Feeling the Hammers when playing

[Stéphane Collin]

Hi Ed.

I knew this was an interesting topic.
I do agree with your objections, but one.
I tried the harder front rail punchings, to feel the difference.  Obviously, the touch feel is much altered (I like this harder touch, giving sensation of more precise control).  But also the sound of the piano, as I think I can clearly percieve that the very sound (knocking) of the key hitting the front rail punching *IS* part of the sound of the note.  This is of course more obvious in higher notes and on forte blows.  And if the guys in the control room don't hear the difference, it is probably because they put the mikes close to the sound board, in the piano body.  If they placed them say 5 feet away from the piano, and in a well reverberating hall, they would notice the sound of knocking of the key against the piano body through the front rail, and interpret this as an increased attack of the higher forte notes.
On cembalums and on pianofortes, as the body of the sound is weaker, the knocking of the key against the rail is more obvious, and gets often a little ennoying.  But on a good piano, I would make this also part of the voicing techniques, to control balance between attack and body of the note.

Greetings to all hypercyberpsychohistoricoacousticians.

Stéphane Collin.
(Brussels, Belgium)
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <A440A@AOL.COM>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Monday, July 01, 2002 12:26 AM
Subject: Re: Feeling the Hammers when playing


| antares writes:
|  
| >It's simple Ricky, you just strike a key, you hit the bottom which is the
| >front rail punching right? you then clearly feel the energy from the impact
| >of the hammer against the string.
| 
|    I can't agree with this.  On a pianissimo blow, there are perhaps 12 
| milliseconds between the moment the hammer contacts the string and when the 
| key hits the bottom its travel.  This is not sufficient time to register the 
| "tingling".  On a stronger blow, the moment of keybottom advances, and on a 
| Forte blow,  the key is actually on the bottom before the hammer hits the 
| string.  So, what you are feeling in the key is not the hammer contact with 
| the string but rather, the string vibration resulting from a hammer contact 
| that is already a past event.  See 
| http://www.speech.kth.se/music/5_lectures/askenflt/keybott.html
|  
|    As far as the see-saw analogy,  the hardness of the "ground" (front 
| punching) affects the impact noise, but I fail to see that it changes the 
| manner in which the string oscillates.   And I  don't notice a difference in 
| the sound when I change the front rail punchings.  This is something I have 
| done in recording studios, where the only judgement of the sound comes from 
| the ears in the control room, and the only thing going into the control room 
| is the signal from the closely positioned microphones, usually 10 inches 
| above the soundboard. 
|   In fact, I don't remember anybody mentioning a change in sound, (and these 
| are pretty controlled conditions) when I regulate and refelt these actions, 
| other than occasionally it is noticed that there isn't as much noise on the 
| very softest play. The players notice a huge difference when I refelt, but 
| the sound going into the control room doesn't seem to change, and believe you 
| me,  those guys are extremely sensitive to changes.  
| Regards, 
| Ed Foote 
| (I am reminded of a thread concerning how much change in tone was to be had 
| from moving the back check upwards, but I was unable to find anyone that 
| could hear a difference between two differently adjusted keys.) 
|