One of my teachers used rosin (the stuff string players put on their bows). Apparently before this particular concert, someone thought it would be nice to polish the piano keys so they were nice and shiny. You know, piano keys are always prettier when shiny I find that the surface the keytop is made of has a lot of bearing on slipperiness. Plasticky keys tend to get slippery quite easily. Ivory or synthetic equivalents are much better, as they are porous and moisture does not sit and collect on the surface.
Good to know some digitals have them as well. Personally, I also find that wood sharps help tremendously. A lot of the slippage I was experiencing was happening on the black keys. I learned 10/5 on plastic keys, but it always felt better to play on my teacher's ivory keys. My current piano has synthetic ivory whites and wood sharps - it makes a world of a difference.
I suggested to outin a while ago to have her key tops replaced with an Ivory Touch material but she said she would rather get another piano ( hot for a grand back then). Least that's what I seem to recall.
The key tops are only glued on. They come off (sometimes on their own on older pianos).
With all this global warming, don't you have the odd woolly mammoth popping up every now and then? Be on the lookout! Their tusks are ivory too, and there is really nothing quite as good. Your next DIY project.
I don't live quite that north...no glaciers around here
I thought they were usually dug out of defrosted peat bogs.
I asked my technician about replacing the keys or something but he said it would be very expensive and did not recommend it in case I plan to get another piano anyway. How do they replace the key tops btw?Obviously some people have more natural friction on their fingertips and can play with such keys. I seem to have none during the colder seasons
Hey, if the bees wax works that's great ! Simple solution.
As I've aged and also at work for any kind of mechanical work or manual labor I do at all I wear nitrile gloves or work gloves in the yard at home etc. I even wear riding gloves on my bicycles. My hands and fingers are way softer than they used to be and also prone to bad circulation in the cold weather ( they go white and numb even if caught out in a cold rain on a 40 deg F day, never mind real winter weather). So they slip more than they used to on the keys. I don't recall slipping on these same keys 30 years ago for instance.
My fingers have always been like this, they are very smooth even in the summer but in the winter they are also dry, so I have a lot of trouble with things like turning pages...
At least not expensive...I guess I'll just have to see how often I need to apply it...My fingers have always been like this, they are very smooth even in the summer but in the winter they are also dry, so I have a lot of trouble with things like turning pages...
Do you use hand lotion for dry hands ? I find that helps, in fact if I don't use it my fingers crack in the winter ( the skin that is of course). Actually, I think we had a thread here at PS on this subject last winter. Anyway, cracked hands and fingers are very painful.
A solution for turning pages is to use sticky tabs or sticky notes. You place a tab on the edge of the page for every page turn. Stagger the tabs, much like a address book index, so you can easily select a single one to turn.
outin, care to share a link to that Prelude ? I don't seem to be finding it anywhere online in my searches.
Because of the spelling I guess:
Damn Russians and their funny alphabet!!Another take on the same piece, which I prefer:
Computer crashed , I haven't been around here for a couple of days. I swear I won't buy another HP product, we've had three of these crash in the last few years and this one twice now where I had hard disk errors and had to do a restore that formats half the HD. ..My Toshiba laptops, never a hitch, I think I'll stick with them. Towers seem old these days anyway.
We recently changed to HP from Dell at work and several new laptops have broken down in just a few weeks...But it might be just the general trend to make products as cheap as possible and ignore durability.
Topic: Beeswax 