Changing FR Felts

[Stephen F Schell]

Hello everyone,

Fascinating subject, these front rail felts. I have experimented with
changing them for years, off and on, but to seek to meet players' needs
for shock absorption, not for changing tone color. Just another example
of how almost any change we make to a piano can have other, unintended
results.

I've long been interested in grand action design, geometry, touchweight,
key weighting, and so on. One important potential use for any knowledge
gained in this area is to help pianists who become injured from playing
their pianos. Damage to joints and  tendons, carpal tunnel syndrome, and
probably other maladies seem to be on the rise.

In many cases the pianists themselves are no doubt responsible for their
injuries. Many players, mostly young, can be observed to viciously
attack the keyboard with no apparent regard for their own well being.
They do not feel the effects until later in life. Crashing dynamic
contrasts seem to be much in vogue at piano competitions.


    I have known some players to develop  problems, however, with even a
gentle  touch; a couple have had to stop playing altogether. It is these
people who may be helped by modifications to their pianos by
knowledgeable technicians.

So far the focus of my work has been on repairing actions which "play
heavy", either from heavy hammers and/or bad geometry which has resulted
in a mountain of lead being placed in the keys to achieve a reasonable
(near) static touchweight. The inertia from all of this mass can make an
otherwise nice piano miserable to play at medium to loud volume. The
teachings of Chris Robinson (action geometry) and David Stanwood (key
balancing) have been very helpful.

What recently got me to thinking (and will pull this rambling discourse
back to the stated subject), is a comment last week from pianist Gary
Graffman. He and pianist Leon Fleisher were performing a concerto
written for two one handed pianists. They  have both resorted to playing
left handed due to injuries. I solicited their comments on the modern
piano, asking how they thought it might be improved to lessen the chance
of injury. I mentioned the general tendency for keys to be more heavily
leaded toward the bass to offset the heavier hammers. Our conversation
was interrupted, but not before Mr. Graffman floored me with the casual
comment " Isn't it curious, though, that pianists most often suffer
injury to their right hand?"

Whoa, reevaluation time. Maybe the principal mechanism of injury is not
the stress  imposed by action inertia, as my tunnel-thinking had led me
to believe, but perhaps the shockwave of energy which is returned to the
player's hand at the bottom of the keystroke. Could it be that the
greater inertia in the lower part of the piano actually absorbs energy
in such a way as to lessen the risk of injury to the left hand? Might it
be possible to modify the piano to absorb more of this energy without
harming performance in other ways? How about front rail punchings made
from running shoe innersole material, or something else that
won't just flatten out and give up under a hard blow?

Too many questions, too few answers at this point. Any ideas out there?

Steve Schell
stfrsc@juno.com