Weak Sound from Concert Grand in a Concert Hall

[doowlehc]

I had a few experiences where I played a Steinway in a concert hall... but the sound that comes out to me sitting on the piano bench is much weaker than I normally expects when I practise in a room with a 6 foot Yamaha.

Does this happen to anyone else?  How do you deal with it?  Why do you think it happen?

[dinosaurtales]

I've experience this, too, and it can be surprising - you're playing on a big piano, the sucker should SOUND big!

There are lots of reasons why it won't sound as big as it seems, though.  For starters, the lid was probably up, and there was any kind of back board the sound would all be going out into the hall which probably sucked it up quite nicely.  No two halls are alike - accoustics is a weird science.  They've even taken the designs from an incredible sounding hall and built the same plans again, but the second hall didn't sound good - go figure.

Once again I will probably raise some ire, but I find Steinways to be incredibly overrated where sound is concerned.  We have a couple of D's at the PSU concert hall and both are such fun to play!  They FEEL great - my trills have never been better!  But they sound DEAD, DULL.  I really think that's just the way they are, and the US audiences and p[ianists have just gotten used to that sound. 

Not to worry, though, I am sure enough of your sound made it out into the audience!

[lostinidlewonder]

Playing in a hall is way different than playing in a practice room. I often hear comments from adjudicators at competitions all the time complaining this fact. You must project your sound a lot more in a bigger room, so that means playing louder than you normally would. It also means really making the contrast in loud and soft sounds greater. I think playing in a small room you can make your contrast in sounds move in a bigger way with less effort. On a stage, to make contrasts in sound move in a big way you have to do it with extra effort. f should maybe be ff for instance. p maybe mf. But a smaller room you have to be more stingy with the louder sounds and much more controlled with the softer.

A number of years back I personally got in trouble the other way around, I am very use to playing in halls and bigger halls and in one competition it was held in a smaller room with a C6 grand. My comments where too harsh in louder sections, which is true, if you project your sound for a concert hall as in a smalller room it will sound very harsh and loud instead of big. But habit is hard to break when you are still understanding the piano, and when you practice for bigger halls and your loud sections are practiced with heaps of energy all the time to controll yourself and hold it back a little requires restraint on your own behalf (because it is so much more fun to give it hell ). But much worse i think is way too soft on a large stage. This habit is a lot easier to fall into because people are so used to play in a small room and they get trapped thinking it is the same in a big room.

The only way you can help it is by practicing playing on stage and getting someone who knows your music to sit in the seat in the audeince and listen then comment whether it is loud enough or not. I do that all the time when I play in halls I am not famliar with. That is the other skill of a musician you must eventually learn. How to tweak your playing to suit the size of the room and instrument. It just comes through experience and getting someone to sit in the hall and listen for you. Ive used a digital video camera before when I had no one to listen for me so I could listen myself and make decisions from that

[doowlehc]

Playing in a hall is way different than playing in a practice room. I often hear comments from adjudicators at competitions all the time complaining this fact. You must project your sound a lot more in a bigger room, so that means playing louder than you normally would. It also means really making the contrast in loud and soft sounds greater. I think playing in a small room you can make your contrast in sounds move in a bigger way with less effort. On a stage, to make contrasts in sound move in a big way you have to do it with extra effort. f should maybe be ff for instance. p maybe mf. But a smaller room you have to be more stingy with the louder sounds and much more controlled with the softer.

This is helpful!  so do you mean in a big hall, when you play, you target a sound level that is loud enough such that if you are the audience you would perceive the sound as just right?  Or you have to play 'louder' (or 'softer'?) than what an audience will hear?

[ChampY]

I have that problem also. The sound in the practise room is always not the sound in the bigger room and concert halls.

But ond more thing I realize why the sound of the concert grand piano is smaller that in baby grand ones is because the string is longer. People may think that the longer string in the piano we have, the bigger sound we will have. That's definately true. However, for the pianist who is playing on the grand piano, the lenght from the pianist's bench and the place where the string vibrates is further. So it might sounds small for the pianist but to the audience, the sound is bigger because they sit and listen from the same place.

That is one of the reasons why I find that the big is hard to control.

[ChampY]

I have that problem also. The sound in the practise room is always not the sound in the bigger room and concert halls.

But ond more thing I realize why the sound of the concert grand piano is smaller that in baby grand ones is because the string is longer. People may think that the longer string in the piano we have, the bigger sound we will have. That's definately true. However, for the pianist who is sitting on the grand piano, the lenght from the pianist's bench and the place where the string vibrates is further. So it might sounds small for the pianist but to the audience, the sound is bigger because they sit and listen from the same place.

For that reason, I find it's very hard to control big pianos.

[lostinidlewonder]

Discover the maximum and minimum sounds from the piano that are heard sitting on a seat in the hall. For instance, if in a smaller room, then f sounds may have to be brought down a notch and p sounds very carefully controlled(because you are close to the instrument you can detect small changes easier compared to a piano on stage in a large hall), whereas if you are in a large hall all touches have to be brought up a little and big f sounds have to really be resonated out of the entire instrument, or the big sounds and climaxes you come to will sound weak trying to fill the whole hall.

[dinosaurtales]

that's an excellent suggestion, lost.. 

In my house, the situation is a big piano in a small space, so I definitely have bump the dynamics DOWN. 

[pianowelsh]

Oh to truely understand acoustics! I once played a nine foot bosendorfer in a fairly mod 2200 seat hall and it felt like playing in an ice rink - one of the strangest experiences in my life. Quite disconcerting. It wasnt so bad when the audience were in but you have to really use your ears and listen to whats coming back from the hall. One has to be flexible in the approach and do whatever to make your interpretation work it may even mean altering it to fit the circumstance of the room - I once had a piano when the pedal was broken too and gave me a kind of 'auto-sustain' that was tricky - at the end of the day you are a bit at the mercy of the hall and the instrument but you have to learn to give absolutely the best you can in whatever situ.

[lostinidlewonder]

In my house, the situation is a big piano in a small space, so I definitely have bump the dynamics DOWN. 

Yeah that makes you develop a better mastery over the p ranges which is often neglected by many concert peformers imo. They get too used to loud sounds and projection and then neglect the p ranges. I feel developing p touches are 100 times harder than loud touches because of the increased control soft touches command on the fingers.

To demonstrate those p touches on a big stage requires very good sense of sound for the room you are in. When you bump the dynamics down for a smaller room I think it increases the volume differences you have to deal with rather than decrease. I mean, f to ff doesn't sound too different, but p to pp has a big difference and the different p to pp has on the hand is a lot greater imo. Even pp to ppp has much different sound quality than a ff to fff in my opinion.

When the entire instrument is shifted more to p because of a smaller room size, then the entire piano becomes a p sound generator more than a f sound generator. The shadings and differences you utilise to highlight the p sounds are much greater and diverse than the the f sounds. The hard, big sounds of the piano do not require as much brute force or control. But play on a big stage and things flip around, you're p ranges have to be brought up a little, and the f ranges have to be brought up a great deal more. This is not to say that in a small room, pieces which are loud and furious can never be played, of course they can. You must however hold back a little on the power you strike your maximum sounds at, or you can totally make things sound very NOISY. Same goes for very quiet pieces played on big stages. You have to make sure that there is obvious difference between pp and ppp, not they they both just sound very soft and not obviously one softer than the other. That may require your p touch to maybe be mf, pp becomes p, ppp is pp, and pppp is ppp. If you played in an enormous place then pppp may have to be raised to pp, ppp-p, pp-mf, p-f.