Re:Chickering

[Bradley P Lehman <bpl@umich.edu>]

On Tue, 21 Apr 1998, John P. Hill wrote:

> But the Chickering was not the one with the incredible tuning.  I believe
> that was the Steinway (not CD318) that he practiced on at his apartment.
> For some reason, it had a great propensity for "self-adjustment" as the
> temperature and humidity varied.

For a person who would practice with the vacuum cleaner and/or radios on,
such an instrument whose tuning bears little resemblance to reality could
be an asset as a practice instrument.  The more distractingly bizarre the
sound is, the more one has to conceptualize the piece clearly in one's
mind.  I mean, there's the old organists' trick of turning the stops
completely off (and practicing during the sermon), or playing on the
mixtures or mutations so each voice is in a different key from one
another, or making the voices wildly unbalanced in volume....  Another
useful practice trick on any keyboard instrument is simply to play with
hands crossed, each hand playing its proper part but in the wrong octave. 
Or on harpsichord, practice in meantone even though the concert's going to
be in a well temperament: helps to make one aware of key centers and
modulations in a different way.  Lots of possibilities. 

Bradley Lehman ~ Harrisonburg VA, USA ~ 38.45716N+78.94565W
bpl@umich.edu ~ http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/