Presents For Piano Players (Part 2 of 2)
Thinking outside the box for piano-player-presents
Looking for something aside from the standard gifts? I crowd-sourced these from my piano-playing friends. Hopefully something will strike a chord with you.
A manicure set, or a gift voucher for a hand massage and manicure — pianists keep their nails short, so they don’t affect finger movement or get caught in between the keys. It would be nice once in a while to have someone file and buff and revitalize my hands and make them look presentable.
Gloves for the winter to keep the fingers warm. These can be leather or thermal gloves depending on what the pianist would generally wear. I have cold hands even in summer, and I will never refuse a present of gloves or scarfs, they will be used to keep me warm.
In the same vein as gloves — fingerless gloves and arm warmers, or just arm warmers. For a cold creature like myself these have been a godsend. I get acrylic wool ones online when they aren’t in stores. The wool is snug enough to not slip down the hand when playing and reshapes after washing. Fingerless gloves need to be thin weave so as not to impede finger movement and cannot slip down the hand. They need to be a bit more fitted on the hand, without being restrictive.
A book stand that keeps the page open — these are sold for recipe books but are also invaluable to sheet music readers or for tablets. As these are for cooking, they tend to be made from better materials then the delicate metal music stands. If the piano player you’re buying for has a digital piano or even an acoustic — it is handy to have music stands, book stands and small portable tables around for teaching, composing, recording.
An orchestral light - it can gently sit on top of a piano and provide much needed light in the longer darker days, so as not to strain the eyes. https://www.thomann.de/ie/mighty_bright_orchestra_light.htm?glp=1&gclid=CjwKCAiA5o3vBRBUEiwA9PVzaj9rg30gbM1aDjId1AvK253WDvyxtLiUzD_1nSoWH5xQKFYI28GDqRoCKdYQAvD_BwE
If the piano player happens to record their practice or put up videos on social media or YouTube, for business or as a hobby, tripods for mobile phones and cameras are also a fun gift. It’s not an expensive gift idea as there are tripods, microphones and lights available online that are compatible with phones and cameras at different budget levels. I myself bought a shotgun microphone for under €80 with postage that is compatible with my phone and I use it daily to record and review practice. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Smartphone-CVM-VM10-K2-Filmmaker-Shotgun-Microphone/dp/B078JXNYV9/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=comica+smartphone+shotgun+video+microphone&qid=1575134067&sr=8-3
If the gift of music is something you want to give — why not gift them a family Spotify subscription or a personal one? (https://www.spotify.com/ie/) There are other streaming platforms besides Spotify, like Amazon and Apple Music to name a few. Or using Patreon(https://www.patreon.com/) you could subscribe them to a podcast in music theory or history for the year.
In the area of subscriptions — why not an online course subscription for music, music history, composing or for playing technique? There’s masterclasses where you can just pick one class or subscribe for the year. The ‘Great Courses Plus’ (https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/) has a lot of subjects and even includes music history!
Then there are online subscriptions for teaching composing, or for technique, so it depends on what the piano player is most interested in at present. Full disclaimer, I am not paid by any of these websites, I’ve just tried them out over the past year and found they have some useful and interesting content.
For example, I liked the ‘Graham Fitch Practicing the Piano’ - https://practisingthepiano.com/ a website for technique, theory and working with classical piano. ‘The Art of Composing’ - https://www.artofcomposing.com/ has videos on composing and subscriptions, both free and paid for content, and ‘Josh Wright Piano’ - https://www.joshwrightpiano.com/ also on YouTube has free videos but also offers online paid classes and skype lessons. Likewise, Bill Hilton - https://www.youtube.com/user/billhiltonbiz and Aimee Nolte - https://www.aimeenolte.com on YouTube also offer piano lessons and books in jazz, blues genres for the non-classical leaning.
Don’t forget the software subscriptions people may love as a gift like Sibelius, Cubase, Finale, Ableton — all have 1 year license/subscriptions but you need to make sure the person has the laptop/computer specs required to run the programs and some programs require other add ons (usb audio interface) or have things included DAW - A digital audio workstation (DAW) is an electronic device or application software used for recording, editing and producing audio files. – this page shows software and usb audio interfaces, daw controllers and other products used together to give an example of one brand of many that is out there. https://www.thomann.de/ie/steinberg.html?gclid=Cj0KCQiAw4jvBRCJARIsAHYewPNl-zMr3-sCZuOEgrvVYtQOSFOTQZg2vToqpWuBrVq1pleOfvbiFNQaAraHEALw_wcB).
Other non-sound engineer subscriptions that are very useful and fun are sheet music library subscriptions like Nkoda https://www.nkoda.com/ or Musescore https://musescore.org/en — music notation software (can be used for free also) that has a playback function, so you can roughly hear what the music will sound like without having to move to the piano and back to the computer.
Also please check out your local public library. They usually have a subscription for CDs as well as access to free online courses, and they can have instruments to rent all for free for all library members.
Well I hope I’ve inspired you with ideas for the piano player or for yourself this Christmas, talk you all in January in my next blog post. And everyone have a relaxed, musical Christmas.