First of all, some background to this story. I bought a Yamaha stage piano (CP33) a while ago, and while it works wonderfully, and sounds great, there was one glaring deficiency. It didn’t come with a music stand.

Consequently, I had to try to persuade any music I was playing from to lean against the wall in such a fashion that it didn’t slip down and cover the keys. Not a trivial task, and frequently an unsuccessful one. It made playing the keyboard more than a little frustrating.

A little searching on google revealed that Yamaha sold a music rest separately to the CP33. No problem I thought, I’ll just get one from the retailer I bought the keyboard from. No such luck. In fact, not a single music store I could find online in Australia even acknowledged the existence of such a product. The only place I could find it was in some US-based music stores. Not even on the Yamaha website!

So I sent off an email to the retailer, who professed to never have heard of such an item, but promised they would contact Yamaha about it. Some weeks pass, and I hear nothing. So I resort to google again, this time to find online music retailers in Australia. I get the contact email address, and send them an email about the music rest.

Only one of the retailers contacted in this fashion had the good business sense to reply. They were under the impression that the music rest was included with the keyboard, an impression I soon corrected. Fortunately they were able to locate this devious little item, and after providing my details over the phone, an order was placed with their supplier.

Yesterday afternoon I picked up a small, triangular-prism shaped package from the local courier depot. With great joy I fitted the music rest to my keyboard, and was delighted to be able to play without fear of sheet music slipping down and covering the keys. In short, my keyboard now brings the joy and pleasure it was originally intended to provide.