A piano in Columbia, SC is played from Minneapolis, MN
Columbia, SC (WLTX) -- You can make a call long distance, you can make a jump long distance, and now, you can play piano long distance. Midlands students are using new technology to get lessons that reach across state lines.
"Once you start playing, you forget, or at least I forget about everything else," explained USC music student Claudio Olivera.
While the passion has remained constant since the modern-day piano was invented more than 300 years ago, John Adair, owner of Adair Piano, says things have changed.
"You can hook up to the internet, you can download music," Adair said.
These days, he says, pianos are wired beyond their strings.
"If they miss a note, you can put that on the computer and correct that note."
"It's much easier to do it from here than if I had to travel all the way over there," Olivera said.
USC students like Olivera are using Adair's Yamaha Disklovier piano in Columbia to take lessons long distance.
"I actually use this technology to teach 3 students in Canada that I've never met," explained instructor Dr. Stella Sick, who is based at Hamline University in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
"I think of it as an organic addition to the ways we learn things and the ways we communicate with one another," she said.
Olivera presses keys in Columbia, and the same keys are pressed on the piano in Minnesota, and vice versa.
Dr. Sick says, travel time and distractions are eliminated.
"I can actually focus on the sound, and I am also focusing on how the sound is produced because I can see the keys and I can see the pedals," she said.
"So you're watching a student play perhaps in Minneapolis or New York or Shanghai, and you're hearing your piano being played by them," Adair said.
"It is a performing art, so being able to do it on another level where the distance is no longer an issue is a very compelling tool," said Dr. Sick.
The same piano allows people to record video of a person playing, then play it back so that the piano plays the music the same way for you, live. Adair suggests that means a loved one's musical hand can perform long after they have passed away.