a solved problem. Yes there is variation in the way the wood is shaped and carved, which gives you the different grades of quality, but the basic engineering problem of "how do you make a violin" is solved.

Because a piano is much more complex there is a lot of room for continual innovation in both materials and construction. This might be the reason that you don't see people performing on old pianos - the newer ones are just technologically superior. That and it just takes so much effort (and money) to maintain a quality piano.

That being said, there is a legion of both pianists and violinists that will tell you (incorrectly or not) that the sound of an instrument improves with age. Something about the fibers in the wood being affected by vibration.

[Edit: maintenance cost as a factor]

I once bought a beater piano for $200 so I could practice tuning it. We didn't have room in our apartment, so a friend let us set it up in his and I'd come over once in a while and bang on it (thanks, Eric!).

Most of the weight of a piano comes from the cast iron frame inside that holds the >20 tons of tension from the strings. And this piano was no exception - it was an "upright grand" meaning it was as tall as a baby grand is long. It took six of us to cajole it up my friend's stairs.

So when moving time came for him and his wife we had to decide what to do with the piano. None of us wanted to move the damn thing again, and since I really didn't have an emotional attachment to it whatsoever, we came up with the next best idea - cut it to pieces with a sawzall. And like another commenter said, if you ever have the opportunity to do this, do it. It was pretty fun. There's nothing quite like the sound of taking wire cutters to a fully tense piano string.

Also, if you're at least semi-serious about becoming good at piano, you'll want a real one because of the action (and if you're really serious about it, you'll want a grand). Digital pianos, while having improved over previous models, are still not close enough to the feel of a real piano to give you good tactile feedback and therefore good technique.

I've found Command-T slows way down on large trees, causing a very noticeable interruption in my "flow" when I use it. Also, it's written in ruby which can be a bit more painful to get started with if your distro doesn't compile ruby support into vim by default.

Only easy because they are traditionally taught first. This is because from a music theory standpoint the keys in which those chords are tonic have the least number of sharps and flats. From a memory and hand position standpoint chords that have a black key in the middle (D maj. E maj. etc) are the easiest.

The whole "Chrome as OS" thing will benefit from this.

I'm curious to know what was so frustrating. I've had my tab for a few months and love it to death.

Yes, you've managed to figure out why tax exempt status exists.