"Tone" doesn't exist.

[falala]

Look for film footage of nyiregyhazi on youtube and listen to mosonyis funeral March and the Liszt rhapsody no 3. I don't believe that's only down to illusions and nothing else. He made almost every sound from contact. He plays louder than most people could play by punching the keys. And he makes a huge sound before he even starts trying. Sometimes his very loudest gets percussive, but the sounds that fascinate me are the effortlessly massive ones that he makes without even coming close to his limits. Those who try to recreate such depth almost always start trying trying to hit or to move as faster. But they get a percussive tone and simply max out, before even approaching the level of volume or resonance that he reaches in his moderate dynamics, with no effort at all. I don't see any explanation at all other than the pacing of acceleration.

I don't see how one can judge loudness via a youtube clip played through a computer. But no matter; I agree with you that one pianist can create a greater psychological impression of loudness than another, playing the same passage of music on the same piano in the same room. However, I think it's perfectly possible to explain this via control of velocity alone (plus of course legato, pedalling etc. that I think we all agree on as factors but see as separate from the argument about the keystroke itself).

It comes down to control of dynamic range.

Anyone who has put a highly produced pop music CD in their player and played it, after playing a classical CD and not changing the volume, will understand this. The pop CD sounds many times louder even though, if you look at the very loudest sounds, it can't be. Both CDs are normalised to 0db and there's simply no way they can be louder than that. The difference is that the classical CD has an enormous dynamic range from PPP to fff, whereas the pop CD has been compressed to all hell to bring the softer sounds up to near the level of the louder ones. Anyone who's worked in music technology will tell you that one of the functions of such compression (when done in certain ways) is not just to make the music sound louder, but to make it sound "warmer", "richer", or "smoother" - terms that correspond pretty well to what most people here probably mean by "good tone".

Suppose you get someone to play a big, thundering piece of romantic music on a Steinway grand in a particular concert hall. Now suppose that we could analyse the velocity of every keystroke, and map them on a scale from 1 - 100 (rounding them off to the nearest integer). Suppose we find that some impression of harshness starts to happen at around 85, and becomes very noticeably and unpleasant above about 90.

Now, your highly skilled famous concert pianist playing the piece, will aim to get most of the loudest notes at about 84, maybe occasionally exceeding that a little and allowing a tiny bit of harshness judiciously placed according to the phrasing. Just as importantly, they will aim to get most of the other notes not too far below that, using just enough variation to obtain the sense of phrasing and dynamic shading that they need, while maintaining a consistently loud sound (plus of course any sections or voices that are deliberately intended to sound very soft, and don't contribute to the sense of loudness).

If OTOH you get a second rate amateur to play the same piece, they will probably AIM to do the same thing. But instead of getting the louder notes right at 84, many of them will come out at 90 or higher and sound harsh, due to the player's lack of control. And instead of getting the softer notes at 75-80, many of them will come out at 60, 50 or lower for the same reason. The effect will be much "looser" and less consistent.

Returning to the pop music compression example, one thing we know about psychoacoustics is that tightly controlled sounds within a narrow dynamic range give a greater subjective impression of "loudness" (AND of "warmth", "richness" etc.) than less controlled sounds over a wider range. In this case as well, the average dynamic of the amateur will surely be lower for the simply reason that if you're aiming for 75-84, and 100 corresponds to how hard it's realistically possible to thump a key in an actual playing situation, there is more scope for accidentally obtaining a lower dynamic due to poor technique, than a higher one. When the amateur hears harshness, he'll back off, but unlike the professional he won't have the control to back off by exactly the right amount and still sound loud.

There are of course other factors involved too, like the professional's control of the pedal etc. And of course as soon as you are talking about chords (ie, nearly all the time) then control of different simultaneous dynamics comes into play as well as sequential ones. Harshness is something we mostly experience in higher frequencies, and the extent to which a higher note sounds harsh will be mitigated by being supported by simultaneous lower notes. Someone with the precision of technique to get those lower notes to exactly the right level of support will be better placed to raise the level of the higher notes a bit further.

You suffer here from the same problem that your claim always seems to suffer from. You have made a claim about the nature of individual keystrokes, but you are illustrating it with an example of the playing of an actual piece, with many keystrokes interacting. Once you consider such interaction, it's perfectly possible to explain the phenomenon you're talking about without recourse to unfounded voodoo about hammer flexion, which may or may not even be happening to a significant degree in the first place.

These things - the psychological effect of dynamic compression; the more precise technique of the better player - these are known phenomena for which there is clear evidence. They are perfectly sufficient (along with the other factors I mentioned) to explain the difference in subjective impression of loudness when hearing two different pianist play the same piece, and Occam's razor tells us not to multiply explanatory phenomena beyond necessity.

To actually prove your point, you'd need to get nyiregyhazi to play a SINGLE NOTE at a loud dynamic but without "harshness", and then fashion some kind of mechanism that could reproduce exactly the same hammer velocity but with a quick, sudden stroke of the key from above. If there were a discernible difference to the listener in double blind tests, in nyiregyhazi's favour, then you'd have a case.

To speak of him moving keys "faster" than other pianists couldn't explain the first thing and neither could anyone recreate his sound with such a mindset. Pianists who think it's about moving faster hit their upper limit without getting anywhere near how far a piano can go (while still avoiding the hard percussive thuds). Volodos is another excellent example of a pianist who can play far louder than the point where most people assume it will sound percussive.

Clearly it's not all about moving faster overall, but about fine control of fast movements and how they interact in the piece. Again, when you make this judgment of Volodos you are judging the overall effect of a piece, not the specific effect of a single note.

[falala]

May I throw in another factor? I haven't seen anything here about the POINT OF SOUND. (Is that the so-called "let-off" in English?)

In keyboards, for example, the point of sound seems to be set at the bottom of the key, but it doesn't work that way in a real piano, where that point is slightly higher. What about the timing of the keystroke into the heart of that point of sound, slightly lower, slightly higher, etc.? Isn't that where all the variations in sound QUALITY come from? Isn't that why a "relaxed" touch gives a much more beautiful tone, while a tense movement aimed at the bottom of the key (and thus "missing the point", haha) will cause a harsh tone? When you are "relaxed" and you "drop" your finger into the point of sound, you simply land where you have to be without interfering (like a cat that always lands on its four) and the instrument will play itself so to speak, something that will never happen by aiming with tension. Just saying.

this makes sense. if your intended point of sound (i.e. where you think the point of sound is as you are playing a key) doesn't line up with the actual point of sound, the velocity of your finger at contact will not be what you intended it to be. of course the sound that comes out will not be what you intially desired.

If this is indeed true, then the problem becomes the following: many pianists simply don't know what to intend or what to desire. They miss the sensitivity to regulate and adjust their touch, because they have no sound purpose other than loud, soft and in between. The reactions of the instrument itself leave them cold. That's why a beautiful touch is so rarely heard these days. Smiley

This all makes sense but it only goes to prove my point - the issue is not acceleration or hammer flexion or anything else, not even velocity per se. The issue is the precision which the velocity of each note corresponds to the player's INTENTION.

Phrasing comes into this as well. It's important to remember that we don't judge notes as harsh because they ARE harsh - because of any particular objective standard in the strength of attack, relative strength of overtones etc. that defines them as harsh. We judge them as harsh because of the psychological impression that they make upon us. And in a performance, you can't divorce that impression from their place in the phrase. A note with a strong sense of "ping" might not even be noticed when that sense is perfectly judged according to it's place in the phrase and overall effect, but stand out as "harsh" when it isn't.

Going back to my example in the post above: if two players both aim to play with the maximum velocity that can create a loud sound but without harshness, and the first player has a much more refined and controlled technique than the other, then the first player will succeed in doing that while the second player will vary between insufficient volume and harshness. When judging terms like loudness and harshness in relation to a particular performance, there is no getting away from this effect of precision of control.

In fact Dima's original point is wrong. There's no evidence whatsoever, AFAIK, that playing a single isolated note with a stiff hand creates a harsher sound than playing it with a relaxed hand at the same velocity. What the stiff hand does do is limit the player's ability to precisely control that velocity.

[dima_76557]

In fact Dima's original point is wrong. There's no evidence whatsoever, AFAIK, that playing a single isolated note with a stiff hand creates a harsher sound than playing it with a relaxed hand at the same velocity. What the stiff hand does do is limit the player's ability to precisely control that velocity.

Uhm. I have no problem with being proven wrong, but with what you say, you are basically denying that there is such a thing like the ratio between a fundamental or core tone (whatever you call that in English) and a certain overtone signature, caused by the resulting vibration of resonators in the instrument and even of objects in the room in a certain unique and optimal way at X decibels. I have trouble accepting that this is a matter of hammer velocity only because my ears tell me otherwise. I suspect that good testing with accurate and adequate equipment for the purpose would reveal that there is more to this.

[falala]

Uhm. I have no problem with being proven wrong, but with what you say, you are basically denying that there is such a thing like the ratio between a fundamental or core tone (whatever you call that in English) and a certain overtone signature, caused by the resulting vibration of resonators in the instrument and even of objects in the room in a certain unique and optimal way at X decibels.

Fundamental is the right word. No, of course I'm not denying that such ratios exist. But they do vary WITH changes in velocity. With any instrument, we know that as the volume of sound produced by the playing mechanism increases, the relative strengths of the overtone series change.

The only thing I'm saying is that in the case of the piano, changing the velocity of the keystroke is the only way we have of obtaining that difference.

I have trouble accepting that this is a matter of hammer velocity only because my ears tell me otherwise. I suspect that good testing with accurate and adequate equipment for the purpose would reveal that there is more to this.

Someone upthread mentioned a study in which people couldn't tell the difference between piano notes played with a finger and a pencil rubber at the same velocity. But it seems to me this should be perfectly possible to test.

The basic question we're all working our way around to is: Is it possible to play two notes with exactly the same hammer velocity, when the hammer is in freefall as it hits the string, that result in significantly different timbres?

All you would need to do is create a mechanism that can strike the key with different degrees of suddenness, while achieving a set, measurable velocity at the end of the hammer's travel, record the effects of two different strokes that achieve the same velocity and examine the wave form.

The problem might be precision of measuring the velocity, I don't know.

[swagmaster420x]

ye, i'm pretty sure velocity is the only thing that matters. inside the piano, the hammer is what actually hits the strings; you can't extend the time of contact between the hammer and string by holding down a piano key. once you press the key, the hammer hits and then retracts; holding the key down is simply letting the string to continue vibrating after it has been struck by the hammer. releasing the key makes the dampener inside the piano dampen the string.

that being said, the only quality you have control of in the hammer is the velocity.. you can't really make it "vibrate". even if you tried by pressing it in a spasmic way, all that would matter would be the velocity at the moment of contact. continuing to "vibrate" the piano key doesn't do anything. if it did, then you would be able to do vibrato on the piano : O

also, im pretty sure the fundamental frequency of a string depends mainly on its length/thickness/tension. you can change the main frequency to a harmonic by vibrating the string a certain way (playing harmonics on the violin), but other than that i think the fundamental frequency and the harmonics that accompany it are pretty much teh same. correct me if i'm wrong though.

[dima_76557]

The only thing I'm saying is that in the case of the piano, changing the velocity of the keystroke is the only way we have of obtaining that difference.

Strictly speaking in terms of technique, there is, of course, another problem left: we don't have direct contact with the hammer, because the key is in between and the hammer is caused to strike indirectly. I would therefore alter testing conditions a bit. Instead of testing with a machine, I would rather see testing with real people, preferably a group of both good amateurs and professional high-class pianists. I maintain that the high-class pianist with a known good touch will aim at the point of sound and let the instrument itself do the rest, while an amateur will simply strike the key to the bottom and get poor results, even for one tone out of context.

P.S.: I wish it were as simple as what I know from my marimba practice. There the velocity of the mallet is certainly not the crucial factor - you also have to know where and how to land on the bars to get the desired sound quality.

[dima_76557]

All you would need to do is create a mechanism that can strike the key with different degrees of suddenness, while achieving a set, measurable velocity at the end of the hammer's travel, record the effects of two different strokes that achieve the same velocity and examine the wave form.

The result should also be evaluated by qualified people in the hall, and not by just anyone through a recording or wave graphics. Every good pianist knows that his/her tone, even the softest whisper, should "carry" to the farthest corner and this is not exclusively a matter of soft or loud. This quality of a good tone can hardly be captured through a recording. You can't get reliable test results with machines on either side because they will "miss the point".

[pianoman53]

Dima, why do you bother?

[nyiregyhazi]

I don't see how one can judge loudness via a youtube clip played through a computer. But no matter; I agree with you that one pianist can create a greater psychological impression of loudness than another, playing the same passage of music on the same piano in the same room. However, I think it's perfectly possible to explain this via control of velocity alone (plus of course legato, pedalling etc. that I think we all agree on as factors but see as separate from the argument about the keystroke itself).

It comes down to control of dynamic range.

Anyone who has put a highly produced pop music CD in their player and played it, after playing a classical CD and not changing the volume, will understand this. The pop CD sounds many times louder even though, if you look at the very loudest sounds, it can't be. Both CDs are normalised to 0db and there's simply no way they can be louder than that. The difference is that the classical CD has an enormous dynamic range from PPP to fff, whereas the pop CD has been compressed to all hell to bring the softer sounds up to near the level of the louder ones. Anyone who's worked in music technology will tell you that one of the functions of such compression (when done in certain ways) is not just to make the music sound louder, but to make it sound "warmer", "richer", or "smoother" - terms that correspond pretty well to what most people here probably mean by "good tone".

Suppose you get someone to play a big, thundering piece of romantic music on a Steinway grand in a particular concert hall. Now suppose that we could analyse the velocity of every keystroke, and map them on a scale from 1 - 100 (rounding them off to the nearest integer). Suppose we find that some impression of harshness starts to happen at around 85, and becomes very noticeably and unpleasant above about 90.

Now, your highly skilled famous concert pianist playing the piece, will aim to get most of the loudest notes at about 84, maybe occasionally exceeding that a little and allowing a tiny bit of harshness judiciously placed according to the phrasing. Just as importantly, they will aim to get most of the other notes not too far below that, using just enough variation to obtain the sense of phrasing and dynamic shading that they need, while maintaining a consistently loud sound (plus of course any sections or voices that are deliberately intended to sound very soft, and don't contribute to the sense of loudness).

If OTOH you get a second rate amateur to play the same piece, they will probably AIM to do the same thing. But instead of getting the louder notes right at 84, many of them will come out at 90 or higher and sound harsh, due to the player's lack of control. And instead of getting the softer notes at 75-80, many of them will come out at 60, 50 or lower for the same reason. The effect will be much "looser" and less consistent.

Returning to the pop music compression example, one thing we know about psychoacoustics is that tightly controlled sounds within a narrow dynamic range give a greater subjective impression of "loudness" (AND of "warmth", "richness" etc.) than less controlled sounds over a wider range. In this case as well, the average dynamic of the amateur will surely be lower for the simply reason that if you're aiming for 75-84, and 100 corresponds to how hard it's realistically possible to thump a key in an actual playing situation, there is more scope for accidentally obtaining a lower dynamic due to poor technique, than a higher one. When the amateur hears harshness, he'll back off, but unlike the professional he won't have the control to back off by exactly the right amount and still sound loud.

There are of course other factors involved too, like the professional's control of the pedal etc. And of course as soon as you are talking about chords (ie, nearly all the time) then control of different simultaneous dynamics comes into play as well as sequential ones. Harshness is something we mostly experience in higher frequencies, and the extent to which a higher note sounds harsh will be mitigated by being supported by simultaneous lower notes. Someone with the precision of technique to get those lower notes to exactly the right level of support will be better placed to raise the level of the higher notes a bit further.

You suffer here from the same problem that your claim always seems to suffer from. You have made a claim about the nature of individual keystrokes, but you are illustrating it with an example of the playing of an actual piece, with many keystrokes interacting. Once you consider such interaction, it's perfectly possible to explain the phenomenon you're talking about without recourse to unfounded voodoo about hammer flexion, which may or may not even be happening to a significant degree in the first place.

These things - the psychological effect of dynamic compression; the more precise technique of the better player - these are known phenomena for which there is clear evidence. They are perfectly sufficient (along with the other factors I mentioned) to explain the difference in subjective impression of loudness when hearing two different pianist play the same piece, and Occam's razor tells us not to multiply explanatory phenomena beyond necessity.

To actually prove your point, you'd need to get nyiregyhazi to play a SINGLE NOTE at a loud dynamic but without "harshness", and then fashion some kind of mechanism that could reproduce exactly the same hammer velocity but with a quick, sudden stroke of the key from above. If there were a discernible difference to the listener in double blind tests, in nyiregyhazi's favour, then you'd have a case.

Clearly it's not all about moving faster overall, but about fine control of fast movements and how they interact in the piece. Again, when you make this judgment of Volodos you are judging the overall effect of a piece, not the specific effect of a single note.

These postulations would be all very well, but clearly you didn't actually listen to nyiregyhazi first.

The idea that nyiregyhazi is simply playing quieter than amateurs who supposedly sound harsh by reaching a higher velocity than him is plain comical in its absurdity. You don't get that huge intensity in your mid-range by playing quieter than amateurs.

As I said, I heard a concert where a college student played so roughly that I could actually distinguish the thump of key on keybed. She didn't come close to what nyiregyhazi produces without a trace of thud. Horowitz exploited plenty of relativity, but nyiregyhazi genuinely makes a much bigger resonance in his moderate dynamics and also finds room for more still. That girl's sound wasn't big or loud at all. At a professional level, Kissin's sound has that harsh thump at levels that are spectacular short of nyiregyhazi's volume. Your argument is based primarily on the fallacy that the existence of relative issues might in any way disprove absolute ones. They are not mutually exclusive, so this does not follow.

Occam's razor is not about casually neglecting credible factors because they are inconvenient and because that helps you to avoid challenging existing beliefs. If it were, it would be a very good basis for perpetuating the flatness of the earth argument.

I briefly raised a point earlier that I am realising is perhaps phenomenally significant in relation to "scientific" testing. We can even assume that the hammer could only go faster or slower, if you insist and this point remains every bit as pertinent. You can produce the same hammer speed with more or less thump of key against keybed. It's often a loud sound but good technique can cushion it. This is definitely something that a pianist can vary.

Now ask yourself, how on earth could it seriously be possible that any form of striking that produces an identical volume from the string should produce an absolutely identical volume and tone of sound from the thump of key on keybed again and again? This makes no rational sense whatsoever. It's ludicrous to suppose that every means of moving the key produced the same thump, as long as the hammer moved at the same speed. Such a belief demands far more blind faith in the irrational than belief in absolute tone quality does. It can only follow that the scientist in question has DECIDED to ignore the fluctuations that must be occurring according to all rational sense. Something stinks about any data that supposedly found no trace of such variation. It might not be so much at lower dynamic levels, but it should be incredibly easy to vary this at loud dynamics. You can say that it's much quieter than the string, but advanced sound recording equipment should be exactly what would easily pick up the different frequencies of the thump and their variance. It ought to be even more sensitive than an ear to the fine details, not less so. If the scientists are seriously claiming that they picked up literally no trace of variety under any circumstances or conditions, something must obviously have been discounted which shouldn't have. It's impossible to explain how sensitive equipment could possibly fail to register variance to correspond to this variable issue. It doesn't add up at all.

[falala]

The result should also be evaluated by qualified people in the hall, and not by just anyone through a recording or wave graphics. Every good pianist knows that his/her tone, even the softest whisper, should "carry" to the farthest corner and this is not exclusively a matter of soft or loud. This quality of a good tone can hardly be captured through a recording. You can't get reliable test results with machines on either side because they will "miss the point".

No, you're wrong here. The measurement of two waves in a computer is bound to be more reliable than what a human says about them. The only time when the human's opinion would be relevant would be if there was a small difference, and we wanted to judge whether the difference is significant.

If you want to judge the effect of the tone at the back of the hall, you can simply set up the recording device there. If the two waves emanating from the piano are identical, and you don't change anything about the conditions in between that affect hall reverb, etc, then they will still show up identically in the recording.

If the recording shows them to be identical but a person listening swears he can tell the difference, then the only possible reason is that he is fooling himself. A double blind trial would show his ability to distinguish them to be no more than chance.

[awesom_o]

The immense control of tonal power in the mid-range is one of the distinguishing factors between great pianists and average ones. Nyiregyhazi is a prime example of this in that recording of the 3rd HR.

This control doesn't come from striking the keys. It comes from having immense control over the hammers themselves!

Intensity of tone and loudness of sound are not the same thing.

[falala]

These postulations would be all very well, but clearly you didn't actually listen to nyiregyhazi first.

OK I've listened to it now. It hasn't changed my opinion of anything I wrote above.

Sorry but I don't get how you can make claims about absolute volume based on a recording. If I turn my speakers down, then he is playing quietly. If I turn them up, then he's playing loudly. If I listen to him and then listen to a different pianist who was recorded with a more sensitive microphone placed closer to the piano and the recording has been normalised higher, then they sound louder. You make no sense here. The only way to compare the loudness of two pianists is by making all factors external to their touch - the piano, the room etc - the same.

The idea that nyiregyhazi is simply playing quieter than amateurs who supposedly sound harsh by reaching a higher velocity than him is plain comical in its absurdity. You don't get that huge intensity in your mid-range by playing quieter than amateurs.

Did you by chance actually READ my post before responding to it? A subjective impression like "huge intensity" is not the same thing as the technical comparison of the volume of specific sounds. What exactly do you mean - or think you mean - when you describe nyiregyhazi's playing as "louder" than other people's? Do you mean that the loudest notes he plays are louder than the loudest notes they do? Do you mean that the AVERAGE loudness of what he plays is louder than the AVERAGE of what they do? And how could this even be meaningful when he might play some passages louder than them, and they play others louder than him? Do you mean that every single note he plays is louder than every note they do?

I think I know the answer - which is simply that you come away with a greater SUBJECTIVE IMPRESSION of GENERAL loudness. Which is fine, except that you seem completely unwilling to consider what the relationship is between that subjective impression and the actual objectively measurable qualities of the sounds coming from the piano. But when we're arguing about whether a single note can be played with a measurably different timbre when struck with the same velocity, you don't get to do that.

It's completely possible that an amateur could play some of the notes in the piece, even many of them, louder than nyiregyhazi, while still giving an overall impression of softer playing. Subjective impression of loudness is NOT created simply by the loudest transients; it's created by the general level of volume combined with the degree to which ALL the sounds are pushed up towards that volume. This is a well known psycho-acoustical fact. It's going to be especially the case here since the difference in loudness between a note just below the harshness threshold and one above it might be quite small, and most importantly largely due to a few milliseconds of the initial attack alone. It might not even register to the listener consciously as a difference in loudness.

The relationship between loudness and frequency would come into it too, since as I said before harshness is not experienced as a function of velocity equally across the frequency spectrum. So if he has the technical command to reduce velocity just enough to avoid harshness to different degrees appropriate to the particular range of the piano involved, then he can perfectly well give a lesser impression of harshness while playing louder overall.

As I said, I heard a concert where a college student played so roughly that I could actually distinguish the thump of key on keybed. She didn't come close to what nyiregyhazi produces without a trace of thud. Horowitz exploited plenty of relativity, but nyiregyhazi genuinely makes a much bigger resonance in his moderate dynamics and also finds room for more still. That girl's sound wasn't big or loud at all. At a professional level, Kissin's sound has that harsh thump at levels that are spectacular short of nyiregyhazi's volume. Your argument is based primarily on the fallacy that the existence of relative issues might in any way disprove absolute ones. They are not mutually exclusive, so this does not follow.

And your argument is based on the fallacy that your SUBJECTIVE IMPRESSION of "loudness" corresponds lock, stock and barrel to some objective phenomenon whereby he is "playing louder", without even needing to specify what that phenomenon is. Again, you need to educate yourself in the psycho-acoustical facts of how this works, because what you are writing here is simply ignorant.

To phrase it in terms of my (admittedly crude) velocity measurements: if he is playing everything between a velocity of 75-84, and an amateur is playing between a velocity of 40 - 95, with 85-90 being the point where harshness is experienced, then you will hear his performance as "louder" even though his loudest attacks are softer than theirs. The control which he applies to every note in the piece to extract maximum loudness from it, subject to the demands of phrasing, will have much more effect upon your psychological judgment of loudness than the relative levels of a few outstanding transients. Even moreso once you consider the role of voicing of chords. He may even play each chord louder in terms of its impression as a whole unit (which is how we hear it), while playing the specific frequencies that contribute most to harshness softer.

Your other point about key thump I will have to come back to as it's a separate issue and I don't have time right now.

[falala]

Intensity of tone and loudness of sound are not the same thing.

What do you mean by "intensity of tone"?

[falala]

OK I'm going to put this as simply as I can, to try and draw back from my rather extreme wordiness above.

It is a known, established fact that the relative loudness of different events, as well as different parts of the frequency spectrum, has a massive effect on a listener's subjective impression of qualities such as "loudness", "intensity", "tone", "warmth", "harshness", "power" etc.

Music technology companies sell compressors to achieve exactly these ends that cost more than my house. And you know what? The ONLY thing those compressors do - even the most expensive ones - is make some things louder and others softer.

In a complex piece of classical music like a Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody, the number of relationships between events of different volume must number in the thousands or millions. The degree to which these can be manipulated by the pianist's control of the volume of each individual event is literally infinite.

It is thus a clearly demonstrable fact that control of velocity (plus phrasing, legato, pedalling etc.) can explain the different subjective impressions people are reporting about the playing of different pianists. This of course doesn't prove that there aren't other factors (like hammer flexion) involved as well. But it means that we don't need them for a comprehensive explanation.

[awesom_o]

What do you mean by "intensity of tone"?

The greatest pianists can produce tone that is incredibly pp with peculiar musical intensity. They can also produce ff tone which is frighteningly sonorous and powerful, without a hint of harshness.

They do this by building their tone over many years, constantly striving to produce more and more tone, with less and less volume. Pressler says 'the core of the sound must have more core, and less sound.'

Think of 'sound' as being the excess fat on the musical texture you are producing, and 'tone' being the pure musical texture you are trying to convey.

Few pianists play with incredible intensity of tone. Many spend far too much time 'perfecting' their repertoire instead of really developing their actual sound.

This is why many people play to a high standard, yet so few manage to play with really beautiful touch and tone.

[nick]

It's not a problem with pressing. That's a worse problem still. But doing nothing doesn't bring the hand into the next position. It squashes the hand into a position that requires all the more muscular effort than opening up properly and standing on the thumb. If you fall down and sag into your thumb, your fingers are left behind in the last position. When the thumb expands the arch open, they are lifted over the top and automatically brought into into the next position.

No amount of passivity does that for you. You can do exercises to wipe the slate clean first and remove general tension before focusing on the necessary activitied. But if the thumb doesn't act to automatically lift your fingers over the top and into their next position, it takes vastly more muscular effort to being them around in a deliberate way. You have to learn how to open up the arch in the hand before striving to stay close can be effective. Droop in the arch will always cause stiffness to compensate for the instability that comes with it. It's like trying to "relax" by squatting over an imaginary chair instead of standing upright. Elevating your knuckles is less effort than letting them droop shut.

I still don't get it. Why not start with proper hand position, certain degree of arch, and maintain it, always observing visually as well as the sound of the notes for evenness etc? I find no need to make my thumb press down more to make others raise going over, otherwise a collapsed hand. I may not be understanding you so don't get me wrong, just trying to get your point.

PS I found a solution for students whose fingers rise uncontrollably. It's a "panic" response to instability, like throwing your arms out if about to fall over. Exaggerate the movements even further at first. Deliberately lift every finger out and then carry on standing properly on the last finger with high knuckles when you let them back down. You'll become more stable and the fingers will stop doing the panic movements by themselves.

I don't find the fingers rising uncontrollably because of a panic. I think it is weakness of certain fingers in certain patterns, say 3-4-5 where when 4 pressed, 5 pops up. It is a symptom of other muscles trying to compensate for a finger not being able at a given speed to act independently of the others. Proof is slowing it way down, viola! finger remains on the keys like they should. More time needed with only the smallest muscles involved with finger depression independent of others. Then the control increases. Visual + sound = success.

Nick

[dima_76557]

No, you're wrong here.

I am not convinced yet.

You may be interested to know that this kind of discussions also used to be held about the voice of certain singers and their ability to be heard over an orchestra in the back of the hall. People who recognized such beautiful voices by ear were also deemed to be "fooling themselves" until the so-called singer-formant was found in the sound spectrum of great singers, a clear formant around 3000 Hz (between 2800 and 3400 Hz) that is absent in speech and in the sound spectra of UNTRAINED and bad singers, however hard they shout. The formant is formed as the result of resonance in certain parts of the vocal tract and has nothing to do with volume of tone.

When I hear a pianist with a beautiful tone who easily penetrates a rather noisy orchestra but apparently does nothing, I get that same kind of aha-reflex: must be a formant-kind of thing because most pianists simply can't do it. Although the human ear is limited in its range of what it can catch, within that range, it outdoes any existing and advanced equipment. If we want reliable test results then, we should first analyze the sound spectrum of piano tone that is considered beautiful and determine what exactly makes it "beautiful" as compared to the sound spectrum of tone that is considered "poor". Do you know of any such research?

[nyiregyhazi]

OK I've listened to it now. It hasn't changed my opinion of anything I wrote above.

Sorry but I don't get how you can make claims about absolute volume based on a recording. If I turn my speakers down, then he is playing quietly. If I turn them up, then he's playing loudly. If I listen to him and then listen to a different pianist who was recorded with a more sensitive microphone placed closer to the piano and the recording has been normalised higher, then they sound louder. You make no sense here. The only way to compare the loudness of two pianists is by making all factors external to their touch - the piano, the room etc - the same.

Did you by chance actually READ my post before responding to it? A subjective impression like "huge intensity" is not the same thing as the technical comparison of the volume of specific sounds. What exactly do you mean - or think you mean - when you describe nyiregyhazi's playing as "louder" than other people's? Do you mean that the loudest notes he plays are louder than the loudest notes they do? Do you mean that the AVERAGE loudness of what he plays is louder than the AVERAGE of what they do? And how could this even be meaningful when he might play some passages louder than them, and they play others louder than him? Do you mean that every single note he plays is louder than every note they do?

I think I know the answer - which is simply that you come away with a greater SUBJECTIVE IMPRESSION of GENERAL loudness. Which is fine, except that you seem completely unwilling to consider what the relationship is between that subjective impression and the actual objectively measurable qualities of the sounds coming from the piano. But when we're arguing about whether a single note can be played with a measurably different timbre when struck with the same velocity, you don't get to do that.

It's completely possible that an amateur could play some of the notes in the piece, even many of them, louder than nyiregyhazi, while still giving an overall impression of softer playing. Subjective impression of loudness is NOT created simply by the loudest transients; it's created by the general level of volume combined with the degree to which ALL the sounds are pushed up towards that volume. This is a well known psycho-acoustical fact. It's going to be especially the case here since the difference in loudness between a note just below the harshness threshold and one above it might be quite small, and most importantly largely due to a few milliseconds of the initial attack alone. It might not even register to the listener consciously as a difference in loudness.

The relationship between loudness and frequency would come into it too, since as I said before harshness is not experienced as a function of velocity equally across the frequency spectrum. So if he has the technical command to reduce velocity just enough to avoid harshness to different degrees appropriate to the particular range of the piano involved, then he can perfectly well give a lesser impression of harshness while playing louder overall.

And your argument is based on the fallacy that your SUBJECTIVE IMPRESSION of "loudness" corresponds lock, stock and barrel to some objective phenomenon whereby he is "playing louder", without even needing to specify what that phenomenon is. Again, you need to educate yourself in the psycho-acoustical facts of how this works, because what you are writing here is simply ignorant.

To phrase it in terms of my (admittedly crude) velocity measurements: if he is playing everything between a velocity of 75-84, and an amateur is playing between a velocity of 40 - 95, with 85-90 being the point where harshness is experienced, then you will hear his performance as "louder" even though his loudest attacks are softer than theirs. The control which he applies to every note in the piece to extract maximum loudness from it, subject to the demands of phrasing, will have much more effect upon your psychological judgment of loudness than the relative levels of a few outstanding transients. Even moreso once you consider the role of voicing of chords. He may even play each chord louder in terms of its impression as a whole unit (which is how we hear it), while playing the specific frequencies that contribute most to harshness softer.

Your other point about key thump I will have to come back to as it's a separate issue and I don't have time right now.

You don't have time for the most important issue I raised- which raises a very big question as to how it could even be possible to fail to capture discernible differences due to keybed noises on otherwise identical decibel levels?

You could cite relative dynamics for almost any other pianist but they do not explain the nyiregyhazi sound. Loud playing is extremely dependent on relativity and much of the standard impression of a colossal fortissimo is owed to pacing. But nyiregyhazi is an exception to this norm. His average volume for moderate dynamics is louder than most pianists, not quieter. Yet so is his upper limit. He just has access to more sounds and not merely through illusion. His record producers spoke of being shocked at the decibel levels reached and struggling to fit his dynamic range on an lp. They had to compress his loudest dynamics at the time. To speak of simply turning volume up or down and being unable to discern genuine big sounds from average ones is plain silly. You're contradicting the accurate point you made before about how timbre is related to volume. Turning a speaker up or down doesn't hide volume and length of sound or give a false impression of a genuine big sound. No amount of tinkering with a volume dial creates that level of deep projection. It's just comical to try to claim that the poor student I heard making feeble but percussive tone in concert must have played LOUDER than Nyiregyhazi 's colossal sound as the supposed explanation. He is the pianist who proves that, important as relative dynamics are, it's also possible to have a thunderous fortissimo after having produced an effortlessly huge and resonant mezzo forte. It's ludicrous to say he only created impressions by being soft. He could simply get louder than ordinary pianists, before percussive thuds came into his sound.

The simple explanation is that he understood how to eliminate or reduce the noise effect of key against keybed-creating a purer sound that has less thud of key against keybed than when less accomplished pianists try to make a big sound. As I said earlier, if an experiment supposedly couldn't find any evidence that the level of noise of key hitting keybed can be variable for the same level of musical sound, something is EXTREMELY suspect about the data that was gathered. I saw one experiment which did show such subtle differences, as common sense would expect. Seeing as the only evidence for the impossibility for tone is based on such suspect experiments, there is no rational basis upon which to leap to such crazy conclusions as the one that second rate amateurs stretch the piano's upper limit for volume further than nyiregyhazi. His average dynamics take the piano's limits further, without the thud that amateurs typically get while only getting up to his midrange. His upper dynamics are worlds beyond what even the most aggressive pros of today can get up to.

[nyiregyhazi]

I still don't get it. Why not start with proper hand position, certain degree of arch, and maintain it, always observing visually as well as the sound of the notes for evenness etc? I find no need to make my thumb press down more to make others raise going over, otherwise a collapsed hand. I may not be understanding you so don't get me wrong, just trying to get your point.



I don't find the fingers rising uncontrollably because of a panic. I think it is weakness of certain fingers in certain patterns, say 3-4-5 where when 4 pressed, 5 pops up. It is a symptom of other muscles trying to compensate for a finger not being able at a given speed to act independently of the others. Proof is slowing it way down, viola! finger remains on the keys like they should. More time needed with only the smallest muscles involved with finger depression independent of others. Then the control increases. Visual + sound = success.

Nick

Ah, but at slow tempos instability can be corrected with arm tensions. Only when you go fast does the integrity of every individual finger need to be near perfect. Everything is easy if you go slow enough. The question is whether slow work trains the fingers to stabilise better, or whether you keep depending on tensions.

Regarding the thumb, as I said before, after passing the thumb you're stuck in the last position if the thumb doesn't lift the fingers over it. That makes getting into the next position more complex and more physical effort to find. When the thumb lifts them over they just get where they need to be. They realign as if by magic around the thumb. Plus the whole arm has to drop in the thumb if it doesn't actually generate movement. Nobody will ever play a truly fast scale when they drop into the thumb. It's one of the ultimate hallmark of awkard amateur pianism and something that no top pro will ever be seen doing. The arm just drifts along. You cannot fall down into the thumb in a good scale and expect to have speed and control.

[awesom_o]

Nobody will ever play a truly fast scale when they drop into the thumb. It's one of the ultimate hallmark of awkard amateur pianism and something that no top pro will ever be seen doing. The arm just drifts along. You cannot fall down into the thumb in a good scale and expect to have speed and control.

This is worthy of noting. Czerny wrote that the main difficulty in playing the piano is the use of the thumb.

A great way to make sure that you are not falling wickedly down on the thumb in scale playing is by doing a quick-repeat on every note that the thumb plays (playing it twice). This forces the thumb to operate very quickly as an actual finger, instead of being a clumsy extension of the forearm.

[nick]

Ah, but at slow tempos instability can be corrected with arm tensions. Only when you go fast does the integrity of every individual finger need to be near perfect. Everything is easy if you go slow enough. The question is whether slow work trains the fingers to stabilise better, or whether you keep depending on tensions.

I don't have arm tension at slower tempos, am not depending on arm tensions. There is a certain fixation of the arm in order to prevent the hand from rising when the finger depresses a key, but this is only the amount needed to prevent that, takes very little. Proof is the speed over time of scale like passages is increasing with no change in feel, tension etc.

Regarding the thumb, as I said before, after passing the thumb you're stuck in the last position if the thumb doesn't lift the fingers over it. That makes getting into the next position more complex and more physical effort to find. When the thumb lifts them over they just get where they need to be. They realign as if by magic around the thumb. Plus the whole arm has to drop in the thumb if it doesn't actually generate movement. Nobody will ever play a truly fast scale when they drop into the thumb. It's one of the ultimate hallmark of awkard amateur pianism and something that no top pro will ever be seen doing. The arm just drifts along. You cannot fall down into the thumb in a good scale and expect to have speed and control.

I am not stuck in the last position even though my thumb is not lifting my fingers over it. It is arm movement that allows this. Picture this: hand poised over the keys without depressing, and moving up and down the keyboard as though one were a concert pianist actually playing the notes in a scale. This is the movement I strive for and one does not "fall down into the thumb". Likewise, when the fingers each are trained to play independently, each not affecting the others, it feels similarly to the above example.

I just don't play as you describe if I understand you correctly  and am ok with that. To each his own. We possibly could go on and on until the cows come home and there would be no change. Good luck and thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Nick

[nyiregyhazi]

I don't have arm tension at slower tempos, am not depending on arm tensions. There is a certain fixation of the arm in order to prevent the hand from rising when the finger depresses a key, but this is only the amount needed to prevent that, takes very little. Proof is the speed over time of scale like passages is increasing with no change in feel, tension etc.

I am not stuck in the last position even though my thumb is not lifting my fingers over it. It is arm movement that allows this. Picture this: hand poised over the keys without depressing, and moving up and down the keyboard as though one were a concert pianist actually playing the notes in a scale. This is the movement I strive for and one does not "fall down into the thumb". Likewise, when the fingers each are trained to play independently, each not affecting the others, it feels similarly to the above example.

I just don't play as you describe if I understand you correctly  and am ok with that. To each his own. We possibly could go on and on until the cows come home and there would be no change. Good luck and thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Nick

If you don't want to change anything then by all means stick with where you are now, but the description of tension to stay stable doesn't sound healthy to me, even if you're downplaying it. Only virtuosi are truly without tensions that significantly hamper them, so it's worth asking questions about anything like that rather than hoping that what you can perceive yourself is too small to matter. No fixation whatsoever is needed to stop the hand rising if you make length properly in the wrist. It's only an issue if your wrist has been pushed forwards and up and then got trapped. From there, the hand does indeed get bounced by reactions and it's tempting to fight them. Speaking from experience of that exact fault, you really don't want to allow it to remain. Standing on the thumb is the first step in lengthening out a trapped wrist and freeing all efforts that are needlessly wasted on trying to force stability against reactions.

If your arm is truly drifting smoothly sideways and not flapping up and down, you must be doing as I describe and actively opening out from your hand to move the key. There is no possible explanation in geometry as to how your thumb can be moving its key without your arm dropping with it, other than it moving.

The thing about realigning with the hand via the arm (rather than with good thumb action) is that it demands muscular braking and abrupt changes of pace. You have to move ultra fast to bring the fingers into the new position in a fast scale. The problem is that at that speed they'll carry on flying sideways if the arm does a fast movement unless you then brake again with other muscles. This makes for a real impediment to fluid sideways motion. When the thumb is flicking them up and over, you don't need to brake. The second finger naturally settles alongside the thumb from a single flick and the rest is automatic. You may or not may not be doing this without realising, seeing as you describe sideways movement rather than a huge arm dip, but it's worth checking. Is the movement absolutely steady and continuous or does it come in sudden movements? Virtuosi are capable of being totally fluid and continuous, with their lateral arm motion. Nothing interrupts it. I've never yet seen a student achieve that without learning to engage their thumb first.

I'm still hindered by the basic issue of an underperforming thumb in basic and advanced repertoire alike, the same as all of my students are. Only Virtuosi get it spot on. Although I have relatively few problems with some of the more advanced techniques in the Liszt Rigoletto paraphrase, I have to make a real effort to get my thumb to actually move in some rapid D flat major arpeggios in the left hand. You can't  get the necessary PPP or the fluidity needed if your thumb doesn't both move the key and open the hand over it. It puts a jerk and an change of pace in the smooth lateral arm movement, if the thumb does not reopen the hand. I'm constantly having to remind myself to stop being so damned lazy as to let my thumb just relax and droop, or any hope of a rapid but true PPP goes out the window.

[nick]

Is the movement absolutely steady and continuous or does it come in sudden movements?

Absolutely steady and continuous.

Nick

[falala]

I am not convinced yet.

You may be interested to know that this kind of discussions also used to be held about the voice of certain singers and their ability to be heard over an orchestra in the back of the hall. People who recognized such beautiful voices by ear were also deemed to be "fooling themselves" until the so-called singer-formant was found in the sound spectrum of great singers, a clear formant around 3000 Hz (between 2800 and 3400 Hz) that is absent in speech and in the sound spectra of UNTRAINED and bad singers, however hard they shout. The formant is formed as the result of resonance in certain parts of the vocal tract and has nothing to do with volume of tone.

When I hear a pianist with a beautiful tone who easily penetrates a rather noisy orchestra but apparently does nothing, I get that same kind of aha-reflex: must be a formant-kind of thing because most pianists simply can't do it. Although the human ear is limited in its range of what it can catch, within that range, it outdoes any existing and advanced equipment. If we want reliable test results then, we should first analyze the sound spectrum of piano tone that is considered beautiful and determine what exactly makes it "beautiful" as compared to the sound spectrum of tone that is considered "poor". Do you know of any such research?

I should have made myself clearer. When I said the computer analysis would be more reliable than a human's, all I meant was that it would be more reliable in determining whether the waves are identical. If there is any difference whatsoever, than it would be down to human judgment to determine whether that difference is significant, and how.

What you write above about formants is all capable of being captured by a computer, so it doesn't change that. The computer can tell you the base frequency and amplitude of the wave AND the relative strength of its overtones at every single millionth of a millisecond, if you want it to. If it determines that the waves are identical, then anyone who says otherwise IS fooling themselves. This is not such a big deal as people fool themselves with reactions to sound in all sorts of ways. But even so, I'd happily have the waves judged by humans in a double-blind test (subject to sufficient sample size and predetermination of the range that would be commensurate with chance), to confirm it.

I should probably add I'm not at all sure that this would be the case. I think N's point about things like hammer vibration is quite possibly valid, and it would then result in differences between the waves. Even if those differences were rare and miniscule, there could still theoretically be a case that they matter. It's then up to humans to determine how much they matter, and up to pianists to determine how much that difference is worth practising for.

But if they're consistently, absolutely identical, then the argument is over.

[falala]

nyiregyhazi -

I'm getting the feeling that you either haven't read my posts above or don't understand them, because I've explained quite clearly, using only known acoustical facts, why velocity alone is capable to achieving the effects you describe. You also completely ignored my questions about what you actually mean by "louder" and what you think the relationship between this subjective impression and the objective measurement of amplitude of each individual keystroke is. Until you do that, all you're referring to is a subjective impression and the known facts of acoustics DO support the claim that that impression can be created while the loudest transients are softer. Your incredulity about that seems to just be due to ignorance of the subject, so I can't really add any more.

Even the engineer's comments about the upper levels of his playing don't contradict this, at all. How recording engineers manage a generally high sound level is a completely different question from how they manage a few very loud transients. And anyway, the salient factor in both cases would be the loudness of the chord, not the single keystroke. So voicing would matter, hugely.

You seem to still be insisting on a highly reductionist paradigm whereby your subjective impression of loudness must be analyzable into a multitude of tiny units that are ALL themselves louder. Once again, this is simply ignorant of the science involved - it's like people who used to think that the Earth must be flat because every little bit of it that they can see is flat. If you can't take that science on board without utter disbelief that such a paradigm might be faulty, then I can't really go any further.

I only didn't have time to address your question of key thump because it's a change of subject, and required thinking about in its own right. You've spent most of this exchange talking about the effect of hammer and shaft flexion on the hammer, potentially transferring itself to the strings, which is a different issue.

Off the top of my head - yes, it sounds highly plausible that keythump contributes to the subjective impression of harshness. I don't know whether a recorded output would be able to distinguish between that effect and the note itself. Since the thump is noise and the note is pitched sound, it may well do. But I'd need to think about it or read about it some more.

[richard black]

A large part of this discussion, to the limited extent I can be bothered to read it, seems to be supremely irrelevant. However, there is of course a very simple proof that factors apart from the speed of the hammer can have an effect: if the pianist hasn't cut his/her fingernails in a while, you can hear the results at the back of the hall. QED.

I still maintain that by far the most important consideration is simply relative loudness of notes.

[nyiregyhazi]

nyiregyhazi -

I'm getting the feeling that you either haven't read my posts above or don't understand them, because I've explained quite clearly, using only known acoustical facts, why velocity alone is capable to achieving the effects you describe. You also completely ignored my questions about what you actually mean by "louder" and what you think the relationship between this subjective impression and the objective measurement of amplitude of each individual keystroke is. Until you do that, all you're referring to is a subjective impression and the known facts of acoustics DO support the claim that that impression can be created while the loudest transients are softer. Your incredulity about that seems to just be due to ignorance of the subject, so I can't really add any more.

Even the engineer's comments about the upper levels of his playing don't contradict this, at all. How recording engineers manage a generally high sound level is a completely different question from how they manage a few very loud transients. And anyway, the salient factor in both cases would be the loudness of the chord, not the single keystroke. So voicing would matter, hugely.

You seem to still be insisting on a highly reductionist paradigm whereby your subjective impression of loudness must be analyzable into a multitude of tiny units that are ALL themselves louder. Once again, this is simply ignorant of the science involved - it's like people who used to think that the Earth must be flat because every little bit of it that they can see is flat. If you can't take that science on board without utter disbelief that such a paradigm might be faulty, then I can't really go any further.

I only didn't have time to address your question of key thump because it's a change of subject, and required thinking about in its own right. You've spent most of this exchange talking about the effect of hammer and shaft flexion on the hammer, potentially transferring itself to the strings, which is a different issue.

Off the top of my head - yes, it sounds highly plausible that keythump contributes to the subjective impression of harshness. I don't know whether a recorded output would be able to distinguish between that effect and the note itself. Since the thump is noise and the note is pitched sound, it may well do. But I'd need to think about it or read about it some more.

Your suggestions about nyiregyhazi were simply ludicrous. I don't understand why anyone would go to such unfeasible lengths to need to avoid serious consideration of what can realistically explain it. The producers spoken of how they punched the piano with their fists in a bid to emulate the dynamic levels before starting the sessions. They said he played louder than their blows. That cannot be explained by such an absurd theory as him staying in a smaller range than an amateur. He could play louder than ordinary pianists before going into percussive sounds. Saying he played with LESS intensity than bad amateurs is so far off target it wouldn't even hit the corner flag. You need to listen to more of his recordings before resorting to such silly attempts to explain the sound.

You'd agreed earlier that a judder can pass on vibrations and I illustrated the fact that vibrations are passed on through connected bodies, despite your belief that the initial disconnect would be rendered irrelevant. Counterexamples demonstrate that the judder can feasibly carry if the initial movement does not start from contact. You also claimed that it's not possible to max out from contact but only from height. That's wrong. Nyiregyhazi made his biggest sounds from contact. Most pianists cannot reach those levels without hitting from a distance and most pianists are thus more percussive when attempting his big sound. Put two and two together and it makes perfect sense that a pianist who can achieve that level of acceleration from contact might be able to both pass on less impact between key and key bed and to put less erratic vibrations in the hammer due to smoother acceleration.

Given how much you had been open-minded about earlier, I cannot understand why you'd now take two steps backwards and come up with such an implausible explanation for the whole thing- rather than consider the perfectly plausible possibility of these issues. I'm well aware of relativity. I didn't bother responding in detail, because it's quite such a poor explanation for a truly remarkable sound and because existence of relativity does not disprove additional factors. Relativity explains many things but doesn't scratch the surface here. He doesn't use the relativity idea of making moderate dynamics to softer to leave room for an illusion of louder forte. He starts extremely loud, at similar levels where ordinary pianists already pound with all their might and sound harsh. Then he gets louder.

[nyiregyhazi]

Absolutely steady and continuous.

Nick

Then how is the key descending if your thumb is not expanding out away from the hand? Either you're falling into every thumb with the whole arm (which can never produce truly controlled and light scales/arpeggios at ultra-high speeds) or it's opening.

[nyiregyhazi]

A large part of this discussion, to the limited extent I can be bothered to read it, seems to be supremely irrelevant. However, there is of course a very simple proof that factors apart from the speed of the hammer can have an effect: if the pianist hasn't cut his/her fingernails in a while, you can hear the results at the back of the hall. QED.

I still maintain that by far the most important consideration is simply relative loudness of notes.

I agree. But in such extreme cases as nyiregyhazi, mere relativity cannot begin to explain all. It just baffles me that so many are determined to exclude valid possibilities. Why? Even if tone were conclusively disproven, it would make sense for an artist to want to strive for the impossible. But what kind of bizarre and twisted mindset leads someone to casually exclude all possibility of something that could make the difference between artistry and thumping? Why on earth would anyone have some kind of romantic attachment to the idea of excluding something that is not genuinely disproven, but which would be of artistic importance if true?

[swagmaster420x]

"Returning to the excitation of the string by the hammer impact, not only the amplitude of the initial pulse on the string changes with the strength of the blow, but also its shape. This is due to a remarkable property of the felt hammer, more specifically the characteristics of its stiffness. The stiffness increases (the hammer becomes progressively harder to compress) the more the hammer already has been compressed, a phenomenon referred to as nonlinear stiffness. This means that a harder blow not only will give a larger amplitude but also sharper corners of the pulse on the string. Again, according to Fourier, sharper wiggles in the waveform correspond to more prominent high frequency partials in the spectrum. Consequently, the piano tone will attain a different ("more brilliant") tone quality at forte (loud) compared to piano (soft)."
thoughts?

and by the way, nygeraizi the thumping part i think has something to do with the player not aiming accurately at the point of sound. if the player aimed past the point of sound, thinking it is at the very bottom of the key, he might maximize the velocity of his finger stroke at the bottom of the key. This would "miss" the right point of sound, hitting it with a lower intended velocity than planned and producing a weaker sound while hitting the dead bottom of the key hard, producing an audible thump

[nyiregyhazi]

"Returning to the excitation of the string by the hammer impact, not only the amplitude of the initial pulse on the string changes with the strength of the blow, but also its shape. This is due to a remarkable property of the felt hammer, more specifically the characteristics of its stiffness. The stiffness increases (the hammer becomes progressively harder to compress) the more the hammer already has been compressed, a phenomenon referred to as nonlinear stiffness. This means that a harder blow not only will give a larger amplitude but also sharper corners of the pulse on the string. Again, according to Fourier, sharper wiggles in the waveform correspond to more prominent high frequency partials in the spectrum. Consequently, the piano tone will attain a different ("more brilliant") tone quality at forte (loud) compared to piano (soft)."
thoughts?

and by the way, nygeraizi the thumping part i think has something to do with the player not aiming accurately at the point of sound. if the player aimed past the point of sound, thinking it is at the very bottom of the key, he might maximize the velocity of his finger stroke at the bottom of the key. This would "miss" the right point of sound, hitting it with a lower intended velocity than planned and producing a weaker sound while hitting the dead bottom of the key hard, producing an audible thump

Yes, absolutely. There's also what I call negative movement, where the finger is collapsing rather than expanding. This means that the speed at the knuckle end does not bring the fingertip to the same speed of movement. The key itself receives only a fraction of the speed that is achieved further back due to the give between energy source and key. Instead, it squashes the finger. Less energy is passed on and there is more unnecessary kinetic energy which cannot reach the hammer but which is being sent towards the key bed. The alternative is to be expanding the hand, which is the only way to conclusively eliminate wastage. Fixation only reduces collapse.

These issues make fore a completely rational explanation for tone at high volumes. Until a survey directly tests these plausible issues in a pianist who plays a massive fortissimo with a pure sound alongside a shallow thumper, it's arrogant ignorance for anyone to wish to insist that tone is impossible and that's final.

[awesom_o]

where the finger is collapsing rather than expanding.

Collapse is obviously bad, but why oh why do you have this fetish for expansion?

Contraction is better than expansion.

[nyiregyhazi]

Collapse is obviously bad, but why oh why do you have this fetish for expansion?

Contraction is better than expansion.

Only in the knuckle. Contracting anything else in the finger sends it into a horrible collision with a dead stop. And it doesn't stop that hole in the transmission. If the fingertip is scratching backwards, the knuckle will still be descending faster than the fingertip if you use arm power. You waste movement on something that achieves no key acceleration but which instead puts energy into the aftershock that occurs after the hammer has been thrown loose, but when the knuckle is still spiralling downwards with energy that can only contribute to an impact. My fingertips also used to hurt in the joint when I gripped during big chords. Only the knuckle can afford to be closing for the most efficient transmission of power. The rest of the finger needs to straighten that out. The other benefit of expanding between tip and knuckle is that hard collision is effectively impossible. Any extra movement is AWAY from the key bed, not into it.

[awesom_o]

I'll be convinced when you post something that is both virtuoso and artistic. 

[falala]

Ny -

Do you have any links to source material about your Nyiregyhazi story?

I don't really understand it - it doesn't make sense the way you've related it. Engineers record very loud sound sources all the time, louder ones than acoustic pianos. If they're not getting a clear signal without distortion they move the mic further away, use a different mic or turn the gain down.

The idea that the difference in sound level between one pianist and all the other pianists who have played that piano in that room is so great that it blows all their recording procedures out of the water is just ridiculous. And it doesn't form a convincing basis for your presenting your own anti-scientific interpretation of your subjective impression as some kind of fact; or of your insistence on rejecting the actual science involved.

But point me to something and I'll read it. It sounds interesting.

[nyiregyhazi]

I'll be convinced when you post something that is both virtuoso and artistic. 

Just try it for yourself. Start with a straight, vertical finger and push down. Allow the joints to bend freely when you press. Most of the energy hits after sound occurred and the key barely accelerates. Then start with a slightly bent finger and expand out into the position nyiregyhazi uses when your arm pushes. The give in the former means the bulk of the energy creates no key acceleration but instead piles into the collision after sound. With the latter you can push will all the force you can muster. As long as you roll over the top into a place of freedom, the expansion of the sends virtually all of the energy you input directly into the key speed (with the rest getting pushed AWAY and not piling down into the aftershock). It's simple physics. Expansion transmits energy whereas squashing wastes it.

[swagmaster420x]

Only in the knuckle. Contracting anything else in the finger sends it into a horrible collision with a dead stop. And it doesn't stop that hole in the transmission. If the fingertip is scratching backwards, the knuckle will still be descending faster than the fingertip if you use arm power. You waste movement on something that achieves no key acceleration but which instead puts energy into the aftershock that occurs after the hammer has been thrown loose, but when the knuckle is still spiralling downwards with energy that can only contribute to an impact. My fingertips also used to hurt in the joint when I gripped during big chords. Only the knuckle can afford to be closing for the most efficient transmission of power. The rest of the finger needs to straighten that out. The other benefit of expanding between tip and knuckle is that hard collision is effectively impossible. Any extra movement is AWAY from the key bed, not into it.

? i thought it was best to keep fingers relatively contracted. the scratching backwards thing youre talking about - i thought that was a technique for staccato

the guy in this video as i understand it is advising the exact opposite of what you're saying

[awesom_o]

Just try it for yourself.

I'm quite alright with where my technique is at right now 

[nyiregyhazi]

Ny -

Do you have any links to source material about your Nyiregyhazi story?

I don't really understand it - it doesn't make sense the way you've related it. Engineers record very loud sound sources all the time, louder ones than acoustic pianos. If they're not getting a clear signal without distortion they move the mic further away, use a different mic or turn the gain down.

The idea that the difference in sound level between one pianist and all the other pianists who have played that piano in that room is so great that it blows all their recording procedures out of the water is just ridiculous. And it doesn't form a convincing basis for your presenting your own anti-scientific interpretation of your subjective impression as some kind of fact; or of your insistence on rejecting the actual science involved.

But point me tot something and I'll read it. It sounds interesting.

The fact that he blew other pianists out of the water in terms of volume is exactly what is indeed being stated. He also played extremely quietly at the softer end of the spectrum, which was an equal contributor. The range was too wide to be easily transferred. Watch the documentary on youtube.

You can't just use the old nothing is objective on any level get-out here. Nyiregyhazi was a very loud pianist and that's not subjective. It's not a scam. He played at louder levels than average pianists could reach without thumping out a percussive tone. He could push the piano further than other players and without even trying, before percussion became an issue. This is not more ridiculous than the truly comedic theory that merely because things are subjective, the man that many regard as the loudest pianist ever captured on record secretly plays much quieter than any feeble amateur who is regarded as playing with a percussive edge. That ludicrous suggestion is simply not on the ball. Schoenberg spoke of having never heard such a level of sonority Years before he was recorded. Illusions aren't enough to casually explain this away, sorry. Neither are a number of highly dubious experiments that were performed on second-raters who almost certainly couldn't dream of achieving Nyiregyhazi's sonority. In second rate amateurs I've heard the thud against the key bed as clear as day. Pass on energy efficiently and you can remove that thud. Pass on energy poorly and you can thud like crazy while achieving little tone from the hammer.

Go and try it yourself. Play a melody that intensely as in the Liszt rhapsody and without starting each note with a hard edge. That's because you actually push the piano further than Nyiregyhazi in terms of velocity, is it? You sincerely believe that to be true? You seriously have to be joking to even attempt such a line of argument, rather than stop to question whether the factors I mentioned are more feasible. It's a total non starter.

[falala]

Given how much you had been open-minded about earlier, I cannot understand why you'd now take two steps backwards and come up with such an implausible explanation for the whole thing- rather than consider the perfectly plausible possibility of these issues. I'm well aware of relativity. I didn't bother responding in detail, because it's quite such a poor explanation for a truly remarkable sound and because existence of relativity does not disprove additional factors. Relativity explains many things but doesn't scratch the surface here. He doesn't use the relativity idea of making moderate dynamics to softer to leave room for an illusion of louder forte. He starts extremely loud, at similar levels where ordinary pianists already pound with all their might and sound harsh. Then he gets louder.

Ah...

I was right. You completely misunderstood my point, in fact you've actually reversed it.

I didn't say that he used relativity by "making moderate dynamics softer". I said the OPPOSITE of that - exactly, indeed, what you're saying here.

A compressor does not expand the dynamic range; it compresses it. (The clue is in the name  ). In other words, it brings the soft and moderate sounds up to a level closer to the loud ones. The well known effect of this is an increased psychological perception of loudness overall, even when the loudest sounds are not made any louder. In fact depending on all the variables involved, that perception can ensue even when the loudest sounds are made softer.

What I've been trying to describe is the potentially similar effect of a great concert pianist's control over the dynamics of every single keystroke. I won't repeat it here because it's all there in my posts above, particularly the one at the beginning of all this, after you posted the link. You could go back and read what I actually wrote rather than what you think I wrote (which it actually the opposite of what I wrote) if you're interested.

The reality is that your subjective impression of loudness is a psychological phenomenon, determined much more by the loudness of the softest sounds than by the loudness of the loudest sounds. What you've written here about the way he played makes perfect sense in that respect. As does your complete misunderstanding that has so drawn out this exchange.

[nyiregyhazi]

Ah...

I was right. You completely misunderstood my point, in fact you've actually reversed it.

I didn't say that he used relativity by "making moderate dynamics softer". I said the OPPOSITE of that - exactly, indeed, what you're saying here.

A compressor does not expand the dynamic range; it compresses it. (The clue is in the name  ). In other words, it brings the soft and moderate sounds up to a level closer to the loud ones. The well known effect of this is an increased psychological perception of loudness overall, even when the loudest sounds are not made any louder. In fact depending on all the variables involved, that perception can ensue even when the loudest sounds are made softer.

What I've been trying to describe is the potentially similar effect of a great concert pianist's control over the dynamics of every single keystroke. I won't repeat it here because it's all there in my posts above, particularly the one at the beginning of all this, after you posted the link. You could go back and read what I actually wrote rather than what you think I wrote (which it actually the opposite of what I wrote) if you're interested.

The reality is that your subjective impression of loudness is a psychological phenomenon, determined much more by the loudness of the softest sounds than by the loudness of the loudest sounds. What you've written here about the way he played makes perfect sense in that respect. As does your complete misunderstanding that has so drawn out this exchange.

The CD Nyiregyhazi at the Opera is not compressed. Your assertions are pointless if you're not out there and listening and trying to recreate the sound minus the amateur thuds that only a rare expert will achieve the the absence of. They compressed it because it was the only way to press the LPs, not because any illusion needed creating. You're simply looking for excuses to try to write off what you are not interested in opening your mind about. There's an objective difference here.

Go and listen and go and see what happens you try to reproduce that tone. If you can't, try playing quieter- as your theory suggests would be the answer. See how far that takes you. You will make hard edges but you will not achieve the same intensity of sound or the same volume of sound. And playing more quietly will only make you sound quieter, not like that. If you can't achieve anything with your theory about how his trick is based on playing quietly, the only valid position you can take it to acknowledge that you don't understand how it's done.

[falala]

You can't just use the old nothing is objective on any level get-out here.

When did I say that?

A statement that something "sounds loud" is a statement of psychological impression. That's simply a fact. Whatever objective processes are involved in leading the person to that impression are what they are. I've actually been trying to clarify what those may be. You OTOH seem peculiarly resistent to doing that.

Anyway, you STILL haven't clarified what you actually MEAN by "he was a loud pianist", as I've asked you to do twice in order to move the discussion forward. So I don't really buy the preaching of objectivity. What you're calling objectivity is simply your refusal to entertain anything but the most childish assumptions about what the objective phenomena must be that are causing your subjective impression.

Nyiregyhazi was a very loud pianist and that's not subjective. It's not a scam. He played at louder levels than average pianists could reach without thumping out a percussive tone. He could push the piano further than other players and without even trying, before percussion became an issue.

You do know I haven't actually denied this, right? That is, if we start with a clear idea of what "loud" actually means.

This is not more ridiculous than the truly comedic theory that merely because things are subjective, the man that many regard as the loudest pianist ever captured on record secretly plays much quieter than any feeble amateur who is regarded as playing with a percussive edge. That ludicrous suggestion is simply not on the ball.

And you DO know that I never actually said this, right?

You DO know that when a pianist plays a chord, he doesn't necessarily play every note exactly the same way, right?

You DO know that it's the total impression of the chord that we hear and react to with an impression of loudness, not its constituent parts, right?

Schoenberg spoke of having never heard such a level of sonority Years before he was recorded. Illusions aren't enough to casually explain this away, sorry.

Good thing I never said anything about illusions then, but only about psychology and acoustical science.

I will look up the youtube documentary though, thanks.

[falala]

The CD Nyiregyhazi at the Opera is not compressed. Your assertions are pointless if you're not out there and listening and trying to recreate the sound minus the amateur thuds that only a rare expert will achieve the the absence of. They compressed it because it was the only way to press the LPs, not because any illusion needed creating. You're simply looking for excuses to try to write off what you are not interested in opening your mind about. There's an objective difference here.

OH JESUS CHRIST.

I didn't say Nyiregyhazi's sound was due to being compressed. I used the example of a compressor to illustrate how reducing the dynamic range of a sound spectrum can give a greater impression of loudness. Then I explained how a great pianist's technique could do the same thing. You would know this if you actually read my posts rather than just arguing with the sound of your own voice. For Christ's sake, you even AGREED with me here that that is precisely what he's doing: bringing up the level of the softer sounds.

Sorry but this is just *** ridiculous. You pretend to be arguing about a particular line of enquiry, but you don't even read my posts; you misinterpret my argument as the opposite of what it actually is; and then when I carefully try to correct that misinterpretation you misinterpret my correction as something completely different to what IT is (apparently due to not having read the original posts that it refers to).

It's either bone-headed, or just plain rude. Bye.

[nyiregyhazi]

When did I say that?

A statement that something "sounds loud" is a statement of psychological impression. That's simply a fact. Whatever objective processes are involved in leading the person to that impression are what they are. I've actually been trying to clarify what those may be. You OTOH seem peculiarly resistent to doing that.

Anyway, you STILL haven't clarified what you actually MEAN by "he was a loud pianist", as I've asked you to do twice in order to move the discussion forward. So I don't really buy the preaching of objectivity. What you're calling objectivity is simply your refusal to entertain anything but the most childish assumptions about what the objective phenomena must be that are causing your subjective impression.

You do know I haven't actually denied this, right? That is, if we start with a clear idea of what "loud" actually means.

And you DO know that I never actually said this, right?

You DO know that when a pianist plays a chord, he doesn't necessarily play every note exactly the same way, right?

You DO know that it's the total impression of the chord that we hear and react to with an impression of loudness, not its constituent parts, right?

Good thing I never said anything about illusions then, but only about psychology and acoustical science.

I will look up the youtube documentary though, thanks.

You argued that the average harsh amateur probably hit a higher value on your scale of 100 than Nyiregyhazi. Whereas he kept it many numbers under what they hit. If you were to go out and listen to a large range of his recordings, you'd realise how ludicrous that idea was.

I'm not going to describe anything in any more detail. The recordings are what you need to listen to. Then you need to try to recreate the sound.

By the way, I've heard a tiny handful of pianists with a truly big sound in concert. One is Mark Gasser. The end of his recording of DSCH recording on youtube gives an idea of his ability to recreate something of what Nyiregyhazi had. I heard him play on a piano in regarded as tinny and percussive in a small room many years back. Never before had I heard anyone play it so loudly, but it actually sounded more resonant and less percussive at these extreme volumes (this was no illusion) than I'd ever heard it sound in the hands of another player. He also achieved the loudest sounds I ever heard in a concert hall on a piano regarded by all students as very quiet and unresponsive. The effect was similar to that conveyed by Nyiregyhazi's recordings, which is why I trust the impression they give entirely. You can't just write everything off an a casual whim.

If you're not interested in going out and doing your own explorations into the pianists who could draw the very most of pianos (and making your own attempts to reach the same level without a hard attack), I'm not interested in arguing on a pointlessly abstracted level. Go and listen and go and attempt to recreate these sounds based merely on velocities and speeds. These things are not interesting as mere theoretical concepts. What is interesting is a dedicated and serious attempt to explore sound in these ways and to think seriously about why it's so difficult to achieve this style of sound. Personally, I've already spent many years exploring how to get closer to a sound that is big and resonant without the classic amateur thuds. Relativity is a big part but only part. You also need very specific things when you genuinely play loud, or you just thud. Without that genuine searching for these qualities on a personal level, arm-chair postulations have no value. If you're not attempting these things in a serious fashion yourself, you're not in a position to make informed opinions about the explanations for them- nevermind be so shockingly closed minded, based on a handful totally inconclusive experiments that were probably performed on pianistic nobodies.

[swagmaster420x]

you seem kinda biased toward the spectacularness of nyiregyhazi's sound.. after all, your forum name is nyiregyhazi 

[nyiregyhazi]

OH JESUS CHRIST.

I didn't say Nyiregyhazi's sound was due to being compressed. I used the example of a compressor to illustrate how reducing the dynamic range of a sound spectrum can give a greater impression of loudness. Then I explained how a great pianist's technique could do the same thing. You would know this if you actually read my posts rather than just arguing with the sound of your own voice. For Christ's sake, you even AGREED with me here that that is precisely what he's doing: bringing up the level of the softer sounds.

On the contrary, what I said his was his MIDRANGE is significantly louder than a rank amateur trying to be loud. His softer sounds are not brought up at all. He plays some of the quietest soft sounds you'll ever hear. But in the levels where your standard illusionist holds back to make room for more, he's already playing loud - contrary to everything that those who teach Illusions will tell you. He doesn't need to make the Illusions to the same extent because he simply has access to a wider range of sound before percussive effects ensue.

Anyway, you're intent on trying to argue on an abstracted level without either having an interest in listening to what you are making very poor attempts to explain, or in attempting to recreate this manner of sound on a piano. Which is why this has lost all interest. Nobody who has not made a serious attempt to even listen to these things for themself, nevermind recreate them is in a position to be making closed-minded assertions about the explanation.


PS. If there's one thing that absolutely does not create an illusion of loudness it's playing your quiet passages louder. This creates an impression of monotony, not of unusual power.

[nyiregyhazi]

you seem kinda biased toward the spectacularness of nyiregyhazi's sound.. after all, your forum name is nyiregyhazi  

Of course. Which is why I don't take kindly to someone having the sheer arrogance to try to explain them via such ludicrous theories as him playing with less volume than percussive toned amateurs, simply in order to avoid having to rethink opinions. I've put a lot of study in to this. Seeing as I bothered to explain the perfectly credible rational explanation behind the idea of a big sound minus percussive thuds, I'm simply stunned to see the other poster going back to this completely unproven idea that there is nothing but key speed-as if everything other than what I took the time to debunk as oversimplified must be voodoo. Before a person wants to assert such things due to unwillingness to be openminded, they need to go and study the sounds and then attempt such sounds for themself. I'd love to hear someone make their bass boom like the start of that rhapsody by drawing a scale from 1-100 and then make sure they stay approx 10 degrees of key speed less than what they expect from a percussive amateur.

I'm sure the piano will soon be resonating with that kind of colossal depth, when these theories are actually tried out in a real world context, rather than when typed from the armchair...

[dima_76557]

It's important to remember that we don't judge notes as harsh because they ARE harsh - because of any particular objective standard in the strength of attack, relative strength of overtones etc. that defines them as harsh.

I expect that an analysis of the spectrum of one single "beautiful" tone produced by a professional pianist, not a machine, at any rate of volume or loudness will prove that it has a certain ratio of rich, harmonic overtones in the lower range (the natural overtones of the vibrating string) and a minimum of high, discordant, dissonant overtones (the imposed overtones caused by excessive noise, not directly related to the natural vibrations of the string itself). A good tone will also last longer, i.e. "die out" more slowly than a bad one, something that can be experienced when one practises v-e-r-y  s-l-o-w-l-y.

Also, as to what was "conclusively" proven about hammer velocity: it wasn't. Nobody simply bothered to do anything for the side the musicians are on.
For starters, two articles:
1) The pianist and the touch (one of 5 lectures on the accoustics of the piano by Swedish technicians, who try to explain the "thump" in certain sounds by certain pianists);
2) Tone (one of 3 essays on piano tone and technique). This one attacks the assumptions of the existing research and does that quite convincingly.

P.S.: I will now take pianoman53's advice to heart and won't be bothering anymore in this thread.

[swagmaster420x]

I expect that an analysis of the spectrum of one single "beautiful" tone produced by a professional pianist, not a machine, at any rate of volume or loudness will prove that it has a certain ratio of rich, harmonic overtones in the lower range (the natural overtones of the vibrating string) and a minimum of high, discordant, dissonant overtones (the imposed overtones caused by excessive noise, not directly related to the natural vibrations of the string itself). A good tone will also last longer, i.e. "die out" more slowly than a bad one, something that can be experienced when one practises v-e-r-y  s-l-o-w-l-y.

Also, as to what was "conclusively" proven about hammer velocity: it wasn't. Nobody simply bothered to do anything for the side the musicians are on.
For starters, two articles:
1) The pianist and the touch (one of 5 lectures on the accoustics of the piano by Swedish technicians, who try to explain the "thump" in certain sounds by certain pianists);
2) Tone (one of 3 essays on piano tone and technique). This one attacks the assumptions of the existing research and does that quite convincingly.

P.S.: I will now take pianoman53's advice to heart and won't be bothering anymore in this thread.

i read the second link. very enlightening. thanks. tone exists.

[chopin2015]

The immense control of tonal power in the mid-range is one of the distinguishing factors between great pianists and average ones. Nyiregyhazi is a prime example of this in that recording of the 3rd HR.

This control doesn't come from striking the keys. It comes from having immense control over the hammers themselves!

Intensity of tone and loudness of sound are not the same thing.

not all pianos are created equal, some resonate more than others, some simply have low quality hammer mechanisms. in this case, what do you do? i agree with the aspect of having absolute control over mid frequencies is very important in music and speech...this should be discussed further!

i believe what awesome means by intensity of tone is control of balance of range and texture in sound created by a pianist, where no matter what piano is used, the pianist is flexible to take advantage of acoustical properties unique to that particular piano, and impose adequate control to create sounds that are always natural in this particular pianist's playing. this is very important. when playing on an unfamiliar instrument, you do need something reliable, you need to be able to create the same sounds so that you do not get cought off guard, at least if you do, you should know how to control the situation. ultimately, tone helps mask the raw mechanics of piano. and, it is how pianists are able to recreate the best moments of richter, cortot, cziffra, ashkenazy...