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

Hmmm, those that claim they can make a certain distinction, criticize others for not meeting their standards, yet cannot or will not articulate the difference when push comes to shove: there is a lot of that kind of empty monkey business going around these days.

Thanks for your "contribution". It was yet again better for your post count than for progressing a meaningful discussion.

"...Seems to me there was one poster who claimed that hammer flex was a component to tone above and beyond the velocity of the strike..."

If I recall, the poster was Kawai Don and the information about the flexure of hammer shanks came from ultra high-speed photography. It wasn't just a blue sky pronouncement. But the speed of the strike is a factor in how, and how much, the shank will flex.

I think it is a figmant of your imagination that anyone at any point was saying anything related to this totally random and unrelated point. I will counter it and support my arguement with an equally relevant point. Flying monkeys are dissimalar from toast!



The original poster was writing about a classical pianists obsession with tone. If you are using tone and an instrument's acoustic profile as interchangeable, then you are not addressing what the original poster was writing about.
It seemed like you were saying that one can't change the tone on a piano. You can change the tone on a piano by striking a key twice in exactly the same way, but once with the damper pedal engaged and once with the damper pedal not engaged. You can change the tone on a piano by striking a key twice in exactly the same way, but once with the una corda engaged and once with the una corda not engaged. You can change the tone of a piano by striking the key with more force or with less force. It is not only the dynamic that changes, but also the tone. It will still sound within "the acoustic profile" of the instrument, but "the acoustic profile" includes many many different types of tone.
Now, I am pretty sure that you understand this, but your definition of tone and changing tone is something else. You seem to be saying that the only way that a tone on a piano could be legitamately changed would be if a pianist made one piano sound like another. And then you ignore the change in tone that occurs on a piano that occurs from basic techniques of playing such as engaging the pedal or changing the speed of attack.
You are aware that the definition of tone is not limited to "the acoustic profile of the instrument", right?

Hopefully though, anybody intelligent who is reading this and interested in learning about piano tone wont be confused by your trolling.

But I don't think you're suggesting that you buy the idea of flexing shafts and that some aftertouch on the keys affects the sound after the hammer is released. Or do you?

I took this post, quoted verbatem, from a guitar forum thread that discusses "tone" from guitarist to guitarist:

**************************************

It's understandable that someone would want to get into the ballpark of a specific musician's tone, but I thought it would be helpful to note some of the factors, major and minor, that effect things. I'm open to contributions.

Factors that effect tone: [...]

Do those factors effect tone or affect tone? I imagine that some do both, but the distinction is central to the topic.

Steven

They're not interchangeable, unless there's no difference between creating tone and merely having impact on it.

Steven

I have ideas about Journey's original question - and if everybody is nice to me I will share them.

Classically trained, jazz trained, pop trained or whatever, the question of beautiful tone is either important to a pianist or not. Conceivably a jazz pianist might opt for a harsh tone at times for expressive purposes. But that said, someone who has heard a good pianist at a good piano produce a singing melody, or a perfectly even scale, or a bell-like tone - the famous broken pearl necklace - might be moved to try to produce the same thing in his or her playing. Classical music demands very fine attention to all sorts of expressive resources, and so does certain types of jazz performances. It is not as simple as 'classical pianists obsess over tone'.

When Bach said that playing the keyboard is easy 'you just press the right note at the right time' he was partly being facetious, but was also contrasting the keyboards of his time with the study of the violin and the voice, for which years have to go in to producing a beautiful tone. If you play on a modern 'acoustic' piano, regardless of the type of music you play, the issue of tone production can become something you 'obsess' over, if only because the results of perfecting this aspect of playing are so beautiful and compelling.

Certainly the piano itself contributes the most to differences in tone. But a well trained pianist will bring out the expressive qualities more dramatically than an ill trained one. The string of a grand are under thousands of pounds of pressure and they respond with great sensitivity to the input from the hands. The hands deliver an impulse to the mechanism - a signal with a high frequency content. The transients from the initial impulse quickly die out and the boundary conditions imposed by the fixation of the strings themselves support a set of vibrations related harmonically. Because of the random nature of the initial transients, and the high pressure of the strings, it is very easy to overdrive the mechanism and create a harsh tone - a tone with a loud transient and unavoidable non-linearities. The limits of useful tone - tones which are both full and not harsh - are narrower than a novice player might suspect at first. The piano can be tricky this way.

The challenge of the situation is to be able to produce a full tone without overdriving the mechanism, on the one hand, and the production of an exquisitely soft tone without the notes 'dropping out' or sounding weak. The first task, limiting the transfer of power from the arms to the strings, is overcome by keeping a flexible wrist - a shock absorber - and using fluid motions with the hands. THe second task, producing a full tone at low dynamic levels, is a matter of practice at that keyboard and finding the point at which who have given it just enough.

And then all the other techniques mentioned above- timing, balance, etc - are used to support the illusion of a singing tone. If you listen carefully to recording of Richter or Kempff or Rubenstein you can hear that they create the illusion of a singing tone - or an orchestral brilliance, or clarity of tone, or separation of voices - by an almost superhuman exercise of control of the parameters mentioned.

Whether or not someone has use for this level of control within a particular style of music seems to be entirely a personal choice.

And then all the other techniques mentioned above- timing, balance, etc - are used to support the illusion of a singing tone. If you listen carefully to recording of Richter or Kempff or Rubenstein you can hear that they create the illusion of a singing tone - or an orchestral brilliance, or clarity of tone, or separation of voices - by an almost superhuman exercise of control of the parameters mentioned.

Whether or not someone has use for this level of control within a particular style of music seems to be entirely a personal choice.

Well said.

With regards to tone, they most certainly are, used in the manner in which I'm thinking of. There's an entire world of acoustic instruments that can be AFFECTED tonally by electronic EFFECTS, which can AFFECT any of the sonic parameters, for one, TONE, once recorded electronically.
Electronic effects will AFFECT the entire sonic profile, especially with regard to the timbral spectrum, which is the major defining component of tone.
Effects affect tone....