Tony and all, Yes, we had the same situation here at San Francisco State when I first came to work here. The piano faculty were complaining that the "Best" concert Steinway (a Hamburg) didn't sound like it used too - but when we tried to limit usage, they kept saying things like "a piano is here to be played" and "students should get a chance to practice on a good piano" and "this class is entitled to use the good piano" and other such drivel. To add insult to injury, they kept pre-empting our service access time. Couldn't quite grasp the notion that a "good piano" doesn't stay that way if it is constantly being pounded - with no opportunity to mitigate at least some of the damage. We managed to get things somewhat under control by pulling it out of service often for "repairs" (pull the action into the shop and announce that it isn't available) and talking it down - while talking up the other Steinways (NY). It's surprising how helpful a "buzz" can be - students and faculty are often like lemmings, following the crowd. And how pianists can "discover" the wonderful qualities of a piano when they actually try it - like when they are denied the use of their favorite because it's down for "repairs". Now we have a battle on our hands again - since the better NY came up with problems that will take time to resolve, everybody is beating up on the Hamburg again. The hammers are ten years old - so it's only a matter of time before it gets totally trashed... As far as locks and keys - well, the faculty have keys and they are the worst culprits. We can reason with students, sometimes. .. Israel Stein ----- Original Message ----- From: caut-request at ptg.org >Message: 2 >Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2009 07:53:50 -0500 >From: "Graves, Tony J." <tjgraves at bsu.edu> >Subject: Re: [CAUT] Practicing on concert hall pianos piano >To: "caut at ptg.org" <caut at ptg.org> >Message-ID: <C5C9580E.4AD6%tjgraves at bsu.edu> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" >I agree with David....More playing equals more wear and tear. I wish people would understand me here. In our main recital hall it can have up to 8, or more recitals a week. We have 2 piano a D and an old CF, but were an A. S. S. school so everyone plays on the Steinway no matter who or what their playing the piano for. The so called "policy" here is that students get 1 hour and faculty get 2, for rehearsal, but it usually ends up at 2 and 2 and sometimes more. The use of the the piano doesn't stop there. It also gets used for piano studio classes every week we have 4 piano faculty and they each have 2 hours, grant it they may not always use the full 2 hours. Sometimes the faculty use it for their own practice time. Then there are other groups that use the piano too. So the hall is booked heavily everyday. One thing that really made me mad toward the end of the fall semester was one of the piano faculty said it was a "substandard performing instrument" I told him that with all the use it gets it's hard to keep the "Concert Piano" in peak performance with the use it gets and the limited time I have in the hall. So some of you should consider yourselves lucky. -- Tony Graves RPT Piano Technician School of Music Ball State University Muncie, IN 47306 (765) 285-0053 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut_ptg.org/attachments/20090224/0af6ac3d/attachment.html>
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