Modartt user forum » Pianoteq user forum » (silly off topic post) Global warming may bring back the real piano...
Looks like green power will be highly intermittent - this could hurt Pianoteq sales and bring back the acoustic piano.... ;^)
http://johnosullivan.livejournal.com/31784.html
Greg.
There are going to be many surprises in the future, but we can only guess at what some of them will be. One thing seems reasonably sure - when (not if) the easy energy (oil) runs low, the world will be a different place - and one of the major changes will be in agriculture.
Making music with acoustic instruments won't be all bad - I was a kid in the era when bands that played for dances didn't have any amplification. All the instruments (except for the guitar) were capable of projecting throughout the dance hall. Hmmm - no distortion guitars - looking forward to it.
G
Very little (3% or less) of the electricity produced in North America comes from petroleum based sources. Consider the amount of energy it takes to manufacture a piano.
Very little (3% or less) of the electricity produced in North America comes from petroleum based sources. Consider the amount of energy it takes to manufacture a piano.
True, but I tend to consider coal, oil, and natural gas as hydrocarbons (HCO) which all have the same source.
Pianos made today certainly utilize considerable energy, but it wasn't that long ago that they were made by candlelight with hand-powered tools.
I've seen and played several 1896/1897 Bechsteins (a friend of mine has restored three or four), and they are still quite nice even by today's standards. HCO free pianos are quite feasible as the manufacture can still be done by hand, and of course we have the knowledge of better scaling design.
The materials used for acoustic pianos today are still wood, leather, steel, copper, felt, and lacquer. For the keys, we've replaced ivory with plastic which is oil derived.
Glenn
PS - Where I was born and raised, 97 percent of the electricity is generated from coal and oil. The province of Saskatchewan has two small hydro plants - the vast majority of electricity there is generated in three large coal-fired plants.
Here in BC, hydro is the primary source.
"My father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, but his son will ride a camel."
-Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum
If we have lucky, the pianist of future will not be like this guy:
Or this:
Remembering the second guy it's a Modartt's collaborator
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Energy it's not really a problem. The problem is that goverments and global politic put money and greed before nature, before future, before their grandsons.
-You can have energy from usines that uses concentrated sun light to heat water and move turbines.
-You can built home systems that use solar energy, by parabolic diks to trak sun and concentrate to a small high efficient solar cell.
-You can get energy from turbine in sea, moving with the sea flow, or turbines in the coast moving with the waves power.
-You can convert any organic rest, even tires, plastic bags, any petrol derived, and chicken's fat and skin, into usefull combustible oil that polutes a lot less than gasoline. It's a process called Thermo Depolymerization as this mimics the way nature produce oil, by pressure and temperature.
You probably haven't heart about, but it exists and costs practically the cost of gasoline, but gasoline it's still more simple and get some profit more.
-You can use a lot less cars and use more public transport.
-You can not buy a lot of trash (plastics in silly gadgets) and stop buy fast food with a lot of plastics.
-You can eat less junk food or fast food and walk more, and so reduce costs of medical assistance.
-You can invest more in research of alternative energies, solar cells aprimoration and recycling technics, and invest less in foolish multimilionary films of explosion and retards.
-You can recicle all your trash, and use recicled wood and more ecologic materials.
We can but we don't do, because humanity it's a dumb greed.