<HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>Blue Man Group Piano</TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY> Hey, All, A while back there was a thread on the CAUT list about the piano that Blue Man Group uses in their show, and how it was set up to stand being beat on with a mallet like they do.  Well, they did a show here this past Wednesday and afterward I talked my way into backstage too look at it.  The secret is out! :-)  The answer is, it’s not a piano anymore. For the road show, they took a junker little 5’ grand and stripped it.  The action is gone.  The keyboard is still there, but when I looked inside I didn’t see the back half of the keys.  The plate is a styrofoam sham, but actually quite a good reproduction of the original.  It even had the raised rims around the plate holes.  There is a thick reinforcing board, nearly as tall as the bridge, that covers the soundboard from the bridge to the belly rail.  On this board are three electronic drum pads, painted to match the wood.  There is another pad on the sham plate behind the bridge, again painted to match.  I imagine there is also reinforcement under that pad under the sham plate.  The pinblock is gone, and the sham plate is a couple inches thick in the pinblock area.  They have tuning pins and hitch pins stuck in the styrofoam, and just enough strings stretched between them to make it look believable from out in the audience.  There is, of course, no tension at all on the wire.  It looks like they just re-used some of the original strings.  The drum pads are hooked into the synthesizer/sound system, so they can get any sound they want when the blue guy beats on it.  So it’s not a piano at all any more, just a platform for an electronic drum set. Way cool show, by the way.  With 30dB foam earplugs it was just about right. Regards, Ken Z. -- Ken Zahringer, RPT University of Missouri School of Music </BODY> </HTML>