Pianist breaking many strings

[Stéphane Collin]

Hi Bruce.

While I fail to understand why, I always experienced that the breaking of
the string is due to a particular movement of the pianist.  A pianist can
play loud on two manners : the first (and this is the one which breaks
strings) is to stiffen finger, arm shoulder and all, and give this concrete
assembly the maximum down velocity.  Bing.  The sound is always harsh, and
sometimes you break a string.  The other is to give the finger, wrist, arm
and shoulder the maximum suppleness you can, and even with force, the sound
will be round and mellow, while forceful.  To my understanding, the
difference lies in the acceleration of the hammer and hammer shank, which
has incidence on the bending of the shank due to inertia, and so, on the
shock quality of the hammer against the string.
My take : tell the pianist that he could play loud while having a nice sound
coming out of the piano, in achieving the needed suppleness in the stroke.
Or tell him that playing loud is a remain of his lower level crocodile brain
wanting to show and prove his superiority on all other males, in order to
obtain all the females around.  In which case, the piano has no chance to
survive.

Best regards.

Stéphane Collin.


Hi all. I have a client who is a professional pianist. He apparently plays
quite forcefully. He seems to break one or two treble strings per month on
average, usually in the upper three octaves. He has a Boston grand, model GP
193. He says he has always had this problem, no matter what piano he plays.
He is wondering if there is a specific brand of piano that would lessen this
problem. Any suggestions?
Bruce Trummel