From gregg@69cents.com Thu Jun 17 14:18:23 2004
Subject:Re: Deep Purple Hush - The Intro

At 12:08 PM 6/17/2004, you wrote:

>Well, hell, you could just hit the keys with a hammer too and drag a
>crowbar up and down them for good measure! There's absolutely no
>reason, EXCEPT <<>> for a keyboardist
>to break keys or cut up their hands playing this (or any other) song.

When I say "breaking keys" , I do not mean they are snapping in half - I mean they get dislodged from their pivots in the keybed, or the pivot mount points get cracked from the sideways pressure - and it doesn't take much to do it.

It's not a matter of being abusive or 'over-enthusiastic'. Doing fast palm-smears on a flimsy non-weighted synth keyboard is going to be rough on them, especially if you catch a black key. Most of these flimsy synth-style keybeds are not designed for side-to-side pressure like that.

Having palm smears draw blood on a brand-new fully-weighted keyboard is also not a matter of being over-enthusiastic. The next time you run across a QS8.1, feel the corners of the keys - it's like razor wire. I finally took an emery board to most of them to take the edge off.

-Gregg