In response to the 2019 bushfires, we will plant a tree with every new piano sold.

I’m sure you don’t need to be reminded about how hard the last few months have been for Australia’s koala population. Although we have it easy down here in Melbourne and our shop is not engulfed in toxic smoke like so many businesses on the East coast, we are still horrified to read about what has been happening in recent months.

When Ginger’s 5-year-old daughter Zoe was asked if she cares about koalas, the immediate response was a big face-splitting grin and an enthusiastic “YES”. So we figured we’d better keep her happy and (although it’s only a small gesture considering the unfathomably large scale of terrible climate changes happening around us) we have decided that for each new piano sold from December 2019 we will be donating to the Australian Koala Foundation for them to plant a Eucalyptus tree at the Quinlan’s sanctuary.

In response to the Australian climate disaster, we will plant a tree with every new piano sold.

We’re stretched very thin at the moment with Christmas almost upon us, but as soon as things quiet down over here, I’ll update this post with more information, and most importantly: cute koala photos!

If you have any thoughts or feedback for us then we would love to hear from you. Please feel free to contact us or write a comment below.

Most recommended pianos for parents

A brief guide to start your musical journey

Due to popular request, I’ve recently published a page on our website featuring our most recommended pianos for parents and students at a range of levels and budgets. If you’ve been looking for your family’s first piano or your teacher has suggested that you will need to upgrade soon, this guide is a great place to start.

I’ve listed several of our most popular pianos in order of their price-points and made some brief comments about which level of playing they are suitable for. You can see the full list here:

Skip the sales jargon

It’s really not important that your piano has mahogany hammers, or agraffes, or some other fancy-sounding features. What matters is how the piano was put together (or to be more specifically, who put it together) and the fundamental design principles that have been used. Pianos are not like mobile phones and comparing features and benefits on the internet won’t get you very far or make for useful comparisons. If you’re interested in hearing and discussing the differences between various pianos the best thing you can do is visit our showroom to see these pianos in action. It truly is the only way to make a meaningful comparison. Our friendly staff will always be happy to offer some guidance and advice that is specific to your situation.

Disclaimer

Of course, all of the opinions presented on that page are my own - and I’m old-fashioned and highly opinionated at the best of times! If you have any questions about why a particular piano has made the list or has been left out, please feel free to contact me and I’ll be happy to elaborate on my reasoning. I wanted to keep the page simple for parents who might be feeling overwhelmed and so have not expanded too far on the information there in the hope it serves as a starting point for your piano research. For now, I have linked some respected external websites on that page that may give a little more insight into the rankings. In the future I intend to publish a more in-depth post to discuss my thoughts about when grand-pianos are necessary, a more comprehensive look at how upright pianos change at various sizes, and technical aspects of design. Stay tuned for those posts!

Compulsory reading for all parents:

While I’ve got you here, I’d also like to refer parents to an open letter to parents of piano students.

“There is sometimes a conflict between what parents believe is best for their children and what music educators know to be the best way to teach in the 21st Century.” - Tim Topham

Tim Topham posted this letter on his blog in 2017 and it is as relevant as ever! If you have children learning the piano this is compulsory reading - if you can pay to put your children through lessons than you can spare the 10-minutes to ensure you’re supporting your children’s musical development in the best way possible.

Thanks for reading!

Yay! A Sale!

Just in case you missed it, we’re clearing out space for some major renovations lined up at the start of 2020. This means that until the 24th of December we’re offering clearance pricing on almost everything in store.

Up to 40% off!

You can read more about this on our Christmas sale page.

Sale pricing includes 30% off Traditional Chinese Instruments, 40% off Brass & Woodwind, 20% off Guitars, and 30% off Violins, Violas, & Cellos. We also have at least 10% off all of our second-hand Kawai and Yamaha Japanese-made pianos with selected models up to 30% off.

Note: all items are available in-store only, we will be re-launching our online store after the renovations are completed.

So what are these renovations we’ve been talking about?

Basically, we wanted a little more retail space for our Vermont South showroom so that we could use our warehouse primarily as an event space, as we’ve been doing recently with end-of-year concerts for local teachers as well as hosting some AMEB and ABRSM examinations.

Of course, we’re very excited about all of this and will be updating regularly on our social media pages (in particular, we are quite consistent with our Facebook and Instagram updates). Please follow us if you’d like to stay in the loop:

There’s room to improve!

It turns out there’s more than 2-metres of unused space above this drop-ceiling, so that’s simply got to be ripped out! We’ll also be removing the offices and practice rooms that are currently hogging the back-half of our shop in order to allow more floor-space to showcase our piano range. Especially as we’re finding more and more customers are enquiring after grand pianos and our high-end upright pianos. Hopefully we can create a more dynamic and flexible space to best support local teachers and musicians.

What’s the goal?

We’re hoping to create a much cleaner and more minimalist feel (think: “Scandinavian vibe” with lots of light tones and natural materials) in the store. The goal is to make coming to work even more fun than it already is but also to help showcase our instruments with a more open layout and relaxing space. Although the showroom will better reflect the quality of our most premium products, we will continue to stock a range of popular entry-level pianos at the same highly-competitive pricing as we’ve always done. After all, we’re here to share music with everyone at all stages of their musical journeys - not just the families or individuals that are ready to invest in German and European-made pianos.

That’s about it

I’d rather not bloat these blog-posts just to try and improve our Google search rankings. That’s about everything I wanted to share with you for now, if you have any questions of course please get in touch. If you were hoping this would be a longer article or blog post, I’m sorry to disappoint. Just wait until someone gets me started about technical aspects of pianos and you’ll wish you hadn’t asked!

Thanks for reading and we hope to see you in-store soon.

Rönisch Model 186 Grand Piano

There's something uniquely beautiful about acoustic pianos, even against other instruments.

Consisting of 8,000+ parts and supporting 20-tonnes of string-tension with a 100+ year old design and only a one-dimensional (although multiplied by 88) interface to control that mechanism.

Any piano performance is the sum of careful collaboration between suppliers all over the globe with the best materials coming from Canada, Alaska, New Zealand, Australia, Africa, and all over Europe before being assembled by highly skilled artisans (often across factories in multiple continents) then carefully regulated and tuned at its final destination by a technician that has trained for many years... finally the pianist adds their own small personal expression via keys that depress barely 10mm.

Without the pianist, all of that work (sometimes more than 12 months of manufacturing) cannot be appreciated. Without this feat of global cooperation and engineering, the pianist has no voice! No wonder this instrument, when manufactured with care and in the hands of a skilled pianist, never fails to captivate even the most discerning audiences. The ultimate example of collaboration between artists and technicians.

The king of instruments? I think so.