Piano conversion project

[jimlondon]

This old piano had been in my parents house since I was little. It was my late great aunt's 21st birthday present and for a number of years could no longer be tuned up to concert pitch.

This year one of my plans was to turn it into a recording studio and record a song on it. The work is pretty much complete, it needs a bit of tidying up but I’m still experimenting a bit before I finalise cable lengths etc.

To play it as a piano you can just sit down and start playing. The sound is clear and realistic. The keys aren’t weighted, so that’s the major noticeable difference between it and a real piano, but then when you switch to electric piano or organ it makes sense.

The sustain pedal on the piano operates the sustain on the keyboard. I did have the left pedal rigged up to operate the expression on the keyboard (e.g. to control amount of tremolo) but I’m thinking of instead linking it into a looping station so it will be possible to loop a piano part which might be handy when writing songs or practicing left hand / right hand piano parts.

There’s a computer inside the piano which means you can also operate the keyboard in midi mode, so when GarageBand is running there’s hundreds of instruments to choose from, plus it’s possible to record multiple tracks. I’ve also been using it as a hifi, playing albums via Spotify.

If there are any Bowie fans reading this, I hope I haven’t ruined the song for you! I know I’m not a great singer, but I stopped letting that bother me a long time ago. I’m aiming to record four of my own songs on it in 2017.

Anyway, enough ramble. I recommend using headphones so as you can pick out the detail of the piano recording

[hfmadopter]

Interesting but seems as though you could have used weighted keys by using one of the weighted midi controllers available today.

I've often wondered what would happen if multi speakers were faced at the sound board of an acoustic piano.

[jimlondon]

I couldn't find a keyboard with weighted keys with a slim enough bed to fit into the piano. I've written to a few manufacturers but if anyone knows of one I'd love to swap the non-weighted keybed out.