Hi everyone,

This evening i played at a music competition on the piano, after the competition the adjudicator came up to me and told me i should try a harpsichord beacuse i have a good harpsichord touch. Is this good or bad for a pianist?

Thanks, a very baffled p*c*s*b

How would he know that from you playing a piano :S

Still, harpsichord is a cool instrument!

i don't know what goes through their heads, but it probs is, not that i've ever played one.

Did you play something very sttacatto, as I think that you have to imply dynamics on the h'chord using varying degrees of staccato, im not sure though.

1 of the pieces was very staccato so it may have been because of that.

The touch of a harpsichord is very different from a piano - first there is a little resistance as the slip of quill pushes up the string, then suddenly *ping* it gives way. All but the most heavily voiced instruments will have a light touch and take less effort to produce fast runs and trills than a piano demands, but they sound muddy very quickly unless played with well-defined articulation. Because there is practically no dynamic range, the way you bring across the idea of loud or soft is through the articulation - and where it matters almost more how you depress keys on the piano to get expressiveness, on the harpsichord the more important thing is how you lift off again. Your adjudicator would indeed have been giving you a compliment on some well-executed staccato, I think .

I have heard many pianists try to play harpsichords and not manage to get that one right: I also know several keyboard players, including my husband and YAP, who can play either equally well. I think it needs sensitivity to do it, and a brute-force pianist is less likely to manage to transfer their skills to a harpsichord, but I'd have thought that if anything, trying out the plucked keyboard instruments would give pianists some idea of how they might tackle earlier music and bring out more of what it contains - and to answer the question, no, I can't see how it could possibly affect piano technique in a negative way.

I think it must have been a compliment based on the staccato playing At school many years ago my piano teacher managed to have a harpsichord on loan and I was so excited - it was beautiful. Unfortunately I couldn't get the hang of it at all - I was so disappointed I don't know where you would go to try one out.

I have access to about sixty of the things....though only half of them play, and it is a museum, so not that ideal for tryouts. There are more of them about though than people realise - my husband is asked to work on at least ten instruments outside of his working hours here in Edinburgh on a fairly regular basis, and we got our own one given to us because it was standing abandoned and unloved in an acquaintance's garage - the previous owner said we could have it on condition that my husband make it work . The only thing is that people tend to be a bit protective of their harpsichords because they do go out of tune and regulation more readily than pianos (though are also much easier to put back into tune...). Contacts to look for would be any music colleges offering early music, and to see a few, the museums at Fenton House, the Bate Collection, and the Edinburgh University Museum of Early Keyboard Instruments. I don't know much about the two former museums - the latter is a playing collection so visitors may well get to hear what they sound like, and there is also a modern instrument there which might tolerate a few keys being pressed, provided hands are washed first and there isn't somebody practising on it .

Oh good, i've been struggling with that staccato for a while, and am glad i got it good enough, maybe i'll have a chance to try a harpsichord when i go to uni next year.