You might think that finding music stands at a music school shouldn’t be a problem. Wrong. Finding a music stand in the annex is one of the hardest challenges you’ll face at Eastman. Musicians always talk about recording devices, recital halls, more expensive instruments etc., but no one ever talks about music stands?! Let me show you some examples of how hard musicians’ lives would be without music stands:
Other replacements for music stands include window sills, chairs and pianos.
I tried to find out who invented music stands and what they originally looked like but unfortunately couldn’t. This suggests that music stands have been around for a very long time. However, I did find this painting called “Church singing, Tacuinum Sanitatis” from 14th century, which gives us an idea of what stands might have looked like centuries ago.
Look at the stand in the painting. It’s made up of thick wood and is probably extremely heavy. It doesn’t seem to be adjustable, as the children in the painting are craning their necks to see the music. Today, we can easily adjust the height of the stand so that it can suit people of various heights. Not only that, plenty of improvements have been made to music stands to make our lives so much easier.
Most music stands these days are made up of metal, that are lighter than wood and are still steady. Most come with adjustable height and tilt function. Some have knobs attached to them, and some have automatic friction slides so that you can just easily push the head of the stand to adjust the height.
This is my personal favourite type of music stands, as it has an extra accessory shelf that lets you put things like pencils, reeds, tuner etc. I always carry a shitload of stuff with me all the time so this extra storage room makes my life so much easier.
One disadvantage music stands have is that it is too heavy and big to carry around. Thankfully there are these things called foldable stands that lets you fold it to make it easier to carry around, and is also significantly lighter in weight. One downside of these portable folding music stands have is that they aren’t very sturdy. They usually have metal spring arm extensions to hold sheet music in place.
To make music stands more awesome than they already are, there are stand accessories such as clip-on light, attachable instrument stands, clip-on page holder and phone/drink holders. It’s pretty wild.
I’m now realising that it’s kinda hard to write 600 words about music stands.. especially because there doesn’t seem to be much information about it. Unbelievable.. Music stands deserve way more credit than it’s getting. Music stands are an absolute necessity for musicians. You can’t even dreeeam of having a functioning orchestra without music stands!
Maybe I’ll post my blog online somewhere public. Let me know what you guys think.
source:
https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_stand
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_stand
https://www.musiciansfriend.com/stand-accessories-parts
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Hey Jaein. Beautiful post about music stands. I enjoyed reading about the info you found and about the relatable Eastman music stand crisis.
I also appreciate your blogpost because it got me to thinking about the quality of our music stands today and I really think that there could be some improvements that could be made if people tried. I actually have a friend who invented a new type of music stand and is making it available for purchase. And it looks really cool actually. https://www.chameleondesignfirm.com/stikato
I think if I were to give you some constructive feedback however, it would be to incorporate and little more logistical content into your blog post. I think you could have talked about more things. It might have been interesting to note how there are also things like digital music stands that display the music through computer screens, very elaborate and ornate music stands, and even those little arm/instrument attached music “stands” even for marching band and such. That being said I still really enjoyed your blog and had a fun time reading it!!
Hello,
I thoroughly enjoyed reading your post as it is both entertaining and extremely relatable. This post is written in a way that the reader remains engaged and there is a good balance of text and supporting pictures. At the end of your post, I thought it was smart how you asked for the reader’s opinion because it further engages your audience by including them in the conversation.
To further improve your post, one thing I would suggest would be to discuss the prices of music stands. Since you talked about variation in music stands, such as how there are lighter foldable stands, I thought it would be interesting to see how the prices of these different types of stands compare. Additionally, something you could add to your post would be the advantages and disadvantages of music stands in specific situations musicians often find themselves in (you did this a bit when talking about how non-foldable stands are rather heavy, but I thought you could have delved a bit further into this topic). In terms of sources, I’d suggest using a few more so Wikipedia isn’t your main source of information. But overall, great blog post!