The video shows pianist Jon Schmidt driving in a car, listening to Christmas music on a snowy night. Suddenly, however, he stops the car and approaches a random piano that has been set up in the middle of the street. Schmidt plays a few notes while looking around in confusion before realizing he’s forgotten to plug in a cord. When he plugs it in, the piano lights up.
Schmidt starts playing “I Saw Three Ships”, but it’s immediately apparent that something else is going on. As he hits each key, you see Christmas lights start to light up before him, with different patterns of lights synched with each piano key.
According to the video’s title, the total set up used a whopping HALF A MILLION lights; the final results were definitely worth the work though.
The light show is beautiful on its own, but the fact that it’s synched with Schmidt’s rendition of “I Saw 3 Ships” take it to a whole new (and amazing) level. I think this may be the first time anyone has literally lit up the sky with piano music— a veritable visual symphony. As the song grows quicker and more intense with every verse, the light show becomes more and more intricate with every musical layer that Schmidt adds.
“I Saw 3 Ships is one of my very favorite pieces to play on the piano. It is just pure fun,” Schmidt writes on The Piano Guys’ website. “Arranged over 20 years ago, [the song] still stands as the arrangement that was hardest for me to finish. It was a 6-month process to get the arrangement to finally feel right.”
The Piano Guys’ website also lists some fun facts, such as the following, about this incredible video:
The video was actually filmed in the middle of the night
500,000 Christmas lights starred in the display
4,900 digital channels were used to make sure the entire spectrum of the keyboard was showcased efficiently
A drone camera was the main way they captured the event
Schmidt was actually playing the piano
The sirens at the end of the video are not fake; the police showed up, but the men explain, “We’d like to thank them for their kindness and mercy. No pianists were harmed or hailed in the making of this video.”
