What are piano desk lamps, and how are they different from normal piano lamps? How are they different from normal desk lamps, for that matter? Does it really matter what type of lamp you put in your piano room?
Piano desk lamps are significantly different from normal desk lamps, although not too different from any other piano lamp. A normal desk lamp is essentially a very small floor lamp; it’s designed to be set up on a desk or table and provide even light around the room. They may be smaller than floor lamps, simply because there isn’t as much room to support a huge lampshade or bulb, but they’re still designed to shed light all around.
Piano desk lamps, however, are significantly different. While a normal desk lamp is designed to shed even light, piano desk lamps are designed to shed light in a very focused area. With any piano lamp, the basic design is to shine light on the sheet music and nowhere else. This is because a piano player doesn’t want a light shining in his or her eyes while they’re trying to read their sheet music, but they still want their sheet music to be lit up and easy to read. Piano desk lamps are simply a subgroup of normal piano lamps.
A piano lamp is any lamp that’s designed this way, to shine light on sheet music and not on the person playing the piano. That means that, while a floor lamp might increase the visibility of the room (and therefore, the sheet music in that room,) a piano lamp isn’t going to increase the visibility of the rest of the room. While a piano lamp isn’t as versatile as a room lamp, it serves a specific enough function that it can often help increase the visibility of sheet music when nothing else will work without blinding the pianist.
Piano desk lamps are the simplest form of piano lamp. While there are piano lamps that are designed as flexible floor lamps, piano desk lamps are designed to sit on top of the piano and shed light on the music stand. Some of these are designed from the side, moving the light over the top of the music stand from the side of the piano. Most piano desk lamps, however, are designed to sit behind the music stand and shine down from just above the sheet music. These lamps can be expensive, but extremely useful.
[...] Piano desk lamps are also helpful in that they don’t take up as much space as other lamps. Because they only need to shine light on a very small, specific space, they don’t have to worry (as other lamps might) about making sure there’s light in the rest of the room. A lamp for the piano has one specific purpose: spread light onto the sheet music. You don’t need a heavy floor lamp to do that; you can simply place a small desk lamp-style piano lamp behind your music stand. [...]