"Tone" doesn't exist.

[falala]

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.

I don't understand what you mean here by "tone" as something you can have an amount of. I understand when people talk about various qualities of tone - a "mellow tone" or a "bright tone" etc. But I don't understand what is meant by tone as something that some sounds have more of than others.

The best I can imagine, in acoustic terms, is that you're referring to the balance between fundamental/low harmonics and higher harmonics. A sound that has more of the former can be raised in volume further and the effect will be more of an "expansion" of the sound, rather than the sound "cutting" and imposing upon the ear. A sound that has more of the latter will start to grate when raised to the same volume, because of the directness of the higher harmonics on one's attention. It's more complicated than this because different harmonics affect the sound differently, but as a generalisation it's a start.

Is this something like what you mean?

[falala]

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.

No, that can't be true because when we're actually listening to music, our judgments about tone don't exist in a little carefully segregated part of our brain that is unaffected by everything else. What we do, in reality, is judge the MUSIC as sounding beautiful, or not beautiful.

There is just no way you can divorce factors like phrasing and musical context from this. What you say here may well be true as a generalization: it may be that if you analyzed all the tones made by a really great player who gets a great sound out of the piano, they would have a general tendency towards a particular balance between low and high overtones that is different from that of a lesser pianist. But you can't take that generalization and apply it to every note individually. One thing that stronger higher harmonics do is bring the sound "forward" to the ear, make it grab the attention more. So clearly the degree to which that is desirable or undesirable is going to depend on the position of each note in the phrase, in the chord, in the texture, in the whole piece.

That's all I meant: not that there aren't general acoustic patterns that correspond to what we find beautiful and what we don't. Just that those patterns are fluid things that we respond to in accordance with musical context. So there is no ABSOLUTE standard of harmonic balance that you can point to and claim as the benchmark for beauty in all cases.

On the question of "harshness" that we were discussing before, this becomes paramount. You can't take a single note out of the musical context it was played in and claim that it either IS or ISN'T harsh. If it was the first note of a phrase with an accent over it, and a huge chord supporting it from underneath, then a much greater proportion of higher harmonics and attack would sound OK than if it was a single semiquaver from an arpeggio in a piece of Debussy.

[dima_76557]

No, that can't be true because when we're actually listening to music, our judgments about tone don't exist in a little carefully segregated part of our brain that is unaffected by everything else. What we do, in reality, is judge the MUSIC as sounding beautiful, or not beautiful.

You are now suddenly changing focus. I already know that an "ugly" tone can be the "right" one in a certain context, because I already said that myself in post #75.

The issue is that one string can vibrate NATURALLY and freely (supported even by other, free strings in the higher and lower registers), and that will give a rich, beautiful, SINGING tone with a certain ideal balance of fundamental(s) and harmonics. But there are also circumstances that are outside of the natural capabilities of that vibrating string that affect how naturally that string will vibrate. These can create higher and CONFLICTING harmonics that kill, overpower or whatever the natural sound of that string and create a "harsh" or "poor" sound where we actually wanted a "warm" or "rich" one. This is an issue that the "conclusive" scientific data simply overlooked.

[pianoman53]

You are now suddenly changing focus. I already know that an "ugly" tone can be the "right" one in a certain context, because I already said that myself in post #75.

And I said it in post 5 or something, but these people can't really see it.

[falala]

You are now suddenly changing focus. I already know that an "ugly" tone can be the "right" one in a certain context, because I already said that myself in post #75.

The issue is that one string can vibrate NATURALLY and freely (supported even by other, free strings in the higher and lower registers), and that will give a rich, beautiful, SINGING tone with a certain ideal balance of fundamental(s) and harmonics. But there are also circumstances that are outside of the natural range of that vibrating string that affect how naturally that string will vibrate. These can create higher and CONFLICTING harmonics that kill, overpower or whatever the natural sound of that string and create a "harsh" or "poor" sound where we actually wanted a "warm" or "rich" one.

What circumstances?

Are you referring to vibrations coming from other things than the string? The metalwork of the piano for example?

If you're still referring to the string, then higher harmonics are no less "natural" than lower ones.

Actually the best example of what you're talking about that I can think of, is the simultaneous sounding of different sets of overtone in a chord. The basic overtone series of the root of the chord (presuming a tonal context) will most certainly conflict with some of the overtones created by other notes of the chord. The command of voicing that the pianist has will most definitely have an effect on how this conflict is controlled.

When you consider the number of chords in a piece, and the rapidity with which they go past (making control of voicing difficult for the technically challenged), the effect of this upon the overall "sound" of the pianist is going to be huge.

[dima_76557]

What circumstances?

An aggressive thud on the keybed, for example, affects the whole action + the metal framework to which the string itself is attached. That's basically what happened in the Kissin example that was mentioned. He didn't time correctly (not into the point of sound, but into the keybed), there was a harsh thump instead of what was supposed to have been a very rich forte and after the numerous false high harmonics of the collision dissappeared (they always disappear rather quickly), we were left with the very poor echo of what he actually intended. The strings simply didn't get the chance to vibrate naturally because most of its properties were simply killed violently by interfering noise.

[falala]

And I said it in post 5 or something, but these people can't really see it.

I'm confused, I just looked back over the first page of the thread, and all the posts by you seem to be saying exactly what I'm saying - that the quality of a tone can only be judged in relation to its musical context. What am I "not seeing"?

I would certainly put this differently to Dima. It's not a question of hearing a note with lots of attack and high harmonics, but exactly right for its context, and thinking "ohh... that's UGLY - but I accept its ugliness". It's a question of not perceiving it as ugly. It's not just a question of exaggerated examples like Bartok, but even of the huge range of tones employed in classical and romantic repertoire.

Dima's description would imply that we have a preset idea of what a beautiful single tone is, we then listen to a piece of music, appraise every single event according to that idea and then make a separate judgment about whether the extent to which it departs from that idea is justified. I think this is absurd.

Even with an instrument like a trumpet or a violin, where it is much less controversial that the player has great control over the tone separately from dynamics, there is a huge range of tones that could be considered "beautiful". A trumpeter could play an extremely brilliant single note that I find beautiful, or an extremely mellow single note that I find beautiful, or all kinds of notes in between. The harmonic spectrum and attack envelope could be extremely different from one to another.

Some balances of harmonics create more sense of peace or repose; some create more sense of fullness; some create more sense of lightness; some create more sense of brilliance. But the idea that there is one - or even one narrow range - that creates "beauty" makes no sense. People just don't listen to music that way.

[falala]

An aggressive thud on the keybed, for example, affects the whole action + the metal framework to which the string itself is attached. That's basically what happened in the Kissin example that was mentioned. He didn't time correctly (not into the point of sound, but into the keybed), there was a harsh thump instead of what was supposed to have been a very rich forte and after the numerous false high harmonics of the collision dissappeared (they always disappear rather quickly), we were left with the very poor echo of what he actually intended. The strings simply didn't get the chance to vibrate naturally because most of its properties were simply killed violently by interfering noise.

Ah OK. That makes sense.

[awesom_o]

Is this something like what you mean?

No.

I'll try to explain what I mean. Stop thinking about it in terms of harmonics and acoustics.

Two pianists play the same passage. One is a first year undergrad performance student, and the other is the Head of Keyboard Studies at the Conservatoire.

The professional pianist renders the passage in a way that is both more smooth AND more colorful. The student will have minute, unintentional hard or jagged edges in the sound texture (tone), or moments when the harmonic texture is slightly threadbare, lacking in the musical richness which the composer has asked for.

The professional's tone will be seamless, and endlessly rich, without any unintentional happenings.  

This has to do with subtle control of articulation, timing, and pedaling that can only be acquired through years of experience.

In passages where the composer calls for huge FFF, the seasoned professional's tone is pure liquid. The less advanced pianist sounds as though he or she has reached the limit of what the instrument can deliver, and we hear that ceiling being reached as harshness in the sound. The professional has a vast reserve of energy which he doesn't need to use. He can push the very same piano to much higher limits, without ever giving the impression that the ceiling has been reached!

In pp passages, the novice will suffer from occasional notes not speaking, and though he plays quietly, his sound fails to project clearly to the back of the hall. The seasoned professional doesn't drop notes in this manner, and her tone, even at ppp, fills the hall with beautifully balanced, whisper-quiet magic.

Don't think of tone as being something static that you can have an AMOUNT of. Think instead of the MUSICAL INTENSITY as being something you can either have much of, or very little of (or somewhere in between).

I hope that helps

[falala]

awesome_o -

YES! Definitely. I agree with everything you wrote there. I particularly think the points about occasional things sticking out, and notes dropping out at pp are important. It's the degree to which a good professional can make EVERY gesture conform to the sound being aimed for that creates that sense of "liquid" sound you refer to. A less good player may well achieve the same sound on some individual notes and chords, but the effect will be compromised by the ones that either stick out or drop out, due to lack of consistent control.

As with everything, we don't listen to individual notes and chords, we listen to the music. Even when a single chord comes in after a rest and we go "OMG, that's beautiful", the mental and emotional state in which we form that impression is still conditioned by everything that came before.

[dima_76557]

Dima's description would imply that we have a preset idea of what a beautiful single tone is, we then listen to a piece of music, appraise every single event according to that idea and then make a separate judgment about whether the extent to which it departs from that idea is justified. I think this is absurd.

If I may, I'll correct what you understood from my words:

The piano manufacturer gave us something to work with and we cannot get more out of the instrument than what it was "born" with in terms of tone capability.

Most pianists, however, do a VERY poor job of getting the max out of the instrument in terms of sound (or should I say "tone"?) in all situations. What's worse: it seems to be entirely out of their focus. The very few who are indeed capable of creating real magic with piano tone as such are, of course, never judged by the quality of the ugly tones they manage to put in context, but rather by the quality of their "voice" in passages that are supposed to be "sung".

As in judging singers, this is not exclusively a matter of the artistic context, dynamics, agogics, etc., but also of the "voice", the "timbre" itself, what I call their "overtone signature" in even one single tone, which becomes recognizable after some specialized training in that direction (Oh, that's Rubinstein, that's Michelangeli, that's Horowitz, that's Katsaris, etc.).

That's why my comments were rather one-sided: I always meant one tone or tone combination only, and with a Belcanto quality only, because other contexts (which no sane musician will ever deny) would make the topic itself too complicated.

[awesom_o]

The piano can produce exceedingly multidimensional musical textures under the right hands.

At the professional level, teachers help you to realize this incredible fact and develop your tone to its fullest potential.

Brendel, in his book 'The Pianist's A to Z'  writes eloquently on the subject of musical depth:

"What I have in mind is not depth of feeling, but spatial, three-dimensional depth. Sound can be flat or spatial. A performance may sound two-or three-dimensional or suggest the plasticity of coutour in relief. It can simultaneously present not only a number of colours, but also a number of distances."

Personally, I usually find his writing to be slightly more interesting than his actual playing (in my household he bears the nickname Brendull) but he is certainly a wonderful artist, with a compelling point of view. I highly recommend the book to everyone!

[timothy42b]

The professional pianist renders the passage in a way that is both more smooth AND more colorful. The student will have minute, unintentional hard or jagged edges in the sound texture (tone), or moments when the harmonic texture is slightly threadbare, lacking in the musical richness which the composer has asked for.

The seasoned professional doesn't drop notes in this manner, and her tone, even at ppp, fills the hall with beautifully balanced, whisper-quiet magic.

Yes to the first sentence.   But that's not a difference in the tone produced by the strings, it's just a higher degree of perfection in articulation and voicing.

No to the second sentence.  You'd have to show me evidence one person's pp projects more than another's.  (That evidence exists for brass or voice, where higher frequencies or formants can be tweaked; it does not for piano.  If it did there would be no argument, it would be obvious on spectral analysis.) 

[nyiregyhazi]

If I may, I'll correct what you understood from my words:

The piano manufacturer gave us something to work with and we cannot get more out of the instrument than what it was "born" with in terms of tone capability.

Most pianists, however, do a VERY poor job of getting the max out of the instrument in terms of sound (or should I say "tone"?) in all situations. What's worse: it seems to be entirely out of their focus. The very few who are indeed capable of creating real magic with piano tone as such are, of course, never judged by the quality of the ugly tones they manage to put in context, but rather by the quality of their "voice" in passages that are supposed to be "sung".

As in judging singers, this is not exclusively a matter of the artistic context, dynamics, agogics, etc., but also of the "voice", the "timbre" itself, what I call their "overtone signature" in even one single tone, which becomes recognizable after some specialized training in that direction (Oh, that's Rubinstein, that's Michelangeli, that's Horowitz, that's Katsaris, etc.).

That's why my comments were rather one-sided: I always meant one tone or tone combination only, and with a Belcanto quality only, because other contexts (which no sane musician will ever deny) would make the topic itself too complicated.

I couldn't agree by this point. There's no question that the bulk of what we perceive as the sound of these artists is down to illusions generated by relative issues. I believe entirely that they all share an ability to produce a "purer" sound than a ham fisted amateur. There may even be more complex permutations, where separate notes can have slight variations that go beyond merely eliminating percussive thud. However I cannot possibly support the idea that a single tone can be imbued with something that is both unique to the artist and identifiable. At this point, we really are going into voodoo and this would absolutely have to be proven by experiment (not by analysing sound waves but by playing someone who claims to hear this single notes and measuring their success rate of identification). The "sound" of a great artist is always a combination of relative issues and an absolute ability to make purer tones than ordinary players, minus the thud. I'd say that that great artists collectively have access to similar things on mere single tones, that amateurs may not. But the equivalent to the voice of a singer would be a matter of illusions generated in how they combine things together.

When I gave the nyiregyhazi example, it was merely to illustrate that there is something that cannot be explained by consideration of velocity and relativity. Anyone who listens to the booming sound at the start of the Liszt rhapsody and tries to play that loud and pure without a massive percussive thud will fail, unless supremely gifted in terms of technique. Although it's easy for someone who is less than open minded to make armchair theories, these theories fall down the instant anyone tries to not only make that level of sound without thudding, but to to go on to play substantially louder still (as nyiregyhazi did). At this point, a person either discovered the rare capacity to sound like nyiregyhazi himself, or needs to have the humility to admit that relativity and velocity are not enough to explain the matter. It's interesting that one of those papers showed that the noise effect on the keybed comes BEFORE the string is sounded, in loud playing. As I pointed out earlier, any experiment that could not identify any scope for variance is clearly overwhelmingly suspect. Given that that the percussive thud comes first in high dynamics, it's even more clear that the sound is going vary based on manner of striking. There's not only one level of thud available for each hammer speed. The idea that harsh tone is always due to excess hammer speed (not to mention the ludicrous idea that percussive amateurs are might be playing louder than nyiregyhazi, as an explanation for their harsher tone) is bogus.

Anyway, when it comes to the Nyiregyhazi sound, I put it down not to any unique imprint at all. I'd say that that he was simply capable of avoiding the thud at louder dynamics than ordinary pianists, which is why he had more sounds to play with that did not involve inherent percussion. Couple that with issues of relative combinations and you have a rational explanation for both his sound and the difficulty in emulating it. I don't think we need to assume anything unique in individual notes. I'm happy to satisfy myself with the explanation that great pianists are simply less infected by extraneous thumps on keybeds and by the potential possibility that they can get the hammer to pass on longer vibrations (rather than abrupt ones followed by quicker decay). Although another poster seems intent on basing his arguments on the fallacy that existence of relative issues can serve as an argument against the existence of absolute ones, something as extreme as unique personal imprint on single notes would have be evidenced empirically, to be taken seriously.

[nyiregyhazi]

Yes to the first sentence.   But that's not a difference in the tone produced by the strings, it's just a higher degree of perfection in articulation and voicing.

No to the second sentence.  You'd have to show me evidence one person's pp projects more than another's.  (That evidence exists for brass or voice, where higher frequencies or formants can be tweaked; it does not for piano.  If it did there would be no argument, it would be obvious on spectral analysis.) 

I'm afraid it's not obvious at all as to what might be obvious on spectral analysis. You'll need to clarify this.

[falala]

Yes to the first sentence.   But that's not a difference in the tone produced by the strings, it's just a higher degree of perfection in articulation and voicing.

No to the second sentence.  You'd have to show me evidence one person's pp projects more than another's.  (That evidence exists for brass or voice, where higher frequencies or formants can be tweaked; it does not for piano.  If it did there would be no argument, it would be obvious on spectral analysis.) 

I agree with that. I think a similar factor comes into play as I referred to at the other end of the volume spectrum.

A pianist playing a whole long passage pp will have a particular idea in mind of what volume level is right to capture the spirit of the music, while still projecting to the back of the hall. (Of course a seasoned professional used to playing in big halls may have a more accurate idea of that, but leaving that aside for the moment...)

The player with a superb, disciplined technique will be able to play EVERY note at that level, or exactly how much away from that level they want to for the purposes of phrasing. The player with a lesser technique will attempt to do the same thing, but some notes will be too loud and ruin the effect, while others are too soft or worst of all, drop out altogether.

This will mean that the MUSICAL INTENTION of the first player will come over to the people sitting in the back rows with far more power, conviction and consistency. They find themselves sitting on the edge of their seats, spellbound. With the second player, they might feel similarly with the first few bars but the effect will fade with every note that is too soft or too loud. Since they are no longer focused on the musical intention, the only thing they'll be aware of is that someone is playing very softly.

We need to be very careful with the words we use to describe our reactions to music - even apparently straightforward ones like "soft" and "loud" - and not pretend that they are existing in a vacuum away from the music itself.

[nyiregyhazi]

This will mean that the MUSICAL INTENTION of the first player will come over to the people sitting in the back rows with far more power, conviction and consistency. They find themselves sitting on the edge of their seats, spellbound. With the second player, they might feel similarly with the first few bars but the effect will fade with every note that is too soft or too loud. Since they are no longer focused on the musical intention, the only thing they'll be aware of is that someone is playing very softly.

We need to be very careful with the words we use to describe our reactions to music - even apparently straightforward ones like "soft" and "loud" - and not pretend that they are existing in a vacuum away from the music itself.

Actually they do. We have decibel counters. That things are relative too does not negate absolute reality. Nobody mistakes ppp for FFF, so you need to appreciate that the fact things are subjective does not nullify objective realities. If you'd actually used your ears to listen to a range of Nyiregyhazi recordings (rather than gone on ad infinitum about how everything is relative anyway) you'd quickly have come to see how much consistently louder his manner of playing primary notes is, compared to regular pianists. Had you then tried to recreate his sound by purely subjective means, you'd also have discovered that it just cannot be done without genuinely playing at a notably higher absolute volume than normal pianists- and one at which amateur pianists can rarely avoid consistent thuds.

I have no firm opinion on the idea of a projected PPP, but it's notable that your every argument tries to bring it back to the idea that everything has to be explained without any reference to anything but hammer velocities and relativity. Why? Have you not read the papers which Dima_ogorodnikov linked? Did you not notice how clearly they demonstrate the dubious quality of the papers that have argued tone to be only about a hammer velocity? Why on earth do you still seem to have some kind of religious attachment to the empirically dubious idea that tone is impossible? You're not arguing from a place of rational grounding, but based on religious adherence to findings that have been demonstrated to be highly questionable. Why not keep an open mind and actually wonder about these things, rather than keep trying to force it back to a narrow-minded explanation that is on extraordinarily shaky ground?

[dima_76557]

something as extreme as unique personal imprint on single notes would have be evidenced empirically, to be taken seriously.

Here is a nice one to practise:

The pianists I mentioned where not accidentally chosen. Try distinguishing Michelangeli with eyes closed among all the others in the link. I am sure you can if you have listened to him before, and even if you don't know these particular recordings, because of his pedant attitude towards the quality of every single tone pianistically no matter whatever the context is. You can basically "freeze" any audio clip with him in it at any spot and you can still say: that's him. Never will you hear any separate tone that even hints at metal or harshness; it's always velvet. Never will you hear him sacrificing his pedantic tone ideals for the sake of expression, even if it would actually be required. That makes his "signature" unique.

The same is true for some of what Katsaris does when he does his incredible finger-lifting-and-dropping thing. I can recognize him much like a mother who recognizes her child in a crowd by the overtone signature of its voice. The sound of "the Swan" I linked to earlier is so powerful, even if a separate fragment is taken completely out of context, that it can be recognized - oh, that's him. Arrau is also a piece of cake to recognize, especially in his fortes. Richter and many others would be harder, for example; I really would need context there.

[nyiregyhazi]

Here is a nice one to practise:

The pianists I mentioned where not accidentally chosen. Try distinguishing Michelangeli with eyes closed among all the others in the link. I am sure you can if you have listened to him before, and even if you don't know these particular recordings, because of his pedant attitude towards the quality of every single tone pianistically no matter whatever the context is. You can basically "freeze" any audio clip with him in it at any spot and you can still say: that's him. Never will you hear any separate tone that even hints at metal or harshness. Never will you hear him sacrificing his pedantic tone ideals for the sake of expression, even if it would actually be required. That makes his "signature" unique.

The same is true for some of what Katsaris does when he does his incredible finger-lifting-and-dropping thing. I can recognize him much like a mother who recognizes her child in a crowd by the overtone signature of its voice. The sound of "the Swan" I linked to earlier is so powerful, even if a separate fragment is taken completely out of context, that it can be recognized - oh, that's him. Arrau is also a piece of cake to recognize, especially in his fortes. Richter and many others would be harder, for example; I really would need context there.

Sure. But it really does have to be single tones. Otherwise, the relativity factor cannot be taken away from the perception of the "voice". It's the consistency of precision that identifies Michelangeli. Not any one individual note on it's own.

Much as I've argued that relativity is not enough to explain everything (and especially not the Nyiregyhazi sound), absolute qualities of one note do not signify the artist. The combination of absolute and relative issues on their overall sound carries the "voice".

[falala]

I have no firm opinion on the idea of a projected PPP, but it's notable that your every argument tries to bring it back to the idea that everything has to be explained without any reference to anything but hammer velocities and relativity. Why? Have you not read the papers which Dima_ogorodnikov linked? Did you not notice how clearly they demonstrate the dubious quality of the papers that have argued tone to be only about a hammer velocity? Why on earth do you still seem to have some kind of religious attachment to the empirically dubious idea that tone is impossible? You're not arguing from a place of rational grounding, but based on religious adherence to findings that have been demonstrated to be highly questionable. Why not keep an open mind and actually wonder about these things, rather than keep trying to force it back to a narrow-minded explanation that is on extraordinarily shaky ground?

A lot of questions . . .

I'm sorry if I didn't make myself clearer before. I have no desire to discuss this with you any more.

You don't read my replies to your questions. You completely misunderstand my points, in crucial ways turning them into the OPPOSITE of what I have actually written. Which is fine as far as it goes; we all make mistakes.  But when I try to clarify what I actually meant it doesn't help; you just misunderstand that and convince yourself that it's all my fault.

What you have written above continues to ascribe points of view to me that I have never expressed, and you don't seem to entertain the slightest notion that you may have some responsibility for moderating this and understanding what I have actually expressed.

Sorry, life is too short. Learn to read, and get back to me.

[dima_76557]

No to the second sentence.  You'd have to show me evidence one person's pp projects more than another's.  (That evidence exists for brass or voice, where higher frequencies or formants can be tweaked; it does not for piano.  If it did there would be no argument, it would be obvious on spectral analysis.) 

You would have to make sure first that there are no bugs in the software that controls the equipment. I know of one such experiment here in Moscow, but it turned out that the analyzer didn't catch C6 and all its parameters, which dramatically turned the test results into scrap. Nothing outdoes the human ear, really. Your ears in the back of a hall would prove you decisively which pianist penetrates with his/her pp tone, and which one doesn't.

[nyiregyhazi]

A lot of questions . . .

I'm sorry if I didn't make myself clearer before. I have no desire to discuss this with you any more.

You don't read my replies to your questions. You completely misunderstand my points, in crucial ways turning them into the OPPOSITE of what I have actually written. Which is fine as far as it goes; we all make mistakes.  But when I try to clarify what I actually meant it doesn't help; you just misunderstand that and convince yourself that it's all my fault.

What you have written above continues to ascribe points of view to me that I have never expressed, and you don't seem to entertain the slightest notion that you may have some responsibility for moderating this and understanding what I have actually expressed.

Sorry, life is too short. Learn to read, and get back to me.

No, you didn't try these things in practise. You just made irrelevant armchair postulations without actually exploring what I presented to you. So I repeated myself. It's when a person sits at a piano and tries and fails to recreate the booming sound nyiregyhazi makes at the start of the rhapsody (without thudding the keys percussively against the key beds in a completely audible way- as is fully evidenced in the paper from dima_ogorodnikov) that they discover the meaning of what I presented to you. Not when they simply retort with casual armchair speculations, robbed of attempt to explore the issues in a practical reality or to learn anything from the experiments. If you don't care to reference theory with practise, theory has no value.

Not one of your follow up posts has suggested that you've actually tried to explore these issues on a practical level, before casually seeking to dismiss things via abuse of the "everything is subjective" line. Dynamics are objective too and it's in objective reality that you will fail to do what nyiregyhazi could do, if you attempt it merely with reference to velocity and idle speculations about relativity alone.

Go to a piano and discover for yourself that toning down dynamics and trying to depend on relativity does not produce that level of absolute sound. And then discover that trying to move hammers faster merely gives thuds and lumps that do not carry or resonate like that. Then try having the curiosity and open mindedness to wonder about what alternative explanations exist, once you've used up the hopelessly inadequate theoretical attempts you made to explain the matter.

[chopin2015]

Here is a nice one to practise:

The pianists I mentioned where not accidentally chosen. Try distinguishing Michelangeli with eyes closed among all the others in the link. I am sure you can if you have listened to him before, and even if you don't know these particular recordings, because of his pedant attitude towards the quality of every single tone pianistically no matter whatever the context is. You can basically "freeze" any audio clip with him in it at any spot and you can still say: that's him. Never will you hear any separate tone that even hints at metal or harshness; it's always velvet. Never will you hear him sacrificing his pedantic tone ideals for the sake of expression, even if it would actually be required. That makes his "signature" unique.

The same is true for some of what Katsaris does when he does his incredible finger-lifting-and-dropping thing. I can recognize him much like a mother who recognizes her child in a crowd by the overtone signature of its voice. The sound of "the Swan" I linked to earlier is so powerful, even if a separate fragment is taken completely out of context, that it can be recognized - oh, that's him. Arrau is also a piece of cake to recognize, especially in his fortes. Richter and many others would be harder, for example; I really would need context there.

yes! michelangeli is a great example! i do like the idea of a unique overtone series being present only with a given performer.

p.s. richter always plays the sad notes extra sad and humble and the happy notes with a childlike happiness. or something like that.
i understand this could be just a way i tell performances of the same piece apart, but would you ever confuse richter with Zimmerman? their playing styles are completely different anyways, as is their approach to technique. i feel that this has to influence tone and musicality. i like them both but they sound different, no matter what. also, i recently learnt the difference between a hamburg steinway and a new york steinway. there is definitely a difference in overtones here, and i believe the new york one has a very open high register that kinda sounds like if a bird is singing really close to you and the hamburg has a very clean cut pronounced high register, but i don't like it. i swear michelangeli sounds like a badass custom new york steinway, allowing the high notes to sing like a girl using her head voice.

i dont agree with awesome completely. a professional pianist's sound and tone does not have everything to do with endless reserve of power as endless reserve of power has to do with unbroken connection of mind to body and body to piano. i was taught that if you stiffen your elbows and slap the piano instead of release, it really does create a dissonant effect, as opposed to same volume hands relaxed and you push from "the center of your back" my prof. said, and it sounds warmer and naturally expands as sound should when you play correctly.

[chopin2015]

and funny, dima. i swear the first 3 clips in your video are definitely of a hamburg steinway. michelengeli playing berceuse in d flat Chopin. definitely not a hamburg steinway. will post clip in a sec.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IlD3xuoT49U

good berceuse


and, you can obviously hear the hall in the back, at the end of the piece.

[thalbergmad]

I agree with post numbered 21046 written on 21st March 2024.

Thal

[chopin2015]

nvm

[timothy42b]

Nothing outdoes the human ear, really. Your ears in the back of a hall would prove you decisively which pianist penetrates with his/her pp tone, and which one doesn't.

There are those who claim that some tones project better than others despite having identical volume and harmonic content.  Projection is some magical quality instilled by intent.  Hogwash of course.

What I expect the spectral analysis would show is that the harmonic content of a pp tone is the same for any pianist playing at the same dynamic level.  If it did not, I would have to concede tone.

I believe the equipment will detect changes the ear will not.  This is because I am a brass player and we are forever arguing the effect of alloy material on tone.  There is a set of well run experiments using different thickness brass bells and sophisticated listeners.  None of the listeners could discriminate beyond chance, but surprisingly the spectrum analyzer did. 

[richard black]

... in such extreme cases as nyiregyhazi, mere relativity cannot begin to explain all. ...

It's possible that he could simply play louder than anyone else, but I doubt it. Don't forget that many of his recordings are highly unreliable as they were made with dodgy equipment and variously fudged before release to get them to sound acceptable/impressive/something.

However, I see absolutely no reason to believe that Nyiregyhazi did anything more arcane than playing loud, with unusually good control of relative dynamics at the same time. The problem with most players is that they focus on the 'loud' bit without worrying about the relative bit. He obviously transcended that, as have done many great players - Gilels, Ogdon, Stevenson, Hamelin, Argerich... Ogdon in particular was a man of fearsome strength (eyewitnesses swear to having seen him bend the keybed of a Steinway, astonishing if true because it's amazingly rigid, and I'll never forget him helping me to unload a gigantic tape recorder, picking it up as it if were a small briefcase), but on a bad day he too was quite capable of banging and clattering carelessly.

[richard black]

There are those who claim that some tones project better than others despite having identical volume and harmonic content.  Projection is some magical quality instilled by intent.  Hogwash of course.
...
I believe the equipment will detect changes the ear will not.  This is because I am a brass player and we are forever arguing the effect of alloy material on tone.  There is a set of well run experiments using different thickness brass bells and sophisticated listeners.  None of the listeners could discriminate beyond chance, but surprisingly the spectrum analyzer did. 

Good points. When the harmonic content is _not_ the same, as in the case of different singers singing the same passage each with their individual voice and technique, projection can be quite astonishing. A good friend of mine sang many times with Birgit Nilsson, including moments of 'Walküre' when she was actually in his arms, and he said her voice at point-blank range was not particularly alarming, certainly one of the gentler-sounding Brünnhildes he knew. Yet hers was the only voice to penetrate 3 concrete walls to the admin offices at Bayreuth. If you could bottle that formula and sell it you could make a lot of money!

[nyiregyhazi]

It's possible that he could simply play louder than anyone else, but I doubt it. Don't forget that many of his recordings are highly unreliable as they were made with dodgy equipment and variously fudged before release to get them to sound acceptable/impressive/something.

However, I see absolutely no reason to believe that Nyiregyhazi did anything more arcane than playing loud, with unusually good control of relative dynamics at the same time. The problem with most players is that they focus on the 'loud' bit without worrying about the relative bit. He obviously transcended that, as have done many great players - Gilels, Ogdon, Stevenson, Hamelin, Argerich... Ogdon in particular was a man of fearsome strength (eyewitnesses swear to having seen him bend the keybed of a Steinway, astonishing if true because it's amazingly rigid, and I'll never forget him helping me to unload a gigantic tape recorder, picking it up as it if were a small briefcase), but on a bad day he too was quite capable of banging and clattering carelessly.

I wouldn't say that he necessarily reaches higher decibel levels that than all other pianists (although I'd say he probably does compared to 99 percent or more of today's average pro thumpers). My primary point is that he can go much further than amateurs and average circuit pros before the percussive effect comes into play. When he plays his absolute loudest, percussion does sometimes come into it, but it's just not yet there at levels where it would already have be quite audible from ordinary players. Obviously control is a huge issue, but it can't fully explain why he can play at such high absolute volumes without thuds. Punching notes fast can theoretically be controlled every bit as much. But it doesn't resonate the same - even on one note into an open pedal. The very first few bass of notes of his highly altered version of Liszt's il trovatore arrangement are just astonishing. You can't make that sound without genuinely playing rather loud, yet traditional ideas about simply moving keys faster will not allow anyone to make that type of bell like tone.

It's easy to question recordings but there are no shortage of different sources of nyiregyhazi on record. They all show the big sound, fromm cassette recordings to professionally recorded sources. Schoenberg spoke of his amazement at the sonority many years before he was recorded. Ogdon is one of few who could reasonably be put side by side at times. His sound in the opening of the Busoni concerto is extraordinarily reminiscent of the effortless big sound that Nyiregyhazi is associated with. Few pianists can reach that level without bringing major percussion from key on keybed and spoiling the sound. Kissin couldn't even avoid it on the first octave of the fantasy impromptu. I've heard him making those thumps in some of the most ordinary dynamic levels.

[falala]

Nothing outdoes the human ear, really. Your ears in the back of a hall would prove you decisively which pianist penetrates with his/her pp tone, and which one doesn't.

Again, that's really not true. The problem is that it's not the human EAR that processes sound and makes judgments about it. It's the human BRAIN. The number of uncontrollable variables in how peoples' aural perception interacts with their thoughts, emotions, expectations and everything else is just too vast to draw meaningful data from.

This isn't a question of being inhuman and thinking computers are better than people or anything. It's just a question of using computers for what they're good for - making objective, analytical judgments about whether things are identical based on nothing but the actual facts involved.

You shouldn't be so resistant to this. I don't think anyone here is in any disagreement that some pianists produce a quality of sound when they play a PIECE (which is all that matters) that is very different from others. The only argument is about HOW that difference is created, and we're all working from a combination of incomplete data, rationalisation and educated guesswork. If a computer can help to eliminate some of the possibilities because they aren't actually true, then that's got to be of benefit to everybody.

[dima_76557]

What I expect the spectral analysis would show is that the harmonic content of a pp tone is the same for any pianist playing at the same dynamic level.  If it did not, I would have to concede tone.

I wouldn't bet my money on it if I were you because you will lose it for sure. There's nothing more difficult than sending a good, balanced, and intense pianissimo to the back corners of a hall filled with people. The energy of a pro will go where it has to go - into the point of sound with the instrument doing the projecting (if it's a good instrument, of course), but the energy of a lesser god will most likely partly be wasted, strings will be missed or poorly sounded, etc., and the result will be poor. That kind of timing takes years and years to learn to accomplish without fail.

[awesom_o]

There's nothing more difficult than sending a good, balanced, and intense pianissimo to the back corners of a hall filled with people. The energy of a pro will go where it has to go - into the point of sound with the instrument doing the projecting (if it's a good instrument, of course), but the energy of a lesser god will most likely partly be wasted, strings will be missed or poorly sounded, etc., and the result will be poor. That kind of timing takes years and years to learn to accomplish without fail.

 
Correct!

[falala]

I wouldn't bet my money on it if I were you because you will lose it for sure. There's nothing more difficult than sending a good, balanced, and intense pianissimo to the back corners of a hall filled with people. The energy of a pro will go where it has to go - into the point of sound with the instrument doing the projecting (if it's a good instrument, of course), but the energy of a lesser god will most likely partly be wasted, strings will be missed or poorly sounded, etc., and the result will be poor. That kind of timing takes years and years to learn to accomplish without fail.

"Strings will be missed"?

Do you mean some notes won't sound (as several of us noted above, in the case of a poorer technique playing pp) or that a poorer player will somehow send the hammer in the wrong direction? 

Presumeably the former, in which case - no argument there! Notes that are not played don't project to the back of the hall as well as those that are. That much is certain!

[dima_76557]

You shouldn't be so resistant to this.

I am not as resistant to this as you think. I am just wondering why all our advanced equipment is UNABLE to catch certain aspects of tone in a hall when we replay and listen to a concert we ourselves were the other day. You will miss more than half of the listening experience.

I also happen to sit in competitions a lot, preferably in critical places for a good listening experience and what I described here happens there all the time - most can do nothing, but some can bring an instrument that was already beaten to death to life again and make it sound as if it were new. I am talking sound quality, not "interpretations" and such.

[dima_76557]

"Strings will be missed"?

Do you mean some notes won't sound (as several of us noted above, in the case of a poorer technique playing pp) or that a poorer player will somehow send the hammer in the wrong direction?  

Presumeably the former, in which case - no argument there! Notes that are not played don't project to the back of the hall as well as those that are. That much is certain!

"Missed" as in: they will not vibrate as intended, if anything was intended at all, because inexperienced pianists will mostly be too busy trying to press those keys carefully enough. Just imagine if it's too loud; they will look like fools. No sound - even worse.

[nyiregyhazi]

Again, that's really not true. The problem is that it's not the human EAR that processes sound and makes judgments about it. It's the human BRAIN. The number of uncontrollable variables in how peoples' aural perception interacts with their thoughts, emotions, expectations and everything else is just too vast to draw meaningful data from.

This isn't a question of being inhuman and thinking computers are better than people or anything. It's just a question of using computers for what they're good for - making objective, analytical judgments about whether things are identical based on nothing but the actual facts involved.

You shouldn't be so resistant to this. I don't think anyone here is in any disagreement that some pianists produce a quality of sound when they play a PIECE (which is all that matters) that is very different from others. The only argument is about HOW that difference is created, and we're all working from a combination of incomplete data, rationalisation and educated guesswork. If a computer can help to eliminate some of the possibilities because they aren't actually true, then that's got to be of benefit to everybody.

True to an extent, but actually the human brain is often far better than machines. Look at the cziffra volume 2 of transcriptions published by Peters. Machines are very poor at distinguishing separate tones from an overall sound. Volume 1 is excellent and extremely well executed by human ears. Volume 2 is a sad joke, where computers made an appalling job of translating a recording into its constituent components. The ear of someone like volodos is far more adept at accurately separating individual pitches and determining them each. On an objective level, technology is still definably inferior. It's why you still cannot edit a single note out of a recording, merely by changing the sound spectrum. Technology is not up to the job. So, on the objective level, the ear can be far more adept at decoding sounds than a computer is, regardless of what we also know about subjectivity in the brain.

If we took your above comment to the full, we wouldn't be able to even declare whether an objectively quiet note we heard could accurately be called loud or quiet, unless we first recorded decibel levels. Subjectivity does not negate objectivity of perception outright. You can't just dismiss everything there is that way. There's a difference between sensible skepticism and irrational cynicism (that is actually rooted more in the desire to be casually dismissive about any information that conflicts with a desired belief system, than in rationality).

[timothy42b]

If we are took your above comment to the full, we wouldn't be able to even declare whether an objectively quiet note we heard could accurately be called loud or quiet, unless we first recorded decibel levels.

That's not really what he said.

Decibel levels are less important than harmonic content when listening.

Back in the 70s I played in the band accompanying Rafael Mendez a couple of times.  That guy could play!  His fortissimo could peel paint.  If you recorded it and played it back at the threshhold of hearing, you would still know those notes had been played loud, by the harmonic content.  The same would be true if you took one of his quiet notes and amplified it - it would sound like a pp note because of the ratio of upper harmonics. 

The same is true of piano.  Notes played quietly have a different spectrum from notes played loudly.  But there's a difference.  There are other ways to shape the harmonic content of a trumpet note that are not available to the pianist.  For a given string and inharmonicity index, the volume of the note determines the harmonic content.  And the harmonic content is what we hear at the back of the concert hall.   

[falala]

I am not as resistant to this as you think. I am just wondering why all our advanced equipment is UNABLE to catch certain aspects of tone in a hall when we replay and listen to a concert we ourselves were the other day. You will miss more than half of the listening experience.

That's simple. Clearly no recording can capture "the listening experience". Noone is saying it can, because the listening experience is created by the complex interaction of many different factors. It's silly to raise that as even relevant to the question of whether a recording can capture the overtone balance of an isolated sound wave, because the answer to that is indisputably that it can.

What you seem resistant to is distinguishing between the human aspect of the total musical experience and specific facts about certain ingredients that contribute to that experience, which can be ascertained by experiment and analysis. Embracing the latter does not mean treading on the toes of the former, which will always be greater than the sum of its parts.

If we discover that a pianist's unique tone is only due to manipulation of velocity, legato and pedal, then that gives us information to go on in our own playing and teaching. Likewise if we discover that it's actually due to control of acceleration of the hammers. None of that's going to depersonalise music, compromise the totality of it or make it any harder for up and coming pianists to develop a great sound of their own. On the contrary, it should make it easier.

It's only a question of seeking accurate information. What we do with that information is a whole different story.

[dima_76557]

What you seem resistant to is distinguishing between the human aspect of the total musical experience and specific facts about certain ingredients that contribute to that experience, which can be ascertained by experiment and analysis. Embracing the latter does not mean treading on the toes of the former, which will always be greater than the sum of its parts.

I think I am still giving you the wrong impression. I'll try it this way:

1) I know from my own experience where to sit in the hall to get the most of the sound. Any other place will give me less tone for my money. That is a fact, nothing subjective about it and other experienced concert-goers can confirm that. I think it could scientifically be proven why that is so, why the sound of a piano goes over the heads of the ones who sit in the first six rows without really reaching their ears, and i am more than surprised that technicians put their microphones into the instrument itself and in places where sound capturing is far from ideal; too close to the instrument.

2) I am now working on Liszt's Legend no. 2: "St. Francis of Paola walking on the water". I can play it in all aspects except: in my version, St. Francis is still walking on the sand of the sea shore for the time being; it's fluent and stuff and in accordance with EVERYTHING in the score, but it's not the waves yet that are needed to portray this most remarkable feat by this exalted saint in stormy weather.

In order to find the sound quality of the water and not make poor St. Francis drown in pedal, you have to think about the PHYSICAL movements that cause that sound quality, because it's mostly left hand work that brings the risk with it of getting muddy. I have found the right movements now, and there's only one type of movement that will help me paint that picture. This has NOTHING to do with dynamics as such, though; it's timing, timing, timing, tone, tone, tone with zero tolerance for less result, without interrupting the musical flow, and without giving people the impression that it's a Hanon exercise. Touch is technique and technique is touch. There is no other principle to get artistic results.

[nyiregyhazi]

That's not really what he said.

Decibel levels are less important than harmonic content when listening.

Back in the 70s I played in the band accompanying Rafael Mendez a couple of times.  That guy could play!  His fortissimo could peel paint.  If you recorded it and played it back at the threshhold of hearing, you would still know those notes had been played loud, by the harmonic content.  The same would be true if you took one of his quiet notes and amplified it - it would sound like a pp note because of the ratio of upper harmonics.  

The same is true of piano.  Notes played quietly have a different spectrum from notes played loudly.  But there's a difference.  There are other ways to shape the harmonic content of a trumpet note that are not available to the pianist.  For a given string and inharmonicity index, the volume of the note determines the harmonic content.  And the harmonic content is what we hear at the back of the concert hall.    

Based on the papers linked by dima_ogorodnikov, it's perfectly possible that the manner of strike could change these factors too. It's neither proven nor disproven as a factor.

Also, the rest of what you said is exactly what I'm saying. Earlier, the poster tried to casually dismiss the unique factors of the nyiregyhazi sound by merely saying that impression of volume is subjective. That's not good enough to dismiss what the ear can accurately perceive via such information. A person cannot casually dismiss whatever they please from consideration, merely because aspects of hearing are subjective. Funnily enough, he actually did attempt to argue that merely turning the volume up and down will trick the ear. He scarcely stopped short of saying that nobody can deem an individual sound loud or quiet, because it's too subjective. As detailed in the last post, not only does the ear have countless objective capacities but it also has ones which are inherently superior to machinery. A good human ear is far better at objectively analysing the individual notes within a particular chord than a computer is.

Given how poor a computer is at breaking down a sound into components, I don't believe that there's any grounds for machinery to analyse this. Also, when we're dealing in subjective issues, many subjective issues are consistent. For example, playing an inner voice slightly later reliably draws any human hear towards it, even when played with a little less volume, than when it has to compete with other simultaneous notes. So the consistently created illusion that humans naturally receive is actually far more important than an hypothetical decibel analysis of each note. The raw data is less important because it fails to account for a consistent issue of how all humans hear. Subjective issues aren't always unique to a single person's impression, but based on absolutes about human hearing in general- which is what all music passes through. There could be plenty of other mechanisms by which a pianist is objectively better at playing quieter but making it register in the human ear in general, but that no analysis of sound waves would shed any obvious light on. Even when dealing in relativity, a single sound could be imbued with an absolute quality that makes it better at competing in relation to other sounds. There's no reason to be anything but open minded.

[chopin2015]

@falala

nowadays, you can record at a much higher sample rate, and with microphones that provide a flat response, such as the earthworks qtc50s. not to mention, surround sound. you can even throw a few mics in the piano, pick up some of the percussion sounds and the reflections, which is really all the pianist mostly hears, anyways.

but really, the audience is an important factor in a musical recording, where bodies absorb sound and cycle the energy from the pianist through them and back to the pianist. this is how we understand music, not just because someone feels somethig and plays the piano. if a pianist is insensitive and unaware of the audience's presence, what is the point of dynamics? just a skill? or will you excite the listener while they are listening? the audience makes a performance fun and physically affects the sound quality of a venue, absorbing good, effective sounds, creating a conductive link between the pianist and adapted space...recordings work only a little differently, where there is a much lower threshold before peak...

tone is a simulation of a situation where specific aspects in piano playing and performance are flexible and are in the pianist's control...is what some were able to assert.

im going to stop rambling here now, and ignore this thread hereafter, seeing as I am just talking to myself here. thanks and f... this.  

[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.

My thumb is not pushing my fingers over it when it depresses. The arm/hand are moving continuously. I was reacting to this statement " But if the thumb doesn't act to automatically lift your fingers over the top..."  I don't use my thumb like this, but the hand does not collapse as the hand form is constant. Hope that help clear this up.

Nick

[nyiregyhazi]

My thumb is not pushing my fingers over it when it depresses. The arm/hand are moving continuously. I was reacting to this statement " But if the thumb doesn't act to automatically lift your fingers over the top..."  I don't use my thumb like this, but the hand does not collapse as the hand form is constant. Hope that help clear this up.

Nick

I should just clarify- it's not necessarily about lifting fingers up in the final product, but just being sure that the thumb is fully doing its job and that nothing is repressing the natural reactions to the thumb motion. When the thumb moves a key, there's a reaction that comes back. I get students to use the thumb to the lift the finger ultra high as a practise method- that both gets the thumb active and teaches the muscles that might try to block the reactions with stiffness to get out of the way and let go. Virtually every student I see fails to make room at first, and cannot physically open their hand over the thumb because there is so much needless downward force. Lifting over allows them to perceive it and release it- by striving for length in the arm rather than downforce. In the final product, the perception is only of the thumb moving the key and of this triggering the rest of the hand to flick straight into position via the free transmission of the reaction. If there's even a trace of deliberate effort in bringing the fingers towards the next keys (when thumb is passed to start a new position), something is blocking the reaction that would have done it for free, and trapping those fingers into a fixed position. If the hand is truly free, merely to move the thumb sends fingers into an automatic realignment. Everything in the wrist is passive, with no sense of reaching in that sensitive area.

Even a trace of downward arm pressure or stiffness can completely block that effortless realignment, which is why more extreme versions of using the thumb action to lift the fingers over are typically needed first. Once you know how to make room for the hand to open around the thumb, it becomes possible to exploit the reactions as a positive.

See the first three exercises in the youtube video on this post:

https://pianoscience.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/action-and-reaction-in-practise-part-i.html

Even the slightest problem with performing those movements to the full will show up as an impeding tightness in more concise ones. The whole arm need to be free to both allow and respond to such movements, with nothing tightened.

[falala]

@falala

nowadays, you can record at a much higher sample rate, and with microphones that provide a flat response, such as the earthworks qtc50s. not to mention, surround sound. you can even throw a few mics in the piano, pick up some of the percussion sounds and the reflections, which is really all the pianist mostly hears, anyways.

but really, the audience is an important factor in a musical recording, where bodies absorb sound and cycle the energy from the pianist through them and back to the pianist. this is how we understand music, not just because someone feels somethig and plays the piano. if a pianist is insensitive and unaware of the audience's presence, what is the point of dynamics? just a skill? or will you excite the listener while they are listening? the audience makes a performance fun and physically affects the sound quality of a venue, absorbing good, effective sounds, creating a conductive link between the pianist and adapted space...recordings work only a little differently, where there is a much lower threshold before peak...

tone is a simulation of a situation where specific aspects in piano playing and performance are flexible and are in the pianist's control...is what some were able to assert.

None of that changes anything.

It goes without saying that if we're going to compare via analysis of a recording, two pianists playing the same single note with the same velocity, we have to make sure that ALL other factors are controlled for.

I suppose theoretically one could do this by recording them with an audience in the hall and insisting the audience sit perfectly still, but practically speaking that wouldn't work. You would have to record them in an empty hall. The point is: if the waves turned out to be identical, then the way any particular audience interacted with them by soaking up reverb etc would also be identical.

If OTOH you're referring to the fact that one pianist RESPONDS to the audience better, and adapts his sound and timing and everything else to them better, then sure - that's undoubtedly true. It just has nothing to do with whether a single note can be played at a single velocity with different timbres. If it can't, then by definition the pianist can't be using control of timbre independent of dynamics when he is adapting. He can only be using timbre as a function of dynamics.

[falala]

If we are took your above comment to the full, we wouldn't be able to even declare whether an objectively quiet note we heard could accurately be called loud or quiet, unless we first recorded decibel levels.

That's not really what he said.

Decibel levels are less important than harmonic content when listening.

Back in the 70s I played in the band accompanying Rafael Mendez a couple of times.  That guy could play!  His fortissimo could peel paint.  If you recorded it and played it back at the threshhold of hearing, you would still know those notes had been played loud, by the harmonic content.  The same would be true if you took one of his quiet notes and amplified it - it would sound like a pp note because of the ratio of upper harmonics.  

The same is true of piano.  Notes played quietly have a different spectrum from notes played loudly.  But there's a difference.  There are other ways to shape the harmonic content of a trumpet note that are not available to the pianist.  For a given string and inharmonicity index, the volume of the note determines the harmonic content.  And the harmonic content is what we hear at the back of the concert hall.

The statement you're responding to seems to suggest that if we hear two sounds and decide on the basis of our ears that the first is louder than the second, but then measure them scientifically and discover that the second is actually a small percentage of a decibel louder than the first, we should still call the first "objectively" louder. So self-reported human human experience is now "objective" and the results of scientific measurement "subjective".  

We need to remember that these are not in themselves value-laden terms. Objective judgments are not "better" than subjective ones. Indeed, in music (as opposed to the science of sound) it's ultimately only subjective ones that matter. But good quality sound analysis equipment properly used doesn't make elemental mistakes like this. If it says that one sound is 0.1db louder than another sound at the place of recording, then that is simply what it is.

What it DOES show is exactly what you say here and I've been saying all along (and which is such a universally recognised fact in all areas of music and acoustics that I can't believe it's even being treated as controversial): that there are more things contributing to our experience of the loudness of music than sheer decibel level.

[falala]

.

[nyiregyhazi]

The statement you're responding to seems to suggest that if we hear two sounds and decide on the basis of our ears that the first is louder than the second, but then measure them scientifically and discover that the second is actually a small percentage of a decibel louder than the first, we should still call the first "objectively" louder. So self-reported human human experience is now "objective" and the results of scientific measurement "subjective".  

We need to remember that these are not in themselves value-laden terms. Objective judgments are not "better" than subjective ones. Indeed, in music (as opposed to the science of sound) it's ultimately only subjective ones that matter. But good quality sound analysis equipment properly used doesn't make elemental mistakes like this. If it says that one sound is 0.1db louder than another sound at the place of recording, then that is simply what it is.

What it DOES show is exactly what you say here and I've been saying all along (and which is such a universally recognised fact in all areas of music and acoustics that I can't believe it's even being treated as controversial): that there are more things contributing to our experience of the loudness of music than sheer decibel level.

How convenient that you chose an example where the ear got it wrong. The point is that you cannot cite subjectivity to imply that the ear necessarily DID get it wrong and should thus be written off, merely because it does not suit your predetermined opinions. The ear may get it wrong in subtle differences, but it is quite capable of judging notable absolute differences too. Nyiregyhazi plays the bass line at the start or the liszt rhapsody with a much higher absolute volume than ordinary pianists achieve with great force. That is not a trick of subjectivity and had you listened properly, you would not have made such foolish theories as you did to casually dismiss the example I presented.

The ear is not always wrong, merely because some illusions are also possible.

[nyiregyhazi]

None of that changes anything. It goes without saying that if we're going to compare via analysis of a recording, two pianists playing the same single note with the same velocity, we have to make sure that ALL other factors are controlled for. I suppose theoretically one could do this by recording them with an audience in the hall and insisting the audience sit perfectly still, but practically speaking that wouldn't work. You would have to record them in an empty hall. The point is: if the waves turned out to be identical, then the way any particular audience interacted with them by soaking up reverb etc would also be identical. If OTOH you're referring to the fact that one pianist RESPONDS to the audience better, and adapts his sound and timing and everything else to them better, then sure - that's undoubtedly true. It just has nothing to do with whether a single note can be played at a single velocity with different timbres. If it can't, then by definition the pianist can't be using control of timbre independent of dynamics when he is adapting. He can only be using timbre as a function of dynamics.

What makes the post so amusing is that dima_76557already produced papers that show variance in identical volumes. Your conjectures are pointless and exist in a hypothetical situation that is now obsolete, because differences are indeed picked up im sound waves. Stop hanging on assumptions based upon bogus evidence and open your mind! As I suggested earlier in the thread, the paper demonstrates that sounds waves were not always identical. It would be insane to think that there's only a single quality of thump available against Keybed for a given sound volume. Any evidence that suggests that thus would always have to be be in a perfectly constant relation to the volume of the sound is totally implausible. Apaper also revealed that the thump actually occurs BEFORE the musical sound at high volumes. So it's hardly a stretch to believe that it has a chance to register in a sensitive ear.

It's time for you to let go of your baffling romanticised attachment to something so anti-romantic as the idea that there's only one possible sound wave for each volume and look at the evidence that has already been presented. You're arguing based on obsolete points, as if none of this stuff even came up. The question is of whether the human ear picks up on such differences as have been detected.

Incidentally, I might not die if I ate a tiny grain of food with a negligible percentage of poison. Not perceiving it from that single grain doesn't mean it wasn't there. Yet could die if I ate a whole bowlful of the same stuff, due to the accumulation. Simply because it's inconvenient in terms of keeping variables consistent, it doesn't mean that a single note is adequate for detection purposes. No matter how inconvenient it would be forscientific controls, it's perfectly possible that the effects of absolute tone are cumulative like the poison example and can fall under the radar unless you have more to hear than a lone note. The fact that normal playing introduces relative variables does not in any way mean that it would not also be the ideal situation to best perceive the effect of absolutes, or that a single note would be adequate for detecting differences which are only subtle in that situation.

[nick]

I should just clarify- it's not necessarily about lifting fingers up in the final product, but just being sure that the thumb is fully doing its job and that nothing is repressing the natural reactions to the thumb motion. When the thumb moves a key, there's a reaction that comes back. I get students to use the thumb to the lift the finger ultra high as a practise method- that both gets the thumb active and teaches the muscles that might try to block the reactions with stiffness to get out of the way and let go. Virtually every student I see fails to make room at first, and cannot physically open their hand over the thumb because there is so much needless downward force. Lifting over allows them to perceive it and release it- by striving for length in the arm rather than downforce. In the final product, the perception is only of the thumb moving the key and of this triggering the rest of the hand to flick straight into position via the free transmission of the reaction. If there's even a trace of deliberate effort in bringing the fingers towards the next keys (when thumb is passed to start a new position), something is blocking the reaction that would have done it for free, and trapping those fingers into a fixed position. If the hand is truly free, merely to move the thumb sends fingers into an automatic realignment. Everything in the wrist is passive, with no sense of reaching in that sensitive area.

Even a trace of downward arm pressure or stiffness can completely block that effortless realignment, which is why more extreme versions of using the thumb action to lift the fingers over are typically needed first. Once you know how to make room for the hand to open around the thumb, it becomes possible to exploit the reactions as a positive.

That clears it up. I live in literalville.

Maurice