Ed, I agree with your point about the amount of downward force on individual keys, but forearm clusters and the like may well exert more severe trauma to the keysticks, especially the bushings. Key bushings have been shown to barely wear at all when the force applied to the keys is exactly perpendicular to the keytop (as only a solenoid can do). For actual people (as opposed to the non-actual ones out there?), it is nearly impossible to apply force to the keystick without it being skewed to the side a little (or a lot, such as in "human" glissandos). I suspect that clusters may be even less precise than fingers in this regard. Alan Eder -----Original Message----- From: Ed Sutton <ed440 at mindspring.com> To: caut at ptg.org Sent: Mon, Mar 22, 2010 5:27 am Subject: Re: [CAUT] Keith Kirchoff Kent, I don't know what Kirchoff's playing for you, but I'd submit that Cowell's forearm clusters, with force distributed over 12 to 20 keys, exert less force on the individual notes than the fortissimo octaves of typical late-romantic show-off repertoire. Ed S. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Amy Porter" <Amy.Porter at uregina.ca> To: <caut at ptg.org> Sent: Monday, March 22, 2010 12:16 AM Subject: Re: [CAUT] Keith Kirchoff Yes, actually I do. And he's a very gifted performer. I had the opportunity to tune for him while I was spending some time at the Banff Centre last year. He may play hard but I think it is disrespectful to label him a "piano abuser". Amy Porter >>> Kent Swafford <kswafford at gmail.com> 03/21/10 5:06 PM >>> Anyone here know pianist-composer and piano abuser Keith Kirchoff? Kent Swafford -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20100322/a8c41861/attachment-0001.htm>
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