[CAUT] touch & tone & tuning (was why does it feel better?)

[Wolfley, Eric (wolfleel)]

Alan,

In my book, adding weight to hammers is a form of voicing. I think what
is happening is that you are more closely matching the weight of the
hammer to the resiliency of the hammer felt. Hammers that are hard
because of reshaping, wear or juicing have tighter springs that need
more weight to get them moving. I am putting really heavy hammers in all
our performance pianos and find that it takes far more juice than a
lighter hammer would need. Once the weight and resilience have been
matched you end up with a fat, powerful sound that can sound sweet as
well. A couple years ago I put some clips on a Steinway B in a
professor's studio because it was sounding too strident for him. It gave
him just the sound he liked and I was a genius in his book. We now have
a new professor in that studio and he wanted it brightened and lightened
up a bit so I took the clips off and viola! I was a genius again.

Eric

Eric Wolfley, RPT
Head Piano Technician
Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music
University of Cincinnati
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Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2006 12:41 PM
To: College and University Technicians
Subject: [CAUT] touch & tone & tuning (was why does it feel better?)

List,

All of this discussion about how chnaging one aspect of a piano's
character affects the perception and experience of other aspects is very
interestsing indeed.  It made me want to share something that happened
here at the school recently and pose some questions for the lists
feedback.


Greetings CAUT Brethern and Sistern (?),

I write to you today to report an interesting experience we have had at
CalArts this past semester.  For some of you, this information is
"yesterday's paper."  For others, it may be a welcome introduction.  

It all began innocently enough with a complaint about inadequate
repetition on a particular note of one of our performance pianos.  Going
over the regulation adjustments with a fine toothed comb helped a bit,
but fell short of an adequate remedy.  The hammers have been filed a few
times and, as you've probably guessed by now, there was insufficient
hammer weight for good repetition (upweight in the upper teens as
opposed to the mid twenties).  Judicious application of "small" and
"mini" binder clips to the hammer shanks enabled a substantial
improvement in repetition. (The clips are readily available through your
local office supply store for just pennies each and may be fine tuned
for weight by sliding large center pins into to holes left open after
removing the "ears" upon installation of the clip itself.)  

As with other maladies that rear their ugly heads, if something has gone
bad with one note, it's usually a good idea to check the others.  Sure
enough, they all benefited from increased down and up weights via shank
clips (and the attendant re-regulation of rep. spring tension, rep.
lever height, drop, backchecking and parameters affecting aftertouch.)
Hammer replacement is scheduled at the next available opportunity, but
this looked to be a good "bridge" measure to hold us over until then.

So far, nothing unusual about all that.  What we thought was worth
sharing was this: Although we hadn't told our community of pianists that
we had done anything at all, unsolicited praises and adulation (what a
breath of fresh air!) immediately started coming in about the great
voicing work we had allegedly done.  Sometimes it is tempting to take
credit for something you haven't done but are credited for anyway-like
when you clean the keys and it feels so much nicer to touch that someone
thinks you performed major action work.  But in this instance, we
decided to tell the truth and leveled with them about what we did with
the clips.  Their response to the operation was so positively unanimous
that we proceeded to perform the same operation on other grands whose up
and down weights were getting a little lean.  Again, we didn't prejudice
anyone by telling them what we had done, and again, players noticed
welcomed improvements in both touch AND tone.

It is common knowledge that, ultimately, touch and tone are inseparable
issues.  This is as important an axiom for piano players as it is for us
technicians.  But we were really surprised.  Had the additional weight
been added in the form of newer, high-quality hammers of the proper
weight, the improvements would have been quite predictable.  But to
sound noticably better as a result of simply adding more weight to the
shank in the form of a cousin to the paper clip came quite unexpectedly.
This held true for a variety of pianos of different makes and models,
and was noticed by faculty and students alike.  What can we surmise from
this?  That something in the players approach to the otherwise same
instrument resulted in improved tone, something elicited by greater
strike weight and the attendant regulation adjustments in pursuit of
better repetition "improved" the tone?

This technique has been covered in convention classes before: A
Bosendorfer voicing class and Richard Davenport's "Prelude to Hammer
Replacement" come to mind.  (Davenport mentioned extensive use of shank
clips as an alternative to doing nothing at all in situations where
hammer replacement and all that should go with it are not an option for
economic reasons.)  In our recent experience at CalArts we had such
dramatic feedback that we felt compelled to offer our testimonial.  Does
this scenario ring a bell for any others out there?

Thanks,

Alan Eder RPT