Meet Warren Shadd: First African American Piano Manufacturer
- K. Abel
- Oct 12, 2015
- 3 min read
Warren Shadd made history in the 21st century by becoming the first African American piano manufacturer!
Shadd is a third generation musician and a second generation piano technician. His enterprise, SHADD, is a USA based manufacturing company with additional production and development in Germany, China, and Italy. SHADD owns several important and innovative patents that advances technology for musical instruments. SHADD’s new technology auspiciously changes the way we perform, create, teach, record, interact, and conceptionalize music.
In an NPR interview, Warren Shadd spoke in depth about his experiences that lead him to become the first African American piano manufacturer.
He recounts his upbringing in a musically gifted family:
"My father was the exclusive piano technician for the Howard Theatre, so I would go down there with him four times a week and see James Brown, Count Basie, [Duke] Ellington, Pearl Bailey, Peggy Lee, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers ... rehearsing. I'd see this all day long, every day. From the time I woke up, there were band rehearsals. Shirley Horn rehearsing in my basement with Billy Hart and Marshall Hawkins ... We had pianos everywhere in my house, from the garage to the basement, sometimes even one of the upright pianos sitting in the kitchen, [Laughs.] And musicians would come over to our house after the gig and play all night: Dude Brown, Bernard Sweetney, Steve Novosel, Roberta Flack .
My father would have me do little repairs on the piano. When he went on these piano [repair] jobs, he would take me with him to see what the whole thing was about ... and I would never want to go. I just wanted to stay home and play the drums; just wanted to be Warren Shadd the drummer. Except when he said he was going to the Howard Theatre — I was in the car before he got there! I wanted to see all these cats rehearse, see the show ... I met Grady Tate when I was about 6 years old, playing with Jimmy Smith, then went full circle and played with Jimmy Smith myself."
Later on in the interview, he spoke in depth about the evolution of his manufacturing process:
"I went back and blew the dust off of these old ideas that had been sitting in a cabinet, and I started trying to engage some of these parts and put some of these old ideas I had together. And then I said, 'Why not try to do some of this stuff electronically?' So I built this prototype piano. It took me two summers and there it is [pointing to a high-tech grand piano in the adjoining room]. I put an audio system in the piano where speakers are right in front of the piano, so the sound would come right to the pianist and the pianist can hear themselves play. And I put speakers under the piano and a subwoofer so you can get the full gamut of the piano and control the volume and graphic equalize each section of the piano — bass, alto, tenor and treble — so you could go to each section of the piano and customize it just like that.
I went another step and made it MIDI, so you could play all of your electronic synthesizer sounds on the piano.For educational purposes, I made this piano interactive. I put a computer under the piano and I built this 24" touchscreen on the front and a 13" screen on the left and encompassed video cams throughout the piano. So on the other side, interactively, your piano teacher can see you, you can see your piano teacher, they can see our face, torso, left hand, right hand, pedal movement, and teach intelligently anywhere in the world ... distance learning right there at the piano."
Warren Shadd's accomplishments as a musician, an engineer and an entreprenuer exemplify Black Excellence and are nothing short of outstanding.
Watch Master Organist/Gospel Band Director P.J. Morgan play a Shadd Piano below!
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