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Comment by bane | Hacker News Reader

A good musician can play world class music on a rusty spoon, a used pie plate and a one-string-out-of-tune-$20-guitar.

Crap musicians are those that rely on fancy instruments to make up for their lack of basic musicianship.

Even a drunk martini bar pianist can sound halfway decent on a $70k Steinway or Bösendorfer.

I do not doubt that. But to return to the original point, a good instrument has a soul, as a good musician has. My digital-Kawai does not have one, my analog Hofmann has. My musical skills have nothing to do with that.

The nature of the instrument doesn't dictate its soul. A digital piano was made with just as much care and soul as a regular old piano.

Even instruments with very limited expressiveness are no less important. Yanni regularly brings listeners to tears and he plays as much on a synth as he does on a traditional piano.

"Soulfulness" didn't stop with the digital revolution. You're simply no sophisticated enough to perceive it. Even instruments like a tb303 have brought deep meaning, and communicated emotional soulful intention, to millions.

Your emotional range is just too narrow to feel it. Blame yourself not the instruments.

Have you ever played a Bösendorfer Imperial?

Yes. I can do you one better, I've even played the piano discussed here

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/03/international/europe/03RUS...

If you can not understand the difference between these instruments and a for example a Kawai MP10 than any discussion is meaningless.

I've also played wooden spoons, a TB-303, TR-808, TR-909, Classical Violin, Appalachian fiddle, Classical Cello, Classical Piano, Piano Moderne, Three kinds of Organ, Several Synths, Tracker, Marimba, Xylophone, 북, 장고, Kazoo, Slide Whistle, Pot and Pan, 5-gallon drum, Hang, Recorder (modern and classical), flute, penny whistle, Appalachian dulcimer, Hammered Dulcimer, 꽹과리, 자바라, and on and on and on. I'm not even uniquely qualified to comment on this because music is a universe, not a spectrum.

If you can't create beautiful, soulful, music on a Kawai MP10, or even a bag or sand, then I question your authority on music. You rely on expensive instruments as crutches to fill in your musicality, when you need to develop your own. Start with simple instruments and when you can put soul into a pair of wooden spoons then you can move on to more expressive instruments.

Somebody who can't perform with soul on a Kawai MP10, then any discussion is more than meaningless because you've limited soulful musicality to such a tiny fraction of music and instruments in the world that you definition is effectively useless.

I did not say that I can not perform on a MP10. I regularly do, because of practical reasons. All I said is that the Hofmann or any other hand made piano is much better because it has a soul. Just look in the worlds concert halls and see what word class classical pianists prefer.

Because they require less performance effort to get a nice sound, not because they have a soul.

Your argument is like saying "chefs use better ingredients in their restaurant then at home because those ingredients have a soul, while the ingredients they use for home cooking does not".

You are utterly divorced from any reality and live in a trite pedantic fantasy world. Please stop talking to me.

You're simultaneously tiring, limited and boring.

No chefs use better ingredients because that leads to better tasting food. As music is a communication method of emotions from human to human, a better instrument is one that leverages emotions. Hand made instruments are far better in this regard than robots or computers because the idea of sound of the craftsman, and therefore his soul and emotions, are built in. That is why hand made instruments sounds far more different to each other than modern CNC made pianos. The hand made ones have personality and taste. Important ingredients for good music.

Do you think there is only one (your) reality in the world?

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