What kind of piano is this?

Ask questions on piano history and the age of your piano.

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Moonshiner
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What kind of piano is this?

Post by Moonshiner »

Hello,

I'm trying to identify a piano that I saw in a documentary about the late singer/songwriter Elliott Smith. I'm a novice player and have fairly limited knowledge of piano makers/styles. As far as I can tell from the video, this piano is much longer than a standard upright and also appears taller than any grand that I've come across. Below, you'll find links to a couple of short video clips where you can see the piano. Any help identifying the style of the piano would be great. Also, I apologize in advance for the poor board etiquette(linking videos and such).

1st clip: (sorry about this one. you'll have to skip the first 30 seconds of cloud footage :cry:)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKX51tAWb04

2nd clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qH2SmPth0A
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Bill Kibby
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Movie clips

Post by Bill Kibby »

At the moment, I can't get either link to work. I don't follow the bit about "taller than any grand", uprights are always taller than grands. Perhaps it will make sense if I ever manage to get our office PC to load the clips.
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Moonshiner
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Pictures

Post by Moonshiner »

Hi, thanks for the reply. I can see how you might be confused. What I should have said is that this piano has a distinctive boxy shape, typical of an unpright. However, judging by its length, it's probably a grand piano. The square edges in the front (on each side of the keys) look particularly unusual to me. Here are a few photos I extracted from the video:

http://img61.imageshack.us/my.php?image=piano5je.jpg

Thanks in advance for your help with this...
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Bill Kibby
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Dunno

Post by Bill Kibby »

There's not enough detail to be sure. Up to Beethoven's time and a little longer, "grand" pianos were shaped like harpsichords, and when these are closed, the keyboard section is like an oblong box with square corners and no curves or fancy shapes at the ends of the keyboard.
Piano History Centre
http://pianohistory.info
Email via my website.
If you find old references or links on this site to pianogen.org, they should refer to pianohistory.info
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