I don't personally play an instrument, but I can also understand that the physicality of keys, strings and pedals is innately different from tapping on a glass screen. A digital piano aims to replicate the sound a specific piano, and provide a piano-inspired interface for playing it.

A real piano is a big single use device, in theory yeah, but I imagine for the people playing it the direct control over the things making the sound that is irreplaceable. There's things that will always be impossible on a VST instrument because it's construction (Prepared Piano [0]), and vice versa [1]. They seem like two different avenues of artistic expression to me.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prepared_piano [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesizer

> They seem like two different avenues of artistic expression to me

I agree completely, this is the point I was trying to make.

People are treating the iPad and the piano as fundamentally different despite both being tools that are equally as capable of making beautiful music in the hands of a talented musician in my eyes.

> I mean, one of its primary uses is to replicate the beauty of a human playing piano or violin via videos and recordings.

Videos and recordings don't actually replicate those things. They approximate them. Recordings leave out tons of really important expression.

They might make beautiful music but not beautiful piano music. The piano must exist in order to be recorded into the ipad, and recording isn't unique to ipads. You could play the piano samples via midi from the ipad but hundreds of other devices can also do that and that still wouldn't replicate from the player's perspective, actually playing a piano or and audiences experience of actually hearing a piano.

It’s for this reason I have a minstrel that follows me everywhere. There’s really no substitute for the original analog sound - it’s warmness and the subtle imperfections of the original - can’t be substituted with a consumer device manufactured by a soulless megacorp. It does become problematic on flights as the imperialist cryptofascist lackies of capitalism require my minstrel buy a full ticket and doesn’t let her play my tunes on the flight. People at work get pretty irritated and complain about flow and focus and whatnot and keep insisting I submit to the consumerist mediocrity of a sound cancelling headphone - and I’ve tried in honesty to build a portable sound proof booth with an ear trumpet attached but it’s kind of bulky and I’m not really that handy with tools to begin with. It was also really hard to get a badge for the minstrel but eventually HR just gave me a neurodiversity exemption and classified her as a support animal, which in my opinion is kind of sexist but there’s only so many things one can get outraged about. The real issue is that a single instrument is kind of insufficient to fully capture a wider range of sound and experience so I’ve been trying to figure out how to pull off a quartet - really some of the best music is done by a four piece band anyway - but the above problems just seem to get worse but I’m sure I’ll figure out how to scale this solution.

Minstrel "music" is perhaps problematic itself. On the one hand, you have music as an emergent property of the gathered individuals' culture and skills. That blurs when a tavern sings to a traveling minstrel rather than a neighbor. But professionals can enhance rather than displace. Consider European acting troupes traveling a US West steeped in discussion of Shakespeare. Or printed "poems" to be spread and read in support of real spoken poetry. And minstrels do collaborate with local players... but they can also displace. Something is lost to a community when the local kid or elder can no longer make a bit of money piping in the harvest. Or neighbors play the gather fiddles. When music becomes for a community a spectator sport, rather than something embedded. A train car singing together, versus an occasional platform busker. Like trust-fund kids who see strength of knowledge and skills as something to buy not build in themselves. Or a merchant who doesn't value strength of body for farming. And then there's the my-tower-is-taller-than-yours of court "professional music". With richly textured diversity, complexity, nuance, and surprise consequences, these can be hard to think and discuss clearly. Like struggling now to appreciate the impoverished isolation of people's un-musical experience of tunes before AR's ambient-rendezvous-and-collaborate jamming apps.

And really it’s turtles all the way down. That’s why I’m considering joining a hunter gatherer tribe that’s never had contact with the modern world. As I worked through the profession of institutional oppression of the natural state of man I realized there’s no other option. I just hope I don’t wipe them out with my imperialist diseases - the least of which is the social cultural ones of modern consumerist capitalism!

(In all seriousness I do agree btw, there’s value and worth in all the art and forms of art we’ve created … but I’m reacting a bit to the “one step backward in historical progression is the pinnacle of achievement” … plus I have to say I’m pretty impressed with the visual and cinematic quality of the Apple ad itself and find the contextual outrage a bit weird - comparing it to the Ridley Scott ad is wild too - not every creation has to be an iconic achievement of a master, but is untrue this particular ad wasn’t interesting and well executed and I feel bad for the creative crew that developed and produced it)

Minstrels are also useful in the event you travel through the frozen land of Nador.

Excuse me, but real musicians use butterflies. They open their hands and let the delicate wings flap once. The disturbance ripples outward, eventually producing a freak weather event which sounds out an awesome cacophony carefully honed to activate homo sapiens' most dormant primal instincts for rage, love, mourning, and triumph.

Anything less is a crude shortcut afforded us by our decadent culture of consumption.

>Aside from that, isn’t this just an appeal to tradition?

No. It's an appeal to something that is eternally true.