Dale said: <Power with out noise. A beautiful blooming sustain. The piano speaks easily and there is awesome definition and tonal balance between registers. Nothing muddy, lots of clarity. Your sing'in my song, my friend! So here's my big question: Regarding the words you've used above, especially the "power without noise", I completely agree with and seek this sound you have described. However, over the last couple of years, on this list and particularly on CAUT, my impression has been that this sound profile has been roundly denigrated as unacceptably "controlled" and inappropriate for serious performing pianists (mostly late romantic classical). So much so that my impression has been that the whole RC&S paradigm was being challenged as inappropriate to the needs of performance venues. The denigration (my word and maybe my subjective impression), was rehearsed in a Journal series a 12/2011-1/2012( I think it was a CAUT conversation) which started with Laurance Libin musing about how hard it is to blind differentiate between S&S, Bechstein, Yammy, much less an S&SNY D from a Hamburg D. (Galembo's series later empirically concurred with this observation). Then Libin's musings on tone and Arledge's blind test which unanimously favored mellow Chickering sound, were then quickly hijacked, as usual, by the "blast sound though the concert hall" argument which quite directly challenged the validity of this sound profile I think you and I are talking about. I took this "denegration", mostly by CAUT techs and their high profile performance requirements to heart, though I disagreed and disagree with it whole-hardheartedly. I decided, rather than try to insert, at high financial risk, my vision in a market "supposedly" looking for more noise and less clarity, to target, through a serious and expensive website development and campaign, like minded pianists from a wide geographical area. My take was (presently is) that it was way safer to draw clients directly from the sounds I make, rather than draw them from tech referrals which come with tech influenced "the way its supposed to sound" biases..and its working for my small business. So my question to you Dale is...you've heard this above "appropriate performance tone" discussion above, as I have. You also have a keen business sense, and you seem to be drawing from a wider customer base than I am targeting. Are you having to deal with this (for lack of a better term) CAUT bias with the sounds you are making? Jim Ialeggio -- Jim Ialeggio jim at grandpianosolutions.com 978 425-9026 Shirley Center, MA
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