How much influence does the pianist have over dark/bright tone?

[Bob]

Just the speed of pressing the key down? 

And an illusion with combining tones.


Otherwise... Is it just up to the piano technician/tuner?

[chopin2015]

Flat or curved fingers, shape of palm/thickness of palm.

[p2u_]

Just the speed of pressing the key down?  

And an illusion with combining tones.


Otherwise... Is it just up to the piano technician/tuner?

I think scientists got it all wrong; there is more to quality of tone than mere acceleration of the key. I would say very much your second option: the illusion with combining tones, and as chopin2015 already indicated: different physical approaches. It really makes a difference whether you use mere acceleration from the key surface alone, or whether you use mass + height as a factor.

Paul

[iansinclair]

Um... well... technically, the volume is determined by how fast the key strikes the string, which in turn is determined by how fast we move the key.  And the tone of the string (the strength of the various overtones) is determined partly by the skill of the technician and partly by the physics of the piano itself.  Which is why you can't make a little spinet sound like a concert grand.

However.  Music is much more than a technical bonk on a string -- and as Bob suggests, we can make a tremendous difference in what is perceived by the way we play the instrument.  Which is why some pianists can make even a spinet sound fabulous, and others of us couldn't make a lovely concert grand do better than Chopsticks!

[j_menz]

a technical bonk on a string

LOL. Ouch! 

Whatever the physics, the fact remains that two pianists playing the same piano in the same room can make it sound like a completely different instrument.

[gapoc459]

Right, so I think the question is... how? What, physically makes the music of one pianist better than that of another?

[p2u_]

Right, so I think the question is... how? What, physically makes the music of one pianist better than that of another?

Rhythm, timing, absolute tone length support (holding the key physically down or not), gradations in voicing (= individual finger control), control over acceleration of the key, direct/indirect tone production, height and mass of the moving body before contact with the key surface.

Paul

[p2u_]

Two incredible lessons in sound management by Shura Cherkasski:

Saint-Saens - Godowsky: The Swan

Chopin Nocturne op.27 no.2

Paul

[richard black]

I wouldn't want to deny the possibility that one can vary the tone of one isolated note without varying the volume, but if you think about it you'll realise that the VAST majority of piano 'tone' is simply the relative loudness of simultaneous and adjacent notes. Everything else is deeply secondary to that and arguably, since most pianists have plenty of room left for improving their control of relative loudness, not worth thinking about.

[hfmadopter]

Two incredible lessons in sound management by Shura Cherkasski:

Saint-Saens - Godowsky: The Swan

Chopin Nocturne op.27 no.2

Paul

He sure puts a glass finish into his work, beautiful !

[Bob]

Another angle on what I was thinking...

The pianist vs. the piano tech vs. the piano itself for control over tone.

[michaeljames]

I have to disagree with some of the responses here.  I have two concert grand pianos...a Steinway D and Mason Hamlin CC2.  I have had both the hammers and the strings replaced on the Steinway.  Voicing in a piano takes a very skilled piano technician. 

Brightness is very much a result of hard hammers.  The skilled tech can needle the hammers to take some of the brightness out.  Some hammers are much harder than others.  Renner blues are very hard...some techs hate them...others swear by them.   

This is not to say that the pianist doesn't have any control...but an overly bright instrument is a challenge for the best pianist.  I play enough that my tech voices every time he tunes, which for me is usually every 10 days.  Sometimes it's only a couple of hammers that "jump" out...but I am very sensitive to everything about my piano...from the key weight to the hammers and especially tuning!!!

[Derek]

My personal guess is when you strike a string, a wave travels back and forth along it, albeit extremely rapidly. When you hit the string again, there will be subtle variations in the tone depending on how the new wave propagates in the string and interacts with a previous one. This may even be true without the damper pedal being depressed as some energy is still in the string even as it is being silenced, I guess, not to mention cross-resonance with sounds already produced. So I'm guessing, variation in color of tone can be quite vast, but this is primarily due to timing. All of the psychological pedagogy about how to approach striking keys are probably effective ways, once practiced, of producing a personal set of very fine timings that produce certain colors. I don't think that these can possibly affect color with individual, solitary held notes----there must be interaction over time for different colors to be produced.