Playing "piano" and "forte" - a divagation

[stormx]

Hi !! 

On the subject of playing one hand "forte" while the other plays "piano" (impossible task for me right now  ), i was wondering the following (bored at work,  ):

Let suppose your LH has to play a pp note, and the RH a ff one, both at the SAME time. The dinamics are determined by the speed of the key being depressed, right? If both keys have to travel the same distance in order to produce the sound, it then follows that the depressing of the "pp note" must begin earlier (very very slighty) than the depressing of the "ff note".

Does this make any sense, or am i speaking nonsense 

[Goldberg]

The latter.

Just play one hand softly and the other loudly...

[thalbergmad]

Here is the view of an un-tutored amatuer.

The start position of the finger playing the ff note should be higher than the other.

Therefore, you can play both of the notes at the same time, but the finger playing the ff note will be travelling with more speed and will therefore be louder.

QED

[ted]

I know that accents and variation in volume, from hand to hand and from finger to finger within one hand is very important to me in playing my own music. In fact it gives it its life, and I dread to think what it would sound like if I didn't do this all the time - like a piece played on a computer I suppose. As to exactly how I do it, I'm not sure, and I don't really want to analyse it. In improvisation it's one thing I'm quite willing to turn over to the unsconscious. I think if I started worrying about fingers going down before others and so on I'd become thoroughly stymied.

[ludwig]

I remember an old post (like 2 years ago  ::)when i was still young) hehe...the relationship between touch, tone colour, speed and dynamics? Maybe its not all about how fast the key is pressed... I'm finding the crescendo in one hand and dim in the other hard! how do I do it? (ie in Chopin and Liszt, where each hand is given a line of different dynamics)

[goose]

Just replied in the other topic about this, but you reminded me that I had the same thought after reading Heinrich Neuhaus. The mass of an object (i.e. your arm) shouln't really make any difference. It is the velocity that it travels. So, YES, if you played two chords together (LH ppp and RH fff) the RH would actually start its descent slightly after the LH.

I experimented with it and believe it is true.

Try this:
- Play two chords (just simple C chord CEGC in each hand) as quietly as possible
- Keep playing them to a regular pulse (say quarter note = 60)
- Now, keep the LH moving with that same feel and rhythm (i.e. v quiet and regular) but now try to play the RH forte. HOWEVER...
- instead of how you normally think ("Hmmm, now I need to play RH loud and heavy" or whatever you think) consciously think the following:

a) I'm going to start the RH slightly after the LH
b) I'm still going to make the two chords must sound at exactly the same time

After a few attempts, I believe your brain can sense that the RH sets off ever so slightly after the LH, EVEN THOUGH they land at the same time. Not only this, but it seems much easier to keep the LH soft while the RH plays loud (simply as a consequence of the speed needed).

Ultimately, I think our brains are much smarter than we imagine and subconsciously, in the end, we don't think "play faster and slight later", we just think "play the RH louder". But I think that the subconscious process IS based on the faster (rather than heavier) approach. And that's why it's hard for us to play that way at first. Because when you think "play heavy", both hands come out heavy.

I think these kinds of conscious focused exercises help. They certainly helped me. I'm interested to know what happens for you when you try this exercise.

Best,

Goose

[TheHammer]

I disagree goose. The volume of a note depends on two things:
1. the speed with which the key is depressed
2. the used mass (weight of the arm/whole playing apparatus "behind" the finger).

You can play a forte with a very fast key attack and with little mass. And you can play it with a slow depressing of the keys, and with a lot of mass behind it. Both variations (with infinte transitional steps in between) sound different and have to be used consciously by a pianist (here we are talking about "tone colours").
And here we have also the answer to your problem. Both hands can depress the keys with the same speed, but with other weight (for the piano use a "light" arm, for the forte a "heavy" arm). This has not only to do with your fingers and your arm, but with all muscles, your shoulders, your back, etc. It is quite difficult to describe, but you should know what I am talking about.
And of course you can try to use the same arm weight and control the volume via attack speed, but then you would have to depress the right hand slightly before the left hand, as goose pointed out. I use both methods, depending on the very passage I am playing.