{"id":337393,"date":"2019-01-31T09:03:30","date_gmt":"2019-01-31T14:03:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newmusicusa.wpengine.com\/?p=337393"},"modified":"2021-06-01T21:28:37","modified_gmt":"2021-06-01T21:28:37","slug":"beyond-the-88-playing-around-inside-the-toy-piano","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newmusicusa.org\/nmbx\/beyond-the-88-playing-around-inside-the-toy-piano\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond the 88: Playing Around Inside the Toy Piano"},"content":{"rendered":"

In last week’s installment<\/a> of \u201cBeyond the 88\u201d I talked about several on-the-strings techniques, after first showing how to construct a weighted, cloth-covered mute. Here in my last beginner\u2019s guide, I\u2019d like to move from the piano to its playful, diminutive cousin: the toy piano.<\/p>\n

The Toy Piano: Some Preparations and Nontraditional Techniques<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, I realize that the toy piano is a different beast from a modern grand piano. However, in discussions with the editorial staff for my book The Contemporary Piano<\/em> I was adamant that I needed to include a chapter on the toy piano. So many pianists are including the toy piano as part of their regular gigging equipment, and, truly, the instrument is coming into its own right now. Just look at the work of Margaret Leng Tan, Phyllis Chen, David Smooke, Isabel Ettenauer, Karlheinz Essl, Amy O\u2019Dell, Elizabeth A. Baker, Xenia Pestova, HOCKET piano duo, and many, many others who are currently showcasing the toy piano in live performances and\/or composing new works for it. Beyond this widespread toy piano boom that\u2019s happening, I\u2019m personally very fond of it, and want to do my best to encourage more composing\/performing and experimenting with this instrument!<\/p>\n

And, here\u2019s a great argument for experimenting with preparations on the toy piano\u2014toy pianos are a lot cheaper than concert grands, and a lot easier to repair or replace if you damage one. I bought a lovely 37-key Schoenhut \u201cDay-Care Durable\u201d upright at my local flea market for $25\u2014and it came with the original mini-bench. Tell enough of your friends that you love toy pianos, and they will start finding their way to you. One of my colleagues picked one up for me at a garage sale a few weeks ago, and just brought it to the music department. (And, the lid of this \u201cgrand\u201d was already mostly ripped off, so the first thing I did was remove the lid entirely. Suddenly it\u2019s the perfect instrument for tone rod preparations.)<\/p>\n

For many of these techniques or preparations, you\u2019ll need access to the toy piano\u2019s tone rods. Most modern toy pianos, and certainly every chromatic instrument that I\u2019ve run across myself, uses small-diameter metal rods for their sound. Plastic (or wood) hammers are set into motion from keys, and the hammers hit these metal rods, rather than metal strings as in a piano. Different models will offer up access to the tone rods in their own ways, requiring different levels of instrument dismantling. My \u201ctravel\u201d instrument (purchased so I would have a toy piano that I could pack in a carry-on suitcase when I was flying to the Florida International Toy Piano Festival a couple of years ago), is a Michelsonne that has a keyboard that folds flat into the cabinet of the instrument. Fold down the keyboard, and you have instant access to the tone rods and the hammers, no disassembly required. As mentioned above, my latest Schoenhut grand had a lid attached with hinges (barely) and an articulated arm that served as the \u201cstick\u201d for the lid. Remove the hinge screws and the ones for the arm, and the lid is out of the way, exposing almost the full sounding length of the tone rods. Other instruments may require removing a few more bits of the casing, but usually even this will mean removing only a few screws.<\/p>\n

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So, get yourself access to the tone rods.<\/p>\n

Then try muting! Hand muting the rods is very easy. Sound notes with one hand on the keys, and press or pinch with the fingertips of your other hand on the tone rods. You can even vary the pressure of the muting fingers and change the amount of pitch and resonance remaining in the sound. For some really delicate sounds, you can also try plucking the low-register (longer) rods, or running the flats of your fingernails across the full range of tone rods.<\/p>\n