Procrastination has been high lately, mostly because I have to finish a choral piece this weekend... ie by tomorrow. It's a monumental amount of work, but I'll make it happen. I'm already a week behind my personal deadline for this piece, and I'm not willing to postpone again!

I went with my roommate and a friend to Costco today. I bought lots of diet coke, so all-nighters will be fueled this weekend.

Piano rental shopping was a little ridiculous. Last year, my roommate and I paid for delivery in advance and then paid a monthly rental rate, ca 35$/month. At the first place I went, the rate for the piano I wanted was 59$/month, but they had a 500$ non-negotiable deposit. I was not expecting this, so I couldn't just go ahead. At the second place I looked, they had no deposit, but the rental rate was a whopping 180$/month for a similar piano. I called a few other places to find out that they mostly all have similar deposits, so I will suck it up and rent from the first place.

Now, about the piano:

Yamaha Silent Piano, google it!

Apparently, the technology has been around for 20 years, but no-one really knows or talks about it. There are tons of forums online for people looking for a good quality digital piano because they need it to be silent, but they're unsatisfied with the action/feel. For a long time, 'apartment pianos' have a mechanism that puts a felt cloth between the hammers and the strings so that it sounds a lot quieter, but this slows down the hammer movement and it's still audible.

The piano I will be getting is actually SILENT! With the silent pedal engaged, the hammers stop a few millimeters short of the keys - you get the same feel of the piano action, but none of the sound. At the same time, there are optical sensors underneath, translating the key and pedal motions into midi information. It has midi in/out so I can make the piano sound however I like through the speakers, but more importantly I can hook it up to do notation on my computer. Basically, the piano has everything I could want. When I get my next paycheck, I'll be acquiring said piano!

Ok, back to composing...!