Quiet ambient instrumental piano still has its place. It provides a connected and continuous pleasant background for conversation at tables in restaurants. Piano music uses all one type of sound-- piano sound-- and in that framework, provides variations of harmony, rhythm and tone without distracting patrons with lyrics. Here's an example that runs about an hour. Cruise ships should consider more of this for the dining rooms either live or recorded-- it doesn't matter as long as a good BOSE system is used for the recorded material. With today's ipods capacity to hold 3000 tunes in mp3 or even mp4 format, there is no excuse for a restaurant NOT providing high quality ambient background music suitable to conversation and dining. Higher culture should requestion it more often than I actually see out there.... but that's culture for you. Sports bars deaden everything. They're the worse possible places to eat. Big screen tv's also kill ambient atmosphere. Anyway, here's a nice selected playlist for piano students and afficianados tonight.
