More on inside playing. But no more after this one. We have a kind of love or rather like-hate relationship with all who play pianos inside. We always help anyone as much as we can regarding piano playing and the composition people are no exception. However they are there own worst enemy. Anything that they do that causes them trouble is fine with us and we don't necessarily try to warn them if it looks like what they are doing is going to cause them problems. Dampers tend to get hung up when people play inside and they must suffer the consequences. Whenever the regular performance pianos are played inside are main concern is for the people in the next recital. They may not be able to perform if the piano is broken. This sort of thing happens about once a semester. I am not aware of any real damage to harpsichords here from playing inside. No broken strings yet. The tuning suffers of course because there is much less tension involved. I guess the thing that I don't like about inside playing is the results. The sound that is. I don't care much for percussion ensembles either but at least they bang and pound on things according to plan. Drummers will pound on anything and call it music but they don't beat drums with "chisels" because that would break the drum. They don't misplay the instrument to get a different sound, they go out and pound on things until they find something that has the sound they want. And that s why percussion ensembles have a truck load of hardware when they perform. The trouble is composers hear this stuff and then try to imitate the sound by getting it out of the piano. When I hear Cage pieces performed on prepared piano my opinion is it could have been done on percussion instruments much easier and sound better too. The new electronic keyboards, computers, MIDI and all that stuff have given composers and others as well a much better way of trying new sounds and playing them on keyboards. This has probably helped save many acoustic piano from inside playing. Of course the purist will come along who wants authentic pop bottle dragging on the string sound or some such crap. Last week-end we moved a hitter to Recital Hall for a composition recital. This happens to be a Steinway B. I tuned it according to the composers instructions. Tune it as usual in equal temperament at A440. Then lower all the E's by 50 cents. I did not go to the recital. ================================================================ Phil Sloffer Indiana University School of Music psloffer@ucs.indiana.edu Bloomington IN ================================================================
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