Stanwood

[Yardbird47@aol.com]

I'd like to step forward at this point, at a moment when I shouldn't even be
on the computer (promises to wife my to be a husband, promises to Stephen
Brady, obligations to work/cash flow). I was quite moved by Michael Wathen's
fatigue, and more specifically, his feeling that he wasn't getting off square
one towards David Stanwood's ideas. I too frequently feel as that I should go
to the back of the class and face the corner. For instance, I didn't realize
what Richard Davenport and others were talking about (in PTJ 5/95) when they
said that wheezing trichord dampers just need to have their wedges trimmed.
That is, until I saw him slice a bevel off of the edge of a wedge as clean
and neatly formed as a piece of yarn.....with a $70 pair of scissors. I feel
a little silly that I missed a good chance to learn how to trim dampers like
that, but maybe I should be glad I didn't pick a recording studio piano to
try something fresh, exciting and sobering.  I'm sure that Dan Levitan
continued with a whole book of fresh ideas on inharmonicity and its real
effects on our daily tuning after the first half installment, but that's as
far as I got. The next vacation I take (and ABQ was not one!), I'm going to
sit down with his entire series, a pad of paper, a highlighter and a pencil,
and make of study of the entire thing. And I also envy the heck out of
Michael Wathen's math and physics courses, and the physics lab equipment he
has access to. But his concepts (and Stephen Birkett's as well) are only
dimly understood by the body of knowledge I have put together thus far, and I
must read , re-read, and read them again before I can claim to follow them.
I'd also like to make a few points regarding David Stanwood's ideas and
system. The discussion of what hammer mass produces the best tone is really
one of nostrums. Each of us from our own experience has a conviction as to
where the best sound is to be found, be it heavy or light hammers, hammers
which you needle down from hard or dope up from soft, or even aliquots which
you've slacked wire to be able to tune. Each of us in sticking with that
conviction will honor that conviction by executing the accompanying work with
as much devotion to detail and and quality as we can. It's easy to see why
each person's work turns out as such a self-fulfilled prophesy. For that
reason I won't argue anybody's side on the matter of the best strike weight.
Barney Ricca said in ABQ, there's only so much that the hammer will do to
deliver energy to the string that the string can best deliver to the
soundboard. Certain aspects of voicing (which we'd like to have control over)
really do live in the board, and if you want to go after them, you should be
prepared to drill 2" holes in the board and hang 20# weights from the bridge.
As we all know, when one tech demonstrates an elegant way of changing a light
bulb, nine other techs are there talking about it. One more thing on
nostrums, I don't doubt Don Mannino when he says that the piano in Seattle
(you know, the one with the "by-the-book" tone regulation of a light hammer)
performed outstandingly in a concerto situation. I would have loved to be
there myself.
That aside, I'd like to continue with people's concerns on David's ideas. As
you've noticed, he's no physicist. I've reminded him on at least an annual
basis that inertia is a function of nothing but mass, in fact it's an
attribute (one of the character traits) of mass. The inertial effect which he
wants to describe, while it comes from the total mass on a note in the
action, is more a matter of impedance matching (Thanks for the new word,
Barney!) .In slamming down on the key, the finger has a certain amount of
kinetic energy to deliver to the action lever train., but it's only slamming
when the object it's striking is an immobile one. Is the action immobile?
Usually that should only be if we've left a 2*4 sitting on the shanks before
we slide the action back in. But we should also think of the fraction of
second immediately following the finger's impact on the key, while the key is
going from a dead start to whatever the velocity  is  at which it will join
the finger. It is that differential which produces the momentary perception
that the pianist is slugging a brick wall. (Ponder on the point I made in
"Hand on Your Hammer", that the extent to which a tight tuning pin will
deflect part our turning motion in a bending of the pin and reflect most of
it back into our hand, is the extent to which we or slamming our hand into a
brick wall.)
I have no difficulty with David's having napped during High School physics
class: I did that too. I also think it should be acknowledged that David's
metrology is not one of dynamic measurements, and thus should not be expected
to satisfy the complexities of the dynamic situation that Stephen Birkett
seeks to remind us of. The measurements in David's system indeed are dead
weights, rather than say, optically perceived hammer velocity vs. key
velocity at the point of hammer strike. Doug Kirkwood  and I faced similar
issues in the development of a spreadsheet model of the way string tension
moves across the string path of note #52 on a Steinway B. How complicated did
our model need to be to serve its purpose? We weren't intending it to be so
complete and accurate in its description that we could use it to predict
tensions, and in fact send commands to a "robo-tuner" (remind me next 4/1 to
bring everybody up to date on the Mitsubishi/Inventronics joint venture). We
discussed possible refinements to our description of the transactions at
friction barriers and at the tuning pin, and concluded with some relief that
introducing these complexities would not drastically alter the outcomes but
would at the most provide a further degree of resolution on the calculations.
Barney Ricca agreed.
But there are several points of elegance in David's system, for all that it
is or isn't. First, with the exception of the Strike Weight, all weight
measurements (including the wippen weight) are taken at the same place: the
touch point at the fronto of the key. That a central measuring point could
yield us the balance weight (how much heavier the back side of the key is
than the front), the total inertia (how heavy is the sum of both sides) and
further yet the action's overall ratio (as measured by weight not by
distance) gives me strong faith in the system. Another piece of elegance is
the fact that  the entire system is based on the simple trick of tared
weight. David's system, in delivering these, tells me everything I want to
know about an action, and how it is "hung". Further, as I've said before, if
you can measure it you can regulate it. Heavy hammers may not be your thing,
but if you wanted to use such a set, you'd be in a position to monitor
whether with such a weight out on the end of the shank, the existing action
ratio would allow you to do a simple balance weight and not send the total
action weight through the roof. Similarly, once you get such a profile of the
action (and how well it is hung) you know exactly which of the factors in
this profile to go after. Or if you had the profile of one of Dennis Johnson's
 turn-of-the century Steinways, you could reproduce it by matching its
profile. At the very least, David's system should be a common language which
in determining the essentials of mass and leverage, allows us to trade
profiles of actions we've run into and maybe even corrected. I know I've
faxed off a few "pictures" since the subject opened last winter.
Consider the current convention, to which David offers an alternative: the
downweight (and if we're really sticklers about it, the upweight besides).
DW/UW may tell you about mass and friction, but won't directly tell you what
is what. It may if you can extract the balance weight from the DW/UW, tell
you how much heavier the back end of the key is than the front. But as for
the sum of both sides the DW can't do much more for you than stand aside
while you guess blindly. And as for overall action ratio, who'd have thought
of getting that from a DW.
And yes indeed folks, I do agree that we should separate conjecture from
science. How about the following shorthand: IST ("I suspect that"), IBMET
("It's been my experience that").

IMHO,
Mr. Bill (Oh, No.....) Ballard
yardbird47@aol.com