What matters most?

[Mark Davidson]

It's important to realize that from the pianist's point of view, this
question is a bit absurd.
The pianist cares about how much weight/muscle it takes to get a sound.
S/he must accelerate
the whole mess, along with damper, so it's the total package that matters.
I recently told a professional pianist that I had moved the capstans screws
forward on
my piano to increase the leverage, to which she replied..."What's a capstan
screw?"
Once the total energy required to play a note reaches some limit, the piano
becomes
unplayable.  The limit varies somewhat for different people, but the range
isn't really
that big.  My pinky can only output so much energy in that .1 second.

So the ultimate border condition is the pianist's fingers.

One question a former mentor almost always asked was "what problem are you
trying to solve?" I would assert that the piano tries to solve the
following:

    1. Throw the biggest, fastest hammer at the string you can.
    2. Now do it again, quick!
    3. And by the way, you only get to use one finger.

Of course the whole problem is that 2 and 3 conflict with 1, so the problem
becomes
one of tradeoffs.

Now I realize that isn't really what you were asking, but good to keep in
mind when
looking for your answer.

The solution seems to involve the following:

1. leverage the hammer.  This allows higher velocity and allows the
    finger to continue accelerating the hammer all the way through the
    downstroke of the key (prevents "fly away")

2. add weight to the hammer until it gets too heavy

3. add keylead or wippen spring or magnets or...

4. if you can still play a trill, go to step 2, else stop

-Mark


RicB wrote:

>Hi touchweight enthusiasts
>
>Conversations with a few folks recently prompt me to put a question to
>you all relative to the problem of action inertia and touchweight. So...
>I''ll ask without further ado
>
>Whats is more important to the <<heaviness>> of the action, the inertia
>of the hammer and top action, or that of the key. Or if there exists a
>kind of border condition where one becomes more important then the other
>and vice versa.... what is that condition ?
>
>Thanks for any thoughts
>RicB