I understand the concept of sustain in a piano. The sounding board needs to be stiff enough to reflect the energy in the vibrating string rather than absorb it. The termination pieces need to be solid so the energy is not dissipated there. When any of these items are compromised, sustain is shorter - sometimes tragically shorter. I've been in classes on voicing where people talk of hammers that enhance sustain, or show how to voice the hammer to enhance sustain. They'll do their thing to the hammer and proclaim that the sustain is longer and the whole class nods in agreement. I've never been sure if this is a real, or a psycho-acoustic phenomena. Has this every been actually measured with lab equipment? I haven't figured out the physics of this. What can the hammer do - however it is made or voiced - to keep the energy in the string and lengthen the sustain? I understand that we can change the prominence and number of the partials by voicing or by changing hammers, but can we actually make the string vibrate longer? dave _________________________ David M. Porritt, RPT Meadows School of the Arts 6101 Bishop Blvd. Southern Methodist University Dallas, TX 75275 dporritt at smu.edu<mailto:dporritt at smu.edu> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech_ptg.org/attachments/20081230/5c452eb7/attachment.html>
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