Quick action lubrication:

[Richard Brekne]

BobDavis88@AOL.COM wrote:

> a
>
> The pianists had definite feelings about controllability, saying that some
> actions felt more manageable. They seemed to favor ones they perceived as
> "heavy." While they were playing, I went around measuring things to see if
> this was truth or perception. The preference seemed to be related NOT to
> weight or inertia, but to voicing! I believe they experienced the ones with a
> softer hammer surface as being more controllable, through what I describe as
> "tonal resistance." On the darker ones, they had to push just a little harder
> to get a soft tone, which helped with control. As a counter-example, imagine
> trying to get a soft melodious tone on hammers the tops of which are soaked
> with lacquer.
>
> Bob Davis

Now THERE you are on to something extremely fascinating. And the pursuit of that
concept will continue to fascinate as well as open a lot of eyes about touch and
voicing questions. We on the tech side tend to pick all this stuff apart into
seperate little quantities.... but the pianist.... they <<sense>> the instrument
on an entirely different plane. For them its.. what goes in does or doesnt come
out...if you get my meaning... They put in an idea they have in their minds... a
note.. how its supposed to sound... how its supposed feel (emotionally as well as
physically) and they want to get out the same... or at the very least something
predicatble to work with. This applies to how things feel to the finger as well
as how thing sound. A pianist mixes will often say something like "the action
feels stiff" when he actually may be describing a problem dealing with hard
hammers. Or he may say the piano plays heavy when its voiced to dark.... because
he has to put so much energy into the system to get out what he is expecting for
that input.... A particularily astute piano major told me recently that "the
voice of the instrument is felt by the fingers"

But the more you listen (and I mean listen hard) and pay attention to how the
given instrument is configured... the better you get at reading what they are
saying... and the more fun it gets solving their particular puzzle for that
particular instrument.

Nice post Bob

Cheers !
RicB
--
Richard Brekne
RPT, N.P.T.F.
Bergen, Norway
mailto:rbrekne@broadpark.no
http://home.broadpark.no/~rbrekne/ricmain.html