Pianist breaking many strings

[Porritt, David]

Stephane:

While I agree with your premise, I don't think there's much chance of success on this.  When piano technicians try to teach piano technique to professional players, they tend to resent it.  They think of themselves as the professionals and we are the repair people.  

In the 22 years I've been at my current place, we've had two chronic string breakers - several strings a week.  Other players have broken the occasional string but these two were way ahead of the pack.  The thing they had in common was the fact that they both were angry young men.  Their playing sounded angry because they were.  

dp


David M. Porritt, RPT
dporritt at smu.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Stéphane Collin
Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2008 2:15 PM
To: 'Pianotech List'
Subject: RE: Pianist breaking many strings

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