We have several "designated hitters" which the composition people and other inside players are required to use. We try very hard to make those piano work for them and thereby keep them off the good stuff. The flip side of the coin is that over time the hitters have been damaged to a point where some of the inside players can hardly use them. It is one thing to have just the damper heads you want to play marked but when they are all marked up it is hard to see your own marks. Tuning also gets tricky because junk that has been stuck to the strings causes funny things to happen to partials. Beats get weird as a result. We have posted a notice that the concert grands are not to be used for inside playing. Most of the time this is observed. We provide a piano for inside use and try to accommodate their needs as best we can. This limits any damage done to 1 or 2 pianos. We even have an old Sabathil harpsichord which is used for playing inside. A recital was given once where the guy played the harpsichord inside and completely destroyed the tuning. All the pieces that followed sounded awful. While I was not happy to see the harpsichord played inside, I was very amused to witness the results inflicted on the tuning and what it did for the rest of the recital. ================================================================ Phil Sloffer Indiana University School of Music psloffer@ucs.indiana.edu Bloomington IN ================================================================
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