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Comment by noduerme | Hacker News Reader

Okay, this is just straight up awesome. I've played piano for 37 years. I've built things all my life. But I never even considered the possibility of building a piano from the ground up. Let alone the difficulty of engineering an instrument that defied all the normal parameters. This is real world hacking at its finest. Not to mention it sounds great.

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In his later years (and as dementia was beginning to set in) my dad spontaneously decided to start building acoustic guitars in all sorts of shapes and sizes, trying out various weird ideas he had. He hugely enjoyed it and it's left behind some interesting heirlooms and a legacy that he otherwise never expected to leave. A piano is at a different scale (pun intended) but if you have a modicum of practicality, you can build something like that with enough time.

any photos?

I only took some yesterday but here's a look: https://imgur.com/a/u2r41Eq

This would make for a fascinating post of its own

My dad is starting to get dementia, but all he does is watch TV. I wish he would build guitars.

Hmm, maybe try figuring out what things he likes and/or can engage in without effort - whatever he can do well without thinking.

And maybe track this over time. Borrowing the analogy of HDD/SSD corruption, which can impact critical filesystem metadata just as easily as file contents, it's impossible to predict how that fundamental capacity to engage will shift and change in confounding and lateral ways.

I had a similar experience with my grandmother. Her motivation and curiosity left her. I tried to interest her in new things a number of times, thinking she'd be so much happier. The data, though, led me to decide she was in fact happier when I just accepted who she had become.

This is my greatest fear, more than death: to stop learning, to stop creating, to stagnate. I wonder if nutrition or exercise has an impact on this. I would eat broccoli every day if I thought it would improve my chances.

Check out the whole-food, plant based diet: https://nutritionfacts.org/video/alzheimers-and-atherosclero...

https://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-alzheimers-gene-control...

Credentials of research scientist behind the whole-food, plant based diet: https://wfpb-wolf.netlify.app/maturity.html

OTOH,the brain needs animal fat for DHA:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/diagnosis-diet/20190...

I'm vegan and supplement DHA via this product: https://ca.freshfield.life/products/vegan-omega-3

Grab a joint/vaporize some loose leaf herb; I don't know why people don't give cannabis to their disoriented, chronically disengaged elders more.

Because they are already disoriented and disengaged so they don't need more.

On the contrary, in many cases with medical problems.

very interested in seeing what those look like

I only took some yesterday but here's a look: https://imgur.com/a/u2r41Eq

and access to either some very enthusiastic amateur smelters, one enthusiastic professional smelter, or some really good welders, because wood you can easily find, but a pre-cast plate for an unusual size piano... very not so much.

I wonder how much of the necessary structure could be obtained by drilling and bolting.

Better be really well-engineered as the the string tensions on a conventional grand piano ranges into the low 10s of tons. Yamaha pianos, for example, are around 20 tons.

I'd think that welding would be the sensible route if you're just doing one, as long as it's made sturdy enough. Casting the whole frame in one piece makes more sense if you're mass-producing pianos. Also, it's traditional. I don't know what welding equipment was like a hundred plus years ago during the piano-manufacturing boom, but casting piano frames was a well-honed art.

Yes and incredibly well balanced, listen to the Funérailles von Liszt recording if you want to get the bass sounds. You get both really nice bass with clear high tones. Chapeau.

Came here to mention this. I'm not exactly a connoisseur when it comes to classical music, but if there's one thing I like it is Liszt, and I haven't heard it like this before. I mean this bass reminds me of 'proper' bass in electronic music (synth or guitar), unheard for a piano in my limited experience.

Direct link: https://youtu.be/sOILiAIwwFM

It is a great showcase of the instrument

> Not to mention it sounds great.

I grabbed my best pair of headphones and monitors ... but I imagine that any recording just does not do this monster of a piano justice.

Yes, I'm sure the deep bass it can produce can only be heard and felt in person. Also in some videos, especially the 480p ones, the low bitrate artifacts are clearly audible.

TIL that youtube has trash audio quality for no good reason even when it's a trivial component of total bitrate.

https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/14632/any-differ...

I wish there were FLAC (or other lossless) recordings, seems that the site only links to YT videos.

Yes, which makes me wonder why hasn't this been done before? How were the standard length in today's piano determined in the first place? The piano making history and a whole loads of questions unanswered and need time to dig deeper.

there certainly are pianos that are incredibly long for this reason.

You can get grand pianos in many different lengths, look at for example Yamaha's products

For example here https://www.robertspianos.com/top-makes-of-piano/yamaha-pian...

[Scroll]

Nothing listed there is half as long as this piano.

I think the point being made was that there is no "standard" piano length, and that it's controlled by the engineer. Which suggests that the answer to the question of "why has nobody made such a long piano before?" is "nobody wanted to" - and I can see why, because this particular piano is incredibly inconvenient to move, and pianos are expected to do that.

Organs are much larger and don't move but lots of organs are built.

true, and lots of trombones are built, as well. organs and trombones have absolutely zero effect on the things a piano must do. they're different instruments entirely, so the fact that large organs exist doesn't change how pianos are used in any way.

Because you get drastically diminishing returns as you increase past a certain size, as a huge piano is a hassle in its own right. The linked super long piano won't work even in concert halls -- it's too long to move around backstage!

Perhaps the dimensions of someone's barn were a factor.

Designs for instruments are always a practical balance.

See also: lutes. A theorbo might allow for greater expression, but it's not very practical. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVabz8LneI4

Thanks for the link. I'm not into lutes, but i found this among the suggested videos, and now am in love.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9VI4tNMyJk

That was fantastic. Both informative and enjoyable, and the comments were an unexpected trove of giggles.

"Shouldn't it have a blinking red light on the end? You know, for airplanes."

Lots of products are limited by the cost shipping, size of roads and train car boxes, etc.

Would that dimension be called _pianomax_?

Either

1. 8 x 40 feet (standard "long" shipping container), or

2. 15 feet, 9 inches x 72 feet (largest modular home size allowed on some US state highways)

I think 8 x 40 would be pianomax, 15 x 72 would be super pianomax. Alexander Piano is ~18 feet so it should fit inside of a standard 8 x 20 ft container with sufficient bracing. You're probably looking at 60-80 tons (guess) of wire tension for a 40' piano, maybe more.

I don't know that there's so much a "standard" as just tradition - smaller grands are largely, as I understand it, about space constraints, but while I knew a place growing up with an almost-ten-foot Bosendorfer, it doesn't look like much ever broke the 10' mark. Most variation seems to happen in the 5-to-10-foot range.

Those bass notes really do sound glorious.

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