Piano Forum

Piano Board => Miscellaneous => Topic started by: pianist7 on March 27, 2010, 10:22:03 PM

Title: String Breaking
Post by: pianist7 on March 27, 2010, 10:22:03 PM

How would it be possible to break a piano string whilst playing? I am not planning on trying. :)

Title: Re: String Breaking
Post by: pianowolfi on March 27, 2010, 11:09:20 PM

Well it can happen...

:P

 8)

Title: Re: String Breaking
Post by: lostinidlewonder on March 27, 2010, 11:50:41 PM

When I was visiting Turkey I did a concert on an old piano, it was a really bad piano. 6 strings broke while I was playing and the notes stopped making a sound but I powered on through until the end substituting notes lol. Usually old strings will break, with newer pianos it will be a string with a defect on it (a string is only as strong as its weakest point), it is actually pretty damn hard to break a new string unless you intentionally keep pounding the note and try to hit on its natural frequency and increase that until it breaks.

Title: Re: String Breaking
Post by: minor9th on March 28, 2010, 02:10:56 AM

Alexander Sultanov (R.I.P.) broke one during the Van Cliburn Competition. You can hear it snap on the CD that was issued from that competition (It's in "The Mephisto Waltz").

Title: Re: String Breaking
Post by: peterjmathis on March 28, 2010, 12:19:41 PM

Yeah, it's old strings that are more at risk for this.