Determining the Age of A Used Piano

If you are thinking of purchasing or selling a used piano, it may be important to protect yourself by determining the age of the piano before you buy it or put it on the market.

My used piano was purchased for me by my husband as an anniversary present and although, it sounded great, and had a few minor scratches which are now covered up by a reading lamp, the owners who put it up for sale had also purchased it used. I had no idea that there is a free way to figure out the age of a piano of unknown origin.

The first thing to determine is the name of the piano manufacturer and the piano serial number. Once you have that information in hand, you can go to the manufacturer's website and look up the serial number. The older your piano the more challenging this may be as pianos manufactured within the last ten years are more prevalently listed.

Below is a link to a free website which has two excellent articles on where to look on your piano for manufacturer information, and provides links to various piano manufacturers. If your manufacturer is not listed, you can pay a $5 finder's fee to have this company perform a search to locate the information and to help determine the age of your piano.

Piano World

Armed with the age information of your piano, you can get a sense of a list price, or tell if the price you are being offered to purchase a piano is fair.

Review of Quiescence Music New Age Piano Lessons

Look out Jim Brickman here we come! If you've ever wanted to learn to compose and take piano lessons in the new-age style of Jim Brickman and George Winston, the Quiescence music website is just the place for you.

Created By Edward Weiss, a piano teacher and composer, the music lessons are designed to teach both the novice and the advanced musician, how to create their own music compositions in the new age style. Lessons are broken down in to their basic elements and are easy to remember and are great fun to learn to ad lib once you get the left-hand part down. I've learned a lot about phrasing and now it is easier for me to listen to a song and tell how the phrases blend in to one another.

You can get access to all 100 lessons and a work book for $19.95 a month. There are no contracts and you can cancel at any time. Payments are accepted via PayPal, and there is an option to pay by check or money order but that does require a slightly lengthier price commitment. There is a free lesson on the website that will give you an idea of how the rest of the lessons will sound like, and if you sign up for the free newsletter, he gives away other free lessons from time to time and also discounts. He adds new lessons every couple of weeks. When I started subscribing to the newsletter about four months ago there were 50 lessons and now there is over 100. . Its a great website that is simple to navigate and the videos play effortlessly.

Check out Quiescence music! Once you sit down for a lesson, you'll be sounding like you've been composing new-age piano music for years. I've had a total blast at this website.

Welcome to The Free Piano Stuff Blog

I love the melodic and emotional sounds of the piano. I love to listen, play and compose my own music at a very amateur level, and I enjoy anything free that relates to my piano hobby.

I invite you to join me in my quest to continue to learn all I can about making great piano music on a limited budget. After all these years, my mom is still proud I've stuck with it, even if its in bits and pieces when the business of life prevents me from spending hours at a time sitting on that lovely hard-wood bench.

I plan to scour the net for all things related to free piano stuff including lessons, sheet music, and demos, because in these economic times, playing the piano is an escape, diversion, and entertaining not only for myself, but for those that dare to listen.