[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)