Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum The blindfold test.

One baroque piece. One classical piece. One romantic piece. Each played on different top-tier pianos.

You're blindfolded.

Can you identify the brands?

I ask because so often people talk about the "bright" or "warm" or "clear" tones that are associated with particular brands. If the tone is so particular, can you identify it blindfolded?

I honestly don't think I could, and I have a pretty good ear. I like to think I'm enough of a piano snob to describe brands just by listening to them, but, if I'm being honest with myself, I don't think I could.

I do believe that pianos do have characteristic tonal qualities, but I do not think they will penetrate a blindfold too often. When my eyes are open I think I can distinguish that growling Mason & Hamlin bass from the clarity of a Yamaha, but, with my eyes closed, and if subjected to this experiment for an hour or two . . . I don't think so.


So, what do you think?

I was thinking of posting a couple recordings I made while testing pianos to see if people could guess. I think I'd need to have better speakers on my laptop for a test like this to work properly.

I've thought about doing something like this as well.

There have been some informal experiments with Stradivarius violins.

Is A Stradivarius Just A Violin?

Blind-tested soloists unable to tell Stradivarius violins from modern instruments

And that involved much more than just tone. It involved touch as well.

Interesting, eh?

Make it interesting.

Play each of those pieces on each piano, then see if someone can identify.

No one has the luxury of playing pieces on pianos suited and/or prepped for the genre.

The biggest aspect that affects the piano's tone, in my opinion, is the brain and ten fingers behind the keys.

Jay

I doubt I could CONSISTENTLY identify individual pianos unless all the other variable are the same (tuning, player, room, place in the room, air conditions, piece). And even then, my memory is not very good, so I could not sustain the sound image long enough to go through many pianos and remember which one was which.

But this does not mean that I cannot separate the tone of two pianos when I hear them played in succession, hear differences in piano tone generally and have preferences without even knowing the name of the piano. It is clear that even the same piano can sound good or awful depending on the above mentioned conditions. And there's often as much more difference between the individual pianos in each brand than the brands. The pianos mature differently.

I was thinking about something like this the other day while reading the "best piano" thread. Actually, I thought about it a while before that while watching Bottle Shock, the movie based on the true story of California wine beating French wine in a blind taste test back in the 1970s.

A blind test could be multifaceted:

1) A jury could hear a variety of pieces played on each piano, screened from view, so that the pianos couldn't be identified visually. I'd even suggest letting manufacturers prep their entry to its maximum potential (of course, "maximum" might differ from one ear to another, or based on genre, but appropriate compromises would need to be made).

2) Ideally, a variety of pianists could play each piano, with the piano's identities obscured (this might be a little more difficult, but not impossible.

It would be interesting to see how the judges and players rated each piano if they had no idea what was what. And I mean rate them qualitatively, not guessing which is the Steinway and which is the Hailun, etc.

I wouldn't be surprised if the results were a little startling, just like in that wine tasting back in the seventies.

I think I can distinguish Yamaha U1 from Kawai K-300, or K-300 with K-800 blindfolded. However I don't think I can distinguish Yamaha YUS-5 with K-800.

I think it depends on how you operate the blindfold test. For example, if you have 3 pianos and you do not tell your jury any information about the 3 pianos, it would be very hard for anyone to correctly guess the brand and model of the 3 pianos. However, if you tell your jury the brand of the 3 pianos without letting them see the pianos, I think many technicians will be able to correctly guess which one is which.

I keep waiting for someone who is trying to prove that a different temperament sounds better to post unlabeled recordings so that people could decide whether they sound better, worse, or the same without confirmation bias, but it never seems to happen.

I doubt if I could tell what brand a piano is from a blindfold test, even if it were multiple choice, or matching choices to pianos. There are too many variables.

I can't. I only can say this one is warmer, this one is brighter etc. Maybe the only one brand that is a little bit easier to distinguish for me is fazioli,but not much,just a little.

This was done before by Grandpianoman - he had his BB tuned in either EBVTIII or ET and posted the same pieces in both, but without naming them. If I recall correctly, no-one could reliably identify which was which.

Paul.

I think that differences between pianos are much more apparent to the performer than to the audience, so that in many cases, what seemed like a clear difference to the performer might not come across in a recording, or even to a live audience. I think this especially applies to concert artists choosing between several Steinways or Faziolis.

The question isn't whether a performer can tell which piano they prefer, it's whether blinded, they could pick the brand. I proposed a blinded test here 10 years ago to see if people could identify a Steinway. It was in response to a Steinway alternative thread where a lot of Steinway owners basically said there were none that sounded the same. Many of them were very sure they could ID brands, and I tried to propose a test that I thought would favor their claim. IIRC, 3 or 4 members started to take it quite personally that I even considered it might not prove Steinways sounded unique, and one even started using partial quotes from my posts to make it look like I was making statements I hadn't. I never tried to set up the test!

http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/71320/1.html

Someone posted a thread not too long ago (maybe within the last few months) that, if I remember correctly, had 1 piece played by the same performer on 4 different instruments - a Steinway, Bosendorfer, Steingraeber, and Yamaha - and asked people to guess which was which. I don't remember if anyone got them all right, but I think Rick was pretty close. Trying to remember what that thread was titled ... Anyway, that was pretty close to a blind test.

Here we go! See 8 Octaves post towards the bottom of the first page of this thread. http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/2535150/1.html

Cool.

Here is one that is interesting as well.

Scarlatti on 4 pianos: Bechstein, Estonia, Shigeru, Steinway Concert Grands

The problem with it, as you'll see, is that the recording quality and acoustics (etc.) are inconsistent.

In the recent Sydney Piano Competition, all competitors who reached the semifinals would have played all the four pianos used - Fazioli F278, Shigeru Kawai SK-EX, Yamaha CFX and Steinway D. They were allocated the pianos, and couldn't choose until the finals. (In the concerto finals, Fazioli was picked the most often).

When recorded under identical conditions - same hall, same mic placement - it's easy to hear the difference: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1SP_AwLMSAUKloQ4k7Dzew/videos

Would someone like to fish out the same pieces played on different pianos and paste them one after the other as a quiz for others?
(Several pieces were played on different pianos, among them Mephisto Waltz No.1, Prokofiev's 6th Sonata, Gaspard de la nuit, Vine's Toccatissimo......).

Totally OT, but this contestant has the longest femurs I have ever seen, at the piano!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_6zfbkQFks (beginning of vid)

It is said that concert Steinways tend to fall into three categories:

1) Mellow ones best suited for chamber music.

2) Raw, powerful ones suited for the piano part in orchestral works (playing from the back of the ensemble)

3) Clear, but colorful, ones suited to piano recitals and concerto performances (playing in front of the orchestra).

Years ago, Brendel did the "Emperor" with Masur and the NY Phil on "Live from Lincoln Center" on a very monumental-sounding Steinway (or so it struck me at the time) that seemed to really be a No. 2 (selected for sheer power, no doubt, in the famously dull hall).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6j-qf5790T8

I think I could recognize this kind of Steinway sound blindfolded, but don't hold me to that!

Identifying different brands from playing them would be much easier than from merely listening, especially listening to a recording.