Music Thing: Fourteen Foot Long MIDI Keyboard (with lights!)
By Ryan Block 
posted Sep 16th 2005 5:55PM
posted Sep 16th 2005 5:55PM
It's a quiet week for new music gear so what better way to end it than with a
fourteen foot long MIDI
keyboard. It's just appeared on the 'bay, with a rather disappointing starting price of £2,000. It was custom built
for a local theatre production (of 'Big - The Musical', obviously) in Barnstaple, Devon. There's a fantastic video on
the company's home page of it being played by two workmen.
Apart from staff at FAO Schwartz in New York, the hero of the gigantic light up MIDI keyboard is Jean Michel Jarre. At
his Houston concert in 1986, he played a big semi-circular thing, with 88 working keys, built for him by French
instrument company LAG. Disappointingly, they don't really seem to have taken off.
"Disappointingly, they don’t really seem to have taken off."
Well think about it...you'd need 5 people to give you the abilities of 1 standard piano player (ie 10 available digits). Can you imagine the coordination nightmare it would be to prepare even one dance/tune number ? I remember hearing it took days to get an acceptable take of that one scene in 'Big'...
But it would be pretty cool to SEE 5 people pull off 'Inagotadavita' on the 88 key version...
I saw those dwarfs on Maury, one was in a trash can and the other guy was on a bookshelf. :) O&A
Carl...edit $60, and I totally agree!
Or, for a few dollars, visit the Children's Museum of Northern Nevada (http://www.cmnn.org/) in Carson City and play one there. Whenever we visit Lake Tahoe, we make sure to drive over to visit the museum; my son loves the piano.
That's really interesting. Did you read how it actually works? You don't have to touch the key at all.
Pshh... I already saw that in the movie Big..
I can NOT be the only one who immediately thought of Homer Simpson when I saw this.
The lights...
I would totally get one if i had that kinda cash layin' around. Then I would learn to play the same song from 'Big' as well.
I bet $2000 they are playing the music from the movie BIG with tom hanks.
It's ok pingu, you weren't. XD
I'm pretty sure that they have one of these at the Boston Museum of Science also. They had one even before Big came out...
This is really nice. I like the instrument. Thanks for writing the article.
na na na na
na na na na
nar nar nar nar
nah ne nahhh!
nah ne na
na na na na
na na na na
nah nah nah nah
nar nae narrrr
:0
No big deal...
I built a 16 footer 3 years ago for my kids' high school production of BIG. It was the hit of the show and we had to do encores just so people could see it played.
Video here....
http://www.greece.k12.ny.us/ody/images/music/big/bigpiano.mov
That's my son doing the playing...