Playing faster than I can hear

[1piano4joe]

Hi all,

Do these statements seem correct:

1. It seems to me that if I play a broken octave in the left hand fast enough, it sounds the same as if I just played an octave.

2. Similarly, if I play a note in my left hand and then another note later in my right fast enough, it sounds like a harmonic interval and not a melodic one. I am definitely not playing them simultaneously but my ear can't tell the difference. However, I can feel it and with control, slow down enough it to the point where my ear distinguishes them as not simultaneous.

3. My first thought was, "oh, these two examples are just like thumb over", but then I thought about it and decided, no Joseph, they are not and for two reasons. Firstly, in thumb over your playing faster than the dampers and therefore it sounds legato but your not actually playing legato with your fingers. Secondly, dampers don't come into play in these two examples above since the keys are not being released and these two cases are "true" legato. In addition, they don't sound legato cause your playing faster than your ears can distinguish.

4. A dog can hear frequencies beyond what a human can and therefore I hypothesized that our hearing might have speed limitations. Makes me ponder if an animal could distinguish the two fast notes as just that and not as two simultaneous notes.

5. If I made a recording and then played it back at a slower tempo, would it sound like one note played after another and would that constitute proof that it's possible to play faster than you can hear?

6. This must be analogous to strumming a guitar. The strings strummed quickly sound like they're played simultaneously but aren't. I guess if I arpeggiated a chord quick enough on piano, that would more or less be the same thing.


Just curious, Joe.

[ranjit]

There is a speed limitation obviously, but I would say that for me, the time interval between the successive notes needs to be less than 1/20 seconds. Maybe even less. I can distinguish 16 notes played a second in an arpeggio pattern and although it's hard to transcribe by ear, it's still possible. For that matter, there are scales which go faster than that.

As for points 1 and 2, I can tell the difference for pretty much every speed at which I can feel I'm playing the notes successively. If you try to play successive notes, but the note values get extremely close together, it's hard to tell physically if you actually played them together or one after another. And even if you do play them together, the margin of error isn't zero.

[lostinidlewonder]

You ask if there should be an observable difference in sound from a solid chord vs a broken one. I think if you do it fast enough it can be difficult to tell the difference. A trick people with small hands have is arpeggiating very quickly the large intervals of a chord they cannot physically play all together and thus create and illusion of it being played as one.

On another matter, no one really hears the uneveness of a scale played very fast. Chopin even admitted that. You can listen to a recording which does very fast motions and at tempo it all comes together as one coherent body of sound, but if you were to slow that recording right down you would hear uneveness of the notes that would not pass the ear check if you were to perfom it at that very slowed down speed.

[ranjit]

I think a major factor which can affect things is  loudness. In order to perceive the difference, we need to be able to hear and distinguish the attack of the key, or at the very least perceive a new note coming in which is suspiciously soft. If one key is played loud, or if something loud is going on in a piece of music, it will be nigh impossible to tell. I actually think that we can to an extent perceive unevenness in a scale -- the overall sound of the scale will feel different. However it won't be about the individual notes but instead the relative loudness, like voicing in a chord.

[quantum]

Great questions. 

1 and 2, correct.

There is a notion in voicing chords that a harmonic interval or chord, indicated such that all pitches are to sound together, can be broken up such that certain notes are played before others in a manner that preserves the perception that the listener is indeed listening to one chord.  The fashion in modern piano teaching tries to obsessively remove this musical tool, so that all notes in a chord must be played and sound perfectly together, as a single point of onset.  However, if one listens to recordings made in the early 20th century, one can hear the expressive capabilities of this technique. 

In my observances, this obsession to perfectly play chords together is strongly concentrated in piano music.  Orchestral music, does still make use of this expressive tool, at times by necessity.  The various instruments need different amounts of time for the onset of a note to be set in motion.  So for a given chord, one may hear certain instruments speaking before others. 

Some pianists struggle when they do 2 piano arrangements of concertos, because they obsessively try to make chords sound exactly at the same time.  However, when playing with orchestra, chords would never sound like that due to the differences in how instruments need to produce the onset of a pitch. 


5 and 6

An idea passed on by one of my teachers:
The fastest way to play a group of notes is to play them all at the same time.  Thus, the way to achieve speed is not to play individual notes faster, but to take a group of notes and control the onsets so they are played slower. 

I've had students that really enjoy this concept when they ask how does one play fast music at the piano.  It makes the concept of speed less intimidating. 

[perfect_pitch]

Hi all,

Do these statements seem correct:

1. It seems to me that if I play a broken octave in the left hand fast enough, it sounds the same as if I just played an octave.

2. Similarly, if I play a note in my left hand and then another note later in my right fast enough, it sounds like a harmonic interval and not a melodic one. I am definitely not playing them simultaneously but my ear can't tell the difference. However, I can feel it and with control, slow down enough it to the point where my ear distinguishes them as not simultaneous.

3. My first thought was, "oh, these two examples are just like thumb over", but then I thought about it and decided, no Joseph, they are not and for two reasons. Firstly, in thumb over your playing faster than the dampers and therefore it sounds legato but your not actually playing legato with your fingers. Secondly, dampers don't come into play in these two examples above since the keys are not being released and these two cases are "true" legato. In addition, they don't sound legato cause your playing faster than your ears can distinguish.

4. A dog can hear frequencies beyond what a human can and therefore I hypothesized that our hearing might have speed limitations. Makes me ponder if an animal could distinguish the two fast notes as just that and not as two simultaneous notes.

5. If I made a recording and then played it back at a slower tempo, would it sound like one note played after another and would that constitute proof that it's possible to play faster than you can hear?

6. This must be analogous to strumming a guitar. The strings strummed quickly sound like they're played simultaneously but aren't. I guess if I arpeggiated a chord quick enough on piano, that would more less be the same thing.


Just curious, Joe.

Here's my interpretation...

1) I'd say that's weird. To me, a proper octave is the control given to the hand to place upon and play the pinky and thumb fingers at the same time. A broken octave is the almost deliberate action of placing one finger before the other.

2) Again, I think the placing of hands on the piano at the same time is our control over the instrument. I think you'd need a VERY fast slow-motion camera to capture any distinct delay between hands striking each other.

4) I don't think this is true, because sound travels at the speed of sound obviously - a constant that shouldn't matter whatever the frequency is. A gunshot will travel at pretty much the exact same speed as someone screaming.

5) Again, you would need to really slow down the recording, and again you might be able to distinguish a very small material difference but you're talking down to maybe 20 ms, which I highly doubt people could distinguish. Again, sound travel is a constant and given the very short distance between your hand and your ears and the possibly small delay, I doubt it's really proven. It's fair to say that light travels faster than sound, obviously... but I don't think our brains are so slow that we can play faster than we can hear.

6) I think from a physical point of view, this proves my argument about Points 1 & 2. We as piano players have to play notes together and this action is something we work on our entire lives. The act of strumming a guitar 'seems' like the notes are executed at the same time, but musicians know that the act of strumming a guitar is just the deliberate playing of (potentially) all 6 strings really fast. There's no way a guitarist can play all 6 strings perfectly together... much like a violinist can't play 4 notes at once. They can play 2 notes at once in double-stopping; but the act of quadruple stopping is just the joining of 2 double-stops together with as little delay as possible in some cases.

[1piano4joe]

Hi all,

I vaguely remember back in a college lab (some 40 years ago) recording some observational data regarding touch. In the lab, 2 probes would be placed say on your lower leg very far apart and you would feel 2 pressure receptors being activated. Then the probes were moved closer and closer and at some point, your mind thought it was only 1 probe.

These were called mechanoreceptors. These receptors interpret physical stimuli of pressure, vibration and sound. Never thought about it back then but I guess this means hearing is a form of being touched literally by sound.

At least that's how I remember it, Joe.

If I remember correctly, the face was better interpretive than the back due to a higher concentration of receptors. So, maybe #4 above about animals might be true.

Some people need eyeglasses and some don't as we all don't have 20/20. Logically, then our hearing ability must vary from person to person as well. Don't some people have "perfect pitch"? Yet, still others can play entirely by ear. Although, I think that is a different skill.

Lastly, I understand that women have more rods and cones in their eyes. My wife, correctly says, "You must be colorblind". I read somewhere that women have better hearing then men due to specific anatomical advantages. So, I really shouldn't be blamed for "not listening".

I'm listening as best I can, Joe.

[lelle]

Hi all,

Do these statements seem correct:

1. It seems to me that if I play a broken octave in the left hand fast enough, it sounds the same as if I just played an octave.

Technically, beyond a certain point, like a millisecond between each note or whatever, but then it doesn't really matter, does it? Our ear guides if we want something that sounds together or broken, and then we play accordingly, if there is a point where being out of sync becomes imperceptible, there isn't any point to trying to be in sync beyond that point, because you can't even tell.

2. Similarly, if I play a note in my left hand and then another note later in my right fast enough, it sounds like a harmonic interval and not a melodic one. I am definitely not playing them simultaneously but my ear can't tell the difference. However, I can feel it and with control, slow down enough it to the point where my ear distinguishes them as not simultaneous.

Personally, I think that at the point where I can perceive with my body that the notes are not together, my ear will notice too.

3. My first thought was, "oh, these two examples are just like thumb over", but then I thought about it and decided, no Joseph, they are not and for two reasons. Firstly, in thumb over your playing faster than the dampers and therefore it sounds legato but your not actually playing legato with your fingers. Secondly, dampers don't come into play in these two examples above since the keys are not being released and these two cases are "true" legato. In addition, they don't sound legato cause your playing faster than your ears can distinguish.

I think one important point is that often when we play legato we are not necessarily binging or overbinding even if it sounds legato. When you play "jeu perlé", the notes are definitely detached from one another, but overall you are still playing with a legato sound in terms of how the notes are shaded in relation to each other - you create the impression of legato regardless if it's physically bound or not. In a position shift in a fast scale, the shift is still so quick that it's not really perceptible if done well.

4. A dog can hear frequencies beyond what a human can and therefore I hypothesized that our hearing might have speed limitations. Makes me ponder if an animal could distinguish the two fast notes as just that and not as two simultaneous notes.

Who knows?

5. If I made a recording and then played it back at a slower tempo, would it sound like one note played after another and would that constitute proof that it's possible to play faster than you can hear?

I guess?

Is there anything in particular you are trying to figure out or why are you asking this?