Quantifying What You Hear...

[ed440 at mindspring.com]

Matt-

You should not assume a "one size fits all" tone standard.

Different performers listen for different things, and many hardly listen.  Do not assume that academic status is a measure of musical sensitivity. 

The way the sound changes over time may be more important to musical expression than a generalized, averaged spectrum. How percussive is the attack, how quickly does the sustain sound come to a focus, how quickly does it decay?

Some music demands articulate, focused passage work, other music works by building a sense of "big resonance" by piling up argeggios and chords, other music demands exquisite balance or contrast between melody and accompaniment.  These are very different demands made of the piano and performer.

None of this is a product of soundboard only; it is always the result of everything working together(including room and performer...and maybe even audience!)

One possible experiment would be to have several different pianos and ask several performers "Which one do you prefer for Scarlatti, which for Beethoven, which for Chopin, Debussey, etc.?"  Then (after they have answered) ask them why, what do they hear, what does the piano do that makes it better for Scarlatti?  (Some musicians are not very good with words; if you offer them a word they will usually grab it.  You need to wait for them to find their own words.) 

You might consider that finding out what musicians say in such a situation is valuable research.  I would urge you not to try to make musicians say things that fit easily with your view of things.  A musical instrument without a musician to play it is meaningless.

Good luck!

Ed Sutton

-----Original Message-----
>From: Matt Borland <mattborland at gmail.com>
>Sent: Dec 29, 2006 7:37 PM
>To: pianotech at ptg.org
>Subject: Quantifying What You Hear...
>
>Hello,
>
>I'm new to this list, but I was wondering if I could get some 
>help/opinions/ideas about the way sound in musical instruments is 
>described. Currently I'm doing a masters working with Stephen Birkett 
>at the University of Waterloo and one of the big problems we have found 
>is the inability to discuss musical acoustics in any quantifiable way 
>that has meaning to both musicians and people using a scientific 
>approach (not to say that people can't fall into both of those groups 
>at the same time). My work is going to involve piano soundboards, but 
>before I start on that I want to think about and define some ways to 
>describe the sound/tone of the soundboards and pianos I will be 
>measuring for vibrational and acoustic properties.  I think we've all 
>used words like bright, muddy, crisp, sharp, round, dark, etc. to 
>describe the sound of an instrument, but these are highly subjective 
>words that are difficult to draw any concrete conclusions from. So the 
>question is, are there any other parameters you feel would be useful to 
>quantify? Maybe there is a way to measure how "bright" something 
>sounds...If you have a concept and some sort of definition to go along 
>with it I'd love to hear from you.
>
>Some obvious ones (if these are poorly defined, feel free to redefine 
>them) are:
>
>decay time - the time it takes for sound level to decay by a defined 
>amount (ie 60dB, or whatever, I'm thinking of the RT60 definition for 
>reverberation time from acoustics) linked to sustain
>impedance - a measure of opposition to motion of a structure subjected 
>to a force
>bloom - change in tone over time
>response time - is the time a system or functional unit takes to react 
>to a given input
>
>Basically I would like to make the link between the frequency and modal 
>analysis techniques available with the language that musical 
>instruments are discussed in terms of. I really doubt anyone has talked 
>about how nice the mode shapes of their pianos are, but maybe if things 
>like this are connected to the way they sound by some common definition 
>or understanding then they could be used to measure the properties of 
>an instrument. I would also like to make the link between these 
>techniques and the way we perceive sound and pitch, something that I 
>feel has been forgotten in a lot of research work.
>
>Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated,
>
>Matt Borland
>