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I dont get the discussion about different pianists "tone".
You press a key and as a result the hammer is thrown against a set of strings. Quite some time (geometrically speaking) before the hammer hits the strings the connection between key and hammer is lost. Then how could pianists create different tone on the same piano? Sounds like superstition to me.The only degree of freedom here is the speed at wich the hammer is thrown against its strings.
Did I miss anything?
Of course, if the map and reality differs then reality "wins".
If so, how could you test it objectively?
Say we have 2 pianists, one with nice (whatever your taste is) tone, the other with ugly. Both are sitting at the same piano.
One plays a single note, could you say - blindfolded - wich pianist it is?

Just to be clear: I'm not talking about use of pedal,articulation or dynamic differences between voices.

pelle (taking cover)

I foresee great things for this thread.

Well, the thing is, that a pianist's tone comes from all the things you're not talking about - pedal, articulation, dynamic differences.

If you play with high tension, you can't produce a variation between the voices in a chord, for instance, and it all comes out the same so it sounds rather dry and bland, even ugly.

If you hit the piano, it sounds ugly, loud, uncontrolled.

Judging someone's tone on two notes is really missing the point about what tone production is, and that isn't your fault - it's because we like to propagate the romantic notion that you could tell Horowitz from Schnabel on a middle C, when probably you couldn't. All of the great virtuoso pianists understand this.

Gould's tone was very precise and dry because he made sure that every finger gave a clear articulated strike, and he used little pedal, and he understood how to produce a singing line and accentuated the voices in a certain way.

Hope that helps you.

But to answer your question, can you tell from one note? Well, there is an anecdote that Aube Tzerko could wow his class by playing one note on the piano and asking them to really listen to the beautiful sound he produced. I rather think it was the difference between listening and hearing that was happening in the class, plus they were awed by Aube's formidable presence rather than really hearing any difference between his one note and anyone else's.

Not correct. There is also the acceleration, and I believe this is where 'good' tone comes from. Velocity controls the volume (loud or soft) but the character of the tone can be quite different depending on the acceleration of the hammer as it hits the strings. It can accelerate into the strings, hit the strings at constant velocity (so no acceleration) or decelerate as it hits the strings, and all of this depends on the touch of the pianist.

I believe that a prerequisite to a good tone is to strike the key all the way to the bottom; I would guess that this means that the hammer accelerates into the strings, but I'm not sure. Lhevinne stressed striking the key all the way to the bottom as the most important aspect of piano technique and proper tone production in his very thin but informative book.

Try it for yourself. Hit a key timidly so that it doesn't go all the way to the bottom, then hit it again striking the keybed. If you can't hear the difference, then maybe your ears are the problem, not your hands.

Look at how a piano action works. The hammer is thrown at the string: as soon as the hammer passes the escapement the pianist has no more control over it. In fact, just before hitting the string on a grand piano the hammer will be slightly decelerating due to the effects of gravity and friction, but this effect will be the same for any given hammer speed.



The notes will of course sound different if the "timid" note doesn't have the same dynamic level as the other one. If the dynamic level is the same, the only possible difference is the slight percussive sound of the key hitting the keybed, obviously absent in the case of the "timid" note.

Here's a controlled study on the subject

That's the point - it's velocity that controls the tone, nothing else. At its most basic and crude level, we have four things which influence the sound

1. Hammer speed (dynamic)

2. Duration (particularly important when thinking about legato)

3. Sustain pedal (engaging all the harmonics throughout the piano)

4. Una corda pedal (striking the string with a softer part of the hammer felt, producing a different tone)

Our study of how to play is basically a study in the most effective way to use these devices to produce the music.

Playing with a heavy hand deep into the keyboard will be a sure fire way to keep everything legato, if you like, but it's not influencing anything other than the moment the hammer touches the string and the moment the damper is returned to the string.

It sounds so crude and inartistic to bring it down to these bare essentials but it's the truth. Once the string has been struck, all you can do is mute it again or leave it to ring.

My teacher is driving me nuts making me exercise in slowly releasing the key in -some- of the theme lines in Bach to produce a more smooth engagement of the dampers. a sort of "taper control" on legatissimo.
I had to admit, in the sections where it's audible ( few notes around ) it makes the difference but it's (at least for my poor skills ) hard to control, especially if the piano is not in a top shape.

Given the note is struck in exactly the same way, you can't modify that, but you can modify how it does resonate and how it does end.

Ataru, I'm not quite sure what your teacher is driving at here. Can you explain further what you mean? I know that lifting the finger off the key quickly *could* produce a thud, but it sounds like perhaps your legato isn't quite right or something rather than anything to do with damper control??

It's hard to explain in words but you can try (not on a digital ) on a grand.
get any music with a simple line. Mozart or Bach for example, play legato and instead of releasing relatively quickly after you struck the "following" note, try to control the engagement of the dampers making the previous note fade away in a slow controlled way (over few seconds) instead of abruptly.
according to him is something in between a legatissimo and an absolute finger pedaling.
The sound is different, but I don't have -yet- the chops to do it as well as he does.

Horowitz's most famous "D" still is around. There are recordings of pianists playing it, and they don't sound like V.H. - copying his tempos, dynamics, pedaling, phrasing, articulations, et c., wouldn't in addition be enough to do it, in my opinion. It is about how the individual notes sound.

Just listen here. One can hear that it is that same piano, if one listens closely, but that is as far as the similarity in the sound of the individual notes goes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdPftnT_75c

Some people think the way you press a key makes a difference in how it sounds.




What is absolutely certain, is that touch affects the way you connect two notes together, and that is where our perception of tone comes from. Both between the notes of a melody and between the notes of a chord.

I know that Horowitz tended to take the piano to extreme dynamic levels in both directions, and that was part of his signature sound. I'm not convinced that him playing a single D mezzo forte might sound different to, I don't know, Sofronitsky playing the same note mezzo forte on the same piano.

Horowitz's sound had a lot to do with the way he perceived rhythm as well, and structure, and these things, I think, have more bearing than the actual key strike - although, he did claim himself that his flatter finger technique gave him a better sound (I know, he played with curved fingers too), but how much of that was his perception and how much of that was true? A flatter finger will make the key go down slower, because there is more of the pad of the finger in contact with the key, so there's a touch more inertia, if you like, but that comes back to dynamics again.

Phantom has it right - it's that no note makes sense in isolation in piano literature, and it's the context that is important.

I find there are more nerves in the tip (just below the nail) than the pad. The tip's therefore more sensitive.

If one plays the first note the same way(volume, duration, articulation, etc),I don't think it will affect the way you connect the notes. If one plays the first note in different ways, already there is a difference.

We are drawn to it like moths to a flame.

(Which prompts an idea for a piano composition - a sort of cross between Ravel's Noctuelles and Scribin's Vers la flamme)

I'll use this one moment to say that my new years resolution is to avoid threads with the word "tone" in the title. Let's see how I do starting......NOW!

Does it make any difference whether or not the word is in quotation marks? An implication of the question marks may be that "tone" is not the most accurate word for what is being described.

This discussion seems more appropriate to clavichord or mechanical action pipe organs where you do have some level of control during the sound production.

Playing Bach on the piano always drives me crazy. Strangely, it seems to work best on the Chickering with no pedal, since the Chickering has a long singing tone in the middle register, and a fairly bright bass. The lute transcriptions seem to work best.

Bach really sounds forced on the Seiler, and I prefer Bach on the harpsichord. Given that Bach wrote for the harpsichord, and not the piano, I think a separated note legato is the best that can be achieved on the piano with a certain amount of agogic accent.