Lego is a universally known brand that attracts people of all ages, gender, race and nationality. Children adore Lego, while many adults are Lego fanatics!
Amazingly, Dutch pianist and composer Jeroen van Veen built a life-sized Lego Piano over a period of more than two years. Consisting of almost 30,000 second-hand Lego bricks, the idea of building the Lego Piano came about over a debate at the coffee table between Jeroen and his two sons, Joeri and Fjodor. Jeroen is well-known in the music industry for his interesting inventions in classical music, such as Lie Down Concerts and Twitter Concerts.
A self-confessed ‘Lego freak’, Jeroen entered into a challenge with his sons to build a piano using only second-hand Lego bricks by recycling the old bricks played by children. No glue was used in the entire building process of the Lego Piano! The whole process of collecting the Lego bricks and building the piano took Jeroen almost two and a half years. With only a small draft to begin with, Jeroen attempted to create the piano keys using Lego, but eventually settled for a master digital keyboard instead as the mechanics were not accurate with Lego.
His two sons stepped in to help him explore and solve various issues he faced in the midst of building the Lego Piano, to ensure that it would be stable and movable. Ultimately, his focus and great vision paid off and the Lego Piano ‘Van Veen & Sons’ was created!
In an interview with Hart van Nederland of DutchNews, Jeroen shared that the creation of the Lego Piano was part of “hobby which got a bit out of hand.” Jeroen gave his first public performance on the Lego Piano in his concert in Almere, Netherlands on Friday, 12 November 2016. The Lego Piano serves to educate people on how the piano has evolved through history – from the clavichord to the pianoforte to the piano that we know today.
Through the Lego Piano, Jeroen hopes to open the minds of people to combine the beauty of art and music, and hopefully to convert Lego lovers to Piano lovers!
WowBrickArt, a YouTube user, also a Lego fanatic, has made miniature musical instruments like the Martha Argerich’s piano and the Johann Sebastian Bach’s organ using Lego bricks as well. Lego has an ideas website, which allows users to submit ideas for Lego products. The website, which is under the care of Chaordix and The Lego Group, regularly reviews the ideas posted by users and comes up with prototypes of the ideas they perceive as being able to add value to their new product business. Maybe someday soon, Lego will add the Grand Piano into their suite of new products. Let’s wait and see!
Lego brings out the child in all of us. Music brings out the emotions in all of us. Build your Lego piano, play on a real grand piano!
