Note by Note: The Making of a Steinway Piano | Musical Instrument | ENDEVR Documentary

you can make something that looks like a piano fairly easily but to get it to sound like an instrument is very difficult to have people in love with their instruments i like the piano to sort of play back a little bit there's something really magical about this cabinet makers are a dying breed see all the little scrapes and everything that's what makes like you feel like actually accomplishing something you know [Music] so [Music] so [Music] good morning [Music] walnut mahogany ebony no matter what it is we have it covered you want to separate [Music] them [Music] [Music] do [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so [Music] so the way we built a piano today it was built over a hundred years ago i can't think of anything else what we produce today which is so conservative and where we haven't changed basically whatsoever like zapier [Music] so [Music] [Music] firstly know what against me about it it's like when i first got here what do i know about pianos i never played it enough i was like wow when they told me the cost of it i think it went five thousand twenty five thousand just to start you know and just the way every floor is covered in pianos i know i can't afford nobody i know could afford really so it's kind of cool because like you know you take pride in it if you look like you see all the little scrapes and everything that's what makes it like you feel like you actually accomplishing something you know like you take pride in it i've been doing pianos for 42 years and i talk about pianos i live pianos and piano my whole life i think piano a different personality account of the wood and the the hammer that felt everything a handmade so every piano is a little different and a little sound a little different every piano got their own personality and you just gotta bring it out [Music] okay i think you can make something that looks like a piano maybe fairly easily but to get it to sound like an instrument it's very difficult [Music] the tone of the piano is so much not only a part of the wood but even of the construction that just the slightest variation can change the sound it can even fail if you try to push it too fast the conditioning room is the place where it rests just like a person would rest and get ready for the next day [Music] [Music] okay this is one of my favorite spaces in the world the basement of steinway 57th street because i love being amongst the sea of instruments there's something really magical about this for me here in the concert department steinway has a bank of pianos that kind of rotate in and out of the basement you know pianists will come in and borrow them for a concert and they can be sent anywhere around the city they can be sent around the country occasionally even around the world i i selected my piano from this very room they had five pianos from which i could choose they they know what i like i have a tendency to be rather heavy-handed and i like the piano to sort of play back a little bit i like kind of a deep heavy action it's really how your body reacts to the instrument and how the instrument responds to your you know to your physical approach [Music] my friend [Music] when are you leaving i'm leaving good night yeah and what are you coming back on the 13th night and the concert is on the 15th oh boy i i would suggest and this is completely up to you into carnegie if at some point i can work on maybe the 79 and the new piano zenkel maybe if you have those two choices when you come in on the 13th that would be sufficient i think they're probably you know at least as good as anything we have here we could also select another piano here and possibly bring it over for that this was my question of course to know if there is an instrument that is a monster or rich enough in terms of um you want to try a couple pianos here for a few minutes just to see you could just see how you feel on those and let me see if we got anything after the rim has been bent we then remove it from the conditioning room and we start the process of building a piano every one hundredth of an inch even though the specs are the same for every piano every hundredth of an inch off will change you do that five times you got three hundredths of an inch then the next guy does the 16th of an inch the next guy blows a 30 second by the end you got a foot and a half you know you can't you can't have that the assembly from here on up is a continuous process one operation building on the next what i do down here affects another department upstairs if all my tolerances are correct all their parts will now fit correctly without any problems when i first looked inside of a piano you know you see the action of the hammers and all the levers and you realize that there was a complicated mechanism there the actual construction of the piano didn't impress me as much as the mechanism of the key causing the hammer to strike the strings that always fascinated me [Music] a good piano is like a good actor it's new to have all kinds of different personality basically you can play very very solid like [Music] a king like an emperor you know we can play things that are very very intricate [Music] we can just play something real basic you know just set up a group and then need to have a very very percussive [Music] [Applause] [Music] sense so you know it's like a complete art creation so you need to have all kinds of different personalities for some reason i like to work with wood maybe because i start very young and you know working with wooden i got used to i have no idea but i i enjoy building piano if i don't work if i don't work physical then i get nervous i want to work physically i want them i like to work hard put it this way when i start in my mind i'm gonna stay here maybe five years so after five years i'm gonna leave and go to my country but never happened it's 32 years in sydney park being that there's so many different craftsmen involved you have to remember that they also come from 18 20 25 different cultures and they all have their own approach to a piece of wood or a chisel or a hammer or how to use it and all those individual techniques from different cultures tend to gel together which is probably one of the reasons why each piano is an individual i remember when i got a memorandum saying there shall be no nepotism no relatives should be hired for anything and i said to my then boss this is what do you want me to fire everybody in the factory including myself and brother john i mean it doesn't make any sense that's what it is so of course we ignored it i guess a piano maker probably doesn't know what his exact finished product is going to be any more than you know when you're going to record a record or play live there's so many things that go into putting a piano together that it's always a combination of elements and chemistry between all those elements coming together kenny barron and i both went to the steinway factory in astoria to select pianos of course since we're different musicians and different people we had different choices try this one there's something that really speak to you and then something uh okay [Music] nope [Music] oh this is a oh the double star by this one no when it's when it's right you know right away classics the fact is it's not an exact science you may wake up in a great mood one day in the lousy mood the next and all of those things come out in our expression of music because it isn't just technical in fact technique is just a way to get to the human part of the music always i'm a plate feeder i have the case i have the plate so i have to pull it together i don't want to go anywhere on this time with diana any part on this time with that i like this path this is my path [Music] january 10 i went to carnegie hall i see my stand with yellow i said it's my piano this ass is my piano you say what you feel i said i'll make it i don't see the name i hear the sound when you walk with your hand you know what you do you know what you touch any mistake any problem you know you touch with your hand you know what the problem is i don't know for somebody else but for me i close my eyes i make it [Music] do [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] how to judge of course in these acoustics very high they're beautiful both of them i would use them in another context and with another piece certainly but i don't have the feeling and it's hard for me to judge so fast that each of them could really bring the huge potential of warmth we we need in this case i can certainly brighten up that piano there i mean we certainly get more pure sound out of it whether that's going to be pleasing to you is another question so let's try a couple more nick in the heyday of piano making last you know 1800s i mean they were literally i think at some point there was something like 1600 different piano companies at least different names now whether they were all from different factories i don't know but now there's just a handful there was the selma piano company it's gone there was the national piano company downtown is gone color and campbell up in the bronx is gone and so we are the only one left and it's never going back to the 1880s when you had to have a piano in your home and see us robert sold them and all that sort of stuff that's that's gone so who knows what the future of the piano business is [Music] you can teach somebody how to do a job but only time makes them better at it the longer they do it the better they get at it cabinet makers are a dying breed it's very hard to go out in the street and find one today that can do the caliber work that we have out here but one face is this way one faces the other but they're identical just right and left [Music] this this hand plane i bring from croatia 1969 he's immigrant with me i come over here because over there i got nothing to do no living so i have to go with the stomach for breath looking for the breath so that's like coming to the united states so i start coming in the standard i work already 32 years for them bell is probably one of the most critical part because whatever you put in there basically that's what is going to produce the sun and you can easily make mistake the sound board is the soul of the piano you know what the sound board does it simply picks up the vibration of the strings greatly amplifies it and throws it into the air if we wouldn't have a sound board no matter how good the other wood is you know how it would sound like an electric guitar which is not hooked up it is a selection of wood which makes a tremendous difference many of the craftsmen are imagining in their minds the slight difference in the cut that they're taking you can't really measure it very accurately the subtleness is in the hand not in in the actual ability to measure it with an instrument little things like notching out the bridge is done by hand entirely you can't really do it by machine because the angles switch a little bit and you really got to do it by hand to get it right there many little things like that about the steinway that do make the difference [Music] do [Music] so it's getting harder and harder to recruit the workforce we can go outside and look uh for people that are working let's say we get a woodwork experience like what i mean nailing two by fours this is nothing like nailing two by fours but the reason i'm doing this to make sure that there is no interference of any kind the board has to be free of anything has to vibrate clearly which is ours [Music] this mark means that he's got to go one millimeter down with the plate right here we need to have a nine millimeters bedding and he doesn't have so he has to do some more adjustments that's it we got another piano to check [Music] um [Music] so remember that the first time my teacher put on a recording of art tatum playing the piano and when the recording finished i remember saying to him well that's no big deal i mean two people should be able to do that and he said no that's one person playing all their piano and i almost quit peace gets me into the classical music with the the actual cartoon which is tom and jerry and there are the hungarian rubs on the number two but at least i remember here [Music] the cat is doing that to the mountain and then and i said you know first of all i love the cartoon and then i think oh if the cannon you know if this tom and jerry play so well i like to be a pianist too you know this is cool this is scary rich luscious gutsy if you want it to be it has a lot of color but i'll show you the other ones so we are planning to buy a grand piano for our son i played as a child six years i went to musicals too but i'm not so good my father has pure musical ear and very talented so he probably got his jeans now we owe him my son has his genes evidently in the music and this is at least some way that we can repay my father he wants the privilege to be able to see it and to appreciate it while he can that's why the urgency of getting a steinway now [Music] okay be [Music] foreign [Music] my big number from the time i was about five to eight was when the saints go marching in and the the whole is funny the i used to put all four beats on the left hand simple triad and how to improvise and then i i that was just the way i played it i had that four on the floor and then one day i heard arrow garner playing something like this with his left hand playing on all four beats and this is before i knew who errol was and i'm thinking like man that guy's copying my style man he's coming into my turf it was you know my dad's like well okay now i'll introduce you to errol garner yeah man i i started to think this is this is hard i'm in for some serious education right now and i got a long haul because it's not easy there's not many things you can find in this world that are not mass-produced we make about a little over 2000 pianos a year where other companies are making 100 pianos a day the thing about technology and other factories and the way the world's moving it's it's not as easy to get someone on an assembly line with metal arms to touch up the string or to feel the lightness of the the weight is you got to balance it and and give it its proper height and proper touch you're not going to get that from a piece of metal all this process of multiplying things has not been made always with the respect for handcrafts and ship and we have lost so much so we have to try to combine this modernity and traditions and seeing beautiful human gesture and human body taking time for the love of the object or of realizing something is of course incomparable [Music] [Music] my whole life has been from ditmar's boulevard downtown i lived right on steinway street on 20th avenue and i moved on 20th road then i moved to crescent when i got when i met my wife i moved out of my parents house that was a glorious day for them you know [Music] me i'm a piano regulator i just align everything make sure it goes in sync i align the hammers to the strings so they come up synchronized everything's level balanced just make sure everything's in sync things like that that's pretty much my job some panels just just resonate more than others they have a particular sound that cannot be duplicated by any other piano that's that's what makes them unique and that it's sort of a negative kind of difference that it's only apparent to certain people with certain sensitivities about sound you know so if you see it leaning it's coming up it's cracking off to the left a little got to get them to where they're all synchronized with the strength this one's going into the right now turn it in [Music] oh [Music] i'll see on a piano that is completely compatible to me those things that i was doing little runs they they come easier on this one i'm forcing it you see the piano should be responsive to my approach my touch if it's if i get that if i get that response back to me then that's the piano for me i worked hard to get here it wasn't like they just handed me this job i did everything i pushed plates i did you know what i mean mixed mineral spirits i said i planed i worked my way through ranks this is my 11th year i love it you know i make good money i live close to home and it supports my children and anytime you do a great job it just feels good even if you cook a good plate of spaghetti you know what i mean i could do that too [Music] so [Music] i always felt that what is communicated during um music making is more important than than the vehicle with which you communicate it but i still think that if you have the freedom of an instrument that can do a lot for you that is very responsive that it has a natural range of colors and a naturally singing tone that of course you're going to be capable of saying more with it it would be terrible to imagine only similar instruments that would this could be a dream of robots i think it's for me much more interesting that instrument will give you an expected combination of sounds and this is stimulating your inspiration imagination this one is very nicely open yeah this is an older piano the problem with well this kind of piece requires the largest scale of dynamics and sounds isn't it from the uh impossible well the impossible sounds from incredibly small dimensions to the cosmic sounds we have a dilemma on our hands sorry we have a dilemma yeah i know therefore we're disgusting the thing about the piano is it's just it's so fleeting you know what i mean it's not like a painting where you finish the painting and it's it's done you can go and look at it and touch it i mean this is the painting right here you know it's sort of waiting to be painted and then you paint it and then it's not there anymore i mean you just never know what's gonna happen i think that's probably the best one so far but i have one that came back it's ice cold just came back on the truck so it's freezing maybe you should play with gloves on [Music] ah we are but it's really very cold but if it sustains huh it stays so the monster yeah the monster you were looking for uh i play on the 24th so if i worked on the piano on the 24th and you came on the 25th is that right i met you like the middle of the day or something perfect perfect very good yeah so 1000 thanks [Music] [Music] my goal yeah it's an impossible goal it's perfection so therefore what i try to do is come as close to that as i can and the only way i know how the way i know the only way i know to do it is the hard way is the constant attention to trying to make an improvement on your last performance that's my goal i am a tone regulator i work basically on the concert grands i work on the touch the feel the the players fingers to the keys and i also work with the tone to find the voice of the piano and make it sound like it should look a little bit high but that's probably because this prop felt so i didn't know anything about working on pianos when i first came here i i worked tuning for a while and then i uh worked preparing the hammers for voicing and then i voiced pianos for 10 years i voiced and voiced and then they thought that maybe i'd be ready to uh to work on some concert brands when i first started working here there was a lot of gentlemen on the verge of retirement people have been at piano making for 30 40 years these guys all worked on the concert grands and they helped me out so much i was really lucky all the people that came before us the ones that trained us gave us lessons taught us and moved on same same knowledge we're passing on to the ones coming up behind us that's how we keep everything going it would be a tragedy for someone to have to go back and try to figure out some years from now how it was that steinway built these great instruments much of what we do is not just the matter of our hands but when our hands and our eyes and our hearts and our minds all work together and much of that is given from one generation to the next majority of the older generation that was here when i came is gone i'm trying to pass on what i learned from them to the newcomers because that's the way to keep it alive to keep the quality of the craftsmanship alive [Applause] [Music] no i'm not gonna look at my own piano even after i'm done and say it's perfect because it's never perfect i hope that my work goes out of here and people are pleased with it and don't have to fuss around with it too much but i'm sure there's always someone who's going to [Music] my job is to even out the tone the piano is all finished ready to go out the door and i go over the note and try to even out though every one sound the same i see all the work that went into making this piano bending the rim fitting the plate and at the end of the line when i see this piano i know how much work that went into it it's a beautiful instrument i know when i'm done when i like the piano when it go down even and when i might feel you've got a feeling the piano when you play the piano heavy piano feel different and when you feel it's easy to play and easy on the ears then you know you got a piano [Music] so [Music] so [Music] oh [Music] one [Music] so [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] this particular piano was actually my favorite right away [Music] i liked i would say the immediacy of the sound the the directness on the attack there's something very clear this one to spoke to me immediately [Music] and everyone anyone sort of somehow involved in its destiny should be uh should be very proud [Music] you

Channel: ENDEVR

Views: 558,114

Keywords: Free documentary, documentaries, full documentary, hd documentary, documentary - topic, documentary (tv genre), Business Documentary, steinway, steinway piano, note by note, Note by Note: The Making of Steinway, musical instrument, musical instrument documentary, piano documentary, music documentary

Id: 6rAhps4AkT8

Length: 56min 13sec (3373 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 01 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/OE1FEU]

And after this odyssey in New York he plays a Hamburg Steinway anyway.