Piano Video Lesson: Should You Close the Fallboard on Your Piano?

Well, you know, so many people see the fallboard, they figure, "Oh, it's there, we'd better use it." And, matter of fact, they even, like on this piano, have locks, so you can lock people out. Why would you want to do that? Well, sometimes it could be young children in the home, for institutional use. Sadly, the locks that are built into pianos are pretty much worthless because they could be easily tampered with, which is why they have much stronger apparatuses for that purpose.

But, getting back to, should you close your fallboard? Well, what function does a fallboard actually play on a piano? Well, if you close your fallboard, dust will not collect on your piano keys, however, dust will collect on the fallboard. Does that help? Well, perhaps it might be a little bit easier to clean the fallboard, but not necessarily, since this furniture, some satin furniture, is very difficult to keep clean.

So, the other issue is, do you have ivory keys or plastic keys? Growing up, my father would always leave his fallboards open, and I asked him about it as a young child, and he explained to me that ivory keys on his piano would yellow if you closed the fallboard. Absolutely. So, if you think about it, if you're in a room and the natural sunlight will keep your keys white, but those ivory keys will yellow if you always close your fallboard when you're not playing your piano, so there's actually good reason not to use your fallboard if you have ivory keys.

If you have a piano with plastic keys, it's a judgment call. If you'd like to close it to discourage people from playing the piano and to keep dust from getting on the keys, and if you prefer dusting the furniture rather than the keys, then close the fallboard, by all means, but it doesn't actually serve any function for the piano. In other words, it doesn't protect the guts of the piano from degradation, so it's more decorative than anything else. Who knew?

Thanks for the great questions. Again, this is Robert Estrid, virtualsheetmusic.com and livingpianos.com.

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