Touch design for concert pianists

[Farrell]

Don't take my comments as the final word on action balancing, as I am not 
real experienced with all of that - but I'm learning. And of course, that 
won't stop me from commenting on your situation!

You've two overall sources for action "weight" - i.e. how heavy the action 
feels to the player.

One is the downweights as you have measured. Yours are perhaps at the light 
end of what is generally considered very desirable - likely a young girl 
with small hands isn't going to want an action with much higher values.

The other issue affecting the action feel is mass. Mass in the keys (lead) 
and mass in the hammers (size, density, cores, trimming, leading - and shank 
mass). If I were you, I'd measure key front weights (FW) and hammer/shank 
strike weights (SW) and see where these values fall on the Stanwood charts. 
That would be a good first step in evaluating if/where your action mass 
falls in the "normal" range. I find such an evaluation to be invaluable.

Another very quick and dirty way to get a very rough idea of action mass is 
to look at touchweight (down and up weight) and key leading. If you have 
"normal" or desirable touchweight (which you do) AND you have key leading 
tapering from three full sized leads in the bass keys tapering to zero leads 
in the high treble keys, you likely a nice action that would feel good to 
most pianists. If you have more or less leads, you MAY have an action that 
is too light or heavy.

If you have 3 to 0 leading and the touchweight you describe, it may well be 
that this piano teacher is blinded by his own preferences. Or, I suppose it 
may be his philosophy that a young pianist needs to hit the (finger) weight 
machine......

Hope this helps your thought process.

Terry Farrell

----- Original Message -----
> I face again the same old problem of a client of mine who's been told by 
> an
> authorized concert pianist that her beautiful piano (Bechstein model D) 
> had
> too light a touch for her to train properly.  The static downweight is for
> now tapered from 52 grams in the bass to 47 grams in the treble.  To my
> fingers, the weight feel is medium and the action plays quite well.
>
> How do you all address this issue ?  I know that the easy undoable way is 
> to
> add clip leads at the back of the keys, but won't this affect the
> responsiveness and repetition performance of the action ?  Clips on the
> hammer shanks will also alter the sound (maybe for better in the bass, but
> certainly for worse in the treble).
> I would prefer redoing the front weighting (cost is not an issue in this
> case).  But then, what are the reasonable limits in which we can work ?
> Should I add 2 grams to all downweights ? 5 grams ? 10 grams ?
> My client is a young girl with small hands (gifted, for sure), and the guy
> who told her her piano is too light is more the Russian kind of KGB 
> security
> agent pianist.  I fear for tendinitis behind the corner.
>
> Stéphane Collin