How to Play a Piano With Balls

Contributor

By Matthew Abdallah
eHow Contributing Writer

Article Rating:

(0 Ratings)

Playing a piano will tennis balls is a trick pioneered by Dan Menendez and later performed by Wally Eastman. This is a trick that combines juggling skills with piano playing. It is possible to fake the note selection using a preprogrammed piano, but still requires the juggler to hit the piano with the proper rhythm. This is a difficult trick to perform, but is visually very impressive when performed. It requires a good amount of juggling ability and coordination, as well as piano ability if the notes are not preprogrammed.

Difficulty: Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

"Bounce" piano
Three to five tennis balls

Step 1

Place the piano on the floor at your feet with the keys facing you.
Step 2

Put the tennis balls in both hands.
Step 3

Gently drop a tennis ball onto the piano keys. Your hand is mostly going to impart a sideways motion on the ball. It should have just enough momentum to bounce on the desired key and bounce to the opposite hand.
Step 4

Gently drop a tennis ball from the opposite hand before the first ball arrives. Catch the first ball immediately after throwing the second.
Step 5

Drop a ball from both hands at the same time to play a diad (two different notes played at the same time). Playing a full chord of three or more notes will usually be impractical.
Step 6

Repeat the process of juggling the balls into the piano keys to form notes and diads for the duration of the song.

Tips & Warnings

A "Bounce" piano can be any piano with hard plastic keys that do not move when pressed. Normal piano keys will not allow the ball to bounce properly. The easiest option to find are the keyboards intended to be played with your feet. A programmable "bounce" piano would have to be a custom-made instrument. People doing this trick with a preprogrammed piano should still know how to play the song. This will make the trick much more convincing to watch than if they were just randomly hitting keys.