TECH AND TRADITION
Music shops meld old-school and new age
Whether you’re a professional performer or a hobbyist at home, the mechanics of making music have changed dramatically over the past century.
A hundred years ago, as the novelty of phonograph recordings was just starting to take off, one of the most common scenes of music making at home involved family members grouped around the piano, a relatively inexpensive fixture in many living rooms.
No one could have guessed back then that plugging guitars, basses, and just about everything else into electrified amplification would spawn future genres like rock ’n’ roll or synth pop.
Today the magic of live music lives on in millions of homes, but the instrumental soundscape is barely recognizable.
A recent informal survey of some of Edmonton’s most established retailers for musical instruments revealed some interesting trends in how the music goes around.
“Embracing technology has been huge,” says Amadeus Peruch, general manager of Giovanni’s Music in the west end, currently celebrating its 50th year in business. The vast store packs in a wide variety of instruments, acoustic and electric, from entry-level ukuleles in multiple colours made for tots, to Bosendorfer grand pianos handmade in Austria that are priced well into the six figures (some mimic gorgeous works of architecture, but check the Audi or Porsche design spinoffs). They even pack in a music school upstairs, but in person it feels as if keyboards are Giovanni’s specialty.
Peruch explains that the low cost, improved touch sensitivity, and dependability of digital pianos now available for under $1,000 has made such electric keyboards a popular option. But just in case, they handle about every imaginable option in acoustic pianos, and a whole line of Yamaha “hybrid” pianos.
For instance, the silent piano eliminates the frustration of listening to your child’s practice sessions by muting the action of the keys, sending the sound through headphones. Then there’s Yahama’s Disklavier line, player pianos that can play and record on a computer chip, with source material that allows you to have an exact facsimile of say, Oscar Peterson playing in your parlour.
“There’s always innovation and in the music industry that can go pretty far. The good news is that the era of the dancing-singing boy bands has given way to more performers who actually play an instrument and that’s having an influence on the public.”
UKULELE ANYONE?
Acoustic music lives on at shops like Myhre’s Music on Alberta Avenue, a family business founded in 1967 that specializes in the fiddle family, guitars, mandolins and ukuleles, catering to both roots and classical musical enthusiasts from across the spectrum.
The terms fiddle and violin are interchangeable at Myhre’s, but owner-manager Byron Myhre explains the humble ukulele is a bestseller with sales of well over 400 this past year.
“We’ve seen a huge, exponential trend in the ukulele world. It’s an accessible instrument that appeals to the beginner or professional and you don’t have to have a $1,000 instrument to play a complex piece. The nylon strings don’t hurt your fingers, and because it only has four strings you can learn three chords and play several hundred songs with that. It’s a huge social thing.”
The uke trend is driven partly by the example of stars like Jason Moraz and Eddie Vedder.
Bowed musical instruments are still popular, especially the cello since around 2000. High-end consignment sales are another busy side of the business as older owners try cull their collections. High-end guitar sales are softer, though Julian Lage has helped popularize Collings’ Waterloo series which sell for around $5,000 to $7,000. There’s also a manufacturer’s trend of making high-end replicas of low-fi vintage guitars from the 1930s, new instruments with a weathered look.
Looking to buy an American or Chinese import? Prices have taken the brunt of exchange rates and Myhre says incoming tariffs could boost prices on imports by 8 to 12 per cent in January.
GUITARS GET WEIRDER
The real hot item in guitar works these days is another offshoot of digital technology: special effects boxes or pedals that can manipulate a guitar’s sound in ways you never imagined.
“DSP or digital signal processors are becoming a lot more popular, allowing you to create weirder and weirder sounds out of the guitar. You can make it sound almost closer to a synthesizer these days which is kind of cool. Over the last five or 10 years smaller boutique companies have become a lot more prominent in the search for niche items like that.”
Vanderhoek points to the Data Corrupter by Earthquaker, a small company out of Ohio, or another brand called Chase Bliss Audio as leading edge innovators in the effects field. Such devices can set you back anywhere from $75 to $700 depending on where your curiosity takes you.
For those who want more control in manipulating sounds there’s “a small boom” in euro-rack or modular synthesizers, a do-it-yourself approach that appeals to hobbyists and pros alike, oddly reminiscent of the monster synths that pioneers like Tangerine Dream used back in the 1970s except that euroracks are much more portable.
“You basically buy all the individual building blocks of a synthesizer and wire them together, so it’s almost like creating a custom synth. That’s grown a lot in popularity over the last couple of years. When conventional instruments aren’t giving you what you want this gives you the freedom to design your own sound. Nothing in music should appeal just to the professionals.”
200 MOUTHPIECES
Need a new mouthpiece for your horn? Chances are Brian Taylor has it among his stock of over 200, running from around $100 to $250. And he has the trumpets, trombones and French horns to go with them, along with over 20 recorders from $300 to $2,000 each, and some of the best Celtic and pedal harps — at up to $14,000 — in the world.
Many customers of The Gramophone aren’t even aware that he’s been selling instruments (by appointment) for 20 of the store’s 30 years.
“We might only sell a high-end recorder once or twice a month but what the customer is really paying for is the hardness and scarceness of the wood. You’re not going to buy that on a whim, but in the classical genre even advanced amateurs might own several instruments in different keys ... We even suggest that students bring their teachers with them to try out the instrument, because we like to make sure they get what’s right for them. We’re very passionate about what we do.”