[HN Gopher] Show HN: A website to find public pianos
___________________________________________________________________
Show HN: A website to find public pianos
Author : qrv3w
Score : 210 points
Date : 2022-03-26 13:34 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pianos.pub)
(TXT) w3m dump (pianos.pub)
| Narretz wrote:
| Quick test. I typed in "Berlin". First hit was Berlin Stralau
| (correct), second hit was ... Amsterdam Airport Schiphol,
| Netherlands?!
| iRobbery wrote:
| i have to say, it is a good piano there at schiphol :)
| AnssiH wrote:
| I clicked "Nearby" and it just took me to an entirely gray map
| screen (no map, no pianos).
|
| Seems to be reproducible by just searching for my city:
| https://pianos.pub/search?q=Tampere%2C+Finland&lat=&lon=
|
| Console says: leaflet.js:5 Uncaught Error: Bounds
| are not valid. at i.fitBounds (leaflet.js:5:28718)
| at search?q=Tampere%2C+Finland&lat=&lon=:355:23
| qrv3w wrote:
| Thanks for the bug report.
| mr-ron wrote:
| Definitely seems like a lot of false positives. Lots of pianos in
| my neighborhood (Brooklyn NY) that no way exist
| qrv3w wrote:
| Yeah I can see that Brooklyn has a lot that are very dated (2-5
| years old).
|
| I guess I didn't explain well that some of these pianos "no
| longer exist" but I find it really useful to still have that
| information because these locations essentially let you know
| that _if_ there is a piano, it might be in this spot.
|
| New York in general is really a difficult place to map because
| it changes so fast.
| doobiedowner wrote:
| Broken pianos make the cut: https://pianos.pub/piano/2f90254f
| teddyh wrote:
| https://www.mapcontrib.xyz/t/e5c83c-OpenPianosMap
| spicybright wrote:
| Love it, but I wish it's database was bigger.
|
| I live a bit outside Boston, MA, and it brought up 2 results: one
| on martha's vinyard (a small island off the coast of cape cod)
| and one somewhere in a library in boston.
|
| Was hoping for a few more results, esp. being near a large city.
| dv35z wrote:
| Kudos to the developer. This is a great idea. I'm traveling
| shortly, and always remind myself - don't bring too much music
| gear, as there is ALWAYS a piano around somewhere.
| javajosh wrote:
| And if you're any good at all piano stores don't mind if you
| play, either! Every pianist must visit the Steinway store in
| Manhattan once in their life.
| qrv3w wrote:
| Thanks for the kind comment. Yeah I made this because I would
| fly a lot and want to play a piano (if no one was around). At
| the time there were only a few resources that listed possible
| locations of public pianos and they were always brief (maybe
| ~100 known pianos), so I tried to compile a more up-to-date
| thorough list. Its still not completely thorough as I
| personally find new ones all the time, and its not always
| correct as there is noise (as people have pointed out) but its
| still served me far greater than any other website has.
| gusbremm wrote:
| I like the idea of public pianos but it is rare to find one in a
| playable state.
| jjulius wrote:
| What's a "playable state", though? Ryuichi Sakamoto challenges
| the notion of a singular acceptable state of the piano both on
| his album, 'async', as well as in 'Coda', the documentary about
| him.
|
| "The industrial revolution made the production of an instrument
| like [the piano] possible. Several planks of wood - six I think
| in this case - are overlaid and pressed into shape by
| tremendous force for six months. Nature is molded into shape.
| Many tons of force and pressure are applied, making the strings
| what they are. Matter taken from nature is molded by human
| industry, by the sum strength of civilization. Nature is forced
| into shape. Interestingly, the piano requires re-tuning. We
| humans say, 'It falls out of tune', but that's not exactly
| accurate - matter is struggling to return to a natural state.
| The tsunami, in one moment, became a force of restoration. The
| [tsunami-damaged] piano re-tuned by nature actually sounds good
| to me now. In short, the piano is tuned by force to please our
| ears or ideals; it's a condition that feels natural to us
| humans. But from nature's perspective, it's very unnatural. I
| think deep inside me somewhere, I have a strong aversion to
| that." - Ryuichi Sakamoto
| spicybright wrote:
| While interesting, I don't have an ear for de-tuned
| instruments. And I don't think it's too much to ask to expect
| a public piano to be properly tuned to the traditional scale.
|
| I probably know 3 songs on the piano, and would enjoy playing
| them for people much more than sitting alone analyzing the
| philosophies of music in front of a de-tuned piano.
| allenbina wrote:
| I would love this for 3D printers. I'm calling hacker spaces and
| libraries trying to find one close to me.
| javajosh wrote:
| I first read your comment as meaning "I want to 3D print
| [something] that helps me find public pianos". I imagined
| printing something like a diorama of a city space with a little
| piano in there.
| [deleted]
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| Useless: All the pianos it has for my city were only there for
| one time events.
| qrv3w wrote:
| That's too bad! Some cities are definitely more active in the
| public piano scene.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| A lot of spam, sadly. Flagging functionality needed...
| Gys wrote:
| So many!
|
| The About page refers to '... to the suburbs of Japan, to the
| cliffs of Australia', but both links find nothing.
|
| I am surprised there are none in Japan, but I assume that is
| mainly a scrappping / language problem.
| qrv3w wrote:
| Thanks for noticing that - didn't realize those went away. Will
| fix.
|
| By the way, Japan is probably the densest in terms of available
| pianos: https://pianos.pub/location/japan
| Gys wrote:
| Aha, but in the countries list it shows only one, not
| existing, piano ;-)
|
| Maybe the number of pianos per country is not calculated
| dynamically?
| g0ran wrote:
| I suggest you go for the smaller piano icons on the Leaflet map.
| qrv3w wrote:
| Thanks I appreciate that! I'm always working to improve the UI
| pimlottc wrote:
| I agree, on a small phone (iPhone 12 mini) the icon is roughly
| 1/5 the width of the map itself!
| jancsika wrote:
| whiteboard exercise: from the video evidence, tell me how many of
| them are in tune :)
| jacquesm wrote:
| Mixed bag here in NL, some are absolutely terrible but most are
| actually quite good as long as they are not too exposed.
| kzrdude wrote:
| The only listed piano in my town is in a hotel lobby. I haven't
| gone there, but I'd assume that counts as semi-public, they
| probably don't like if non-guests come and play.
| jen729w wrote:
| I think hotels these days would just be glad to have some life.
| Maybe you'll buy a drink. Maybe you'll entice others in.
| sixhobbits wrote:
| A lot of train stations in the Netherlands have public pianos -
| some of them were closed for covid, but it seemed a bit
| inconsistent
|
| https://nltimes.nl/2018/05/22/hobby-musician-plays-piano-16-...
| femto wrote:
| Openstreetmap has a tag for public pianos:
|
| https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:amenity%3Dpiano
|
| and a discussion:
|
| https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=69772
| [deleted]
| C4K3 wrote:
| Map based on that data:
| https://www.mapcontrib.xyz/t/e5c83c-OpenPianosMap (via
| https://github.com/brunetton/OpenPianosMap)
| kzrdude wrote:
| This one has a photo that links to a deleted/gone instagram post?
| Should the photo be taken down, for privacy?
| https://pianos.pub/piano/df042e84 Sorry to ask the hard
| questions.
|
| This one as a video https://pianos.pub/piano/a9e918f3 of the
| piano right by the water but the map location is 2-3 blocks from
| the water. The piano in the video seems to be that guy's own
| piano, so not a public one? The guy plays a nice self-composed
| tune, at least.
| Timwi wrote:
| Love the idea. But there's a snag. If I search for my town, I get
| a lot of "likely not available (last seen years ago)". If I click
| on "recent", I get entries from all over the world. It seems to
| me that being able to filter by both would be essential to be
| able to actually find a piano.
| qrv3w wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback. I get the confusion. If you searched
| for your town and only see "likely not available" there is
| likely none available and the "recent" would just be empty. I
| didn't make "recent" localized for that reason - for 90% of
| cities it will just be empty because there are only a few dozen
| new pianos each week. Instead of doing this I had "recent" show
| _all_ recent so users can get an idea of how active the public
| piano scene is as a whole. In the summer there is up to 80
| pianos a week, and the winter much less.
| Fargoan wrote:
| There used to be one in my city but people kept vandalizing it.
| Very disappointed that a few idiots can ruin something cool for
| the rest of us
| jacquesm wrote:
| > Very disappointed that a few idiots can ruin something cool
| for the rest of us
|
| This is a comment that is 'fractal' in nature, it is true at
| many scales.
| vkdelta wrote:
| Why do most of them have likely not available? Due to covid?
| kzrdude wrote:
| It will say that without any recent confirmation that they
| exist. A public piano is not very long lived. Outdoors it will
| lose tuning quickly. Indoors still it needs continuous
| maintenance too. Many of these are short lived projects?
| qrv3w wrote:
| Most public pianos are fleeting - usually they eventually get
| vandalized or destroyed by weather. For this website, if its
| not seen again for a few months then its "likely not available"
| (but maybe worth a check)
| defanor wrote:
| Seems like it could be a part of OSM. And indeed, there's
| "amenity=piano" [1], as well as "musical_instrument=piano", with
| overpass-turbo [2] even finding some pianos using the latter.
|
| [1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:amenity%3Dpiano
|
| [2] https://overpass-turbo.eu/
| qrv3w wrote:
| I agree it could be part of OSM, but keeping it up-to-date is
| really tricky. Piano locations are impermanent structures and
| information can become outdated in just a few weeks. It would
| take a lot of effort to keep it up-to-date and there are very
| few people willing to put in that effort (i.e. "few" because
| the union of groups of people that love public pianos and like
| editing OSM is small).
| dewey wrote:
| Could it be synced back to OSM so that people can submit in
| your nicer interface but it'll flow back into OSM? I'm
| honestly not super familiar how open OSM is for things like
| that.
| defanor wrote:
| Haven't tried it myself, but there are automated imports
| going on here and there, and a few wiki pages (including a
| code of conduct) on the topic too:
| https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Automated_edits
| Gigachad wrote:
| Not to mention that a lot of downstream projects using the
| OSM data set only update once every few weeks / months so by
| the time the data hits, its already old.
| DarkContinent wrote:
| Great idea! Small feedback: one of the pianos listed for
| Minneapolis is in Concourse C at the airport. While this is, in
| fact, an actual piano, you have to go through security to play on
| it. So I'm not sure if this counts as a public piano?
| qrv3w wrote:
| Actually these are the best public pianos in my opinion -
| people often search for public pianos when they are traveling
| and travelers often enter/exit airports. Also the airport
| pianos are usually the best maintained.
| dvtrn wrote:
| Along those lines: this has happened exactly once in my life
| but man was it something, getting off a red eye at 6am and
| noticing a piano in the middle of the food court. Place was a
| ghost town except for the morning shift relieving the evening
| shift, a few food vendors setting up and us, the first
| arrival of the morning.
|
| Guy a few feet ahead of me pauses, sits down, and unleashes a
| beautiful melody that stops everyone in their tracks.
|
| There's an applause, he calmly gets up, and we all continue
| on our way.
|
| Edit: I had to do some seriously creative google dorking to
| find it, but this was the melody:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjqkkuhRt_M
| blamazon wrote:
| My theory for why such moments are utterly magical: For a
| brief moment the non-place becomes a place.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-place
| jen729w wrote:
| You might enjoy The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Raw_Shark_Texts
| jacquesm wrote:
| That particular pianist, Paul Barton has a whole bunch of
| very nice renditions of various pieces, he lives in
| Thailand and seems to be a genuinely nice person as well
| based on the videos of him that I've watched. Two
| recommendations, the one is Bach's version of the adagio,
| the other the fugue part of 'Toccata and Fugue'.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3aI7Oo3GMo
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_wsSIuv_po
| daviddaviddavid wrote:
| Also a big Paul Barton fan! He has a nice video playing
| the 18th Goldberg Variation by JS Bach (my favorite one).
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zka65VYD318
|
| And he is also a great painter and there is an awesome
| video of him painting a portrait of Josh Wright, who is a
| concert pianist that has lots of educational videos
| online.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovu-u8BTGxI
|
| One thing I love about watching Barton is that he has the
| hands of a mere mortal. So you can see how he
| accomplishes various reaches and fingerings if you don't
| have gargantuan piano hands.
| gbear605 wrote:
| I think it still belongs on the site since it's public to
| anyone who has passed security.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Pre 9-11 public?
| [deleted]
| codingdave wrote:
| This is a great idea, but the UX feels difficult:
|
| - If I search, I get local results. But expanding the map should
| bring in more results. After all, I can start with the world map
| and filter down to my area, so why not have the same
| functionality in reverse?
|
| - Zooming in from the world map all the way to my towns, I see 2.
| If I click one, the map zooms out and puts their icons together.
| I have no idea how to see details on these.
|
| - The search results only showed one. Why are the results better
| when not searching?
|
| Still, great idea, if the experience can be improved.
| qrv3w wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback.
| samstave wrote:
| Folsom california has a public piano near the tea shop and candy
| shop:
|
| https://i.imgur.com/Bn7uo3e.jpeg
|
| right here
| ape4 wrote:
| Perfect results in my area!
| hkc wrote:
| Wait, this is not what pianos look like :P
|
| https://pianos.pub/piano/656b258f
| qrv3w wrote:
| :) Yeah there are a few "false positives". I flag them manually
| and have flagged this one so it will disappear soon...
| hkc wrote:
| I think you should manually approve them as Instagram tags
| are used to spam.
| axiomdata316 wrote:
| I remember the airport in Finland had one and a young guy was
| play some beautiful classical music on it.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-03-26 23:00 UTC)