[CAUT] Steinway sound

[Fred Sturm]

On Feb 28, 2011, at 8:20 PM, rwest1 at unl.edu wrote:

> As Fred states, we don't want to see the hammer wobbling left to  
> right, but the fact that the hammer arches back on a hard blow and  
> delivers a strike differently and in a different area of the hammer  
> from a soft blow, a strike without significant shank distortion, may  
> be a good thing, without any more inconsistency of control than a  
> rigid shank.  In fact there may be more variability and a wider  
> choice of color and volume.  Until, of course, the weight of the  
> hammer is not great enough to really punch out the concerto volume.


	Well, Askenfeld did speculate that the back and forth wobble might be  
the source of the notion of "different touches" producing different  
tone quality.  I am skeptical, and think Del is right: the problem is  
that it isn't really going to be consistent and controllable. The  
hammer wobbles back and forth more than half a time or a whole time  
during a blow. If it were in that range, maybe it would be  
controllable. But since it goes back and forth more like two to three  
times, predicting where it will be on impact is really impossible. And  
different wooden shanks, even the same size and shape, will flex  
differently, so if you learn the feel of one, it won't apply to another.
	IOW, it seems like a nice conceptual thing, but I doubt it works in  
practice. BTW, I tentatively think a big portion of the "different  
touch" affect comes from the portion of attack sound created by the  
key against the keyframe/bed. The importance of the attack portion of  
tone is often overlooked, as we tend to focus more on the sustain, and  
attack sound has a lot of "noise" in it.
Regards,
Fred Sturm
fssturm at unm.edu
http://www.youtube.com/fredsturm