Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner - Non Classical Is only the Classical Pianist Corner Obsessed with "Tone"

You'd make a terrible juror.

I realize the Title of this thread is already negative and perhaps Troll-ish in composition, but the question is a valid one and need not result in off-topic accusations.

He examined the evidence and reached a conclusion based on it, which is what a juror does.


It's certainly a loaded question, as it takes for granted that classical pianists are obsessed with tone. I don't think that can be assumed; if anything, there may be evidence that those most obsessed with tone aren't necessarily serious players of any genre. One only has to look at the regularity of threads in the Piano Forum about countless quests for the "perfect" piano, in which tone may be described with the kind of specificity more commonly reserved for fine wine.

Steven

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It's certainly a loaded question, as it takes for granted that classical pianists are obsessed with tone. I don't think that can be assumed; if anything, there may be evidence that those most obsessed with tone aren't necessarily serious players of any genre. One only has to look at the regularity of threads in the Piano Forum about countless quests for the "perfect" piano, in which tone may be described with the kind of specificity more commonly reserved for fine wine.

Steven

VirtuosicOne is simply stating the obvious. Each piano has an inherant tone. The pianist can only control the many possible levels of attack, sustain and release. Also resonance and sympathetic vibrations through pedaling. Also voicing harmonies by empahisizing different notes in a chord.

VirtuosicOne is simply stating the obvious. Each piano has an inherant tone. The pianist can only control the many possible levels of attack, sustain and release. Also resonance and sympathetic vibrations through pedaling. Also voicing harmonies by empahisizing different notes in a chord.

My experience is that there are pianists of all genres who are obsessed with tone, but the classical pianists are less likely to have their obsession under control.

I realize the Title of this thread is already negative and perhaps Troll-ish in composition, but the question is a valid one and need not result in off-topic accusations.

So far we've all agreed that we're all the same, haven't we?

VirtuosicOne is simply stating the obvious. Each piano has an inherant tone. The pianist can only control the many possible levels of attack, sustain and release. Also resonance and sympathetic vibrations through pedaling. Also voicing harmonies by emphasizing different notes in a chord.

But I think it is safe to say that good pianists of any genre seek to control the percussive attack, sustain, and legato (with the exception of Gyro). At least when jazz pianists discuss tone, that's what we are talking about. Perhaps I would refer to more often as the "Touch".

I'm sure their confusion is over terminology. While it's true that one word can in of itself be a sentence, typically, phrased musical sentences need more than one component to be able to inflect spin, or phrasing, more properly, internote dynamics and ASR. Phrasing is created by at least two notes, one of which is either greater or less in some musical parameter than the one that precedes it, or in phrases of more than two notes, that follows it.
The more notes, the more ways there are to successively inflect individually upon each component, whether dynamically, durationally, etc., etc., even spatially (as Miles often does very effectively with sometimes only ONE note!), and the greater the possible diversity of phrasing becomes.
Classical pianists are dealing within finite boundaries. That boundary is the mind of the composer.
Jazz musicians are not bound by the minds of others and seek to become totally self sufficient when it comes to musical material, relying only on their own imaginations. Not the imagination of others.
Aside from the dialect that's the basic difference.

LOL.

Wow. I come back the next morning and there are almost 50 replies, some of them even about the subject.

Thanks in particular to those who chose to make a relevant contribution to the the actual question as opposed to stirring the pot and issuing personal attacks at other posters!

I resemble that remark. It is a fact that there have been many posts on the Piano forum about the tone of pianos and on the Pianist Corner about producing tone, the possibilities of affecting tone, the definition of tone, the praise of tone, the denial of tone, the proof from Physics that tone does not exist, the Proof from neuroscience that it is all in our head, snide, gratuitous remarks about Lang Lang, etc. etc.

I do appreciate the comments about how Jazz is different and the first explanation given by V1, although pithy in its rhetoric, does make sense. Of course we are talking in generalities, but in general, those starting to learn jazz often seem to be focusing on something much different than the elusive and anal retentive goal of perfect "tone" production that is oft discussed on the (Classical) Pianist Corner.



Is that all????? It sounds like an awful lot to be in control of to me and would go a long way to explaining why we all can tell good "tone" when we hear it -- whether from a Classical musician or a Jazz musician--, even if most of us can't put our finger on what we mean when we say it -- or line up our fingers to actually be able to (re)product it.


Great posts!

I find myself more and more drawn to Jazz.
Playing Classical Music is my first love, but it could be compared sometimes to choral reading or to reading an Abraham Lincoln speech word for word in historically accurate clothing.

Jazz on the other hand is more like extemporaneous speaking, or having a spontaneous conversation -- if you have internalized the language to be able to string two sentences together.

Since starting my Jazz study this year I have notice how much better my ear is becoming --- and the positive effect this has on my tone...

Some elements of 'tone' the pianist can control - phrasing, accents, timing, articulation, dynamics, evenness. But clearly a pianist can't control the actual timbre of the sound like a singer or a clarinetist can.

There have been lots of posts in the past on the Pianist Corner forum about tone and the physical side of playing the piano which can be summarized as " only careful years long study with a master teacher on a fine acoustic instrument can insure that the pianist will not injure himself and produce an ugly banging tone ".

This "summary" isn't vaguely close to being a correct summary.

Kenny Werner, in his book talks about the search for that Bill Evans sound. He related a story when at a party of pianists, some of the pianists played on the piano which was criticized as having poor tone. And then Bill Evans played on it, and it sounded like, well, Bill Evans. And they were astounded.