I wish we had key-cards issued so that only students could enter practice rooms! The building is open from 7am to 11pm most days, and not enough monitors to see if everyone there has a collegiate reason for being there. We're lucky in that not many incidents with liquid stuffs are spilled on or in pianos. Sometimes, classroom pianos are more apt to be damaged as students will reserve them for receptions before or after their recitals. One spill of "something" so far this year killing the bottom 6 bass strings on a Steinway B, but so far, that's it this year....(knocking on wood happening now!) I've heard of Richard West, my friend and predecessor finding a piano all strung out as a buffet table once, but can't confirm this rumor. I would come unglued if I found this!! Every fall, I put a note saying, "Do not put anything but music on this piano", but unfortunately, I find that the students think this a coaster for their coffee! There's no way to control them. Sure, they're "adults", but even "adults" refuse to respect the instrument and think it a great way to set their junk on them, including drinks... OK. enough rant. Paul From: "Newhouse,Larry R." <lrn at SFCM.EDU> To: <caut at ptg.org> Date: 12/02/2009 01:23 PM Subject: [CAUT] Protecting pianos from student and faculty beverage spills Hello everyone, I have not been subscribed to CAUT for many years and I apologize in advance if this question has already been discussed to exhaustion. We have more than 100 pianos with approximately 88 practice rooms, classrooms and studios. While I have had placards placed on a wall of each room stating no food of beverages allowed and discuss this at the beginning of each semester we invariably have a few spills a year on average. I haven't found away to search for past threads on the subject. If that is possible I would welcome some direction. The most recent spill was a large volume of hot chocolate into the keys and keybed. The only reason I found out soon afterwards was because a student walked into the room and found it dripping from the keybed and didn't want to be blamed (not that this action eliminates that possibility.) Of course this was a piano on which I had recently replaced the key bushings...Murphy's Law and all. We have keycards that are assigned to everyone so facilities knows who enters a room at any given time and date but the reality is that students hold doors open for each other and there is no way to have reliable hall monitors on 5 floors without it costing a lot and seeming like a prison. One would think that musicians would think clearly and follow policies but they are also in their 20's (although faculty has been guilty of this too at times.) The concert manager and I are trying to come up with suggestions to try and change the culture since it is very hard to catch these accidents as they happen. Therefore, It would be helpful for me to know how other universities, colleges and conservatories handle this and what systems they use, if any, to minimize the damage. Thanks for any input. Larry Larry Newhouse|Senior Piano Technician San Francisco Conservatory of Music 50 Oak Street San Francisco, CA 94102 415 503-6282 415 383-7690 (home office) lrn at sfcm.edu NOTICE OF CONFIDENTIALITY This e-mail message and its attachments (if any) are intended solely for the use of the addressee hereof. In addition, this message and the attachments (if any) may contain information that is confidential, privileged and exempt from disclosure under applicable law. Unless you are the addressee (or authorized to receive for the addressee), you are prohibited from reading, disclosing, reproducing, distributing, disseminating or otherwise using this transmission. Delivery of this message to any person other than the intended recipient is not intended to waive any right or privilege. If you have received this message in error, please promptly notify the sender by reply e-mail and immediately delete this message from your system. Thank you.” -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20091202/2e9dfc8c/attachment-0001.htm>
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