While the Duet team attended the Music Teacher's National Association conference in Reno, NV last week, we had the opportunity to try a Spirio piano. Spirio is famed piano maker Steinway & Sons' "high resolution player piano," and for us, it lived up to the hype.
Have you heard of the Spirio piano before? In 1999, when I graduated from college and moved into my first apartment, my dad's graduation present to me was a Yamaha "Disklavier" piano: a full-sized keyboard that used sampled sound to create a realistic tone with weighted keys. For an apartment-dwelling first piano, it did the job. It was very cool to be able to put a disk into the hard drive and record myself or play back a previously recorded performance. But since I was coming from 3+ hours of practicing a day, the lack of real hammer action eventually made my muscles feel like they were atrophying.
Steinway's Spirio is a different sort of innovation. Introduced in 2015, the Spirio is a self-playing piano that allows listeners to experience the performance of some of the world's most celebrated pianists, recorded with the utmost precision and accuracy.
To be clear, the Spirio is a fully functional, acoustic Steinway piano. But the Spirio's added computer uses advanced technology to record the performances of pianists in high definition, capturing not just the notes played, but also the nuances of their touch and expression. This is achieved using a proprietary high-resolution optical sensor system that captures up to 1,024 levels of dynamic velocity, allowing the Spirio to reproduce the finest nuances of the performer's playing. Additionally, the Spirio records the exact pedaling and key movements of the performer, creating a truly immersive listening experience.
The Spirio comes pre-loaded with a vast library of recordings from renowned pianists, including Lang Lang, Yuja Wang, and Emanuel Ax. These recordings can be accessed using a simple interface that allows the listener to choose the performance they wish to hear. The Spirio's library is continually expanding, with new recordings being added regularly, ensuring that there is always something new to discover.
What was so exciting to me as I watched and listened to the Spirio at MTNA was the sense that these artists were actually sitting at that very piano and playing live, just for me. While the actual instrument may be different, the great pianist's tone and pedaling and nuances were just like they were in the room with me.
Is the Spirio Piano A Good Teaching Tool?
Is the Spirio piano a good teaching tool? The Steinway representative I spoke with said that many universities and conservatories are purchasing the pianos. But the piano's cost makes the Spirio (about $50k on top of the price of the piano itself) prohibitively expensive for most piano teachers.
Piano students should of course always seek out the very best artists to listen to. Good piano teachers encourage students to hear as much live performance as possible, and sometimes traveling to performance venues, making time for a full-length concert or purchasing tickets can be a hurdle. Hearing the world-class performances live on a Spirio is a unique and exceptional learning opportunity. But should every piano teacher aspire to have a Spirio? Probably not. Even aside from cost, the target Spirio customer is either an institution that can invest in a high ticket item or an individual who is more interested in the thrill of an awe-inspiring home concert.
Do you have access to a Spirio piano? Do you use it as a teaching tool? What do you think about it?
