"Tone" doesn't exist.

[nyiregyhazi]

Here are two collision experiments, one of which you should very definitely not do yourself.

Drop a basketball and a tennisball side by side from about three feet or so.  They'll both bounce back up fairly close to the same distance, somewhere around 2 1/2 feet give or take.  Now carefully hold the tennisball on top of the basketball and drop them as a unit.

What do you predict?  

If you haven't done this, you'll be surprised.  The tennis ball usually hits the ceiling with considerable force.

Now the second experiment, which needs to remain a thought experiment.  Have somebody toss you the tennisball, and hit it hard with a baseball bat.  It bounces off the bat pretty fast, right?  Now do the same with the basketball.

No, DON'T do this with a basketball.  I have seen this attempted just once.  The guy swinging the bat figured a heavy ball like a basketball just wouldn't go very far, he might even have to keep exerting force after impact.

Well, he couldn't, he was down on the ground.  The bat bounced off the basketball and smacked him in the head.  He wasn't out but he was down and dazed.  

I don't believe you read my last post. The relevance of dropping things passively or hitting basketballs is literally zero. What is that supposed to even mean in the context of the pacing of hammer acceleration and how this affects smoothness of motion/flexion rather than a mere speed? The guy didn't middle the basketball with his hit so it went at a surprise angle. So what? What is the relevance?

[timothy42b]

Of course the shaft contributes. That's why the wrist action at the moment of contact is so vital. The club is not coasting but ACTIVELY being accelerated through the ball. A player who merely swings fast and lets it coast will not get the same distance as one who gets active acceleration through contact. Clearly you are not a golfer...

I think it is you who might not be a golfer.

(of course, like piano it is possible to play very well without understanding the physics, and golf is admittedly counterintuitive in this respect)

You are very wrong.  Both the mathematical analysis and the high speed photography prove conclusively that the shaft does not contribute.  The clubhead is effectively a loose ballistic projectile.  And you can hit just as far with a hinged clubhead, provided your alignments are correct.  

Moreover, wrist action at impact is negative.  You do not accelerate through impact.  The club IS accelerating but only because the radius is increasing as your two lever system is extending.  Your hands are SLOWING as momentum transfers through the kinetic chain to the distal elements.  In fact stopping your hips, shoulders, and arms contributes to higher speed at impact, and a high speed impact is ALL that is important.  (well, it has to be at the correct alignment)  

Attempting to accelerate the wrists at impact is one of the worst faults an amateur can have.  The pros do not do this, they "hold the angle" as long as possible for a late "release."  But the release is not an active motion of the hands, it is just the effect of the pull of the clubhead.  Amateurs have neither the strength nor the timing to delay the release long enough.  

[nyiregyhazi]

I think it is you who might not be a golfer.

(of course, like piano it is possible to play very well without understanding the physics, and golf is admittedly counterintuitive in this respect)

You are very wrong.  Both the mathematical analysis and the high speed photography prove conclusively that the shaft does not contribute.  The clubhead is effectively a loose ballistic projectile.  And you can hit just as far with a hinged clubhead, provided your alignments are correct.  

Moreover, wrist action at impact is negative.  You do not accelerate through impact.  The club IS accelerating but only because the radius is increasing as your two lever system is extending.  Your hands are SLOWING as momentum transfers through the kinetic chain to the distal elements.  In fact stopping your hips, shoulders, and arms contributes to higher speed at impact, and a high speed impact is ALL that is important.  (well, it has to be at the correct alignment)  

Attempting to accelerate the wrists at impact is one of the worst faults an amateur can have.  The pros do not do this, they "hold the angle" as long as possible for a late "release."  But the release is not an active motion of the hands, it is just the effect of the pull of the clubhead.  Amateurs have neither the strength nor the timing to delay the release long enough.  

What kind of shot are we speaking of? I've heard countless pros speak of the need to turn the wrists through the arrival at the ball. And I've seen that clearly happening actively on slow motion videos. If the hands are not accelerating, the bend in the club certainly would have to be unravelling to make the acceleration. Maybe there's a split second before arrival where the hands become passive, but the club head couldn't be coasting at all but springing into considerable acceleration via the unbending of the shaft. A hammer can theoretically be doing that too, if paced correctly.

Incidentally, it's when you're coasting that you get a serious rebound. The onset of resistance considerably slows a coasting body based on newton's basic laws unless it is actively accelerating through that resistance. There is not enough elasticity in a baseball bat for the bat to do it, so you need to actively accelerate through that point. In cricket, the forward defensive is often misdsecribed as merely putting the bat in the way. But if you don't time it to actively move forwards and through the ball (even if subtly) there's really no control and you may be inclined to stiffen the hands to compensate for the jolt caused by ball hitting the bat. You need actively instigated acceleration through the ball to soften that jolt, even if it's subtle. In golf, a coasting club loses those vital extra milliseconds of contact with the ball, by being repelled. It must accelerate though arrival in order to maximise the impulse. Only the shaft can cause that. It's the same issue I described a few posts back of positive movement vs negative movement. Perhaps the basketball is simply too massive and accelerating actively through it may still provide a rebound unless you are exceedingly strong. But when you want to set something in motion, it's the point of contact where you need the maximum acceleration. Otherwise you are repelled too quickly to transfer any real energy and you lose contact at once. If you wanted to hit the basketball maximum distance, you'd need to accelerate right through contact and take your chances. Coasting wouldn't cut it.

[thalbergmad]

Hic

[pianoman53]

I don't find the sound of an attack that is masked by a percussive thud and then followed up with a rapid decay to be effective in any instance. It's a horrible anticlimax. If a note is going to have to last with no new introductions of accompanying sounds, it needs a more lasting resonance. I'd hate that type of sound as much if it began a prokofiev sonata as to start Chopin. Percussive sounds are only suitable for short attacks. They are no use to start a long note that stands alone, within a long pedal, in any composer. I honestly can't think of one exception to this. A short note followed by a rest might be a different matter, but not when you need the sound to last.

... You don't read what I write, but just take things out of context. I always said one note, with no context. As an example, I used prokofiev and chopin, but you don't seem to understand, so I stop.

[nyiregyhazi]

... You don't read what I write, but just take things out of context. I always said one note, with no context. As an example, I used prokofiev and chopin, but you don't seem to understand, so I stop.

Well, I'll repeat that I was horrified before before the context was established. Sure it was two notes, at an octave doubling, but it's a tiny difference. There is something inherently very ugly about a note that is banged abruptly and then left to go on in a murky way and without a sense of being carried. If there's any context in which this sound is "good" I've not encountered it. Okay, I know the piece but you could bang any octave that way and tell me that it's the start of a new composition you wrote. Equally, he could have been playing another piece with the same starter octave but he wouldn't have changed my mind about that thud. I wouldn't enjoy that percussive thud followed by instant decay, whatever context you were to place it in. Percussive attacks can work for a short note but they simply don't fare well for a note that is played into the pedal and then prolonged.

[nyiregyhazi]

I think it is you who might not be a golfer.

(of course, like piano it is possible to play very well without understanding the physics, and golf is admittedly counterintuitive in this respect)

You are very wrong.  Both the mathematical analysis and the high speed photography prove conclusively that the shaft does not contribute.  The clubhead is effectively a loose ballistic projectile.  And you can hit just as far with a hinged clubhead, provided your alignments are correct.  

Moreover, wrist action at impact is negative.  You do not accelerate through impact.  The club IS accelerating but only because the radius is increasing as your two lever system is extending.  Your hands are SLOWING as momentum transfers through the kinetic chain to the distal elements.  In fact stopping your hips, shoulders, and arms contributes to higher speed at impact, and a high speed impact is ALL that is important.  (well, it has to be at the correct alignment)  

Attempting to accelerate the wrists at impact is one of the worst faults an amateur can have.  The pros do not do this, they "hold the angle" as long as possible for a late "release."  But the release is not an active motion of the hands, it is just the effect of the pull of the clubhead.  Amateurs have neither the strength nor the timing to delay the release long enough.  

Regarding the hinge, are you speaking of these?

If so, it's in contradiction with what you say about coasting. Coasting is exactly what you cannot do when using such a practise club. It has to stay as one unit. Any coasting and the hinge snaps out at once. Shaft and clubhead have to operate as one connected unit. I doubt very much whether any pro could hit a big drive with that type of practise club. The club head would never coast truly freely in a good swing, but it would need to respond to flexion in the shaft. That would be impossible to achieve with the hinged club, as the hinge would break before it could bend properly.

Who are the golf teachers who don't advise active acceleration through contact, exactly? I'm intrigued, as with a big arm drop, there is advantage in marginally slowing the arm and letting the fingers shoot out, when playing the piano. I can see the possibility of an equivalent where you first accelerate towards the ball but then "let go" (fractions of a second before reaching the ball) and use the club's elasticity to further accelerate the club head, but I've never heard of any golf teachers advising such an action. They all speaking of accelerating actively through the ball.

[pianoman53]

So you admit that it works on short notes? Therefore, with no context whatsoever, you cant say that a single tone is good or bad. Discussion over, don't bother to reply.

[nyiregyhazi]

So you admit that it works on short notes? Therefore, with no context whatsoever, you cant say that a single tone is good or bad. Discussion over, don't bother to reply.

It's the exception that disproves a rule, not a single instance of correlation. I'm not going to waste any more time on this, if your basis for protecting your initial assertion consists of ignoring the existence of long sustained notes. A short percussive note is contextual. A long note with a thuddingly percussive beginning that is played into an open pedal is just sloppy piano playing.

[timothy42b]

Who are the golf teachers who don't advise active acceleration through contact, exactly?

The worst amateur fault is the "hit impulse," that almost irresistable urge to hit that ball when you're getting close to it.  You must not do that.  You swing steady, and let the club do the work.  You try to hold the club back as long as you can - but the forces involved will pull it straight in time to hit the ball.    

The earliest proponent of this I can think of is Bertholy, who is probably the father of modern golf instruction back in the 1940s.   Read any golf magazine, most of the swing descriptions rely on a "centrifugal" swing.  Kelly in The Golfing Machine described two distinct methods of loading, as did the Oxford study, drive loading and lag loading, but you hardly ever find anyone who appreciates the subtle difference.  I can't think of a single advocate for accelerating through contact.  

Look at Michelle Wie, who at 14 could outdrive most men.  Her release was so late her clubs were effectively delofted, explaining why she always used a different iron than you'd expect for the distance.  Her hands were always well forward of the ball at impact.    

Jorgenson is one of the better authors on the physics of golf; I think Brancasio has done some work, and of course Vic Braden.  

[pianoman53]

Clever reply there n. I really respect you more with those pathetic replies.

[nyiregyhazi]

The worst amateur fault is the "hit impulse," that almost irresistable urge to hit that ball when you're getting close to it.  You must not do that.  You swing steady, and let the club do the work.  You try to hold the club back as long as you can - but the forces involved will pull it straight in time to hit the ball.    

The earliest proponent of this I can think of is Bertholy, who is probably the father of modern golf instruction back in the 1940s.   Read any golf magazine, most of the swing descriptions rely on a "centrifugal" swing.  Kelly in The Golfing Machine described two distinct methods of loading, as did the Oxford study, drive loading and lag loading, but you hardly ever find anyone who appreciates the subtle difference.  I can't think of a single advocate for accelerating through contact.  

Look at Michelle Wie, who at 14 could outdrive most men.  Her release was so late her clubs were effectively delofted, explaining why she always used a different iron than you'd expect for the distance.  Her hands were always well forward of the ball at impact.    

Jorgenson is one of the better authors on the physics of golf; I think Brancasio has done some work, and of course Vic Braden.  

Phil Mickelson advocates accelerating through. I couldn't find anyone who doesnt, when I Googled just now.

I'm open-minded about a release split seconds before the ball, but it's no use unless you have first provided phenomenal but smoothly paced acceleration before that. If your hands accelerate ahead of the clubhead, that creates the bend. Stopping active acceleration at the ball could theoretically allow the shaft of the club to begin the unbending process and create further acceleration. But this is absolutely not coasting of the club head. It the elasticity dragging the club head into further acceleration through the ball. It's the absolute opposite of coasting Without the shaft accelerating it through, it would allow the club head to be repelled by the ball and slowed down. But a "steady" swing like with the hinged club won't allow any of this. That would just be a very neutral movement with an ordinary result. The kind of swing that would allow the club to bend and then spring back would almost certainly not be possible with the hinged golf club.


This is exactly the same concept as with the hammer. If you've paced acceleration so the base of the lever has accelerated well ahead of the hammer end, after escapement it is no longer getting ahead of the hammer. This provides the bend in the shaft the chance to spring the hammer actively towards the string - just like a bent golf club that is springing back into shape. The pacing of the hammer could affect whether the hammer is actively accelerating towards the key (which would make for a longer contact with the string) or simply moving as a single unit. Just as with a golf club, the pacing of acceleration before you arrive at the point of release will determine how much potential energy has been stored up by the bending. So it's absolutely nothing whatsoever like a coasting baseball hitting something.

[awesom_o]

Clever reply there n. I really respect you more with those pathetic replies.

You ought to stop being so rude to people! 

This is only a piano forum! 

[awesom_o]

The worst amateur fault is the "hit impulse," that almost irresistable urge to hit that ball when you're getting close to it.

Golf and piano are not exactly the same, but I would argue that this is one of the main faults that amateur pianists also suffer from. The irrepressible urge to 'hit' the keys themselves!

[pianoman53]

You ought to stop being so rude to people! 

This is only a piano forum! 

And it has clearly nothing to do with music.

[awesom_o]

It has everything to do with music  !

The piano is just a vehicle for music!

That's what tone is all about...being able to use the piano effectively as a vehicle for music!

[pianoman53]

Aha. Good. Here I was, thinking tone was something completely different.

Thank you for enlightening me!
Now, teach me to play like pollini, so I can join this train of pretentiousness and superficiality that you all seem so fond of.

[awesom_o]

What exactly do you need help with? 

[pianoman53]

Maybe we can all have a get together, and brace each others hair and compare it to driving a train... Or maybe to boiling pasta.

[awesom_o]

Or maybe you can just post something in the audition room for us all to enjoy! 

[pianoman53]

I don't take myself too seriously, and I don't have a God-complex. I think I need that to fit into your club.

[pianoman53]

 

[awesom_o]

It certainly does help us to develop our creative powers if we are in touch with the creator spirit

Why not share a little music this holiday season? It's fun!

[pianoman53]

Oh, that explains it...

[awesom_o]

That explains what?

[dima_76557]

A lot in this thread "sounds" so beside the point that it's simply unbelievable that it is musicians who are having a discussion here.

Anyone who wishes to develop a beautiful touch must first of all have a mental concept of what a beautiful tone is, otherwise there will be nothing to develop. There is little hope in this respect for people who are tonally deaf to lovely sound qualities.

Anyone who doubts that one single tone on the piano, even without musical context, can have different sound qualities depending on how it is produced should read the book by Neuhaus and follow the suggestions in his book to the letter. Working on the production of one single tone and all its nuances and possibilities is actually the first element he mentions in the chapter on technique. This is something to be taken very seriously. The focus there is not what you do with the playing mechanism as such, but rather the quality of sound you get as a result, which is not only a matter of articulation, but also of the feel of rhythm within that articulation, the timing, etc.

And of course: no separate tone, however beautiful or ugly, will have real meaning unless it is used within a certain context. The beginning of a certain piece (even one single note or combination of notes) should contain and predict the end of the piece and all the notes in between in a game of prediction - echo - prediction - echo, etc. This is part of what we call "intonatsia" here in Russia. Without this, the pianist will only reveal 50% of what the piece contains, even if everything else is "right". That's why it can happen that a really good teacher, listening to you with his/her eyes closed, will stop you immediately after the first tone. The rest doesn't make sense already, even without having heard it.

[timothy42b]

Anyone who wishes to develop a beautiful touch must first of all have a mental concept of what a beautiful tone is, otherwise there will be nothing to develop. There is little hope in this respect for people who are tonally deaf to lovely sound qualities.

I think so too.  I think tone is a result of a process too complicated to produce deliberately.  I think you have the end goal in mind and your body experiments until it gets there, and for some people that never happens. 

I have strong doubts that tone has very much to do with how you depress the key, but it really doesn't matter.  The process to get to it is to have a clear mental image, listen carefully, and try to adjust closer and closer to your image. 

I'm dubious about hearing much from one note.  That hasn't been possible to duplicate experimentally.  Remember that while we're trying hard to hear what IS there, we're also hearing much that is NOT there.  That's the way our brains are wired. 

[dima_76557]

I'm dubious about hearing much from one note.  That hasn't been possible to duplicate experimentally.  Remember that while we're trying hard to hear what IS there, we're also hearing much that is NOT there.  That's the way our brains are wired.

It is not mere imagination though. If you are really interested, you could try experimenting yourself and see that there is more to it than the scientists care to admit. We are always told to listen to great Belcanto singers. Let's try and imitate them on our instrument, the piano.

For example: let's say that we want to "sing" a melody in forte. To get a tender, warm and penetrating tone, you press the key very intensely and deeply, starting the finger movement as close to the key surface as possible, but to get a more "open", broad and flowing tone (let's say the voice quality of a Caruso or a Gigli), you use the full swinging capability of the finger and hand into the key with a completely flexible legato (no hitting!). Really great pianists do this intuitively.

Another example would be the beginning of Liszt's great b minor sonata. G... very powerful silence... G... very powerful silence.

If you play that like a piano tuner, nothing will happen, except for what the scientists describe as the truth - X hammer speed produces X noise. Since it's three notes together in unisono, you have a seemingly insignificant balancing problem, OK, but a piano tuner will be able to solve that problem with his ears. It will still sound like nothing.

Now think of it as something that gives birth to what is going to come next, though, and suddenly everything changes; the tones change color. This is real, and anybody who loves this sonata will feel the message. You don't want to play what's in the notes on the paper; you want to play what the composer heard before he wrote it down.

[timothy42b]

For N's question on golf science, here are two references that my physicist golfer friends say are credible:

https://www.amazon.com/The-Physics-Golf-Theodore-Jorgensen/dp/038798691X

Though dated, Jorgenson is still one of the most cited authors.

and

https://www.amazon.com/Science-Golf-Proceedings-Scientific-St-Andrews-ebook/dp/B000Q6GVBU/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1388119663&sr=8-2&keywords=congress of golf&tag=vglnk-c914-20

They're both expensive but probably available free through interlibrary loan. 

You will find both support the claim that the wrists are passive during impact.  They are uncocking and rolling, but only because they are being pulled that way by club forces. 

[falala]

Direct touch in this document means: to play from the key surface.
Indirect touch means to lift the playing unit and let it drop.

The differences are not merely a matter of "convenience/inconvenience" or "effective or ineffective piano playing" as one might think. Indirect touch gives an essentially different tone quality (timbre). That's what the document seeks to demonstrate.

The document does nothing of the sort.

The document doesn't even compare direct and indirect touch; it compares different kinds of finger shape within indirect touch.

Furthermore, it doesn't appear to say anything about the resulting sound whatsoever. The researchers don't even appear to have recorded or attempted to measure the sound. They just videoed the finger strokes and processed the visual data in various ways.

TBH I'm struggling to work out what the point of the study was at all. But it certainly wasn't what you're claiming.

[falala]

Of course tone exists, in the sense that when you vary the speed at which the key strikes the hammer, the harmonic spectrum of the resulting sound will vary as well.

OTOH the only way we have of controlling tone is by varying the speed at which the key strikes the hammer. As Timothy has corrected pointed out, the hammer is in freefall at the moment of collision. Our job is done, and there is nothing more we can do. Voicing of chords, legato and use of the pedal also affect the perception of tone of course, but if you're talking about a single note there is only speed.

It doesn't really matter though. If someone has some highly poetic way that they think striking the key "differently" changes the tone - and it allows them to control very fine nuances of speed that create a beautiful effect - then who cares that what they're doing is not what they think they're doing?

[dima_76557]

TBH I'm struggling to work out what the point of the stufy was at all. But it certainly wan't what you're claiming.

Read between the lines and guess what the point of these experiments was. That's what I did (I didn't really claim; I inferred), and I think my guess wasn't bad at all. It is at least good enough to shed some light on why a piano sounds so much more beautiful, so much warmer (if it is handled well, of course) than the best digital "touch-sensitive" keyboard (the latter does exactly what the OP states).

It doesn't really matter though. If someone has some highly poetic way that they think striking the key "differently" changes the tone - and it allows them to control very fine nuances of speed that create a beautiful effect - then who cares that what they're doing is not what they think they're doing?

Because artists are illusionists, not scientists. As soon as you try to catch the spirit and put it in a bottle (=scientific concepts), it will slip through your fingers and it will be gone; the spell will be broken and you will be left with nothing to live or die for.
P.S.: Try Neuhaus "The art of piano playing", especially the chapters on "tone" and "technique".

[chopin2015]

Phil Mickelson advocates accelerating through. I couldn't find anyone who doesnt, when I Googled just now.

I'm open-minded about a release split seconds before the ball, but it's no use unless you have first provided phenomenal but smoothly paced acceleration before that. If your hands accelerate ahead of the clubhead, that creates the bend. Stopping active acceleration at the ball could theoretically allow the shaft of the club to begin the unbending process and create further acceleration. But this is absolutely not coasting of the club head. It the elasticity dragging the club head into further acceleration through the ball. It's the absolute opposite of coasting Without the shaft accelerating it through, it would allow the club head to be repelled by the ball and slowed down. But a "steady" swing like with the hinged club won't allow any of this. That would just be a very neutral movement with an ordinary result. The kind of swing that would allow the club to bend and then spring back would almost certainly not be possible with the hinged golf club.


This is exactly the same concept as with the hammer. If you've paced acceleration so the base of the lever has accelerated well ahead of the hammer end, after escapement it is no longer getting ahead of the hammer. This provides the bend in the shaft the chance to spring the hammer actively towards the string - just like a bent golf club that is springing back into shape. The pacing of the hammer could affect whether the hammer is actively accelerating towards the key (which would make for a longer contact with the string) or simply moving as a single unit. Just as with a golf club, the pacing of acceleration before you arrive at the point of release will determine how much potential energy has been stored up by the bending. So it's absolutely nothing whatsoever like a coasting baseball hitting something.

the first paragraph, that's good stuff! 

[chopin2015]

Timing, pacing rhythm...

there was a mention if a delay time...lets say the hammer is activated at a certain point of depression of a key, and there is a total time the hammer takes to activate the string or whatever...that time is set somewhere in the middle of too light, note does not sound but is open to resonate for the duration of a slow hammer swing. this does not change the weight of the hammer.

oops, i was really inspired for a second but I seem to be lacking factual knowledge and am too lazy to do my own research at 2 am...

so...what about pushing the key down all the way, and then pushing it with raw, uncontrolled force, pushing the hammer, instead of allowing it to swing? that would be causing a percussive delay, where otherwise, the swing of the hammer within it's range would really only allow for dynamic and tonal fluctuations, not delay. this could also explain decay, this would have a different release effect, as opposed to regular, traditional use of piano hammer mechanism

just a peace offering, yall...

[dima_76557]

oops, i was really inspired for a second but I seem to be lacking factual knowledge and am too lazy to do my own research at 2 am...

Do you need that scientific "evidence", though, for what you already know to be true? Let's say I look into your eyes, Julia, and I see indescribable beauty there. Will scientists describe what I see as such? No. They will rather describe you and all your flaws, me and all my flaws, break the spell, and send me to a psychiatrist.

[chopin2015]

Do you need that scientific "evidence", though, for what you already know to be true? Let's say I look into your eyes, Julia, and I see indescribable beauty there. Will scientists describe what I see as such? No. They will rather describe you and all your flaws, me and all my flaws, break the spell, and send me to a psychiatrist.

hahah, man...it really is the hypothetical "what if" that kills! What if, Bigfoot is malicious?
and, no. you don't really need the evidence, but some people do. we all work in different ways, different ways of knowing something to be true (or not true). many ways there are, to communicate something.

[dima_76557]

hahah, man...it really is the hypothetical "what if" that kills!

Love for whatever object of that love is subjective, but it is contagious. If I love someone or something, it will be expressed in what I do and in how I do it, and everybody will recognize it as such on an intuitive level and believe that what they see or hear is true. Only the most insecure will start asking questions about the objective value of it all.

[nick]

A lot in this thread "sounds" so beside the point that it's simply unbelievable that it is musicians who are having a discussion here.

Anyone who wishes to develop a beautiful touch must first of all have a mental concept of what a beautiful tone is, otherwise there will be nothing to develop. There is little hope in this respect for people who are tonally deaf to lovely sound qualities.

Anyone who doubts that one single tone on the piano, even without musical context, can have different sound qualities depending on how it is produced should read the book by Neuhaus and follow the suggestions in his book to the letter. Working on the production of one single tone and all its nuances and possibilities is actually the first element he mentions in the chapter on technique. This is something to be taken very seriously. The focus there is not what you do with the playing mechanism as such, but rather the quality of sound you get as a result, which is not only a matter of articulation, but also of the feel of rhythm within that articulation, the timing, etc.

And of course: no separate tone, however beautiful or ugly, will have real meaning unless it is used within a certain context. The beginning of a certain piece (even one single note or combination of notes) should contain and predict the end of the piece and all the notes in between in a game of prediction - echo - prediction - echo, etc. This is part of what we call "intonatsia" here in Russia. Without this, the pianist will only reveal 50% of what the piece contains, even if everything else is "right". That's why it can happen that a really good teacher, listening to you with his/her eyes closed, will stop you immediately after the first tone. The rest doesn't make sense already, even without having heard it.

I agree! But will say the main factor is the speed of the hammer in this ugly vs beautiful tone.

nick

[falala]

Read between the lines and guess what the point of these experiments was. That's what I did (I didn't really claim; I inferred), and I think my guess wasn't bad at all.

But you're just making that up. The study didn't even deal with the SOUND of the piano, in any way whatsoever. The conclusions you draw about sound from it are thus not inferred from anything in the study, they're simply invented.

It is at least good enough to shed some light on why a piano sounds so much more beautiful, so much warmer (if it is handled well, of course) than the best digital "touch-sensitive" keyboard (the latter does exactly what the OP states).

We know why pianos contain elements of sound that digital keyboards don't; it's because they're different instruments. One has hammers hitting strings, which create a spectrum of harmonics depending upon their physical properties; the other has samples being played back and/or sound being produced electronically. None of that has anything to do with the validity of claims about what differences of strike in a piano produce differences of "tone". The fact remains that the only difference of touch within the player's control is speed.

Because artists are illusionists, not scientists. As soon as you try to catch the spirit and put it in a bottle (=scientific concepts), it will slip through your fingers and it will be gone; the spell will be broken and you will be left with nothing to live or die for.

Yeah, agreed. As I said, whatever works is good.

[dima_76557]

But you're just making that up. The study didn't even deal with the SOUND of the piano, in any way whatsoever. The conclusions you draw about sound from it are thus not inferred from anything in the study, they're simply invented.

1. Introduction

A direct touch begins with the finger in contact with the key. At the starting point of a direct touch, the finger is at rest. The finger then continuously accelerates the key. On the contrary, the indirect touch begins with the finger above the key. When the finger hits the key, it has already attained a considerable speed. This is a key difference to direct touch with implications on the sound because of noise being generated when the finger hits the key. In this paper we examine the indirect touch.

They then start analyzing differences in flexion and extension touches in those indirect types of touches under different angles and conclude:

9. Future work

Our approach can be extended towards online generation of the graphical representations. If the graphs were generated in real-time they could serve as direct visual feedback about the regularity of the touches and could be used in a pedagogical setting. If we could distinguish flexion-touches and extension-touches automatically and in real-time, this could be used to implement a special electronic piano. The flexion- and extension-touches would have different timbres. This piano could be useful for learning and teaching the different touches and as an instrument with an additional expressive parameter.

Where did I make what up?

[awesom_o]

Personally, I was trained very hard to avoid any kind of 'indirect touch' as described above.

In my experience, hitting the keys from above using indirect touch is very detrimental towards making good tone.

[dima_76557]

Personally, I was trained very hard to avoid any kind of 'indirect touch' as described above.

In my experience, hitting the keys from above using indirect touch is very detrimental towards making good tone.

The sound result is not always as ugly as the wording in the scientific description suggests:

[awesom_o]

In my experience, I always get a much better tone by not striking the keys.

[falala]

Where did I make what up?

You made up the idea that the study showed an effect on timbre of using indirect or direct touch. For a start, the study didn't even deal with direct touch. Furthermore, even if you had correctly looked at what the study was comparing - two different kinds of indirect touch - you would still be making up any conclusions about the sound produced.

Saying that it would be theoretically possible to invent an electronic piano that responds with different timbres according to information fed to it about the shape of the finger (which is what your quote above appears to say) does nothing to support the claim that already existent acoustic pianos DO respond with different timbres according to the shape of the finger, independent of velocity.

The latter claim is just an invention. You've made it up, and the study says nothing whatsoever about it.

[dima_76557]

You made up the idea that the study showed an effect on timbre of using indirect or direct touch.

I think something went wrong in our communication then, just as in the other thread. If I suggested just that, it was never my intention to do so.

In reply #20, I merely said that the difference in timbre between direct and indirect touch was MENTIONED in this paper (I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere else) which I demonstrated with my quote in my previous post. I also explained to N. (in reply #30) what I GUESSED the paper was really for, and I certainly mentioned that this very paper was about INDIRECT TOUCHES only. The testers clearly ASSUME that a different angle will give a different timbre, but since evaluating sound differences is not their concern, they do not provide us with evidence in the form of sound samples.

[falala]

Sorry Dima I just noticed the other part of your quote above - I was concentrating on the second one.

OK, mention of timbral difference between direct and indirect touch is made at the beginning of the article.

[dima_76557]

Sorry Dima I just noticed the other part of your quote above - I was concentrating on the second one.

OK, mention of timbral difference between direct and indirect touch is made at the beginning of the article.

No problemo. Back to the topic.

[awesom_o]

I was always taught that the direct touch puts more energy directly into the tone, whereas the indirect method of touch wastes energy by vibrating the actual key.

[dima_76557]

I was always taught that the direct touch puts more energy directly into the tone, whereas the indirect method of touch wastes energy by vibrating the actual key.

There is a lot to be said in favor of economy of movement, but the most important is a sound effect you want to achieve. If that means pressing almost through the keys (also  seems like a waste of energy) as some Russians sometimes do in Rachmaninoff, so be it.

As we can see from the Katsaris clip above, he is apparently "wasting" lots and lots of energy, but he is doing that in a heavenly fashion and clearly for a purpose other than simply showing off. I have experimented a lot myself with this approach and I have found that to get that kind of sparkling, transparent sound out of the instrument, you *have to* do what Katsaris does there. There's no other way to get that same effect.

The problem with this approach is that it is probably the most difficult thing one can require from a pianist - lifting the fingers and let them drop; take the risk of NOT controlling the result, but rather "let it happen". There is therefore also the practical question: is it worth it? That is clearly a very personal decision.

[awesom_o]

As we can see from the Katsaris clip above, he is apparently "wasting" lots and lots of energy

I don't think we can make this assumption based on watching that video clip.