[CAUT] damper return noise/una corda

[Greg Newell]

Joe,

                I’m not familiar with this effect even though I own one.
Could you please describe?

 

Greg Newell

Greg's Piano Forté

www.gregspianoforte.com

216-226-3791 (office)

216-470-8634 (mobile)

 

From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Joe
Goss
Sent: Friday, May 07, 2010 12:13 AM
To: caut at ptg.org
Subject: Re: [CAUT] damper return noise/una corda

 

Sort of like the Bosendorfer effect?

Joe Goss BSMusEd MMusEd RPT
imatunr at srvinet.com
www.mothergoosetools.com

----- Original Message ----- 

From: Zeno Wood <mailto:zeno.wood at gmail.com>  

To: caut at ptg.org 

Sent: Thursday, May 06, 2010 11:33 AM

Subject: Re: [CAUT] damper return noise/una corda

 

Hi Fred,

I remember hearing Ed McMorrow's take on this.  When the hammer strikes the
two strings, the third string is out of phase, which causes noise on a slow
damper release.  However, his solution was to tell the pianist not to do it.
FWIW.  YMMV.  Etc.

Regards,
Zeno Wood



On Thu, May 6, 2010 at 1:09 PM, Fred Sturm <fssturm at unm.edu> wrote:

       There has been discussion in the past on this list of the problem of
damper return noise when playing with una corda. This problem has really
been bugging me more and more. The issue is that the dampers work fine with
next to no return noise except when the una corda pedal is used. But when
the u c is used, there is considerable, often very audible return noise, and
it happens when someone is trying to play very softly so is doubly annoying,
essentially in areas where there are trichord damper felts. I have tried
lots of things, the most promising of which is to tilt the dampers very
subtly so that flats hit the strings slightly ahead of trichords, and this
helps but doesn't eliminate the problem. Different damper felt doesn't seem
to help, though I can't say I have tried everything (haven't tried Yamaha or
Kawai, for instance).
       I am at a loss what to do to avoid this other than to change hammer
alignment and shift parameters so that all strings are always struck by all
hammers. I am beginning to suspect this may be a major reason why the
Steinway basement guys decided to make that change to their standard
procedure. While I like to have the two string tonal palette available, the
tradeoff of that return noise seems to wipe out the advantage.
       Does anyone else have thoughts on how to resolve this issue?
Regards,
Fred Sturm
fssturm at unm.edu
http://www.createculture.org/profile/FredSturm

 

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