The faculty member here who does the most inside the piano playing always uses thin white cotton gloves when touching strings. That is a nice model for our students.
To be fair, it depends a lot on the individual pianist and how active the hand sweat glands are. Mine, for instance, put out next to nothing in my climate (at the moment we are in our high humidity period of 50 - 60% RH, and my hands are still very dry - though when I am in 80% conditions they begin to sweat somewhat). So I can touch strings a lot without really worrying about it, which makes stringing a lot easier - and the strings are just as shiny when I am done and months later, so I know there is no delayed reaction. My son, on the other hand, has perpetually wet palms, and goes through guitar strings in no time. If he strummed a set of bass strings, I'd expect them to look like the photos that have been posted.
I'll put in a plug for the
Protocol for Extended Techniques in Piano Performance the CAUT Committee recently produced. You can find it on the
CAUT page, as text, and also as a Word Document file in the CAUT Public Library. It is probably about time we did some layout and produced it as a pamphlet. Any comments on the text would be most welcome.
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Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico
http://fredsturm.net "When I smell a flower, I don't think about how it was cultivated. I like to listen to music the same way." -Federico Mompou
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Original Message:
Sent: 07-30-2014 10:30
From: Mario Igrec
Subject: bass string damage (finger strumming)
The problem is that to non-technicians the "damage" looks like a minor cosmetic blemish, certainly worth the artistic benefits of strumming or blocking the aliquots of bass strings. The tension between the technician and musician will exist as long as the musician perceives prepared piano techniques as a legitimate way of expanding the instrument's expressivity, and I don't see that going away anytime soon.
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Mario Igrec
http://www.pianosinsideout.com
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