You should try it - it's a hoot!!

Our house was freezing so i put on some gloves and tried to play chopin nocturne no 20 and it was damned near impossible - though the humour it provided more than made up for this. :p

Hehe - same for typing in gloves!

:p

x

I may try the same. My house has been in the 15c range all week. We've been trying to save money by keeping the heat down. It's getting so cold the keys feel like ice cubes.

John

My previous teacher told me that when she was a little girl (maybe 6 or 7 years old), she once sat at the piano with her feet on top of a heater. She was wearing rubber shoes, and they melted on her feet.

try these

i'm going to try cutting off the tips

i also make warmers of socks filled with field corn microwaved for 2.5 minutes (cups corn, 1 sock, 1 rubberband and some lavender

I've been told, though I haven't tried it, that if you practice wearing surgeon's gloves it will greatly improve your technique - once you take the gloves off. It's like unleashing all the power that was harnessed in your hands by the gloves.

George

I play w/ gloves in the winter often.. they really improve one's accuracy in a way.. it is so much more difficult to land on the center of the key, I guess

Been playing with fingerless gloves for many, many years. It got so I (almost) never take them off - they also prevent a lot of bumps, bruises, grazes, nicks, paper cuts - etc...

This is true. Back in the late 70s I used to practice highly technical studies for hours on end in the Nassau Community College piano practice rooms, which were housed in old military barracks buildings. In the winter, they were ice cold. I'd wear a pair of cloth workman's gloves and found that after a while there was little difference in my ability to execute even at the fastest tempos. A young Michael Habermann, the famed Sorabji scholar and disciple, often frequented the practice rooms and was flabbergasted that someone could play gloved Chopin Etudes well above the prescribed tempos. The overall feel was akin to playing with the "soft" pedal down. Once the gloves were off, individual note-targeting accuracy was markedly improved. At one point, I was practicing the Liszt/Paganini Campanella. After acheiving a measure of targeting accuracy with the gloves on, once they were off, the upper pedal tone became easier to target accurately even when transposed to keys that put the pedal tone on a white key, which is more difficult to target than the d# with up to two octave jumps that rely on deadly accurate, static elbow rotation!

If you think playing with gloves are fun, next, try putting a sheet over the keys! That's quite a challenge in itself as well.

This might sound a bit daft but I was wearing a beanie hat while playing yesterday afternoon and it seems to keep the hands nice and toastie

Not at all daft, if you wearing the beanie on your hands. :p

This is very interesting - about practising with gloves improving your technique.

Does the same apply to scales?

But I'm definitely gonna try this. But would first have to go and buy some - here in South Africa it doesn't get nearly as cold as there where you live!

Hi from South Africa

Glove liners - what a good idea, Apple. I used to wear one silver one all the time when we went to Las Vegas for handling coins. People used to ask me if I was Michael's sister.

Not really. You lose 80% of your body heat through the top of your head, so wearing a hat should help keep your hands warm as well.

I used to practice basketball with gloves with the fingertips cut off - that way it reinforces the use of the fingertip for dribbling.

I'm sure there are benefits to gloves for pianistic pursuits as well - though my gloves are all far too large to be used in such a way (new england is far too cold!)