Kawai Must Die

There has been a growing plague amongst the LDS churches. This has particularly been happening in new building and some branches. It all started when I was in Vegas. There were many new churches being built. Every piano in the new building were just plain inferior. None of them sounded anything like what a piano should. They were muffled and weak sounding. The tone was terrible. The keys were stiff and it looked as if they were made from some cheap wood.

Now they are bringing in a new generation of pianos. I can do with inferior products, but this new generation has done nothing but completely piss me off. The electronic keyboard. I first encountered one of these several years ago at an institute meeting. There were several stakes included in this meeting, so to many of them it was a novelty. One of the institute instructors sat down, push a few buttons and was showing off how well he could play. "Hey look at me, I can play piano!" he says while some random hymn is playing through this keyboard as he pushes random keys that in no way resemble the hymn. Every single hymn is already programmed into the keyboard. But that's not all, guess what else it can do... You can program it to play the hymn while you play the beat on one note. Now anybody can play piano without ever learning how to play it. Even geeky looking institute teachers can sit down and show off to all their students how well they can play. It was the first time I saw this machine, so I didn't think too much of it.

The next time I run into one of these accursed machines was in a branch that I attended for two months. This keyboard had just replaced the organ that had been used in that chapel for quite some time. The organ was still working and was just sitting right outside the chapel. Unfortunately they had just given the old organ away to some happy person just a week before I got there, so the only thing I could do was sit here and drool for this organ that missed being in my possession by one week. Free, no less!

The 2nd counselor was doing double duty and playing organ, so they immediately made me the organist when I entered that branch. They had no grand piano to play on, so I was forced to learn the extent of that keyboard's uses. The first thing you'll notice is the fact that it has a whole seven sounds available. Two of them are piano, bright and mellow, and five are organ sounds. Who has ever heard of an organ having only five available sounds? As I look for other organic features on this keyboard, it has volume pedals and sustaining pedals. No where are there a pedal keyboard. It did have a bass coupler, but this is inadequate. That becomes a problem when you start doubling the tenor as well. The volume control on these are way too sensitive, and provides only direct sound. The speaker in this stupid box are facing straight ahead. This means that if you're too soft only the front row can hear you. If you are on the back row and hear the organ, this means the front row has become deaf. Luckily, I left this branch soon after, so I didn't have to deal with that piece of scrap wood(actually it's probably plastic).

Now I'm in Minnesota. The church building here is one year old. Guess what they have for their organ? The same Kawai keyboard had replaced what should have been an organ. One member of the bishopric is a competent enough musician to see the evils of this contraption. It is never used, and instead, everyone plays the cheap grand that's in the chapel.

But enough is enough. This is wrong on so many levels. I thought that the LDS church encourages us to expand our talents. Since when does bringing in these devices help in that process? Having keyboards that play all the hymns on them does not expand the talents of anybody present. I often have less experienced pianists play in situations that they are incomfortable in for the sake of learning and gaining performance abilities. Now this mass of parts gives them an easy copout, and allows them to sit back and do nothing to expand their talents, while our ears get accustomed to the mechanical playing of our favorite hymns. Way to contradict your teachings.

This isn't the only thing we are doing. We are killing the organist as we know it. None of these keyboards have the ability to function as an organ even though they are replacing them. Gone will be the days of accomplished organists, who can crawl along the keyboards expertly, play passages of music with their feet, and pull out all the stops. Can you imagine some incompetent organist in the Tabernacle, accompanying the Tabernacle choir, because they never had a chance to play real organs? That may be an exaggeration, but the organist is a dying profession. In talking with piano majors, the amount who play organ continues to dwindle, and very few play just organ.

Boo to Kawai for offering these glorified stereos at the lowest price to the LDS church. And boo to the LDS church for buying them and allowing this plague to spread through their churches.