Meet Chopstix
In 2021, engineer and YouTuber Mark Rober came to Cambridge looking for a piano that could be taken apart and rebuilt. Ours had already been playing itself for years. He wanted to see what else it could do.
Working with a team of player piano technicians, Rober’s team doubled the piano’s playing speed, from 30 keys a minute to 60, fast enough to perform Rush E, a piece of music written to be too fast for human hands. Along the way, it also learned to talk.
They named it Chopstix.
The video has been watched more than 13 million times. Classic FM covered it. None of that was the plan. The plan was simply an Edelweiss Transparent Upright, and the self-play system fitted to every piano we build.
What Chopstix is built on
Underneath the showmanship is the same technology in every Edelweiss piano, at every price point. Precision solenoids and MIDI control operate the keys with no visible mechanism. Felt hammers strike real strings. The instrument is fully acoustic. The performance is not a recording, because there’s nothing to record from. It’s happening, live, in the room.
Chopstix plays faster and speaks. A standard Edelweiss self-play system doesn’t do either. What it does is turn any of our pianos into an instrument that performs on its own, drawing from a library of 1,000 pieces as standard, expandable to 5,000, with bespoke recordings commissioned for individual owners.
Plays beautifully. Even if you don’t.
The piano itself
Rober’s build started with our Transparent Upright, a piano with an open case and integrated LED lighting, available in one size: 125cm height, 155cm length, 68cm width.The Transparent Upright typically starts from £40,000 / $50,000, plus shipping, with a lead time of 4 to 6 months. It sits outside our grand piano range. If you’re planning a design project and want the full detail, our designers page has it.
Common questions
Our team answers the questions we’re asked most often about Chopstix below.
Beyond Chopstix
Chopstix is one piano, modified for one video. The range it came from includes Sygnet, the smallest grand piano in the world, Flugel, built for scale and presence, and Aurora, our most advanced instrument, built entirely in Britain.
Every one of them plays itself. None of them needs to go viral to prove it.
