Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner How to break a string?

Has anyone here ever broken a string? Can it be done on purpose using some technique, or is it just a matter of the piano being poorly strung or tuned too sharp? And is there more to it than just sheer force, like the way you strike a key?

I've had a string break on me, I don't think it's necessarily a question of hitting it hard - when mine broke it was in the middle of a mezzo-forte passage. There might have been a pre-existing weakness in the string which meant its days were numbered from the beginning. I'll never forget the noise - it was like a rifle going off. I quite literally fell off my seat.

It is comparatively easier to break hammers, pinions and dampers, and I've done them all and had them replaced countless times. I have broken bass strings on my acoustic. They were quite aged anyway. And many of the upper octave strings snapped too. Yes, and the tuner didn't really tune up the others too much in case they would go again. Once you put a new string in and old case you have to do the lot and that costs.

On a related matter I haven't been able to play recently because I managed to break the hammers on my current Roland, currently the most sophisticated weighted action available - but also pretty durable.

A lot of times. I find that if I press and lift my hand off the key very quickly while using a lot of body weight, I seem to break some strings. They sound like a gun/fire cracker/and a bomb going off. It sounds a bit startling XD

Pieces where I broke strings/Hammers:

Prelude in C# minor - Rachmaninoff *
La Campanella - Liszt
Hungarian Rhapsody #2 - Liszt *
Rhapsody No. 3 - Ernst Von Dohnanyi
Appassionata 1st movement - Ludwig Van Beethoven *
Waldstein 3rd movement - Ludwig Van Beethoven

*Broke them in my Kawai Baby Grand piano.

That doesn't make sense to me. Once the key has struck the string, even if your fingers are still on the keys, there is no further contact between the hammer and the string. How can the string break after you have struck the key?

Regards,

Well, don't do it then!!!


John

There's an issue here of common sense. You can't get out of a piano more than it's capable of. So there's no point in trying. You'll damage the instrument and you'll be overworking your body. And, it has to be said (though it should be obvious), if you're playing like that you're playing badly.

Breaking strings etc is not something to be proud of.


John

I have broken many. It is my job to break them before the concert, rather than to have it happen during the show.

Broken strings usually do not just happen. There is usually another flaw in the string that helps it. The most common is metal fatigue, which weakens the string just like bending a paper clip back and forth. That occurs from a lot of strong playing, and I see it in pianos of professional level pianists and older concert instruments. There may also be flaws in the wire or in the design of the piano. Rust can also weaken a wire.

Sometimes a string will go flat just before breaking. This is due to stretching at the weak point. This would be how a string breaks after you play the note.

I'll never forget the one time it happened to me.

The piano: 1908 Baldwin concert grand
The piece: Chopin Scherzo #2
The note: the first low C# - a very long string

Instead of "rifle going off" it was more like a cannon being shot next to my ear.

A few years back in London, I saw Andre Watts break a string during the Liszt B minor. He reached up, pulled it out of the way and continued along as if nothing happened. Nice work, Andre!

If it's the 2nd Scherzo, then wouldn't you be referring to the low Bb?

[edit] No, I meant low D-flat (measure 49).

Liszt B minor, eh? A real showman would rip the string out and swing it over his head like a lasso!

Just curious,
How much would it cost to re-string a piano ?

Peter

Not to sound nit-picky, but fatigue is not what happens when you break a paper clip by bending it back and forth a few times; that's caused by work-hardening and brittle fracture. Fatigue happens in the elastic region of a metal after many thousands or millions of cycles of bending.

In other words, if you only bent the paper clip to a point where it would spring right back to its original shape (no permanent bending), that's elastic deformation. If you do this millions of times, the paper clip might eventually break spontaneously. This is fatigue. But depending on how far you bend it each time, you may remain within the material's "endurance limit" and it will literally never break.

Back to piano strings: I have had a number of strings break on my piano (20 years old) over the years. It is fairly common if the piano is played a lot and has some age. Relacing them is no big deal for a tech and it doesn't cost much, though the new string will go out of tune a little faster than the other strings for a while.

A complete re-stringing is another story. That's a real project. It will be time-consuming and expensive.

Don Gilmore
Mechanical Engineer
Kansas City