The Good kind of Heavy

[Isaac sur Noos]

Hello heaviness lurkers !

I believe student pianists like some heaviness in the action in the
sense this give them a better perception, then they are under the
impression that things are easier to control (particularly if they are
healthy pianists).

This also give them assurance of the kind "if I can play well with
this somewhat heavy action, I will be at ease on the Concert D for the
exams".

Most difficult task to learn for the pianists is how to make an
economic use of their muscular strength and body weight, having a
piano on which they can push allow them to play more forcefully
without the usual hard response they get on a lighter piano.

But professional pianists want most often an action with a lot of
tactile feedback, not too light indeed, but mostly where the end of
the key resistance is even from note to note, the heaviness they like
and they use is mostly located at this moment (and a little before
under acceleration parameters when they play faster)

it is more a question of friction and compression of the action (that
are indeed dependent of the hammer's weight also) that can be
perceived as "good heaviness"

We have a very heavy piano by static measures in the conservatory, it
is very well regulated and the tone is acceptable, it is a KAWAI KG5C
with too heavy Renner heads. They like to practice a bit on it, but
soon will complain that it is too difficult (tiring) to use it for
virtuosity.

My good friend Stephen Paulello say that the pianist may learn to work
the tone only at the end of the stroke , the beginning of the key move
may be obtained with the arm/body weight or a lot of fatigue & tension
occur soon.

Then most of the pianists can deal with a large range of "static"
heaviness but it may be predictable. Also, the resistance may
certainly not be larger at the beginning of the stroke than at the
end. Once the key is dropped the arm/hand is totally relaxed, and get
active only to hopefully control the last moments of the stroke just
before the tone really occur.

A key that is too easy to move at the start oblige the pianist to hold
its weight a lot, a key that is hard to move oblige him to a
supplement of weight effort at the begin and it is then difficult to
be totally relaxed to "do something" when the key bottoms.

For most pianists, the reference is the bottom of the key, the
punching, they play like if the first 2/3 of the key travel does not
even exist, that is there I believe a match between the pianist weight
and the inertia of the system may find compliance.

I've read some teacher talking of the "germination of the notes" the
tone open only at these very last moments., and appears from the
bottom of the keyboard like seed opening from the ground !

Well, I am certainly not expert on those, I just have a few ideas on
how a piano can be played, I also noticed that organ players and
harpsichord players rarely know how to use the inertia of the piano to
produce a good tone. Pianists that have not a lot of muscular mass are
more at ease on music that could be played on Forte pianos, and have
less need for a deep full tone.

I don't pretend that I say to be true and it is certainly roughly
expressed, in the end we can analyze and try to have a good
understanding of what are the errors to avoid, how an action can
repeat better or be more even, but in the end the pianists only can
tell us what is better for them.


Its getting late now nuf musing !

Friendly greetings to all

isaac OLEG