Motherboard

If you live on the Internet, you may have already seen this video of people in Stockholm getting some exercise (that is, with their bodies, in real life). Except they’re not at a gym — they’re just leaving the subway, and are opting to take the stairs instead of the escalator.

Why are these Swedes moving their muscles rather than let the machine do the work for them? Because these stairs have been converted into a virtual piano keyboard, the black keys, white keys, octave scale, all that. Walk up the stairs and you can make a song. Take the escalator and all you hear is the soft drone of rubber on metal, the hum and drum of a humdrum existence, and your body getting fatter.

And if there’s anything Tom Hanks has taught us, it’s that being able to play a walking piano can score you a job and eventually the girl of your dreams. (And making one, it turns out, can earn your international fame)

The musical stairs, says the video, led to an increase in stair use of 66%. And stair use has been shown to be a great form of exercise: In a Harvard study, men who climbed more than 55 flights per week had a 33 percent lower mortality rate than those who didn’t. If the escalator were made to only move when people approach it, like the kind I’ve often seen in China, the energy savings could be huge too.

Piano stairs aren’t the only way of making stair-climbing fun. Architects and designers are increasingly talking about ways of encouraging more stair use through better design, more light, and music. Pipe in some tunes to a stairwell, some designers suggested at a conference in New York this summer, and you’re likely to see an increase in stair use. Even simply putting up signs that remind people of the benefits of stairs has proved to increase stair climbing.

One slightly off-key side bar: the company behind this inspired effort to get people having more fun by moving their bodies? Volkswagon, natch.