Let's Get Nerdy ABout LEGO Pianos - BrickNerd.png

I started playing piano when I was a very wee lass. The photo below of me in a booster seat at the piano is only a slight exaggeration. I’m not particularly good, but—for better or worse—I’ve spent a lot of time behind a keyboard. I grew up with a hulking upright beast that came with the house and probably couldn’t be moved again because it weighed a ton. The keys were yellowed (actual) ivory, and decades before we inherited it, the highest few strings had already been removed to repair more commonly played keys.

Did the sheet music call for the highest notes? Or dynamics? Too bad. While playing this piano, you had to use your imagination. Piano ownership was at its peak back then. In those days, most of my friends had a piano in their house and it seemed like every kid was taught to play in public school.

I bought my own piano a decade or so ago. It’s a perfectly serviceable modern upright that (after a little work) keeps good tune, even in the bipolar desert weather. I found it at a yard sale for $350, including delivery in the back of a pickup truck. I even replaced the knobs on the key lid with LEGO-compatible knobs. These days, it’s covered with my daughter’s piano trophies. I teach my son on this piano, too. You’ll meet him in a few paragraphs.

Pianos and Me

I didn’t start building with LEGO until a few years ago. My kids were originally only interested in sets, so the bins of random brick I had collected (from yard sales) were free game for me. The very first thing I did was to recreate the Homemaker Piano set 293 with those bricks. I didn’t have all of the pieces (let alone the sheet music sticker), so I did the best I could, from directions online. This is it. I haven’t taken it apart since.

Over the years, I’ve tried my hand at a few other models including this MOC of a music box. The original was given to me in middle school to commemorate some amount of years of performance. (Like the music box, my LEGO recreation spins!)

Now let’s talk about the sleek, black elephant in the room. When LEGO Ideas announced the Grand Piano set 21323, I knew I had to have it—even though it would come at the exact same price as my actual piano (plus tax). I got it for Christmas, and it was a delight to build. It’s gorgeous! The keys even move and it “plays” music. (FYI, LEGO is still out of stock but Amazon has the set available right now if you are interested.)

After building the massive Grand Piano, I got hooked on the notion of amassing the complete LEGO piano collection. There are tons of MOCs out there from talented builders, and I’m fascinated with the many brick interpretations of the same basic instrument. But the more I looked for models to learn from through reverse engineering, the more curious I became about how pianos had been used in actual LEGO sets. And so this LEGO piano recital begins.

Sit straight, with your best posture. Set your program neatly on your lap. This might be a long concerto.

Guys and Dolls

Meet my sigfig—who is a minidoll. What luck! As it happens, most pianos that appear in LEGO sets (and the subject of today’s article) are made for minidolls. The tiger boy (with shorter minifig legs) is my son, #wildorson. You can imagine him playing “The Entertainer” on all of the LEGO pianos we encounter in this revue (if they have enough keys). He can’t pass a piano and resist that urge. These sigfigs will guide us through my survey of LEGO pianos for a sense of scale (size, not musical scales).

Overture: LEGO Pianos Begin

LEGO Samsonite released its first piano set in 1961 as part of the Small Basic set 703. It was released only in the US and Canada for $2.95. That’s $25.79 in today’s money. (I guess LEGO has always seemed expensive!) As you can see from the box art (courtesy of Brickset), a happy girl and boy could both build all sorts of things with bricks in THE SYSTEM. Let’s be honest: you can only tell that it’s a piano because there’s also a bench in the picture (which I did not build). It isn’t the best model, but you have to start somewhere.

A few years later in 1964, LEGO Samsonite released a blister pack Player Piano set 802. (Maybe the cowboys and Indians pictured on the box art could play this instrument!) I didn’t check if they are built to scale, but with those new slopes and cylinder pieces it does almost look like a piano! For $0.98 ($8.26 today), you could try your hand at building the model—with no instructions!

And if you were trying to build the set from copying the box illustration, you’d get mighty frustrated. Look closer! The red slopes on the top are 14 studs wide, supported by two impossible bricks… two 2x7 bricks that have never existed. Ding, ding, thank you for playing! At least they warned you: this piano is a player. The box does give you permission to “build, take apart, and build something else.”

So to recap, LEGO released two piano models in the early 60s and both were marketed to boys and girls alike. A fantastic start for this newfangled toy SYSTEM! But how would LEGO build on this musical momentum?

Fast-forward allegro NINE YEARS to 1973 to Piano set 293 (my very first LEGO piano from the top of the article). It was released as part of LEGO’s “Homemaker” series, aka LEGO for girls. If you hadn’t guessed already, this is the subject where this article splits into two parts.

“Oh no!” I hear you cry. “This isn’t going to be an article about LEGO and the patriarchy, is it? I don’t want politics in my children’s toy!” Rallentando, bro. No, that isn’t what this article is about. I am simply dividing my analysis of LEGO pianos by theme—themes like Friends and City that have traditionally been marketed to more girls or boys, respectively. (However, you’ll have to wait for the second part of this series coming in a week or two for the full comparison.)

In actuality, I’ve crunched the numbers, and the piano is an instrument played and studied by both boys and girls in EQUAL numbers. (My daughter and my son play with EQUAL brilliance, for example.) The piano was more of a piece of household furniture back in the day, reaching its zenith in 1978, so it fit quite well in the LEGO Homemaker line of the time.

So we have our third LEGO piano! Guess when (and where) you’ll see a LEGO piano again… Well, why don’t you take a long intermission. Go grab a snack or head to the restroom. Believe me, you’ll have time.

First Movement: Not Five Easy Pieces

To the best of my findings, retail LEGO sets were devoid of pianos between 1973 (before I was born) until 1991 (by which time I had aged out of the target audience). That’s almost TWO DECADES without a LEGO piano. I looked on every box of classic brick, and I glanced at every wacky sub-category. Nada. Not even in Duplo.

Basic Building Small Bucket set 1878 released in 1991 would break the vamp with a human girl smiling at you from the box with a minifig girl standing next to a piano that you could build with the pieces in the box. The piano is no M-Tron—and this little box lady certainly didn’t have the fanbase of Zach the LEGO Maniac—but it’s actually a really nice little model. It would have looked great in a City set. (Bueller? Whoops, getting ahead of myself again. That’s next week’s article!)

At this point, we’ve waited almost a full generation between LEGO pianos. (Let me know if I've missed any you know about in the comments!) When will LEGO and piano build their next duet?

Take another nap, Rip Van Winkle.

In 2004, Belville Pop Studio set 5942 puts a blip on the radar (with a keyboard sticker). I’ve built it here without the sticker.

The first 50 years of LEGO had a total of five pianos. Yep, keep waiting… Must be one of those really quiet cantatas that soothes you to sleep. But things are about to pick up speed and get exciting.

Second Movement: A Tempo

The first LEGO piano in a set targeted at a general market SINCE THE BEATLES INVADED AMERICA appeared in the year 2010, by which time the girls who had built from that bucket set were raising their own children! A decorative organ appears in 10210 Imperial Flagship. It’d been so long, yes, I’ll count it. I will save detailing the features of that organ until Part Two, but in fact, 2010 is a turning point for LEGO pianos for one simple reason…

The 1x2 grille tile appeared in white in 1989. We finally see that element used as a keyboard in the 2010 LEGO City Advent calendar (seen built above), which is six years after the last rogue piano appeared in a set (represented by a sticker on a tile) and TWENTY-ONE years after the invention of the element that would become the universal piece for ticklish ivories. I’d say “Nice Part Usage,” but instead I’ll sing, “Took you long enough!”

Andante: LEGO Piano Ergonomics

Remember those sigfigs from before? Good, because here’s where we start to get REALLY nerdy about LEGO pianos.

What surprised me most after building all forty-three pianos found in LEGO sets was the lack of… well, a SYSTEM in the piano system. (Warning, don’t look at the right half of that photo above unless you want an early preview of Part Two!)

A human piano keyboard is 28 inches above the ground and 48 inces long (sorry international readers, that’s like 71 cm tall and 1.2 meters long). When I stand at a piano, the keyboard is below my hip; I would have to bend over slightly to play standing up. Extrapolating those ratios to the LEGO universe, the playing surface (keyboard) should be 5 or 6 plates high for a minifig and 6 or 7 plates high for a minidoll for ideal playing power. Anything higher and that would involve a LEGO fig holding their arms up painfully to reach the keys. Any lower, and that’s a world of back pain. Scaling down the width from human size, a LEGO keyboard should be 4 or 5 studs wide.

The piano in that first City Advent set was 6 plates high and 2 studs wide. Which is actually the perfect height for a both minifig and a minidoll. But that is where things get more complicated. For the rest of this article, let’s take a look at the LEGO pianos meant for minidolls (which just so happen to be from the majority of themes targeting girls, like Friends).

[NOTE: There are one or two models that tested the limits of my bricks collection, in which case I substituted a different color. Somehow, I do not own every LEGO element in every color. Shocking! Also, I only own a few of the sheet music tiles, so after I ran out, I switched to 2x2 white tiles, so you’ll just have to imagine the printed notes. Lucky for me, those white grilles were on the Pick a Brick wall a few years back, so I had plenty.]

Third Movement: That’s What Friends Are For

Two years pass until we see another LEGO piano, which coincided with the introduction of LEGO Friends in 2012.

Meet Andrea! She’s a “perfectionist performer” and music is her “thing.” In her first set, it appears she’s already a pro. I went a little overboard in the color scheme to recreate the first LEGO Friends piano, which appeared in Andrea’s Stage set 3932. She’s ready to work for tips with her mocktail and microphone! But I hope she found a tall Technic doll dude to accompany her while she sings or her arms will sure be tired by the end of her shift, as her piano is 8 plates high. The next year (2013), Friends got a Rehearsal Stage set 41004 which was also 8 plates tall for the piano. You can see both pianos side by side below. I guess they really wanted to make telescope legs a thing.

By 2015, LEGO knew that they had a hit on their hands with the Friends theme, and LEGO leaned in big time. The model below has no set number that I’m aware of. My kids built it at a special LEGO Store event to launch that year’s Friends theme. [ASIDE: Big props to every LEGO employee who ever moderated one of those early morning activities. Five stars all around! Those are bound to be some of the best memories in many childhoods.] I modified a few elements and colors when I moved it to a modular house MOC of mine, but you get the gist. (Again 8 plates tall, too high.)

In 2015, Heartlake got a lovely grand piano in the Grand Hotel set 41101. You’ll notice that several minidoll pianos include a clip or a hook for another instrument. This one holds a saxophone. Apparently, our Friends friends are multitalented! Also 8 plates tall with those telescope legs.

At this point, I was thinking that 8 plates tall was THE SYSTEM for pianos—but not so fast. The year 2015 also gave us Pop Star Show Stage set 41105, with a synth-like keyboard that belongs to pop star “Livi” but only stands a mere 6 plates tall! As Goldilocks says, “that’s just right!” (Except the Goldilocks equivalent in LEGO Friends would be Stephanie and we’re talking about Andrea. But I digress.)

In 2016, Friends introduced the second advent piano. It looks much more like a piano than the previous City Advent Calendar, but it’s still scaled for a minifig instead of a minidoll at 5 plates high (and 2 studs wide). [NOTE: According to this fascinating article on Brickset, this set is one of the most short-lived sets in LEGO history! It must have been the mad rush for the piano!]

2016 also gave us a mini black baby grand that is 6 plates high (but only 3 studs wide) from Birthday Party set 41110 a brown practice instrument from Heartlake Performance School set 41134—which is again 8 plates high… sigh. But the model was the first to involve foot pedals! Interestingly on the rear box art, you can see a student is sitting on a chair with her arms up high trying to reach the keys who is unable to access the pedals. What kind of music program are they running!? Upset parents might send their kids back to Heartlake High… but that school doesn’t even own a piano. Even Heartlake needs more funding for the arts.

As you can see, these pianos that are all made to be played by one size of figure (a minidoll) are all over the place! Let’s take a break for a moment until the year 2018 gave us… a LIGHTNING ROUND!

Four pianos came out that year. There’s the two-stud-wide synth in Andrea’s Bedroom set 41341 (8 plates tall), a complicated, pedal-having synth in Andrea’s Stage (foil) polybag 561809 (5 plates tall, plus guitar), a rotating stage where playing two piano keys makes puppets jump on the other side in Andrea’s Park Performance set 41334 (9 plates tall?!), and another (more festive) Advent Calendar entry from set 41353 (5 plates tall).

Encore: The Keyboard Gets an Upgrade

LEGO piano design took two years off after that piano-palooza in 2018, but what came next was monumental. In 2020, LEGO introduced printed PIANO KEYBOARD TILES!

These new tiles were a huge step forward for LEGO pianos. Sure, they only depict two octaves—but I’m nerdy, not pedantic. These 1x2 and 1x4 white printed tiles look NICE. And they have been employed more times in the two years since they were introduced than the combined number of all LEGO pianos from 1961 to 2015. What an encore!

In Friends sets, we see these tiles used four times in 2020: Andrea’s Play Cube set 41400 (8 plates tall), the simplest keyboard ever in City Brick Box set 41431 (used a second time in Andrea’s House set 41449, 8 plates tall), and a weird one in Beach House set 41428. That last one is a strange thing on a hinge. It’s meant to be played sideways, on a roof? It uses the piano keyboard, but it’s listed in LEGO’s description as a “DJ booth.” Mia and Andrea will have to figure that one out… These kids and their rock’n’roll dubstep.

The collage above also includes a sneak peek at an unreleased model, due to appear in Heartlake Shopping Mall set 41450 starting March 1st. Ooo! A lovely synth and microphone at 7 plates! (And a working escalator! Fun!)

[NOTE: I used blank 1x2 and 1x4 white tiles in my recreations above instead of the printed keyboard tiles because my Bricks and Pieces order hasn’t shown up yet. What you are seeing is an illusion called Photoshop from our wonderful volunteer designer Nathan.]

Singing In Harmony: Other Minidoll Pianos

I looked everywhere for LEGO pianos—in cities, in space, even underwater. And that’s where we’ll start to wrap up our deep dive into minidoll pianos—with the alto section under the sea. Ariel’s Undersea Palace set 41063 (2015) has a piano built on an arch. (It’s 9 plates high but that doesn’t matter. What are ergonomics for swimming mermaids?) Neither are the measurements relevant for Sebastian’s setup in the Ariel’s Underwater Symphony polybag 30552 (2018, 5 plates tall) and on Ariel’s Celebration Boat set 43191 (2020, 4 plates tall, plus sax and flute). [NOTE: Forgive me, I did not do the math to scale down a piano for a crab.]

In Part Two, I will discuss the pianos in the LEGO sets aimed more at a gender-neutral markets, but we finish this movement with a few staccato notes in sets mostly aimed at girls and wrapping up the Disney Princess theme. Elsa lets it go with a microdoll-scale organ in Anna and Elsa’s Storybook set 43175 (2020, 4 plates tall).

LEGO animals are given the piano they’ve been wishing for since Fabuland as a blue raccoon and a pink cat enjoy a 1-stud-wide keyboard in the Palace Pets Royal Castle set 41142 (2016, 6 plates tall). (FYI, the keyboard on the side of the Fabuland accordion did not count for my purposes.) Rapunzel also has an itty bitty piano in her Tower set 43187 (2020, 3 plates tall). [ASIDE: I kind of feel like Rapunzel this past year… How many of you took up an instrument in isolation?]

The Final Note (Until Part Two)

So what does all this mean? Is there a standard height for brick-built pianos in LEGO sets targeted more to girls? Well, I like charts—charts and LEGO! Allow me to adjust my glasses for a statistical recap:

Since 1961, LEGO has produced 26 sets targeted to mostly female builders that include pianos. [NOTE: These sets are actually awesome for girls AND for boys, but the themes are specifically marketed toward girls. I’m sure BrickNerd will delve into that topic one day, but not today.] Out of 26 sets, 10 keyboards are 8 plates high, 1 is 7 plates high, 3 are 6 plates high, 3 are 5 plates high, and 7 are “other” or “it doesn’t matter,” Therefore, it can be concluded that THE SYSTEM-defined height of a brick-built piano’s keyboard for use by minidolls as suggested by LEGO is 8 plates tall.

Ergonomically speaking, that means our minidolls are expected to play with arms out at shoulder length—which is piano-posterous! But I know that LEGO does its research. I can see how five-year-olds may have approved of this configuration. Kids are short and a piano is taller, so I guess that is the reality portrayed by LEGO (unless 8 plates tall just allows LEGO designers to, well… design more detail into them). After 3,500 words, case solved!

How does the pianoforte fare in standard minifigure land? Find out in Part Two!

Did I miss a primarily “girl-marketed” LEGO piano or an “everyone” piano not mentioned before 2010? Let me know in the comments below and I will add it to my collection and stand corrected!

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