I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been playing piano in a cold venue and wished that I had a pair of gloves with me. But can you play the piano successfully whilst wearing gloves? I’ve just tried playing the piano with two different styles of gloves and here’s what I found out.
You can actually play the piano to some extent whilst wearing fingerless gloves or total-cover woolly gloves. There are some significant limitations, which I will discuss below, but I was surprised at the extent to which I could successfully play the piano whilst wearing gloves.
Why Would You Want to Wear Gloves to Play the Piano?
There are a number of cold locations that a pianist may be playing in that could prompt the desire to wear gloves:
- A practice room that doesn’t have heating
- Big venues without heating, such as churches
- Performing a concert or gig outdoors
- Keeping your piano/keyboard in the basement
- Any other situation where maybe you are just feeling cold that day!
Another reason why you may ask whether you can play piano while wearing gloves is if you are performing as a character in a play or show, and gloves are part of the costume.
I tried two different styles of gloves to see what it was like to play piano while wearing them.
Playing Piano with Fingerless Gloves
With fingerless gloves, the tips of your fingers are still able to make contact with the piano keys as normal, so you can still play to some extent.
However, I couldn’t play nearly as fast while wearing fingerless gloves compared to normal.
My fingerless gloves were quite thick, especially at the seams along the fingers. This made my fingers fatter and further apart from each other. Not only did this throw off my normal sense of where my fingers were in relation to each other and the keys, but my fingers rubbed against each other at every movement, slowing me down.
Playing Piano with All-Covering Woolly Gloves
Before trying to play with the gloves, I assumed that the fingerless gloves would be easier to play in than the big woolly gloves. I actually found that the opposite was true.
I found my big woolly gloves much easier to play in overall than the fingerless gloves. The speed of my playing wasn’t really affected, unlike with the fingerless gloves.
However, there was definitely a reduction in accuracy, due to the fact that the tips of my fingers were not having direct contact with the keys. The contact was a lot more slippery, and I felt a lot less in control of my fingers compared to playing normally without gloves.
For me, the added width to my fingers due to the gloves meant that I could only just fit my fingers between the black keys when needed. Depending on how big your hands are and how thick the gloves are, in some situations you may not be able to fit your fingers between the black keys at all whilst wearing gloves, which is a significant drawback.
So Can You Wear Gloves to Play the Piano?
Even though both types of gloves definitely impaired the playing accuracy compared to playing under optimal conditions, it got me thinking.
When you have to play piano in a cold environment and your fingers are cold for an extended period of time, that also negatively impacts your playing. When your fingers are cold, they can’t move as fast as when they are warm, similar to the disadvantage of using the fingerless gloves. And if your fingers get so cold that you start to lose some of the feeling in them, then that is similar to the disadvantage of playing in the woolly gloves.
Provided that your gloves kept your hands warm enough, it seems like playing wearing gloves could be a less unpleasant alternative to playing with freezing cold hands, if those were the only two options available.
If you were planning to do a performance wearing gloves then it would be really important to wear them during your practice as much as possible beforehand, so that you could get used to them.
That would be one of the advantages to playing while wearing gloves. Recently I played for a performance of Verdi’s Macbeth in a derelict train tunnel. It required me to be playing for relatively long periods of time in the cold whilst in the view of the audience. Even though I tried to warm my hands up as much as possible before going on stage, as the playing went on my hands got colder and colder.
It got harder and harder to play fast, and the feeling in my fingers became less and less. I had rarely played piano in the cold before that point, so I wasn’t too used to playing like that.
If instead I had practised wearing gloves in the run-up to the show, then maybe overall it would have been easier to play. At the very least I would know what to expect.
However, in really cold environments there is no guarantee that gloves will keep your hands completely warm. You may end up with some of the negative impacts of the cold on your playing, as well as the difficulties created by playing in gloves.
So what are some alternatives to playing in gloves when you have to play piano in the cold?
Alternatives to Playing Piano in Gloves When It Is Cold
Use a Hand-Warmer
One of the things that you can do to warm your hands up before going on stage is to use a hand-warmer.
I did this each night when I was playing in Macbeth, and it really helped my hands stay warm for the first five or 10 minutes of the performance. However, I was playing continuously for much longer than that, so the positive effects wore off and my hands were still very cold by the end of it.
If your performance is only short, or if you have little breaks in playing where you could use your hand warmer to re-warm your hands up a bit during the performance, then this could be a really good solution.
Wear Thermals or Lots of Layers
The other thing I did was wear lots of layers underneath my performance clothes. For me this meant a T-shirt under my shirt, leggings under my trousers, and two pairs of socks. Sadly the venue was cold enough that that didn’t help that much.
In hindsight, perhaps I should have invested in some actual thermals to keep me warmer.
Do a Little Bit of Cardio
The other thing that you can consider is doing a little bit of cardio immediately before you go on stage, something to get your heart rate up and give you a boost of warmth. Just be careful to not overdo it so that you end up sweating. Not only will that make playing the piano harder because you have to account for the slipperiness, but the sweat will evaporate and end up making you colder in the long run.
Sometimes you can Rely on Adrenaline
Sometimes, if you are nervous before a performance, the adrenaline can get you through it without you properly noticing how cold you and your fingers are. Sadly, if you are not nervous then this probably won’t be relevant.
In Conclusion
It is possible to play the piano while wearing gloves if you really want to. I think it’s probably like anything, if you get used to it and practice with it, then maybe it could work for you. But without practising playing with gloves, I think I would still choose performing with cold hands over performing with gloves on.
If you want a successful example of someone playing in gloves, check out the pianist Valentina Lisitsa below: