Christopher Moore's Personal Blog

Two weeks ago I experienced something mind-blowing that I thought people should be aware of.

I have just played the Ultimate Piano (™)

Now before anyone jumps up and down on me for having been injected with a near fatal dose of marketing jingoism of the worst kind, let me assure you that this is not the case - I am a trained research scientist and able to make reasonably objective judgements about things, especially music. So let me repeat in totally non-emotional and objective language -

I have just played the Ultimate Piano (™)

I visited the Stuart & Sons Piano factory in Newcastle to play their latest pianos - and let me tell you these are something to behold. These are the world's only currently manufactured 102-key grand pianos. The new Reference series Stuart & Sons Concert Grand Piano (2.9m) and Studio Grand Piano (2.2m) have pushed the frequency boundaries for the acoustic piano to the limits CCC (or C0) @ 16.3516Hz to f5 (or F8) @ 5587.6517Hz. These ultimate grand pianos are designed and handcrafted not only for a new and exciting experience in the interpretation of the 'standard' piano repertoire, but also, and uniquely, for the vertical dimension of sound which has been the bedrock of music composition since the Impressionists. The extended frequency range, the dynamic sensitivity and sustain opens the way to a whole new experience in piano performance craft not possible on any other piano. Stuart & Sons recognises that since the introduction of the Bosendorfer Imperial grand that C0 is the lowest key to be found on a piano. There is repertoire which embraces this lower frequency range but until now only Bosendorfer have met the keyboard challenge. Stuart says that the successful employment of special wire from Stephen Paulello in France has enabled the design of the 2.2m 102-key piano as modern high-tensile music wire can not be used successfully for low tension scales.

The first three ultimate grands are hot off the press with two instruments 'seasoning' in the performance room where they will undergo further adjustment and refinement as they settle and acclimatise to their environment. Even at this early stage the sound was quite extraordinary and certainly much better than any piano I have played to this point in time.

What do they look like? Like all of his pianos, beautifully finished and absolutely stunning in a satin finished East Indian rosewood. Veneers up to 500mm wide are quite magnificnetly matched across the lid.



The studio grand piano is the only 2.2m 102 note piano ever to have been built as a serious musical instrument.



A close up of the sub-contra octave bass strings is provided here



With the interior view, it can the clearly seen that the sub-contra octave bass strings really do take up all of the length of the piano.



The whole instrument is an imposing and incredible piece of work. This is a piano that up to now people have only dreamed of, and to have experienced it in reality is a life experience for me.

But even better than it looks, is the way it plays and sounds. Sound samples have already been provided at www.pianophilia.com

This piano puts to the sword the contention that innovation in the acoustic piano is moribund. It further redefines the possibilities of the acoustic piano for the 21st century and provides the final nail in the coffin of the incessant reproduction of proven form that has dominated the acoustic piano for the past century. When Nietzche said 'God is dead' many would say he was wrong. If I were to say that 'Steinway is dead', I don't think I would be.

…since I added anything to this blog, simply because during that time I didn’t really have anything earth-shattering to say and I didn’t want to waste bandwidth in spouting a whole load of noise.

But last month was an interesting anniversary for me. It was the 50th anniversary of my starting to learn the piano, and looking back over what I can remember of those fifty years its quite clear to me that, after my family of course, music has been the one thing that has held me together for all of that time.

My eye is quite stable after the cataract operation and I will need one final operation later in the year to finish things off, and then hopefully any operation I need in the future will not be on the eye.

After many ups and downs I’ve finally begun to make serious progress with the oboe and cor anglais, and I’ve arranged to be taught by one of the best players in the Australia – I imagine this will really a test of patience. I’ve actually played the instruments a couple of times during masses that David and I have played together, and whilst the volume is OK (that oboe is loud!) my pitch is a bit wonky and that is something which will be a focus over the next few weeks and months.

On the Stuart front, I’m doing another fundraising recital in October, playing Schubert (the Sonata in B flat D960) and works by Tan Dun and the unknown until now Ukrainian composer Javid Artoghrul. It’s quite a major undertaking for me, and I must admit I will need to work hard to get it right. So far, I rate myself about 60% overall, which of course is not good enough.

As a result, my re-recording has not yet occurred, but I plan to finish it off after the recital since I hope my overall skill level might be better then.

So it’s all hands on deck, as it were. Much fun.

… and I had a good time playing lots of old-time R’n’R in front of what was really a very appreciative audience last Saturday night. Considering it was the first such concert I’d been part of in what passes as my professional life I was quite happy with the overall effort and friends and relatives who were there were quite complimentary and had a good time into the bargain.

I used the Kurzweil keyboard, and that stood up to my shenanigans very well as I expected it to, and the sound coming out was pretty good into the bargain. There was a Yamaha baby grand there I could have played but I needed more sounds that just a piano and it probably wouldn’t have fitted onto the stage with all the PA gear and drum kits etc that even these days are part and parcel of such shows.

My son used his high definition video camera to record the show (in 5.1 surround sound, yet…) and I type this my computer still has over three hours to go (after already spending 17!) in rendering the output into a video file I can play on the computer, and then I’ll create a DVD so that we can go back and see where things can improve. I know one bit already – there’s one spot where I’m one beat ahead of everyone else – how that happened I have no idea

On the Stuart front, things are progressing reasonably well and whilst I’m still not sure when I’m going to be comfortable recording again that should happen sooner rather than later. The piano is sounding good as usual and my fingers are comfortable, which is something that not always happens but when it does it’s a sign that at least mentally I’m feeling at ease.

The only small cloud on the horizon is the, whilst my eye has been stable now for quite a while, a full-fledged cataract has formed and that will be operated on next week. These operations are pretty routine now and I don’t anticipate any real problems, but it pays not to take things for granted in life as I’ve discovered many times.

… people’s attitudes to various things surprise, and not often positively either. I’ve always felt that it is very difficult to convince people that something new is worthwhile since people are normally stuck inside their own little square and nothing you say or do will convince them to change that in any meaningful way.

I’ve found this to especially true with the Stuart piano – people tend to have entrenched positions when it comes to discussing the pros and cons of the beast, and quite often I’ve found these positions are ‘protected’ as it were by an attitude and demeanour bordering on arrogance and in no way based upon any meaningful or intelligent thought.

Wayne dropped in last week to make sure the piano was in good shape since I’m getting into recording mode again. Apart from replacing one hammer which was ‘clicking’ and probably a bit loose, the rest of the voicing required very little adjustment and the tuning was still spot on. The overall stability of the piano never ceases to impress. But I digress …

He had just come back from the Canberra International Music Festival, which amongst other things showcased some outstanding piano music by the contemporary Dutch composer Louis Andriessen, of the clan of the same name. What was just as impressive in his view was the way the two Dutch pianists took to the instrument and used them (this was for two pianos) to their maximum advantage to bring out the power, complexity and at other times subtlety of the music. The musicians’ considered view was that no other piano could do nearly as good a job at the Stuart, and I can believe that – their views are not unique by any means.

Contrast this with some of the other pianists on show who seemed to think that you can transpose how you play a Steinway onto a Stuart and came up so far short it just wasn’t funny, and then, ignoring their own limitations which were obvious to all who listened, blamed the piano. Particularly disturbing was the Canberra piano student who, never having either seen, heard or played a Stuart piano before, rubbished the whole thing – “You can keep the piano – it’s no good”. Politeness prevents me from responding in print.

It is very sad when peoples’ minds are so closed and shuttered that they are unable to see either side of the straight and narrow. Even more so, when students of a reputable school of music disparage works and instruments which are at the top of the tree and at the forefront of classical music making in the modern world.

… but that doesn’t mean I’ve been idle – far from it in fact. I’ve been continuing the practice of the pieces I’ve recorded previously, and will start to rerecord them next week, all going well.

I’ve also got back into some ‘mainstream’ repertoire, and the Schubert Sonata in B Flat, D960 is beginning to take on some serious shape – although with a work of this magnitude and complexity it will be a while before I’m even remotely satisfied with what I’m doing. But at least I’ve made a start and there is no doubt that the piano suits the music (and vice versa!) to a tee. The piece covers a magnitude of emotions and moods but I’m finding, as I would expect, that I’m able to use the full dynamic and tonal range of the Stuart to its best advantage here.

Once again, a poke in the eye for all those people say ‘You can’t play such and such on the Stuart’ etc etc.

I’m also doing a one-off show with my brother-in-law’s band to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the death of Buddy Holly. I wouldn’t consider myself a rock musician by any stretch of the imagination and the majority of ‘pop’ music in general leaves me cold, but the music is not complex and being very experienced as I am in playing in bands and accompanying singers and other musicians, fitting in is not a problem.

Anyhow, it’s fun.

Unfortunately I can’t take the Stuart piano with me, so I’m stuck with the Kurzweil keyboard. You can’t have everything, I suppose.

… , at least in things musical, is something that I’ve been doing nearly all of my life. I seem to remember that my first ‘performance’ as it were was on a ukulele at the age of eight, and that was around the time I was crazy enough to answer ‘Yes’ when my mother asked if I wanted to learn the piano.

I’ve come a long way since then of course, my first piano was one which we brought out from England with us because we couldn’t sell it there, and in fact we kept it in our garage of all places because we couldn’t fit it in the house. Now of course I have the Stuart sitting in my music room and certainly I would suggest that that is an improvement over my humble beginnings in this regard – albeit some 50 years or so afterwards.

I have mentioned before that the Stuart piano is so clear and precise that it emphasises everything I do wrong, and I must admit that I do quite a few things wrong when I play. Whilst I can get away with this to an extent when I record my playing, in the sense that I can go back and correct things, strictly speaking I can’t do that when I perform in public. Since I have begun to get back into such performances, it is clear that I need to really focus on that aspect of my playing and that is what I have been doing over the last few days.

I plan another fundraising concert in the beginning of July, and so I have set myself the target of really trying to eliminate as many errors, glitches and uncertainties as I can. This will have an important bearing on my recordings going forward.

In order to really set a standard, I’ve been recording my playing on video. Obviously, in video recording WYSIWYG with a vengeance and any little imperfections, particularly on this piano, become glaringly obvious.

So I’ve been recording myself in glorious high-definition 1080p using my son’s video recorder. At the same time, I’ve recorded the audio on my digital recording setup in CD quality sound. I then replaced the video sound (which is actually quite good from this camera) with this audio. It’s a bit tricky to get the synchronisation right, and when I play the rendered file back on my computer it looks as though the sound is coming out very slightly ahead of the video, but it turns out that this is because my graphics card cannot handle 1080p + the audio that well. I have made a DVD of what I have done so far, and the synchronisation is exactly right. Of course the sound is very good, and overall I must admit I’ve done a good job on the pieces so far.

But I have a long way to go before I’m really happy with the outcomes, but at least I’ve made a start in the right direction and this will only push me harder over the coming weeks, and hopefully higher as well.

It’s beginning to sound as though I really am serious about this, finally. Confidence is good thing to have, and I must admit after many years I’m beginning to get it back again.

… for the last couple of weeks on the Stuart front, hence my lack of activity on this blog – I gave myself a bit of a break from serious Stuarting after my recital. Easter was a busy period, not the least because David was organising the music for the Easter vigil mass close to where we live and consequently there were copious rehearsals, arranging, practicising and other organisational tasks etc to be done, all of which took up much time and effort on both our behalfs.

Nonetheless, it went off very well and all of the musicians and choir did a sterling job under the circumstances. I played keyboard and organ, and considering I’ve been doing these things for while now I was able to adjust quickly when soloists didn’t quite come in at the right time …

Especially one time when the hymn stopped but the soloist kept going with the next verse – these little things do test you at times. In fact, I picked it up very quickly and no-one really noticed any difference!

On the Stuart front, I need to get back and do what I planned to do before and refine the recordings that I’ve made over the last couple of months, as well as developing a bit more repertoire for future recitals. I would like to explore some Schumann and Brahms, two composers I haven’t really got my teeth into for a while now, and there is some very interesting music from the former Soviet republics that I will look at as well.

It really is a question of time – how much of it, to be precise. I’m probably going to need to improve my time management in order to get everything done that I need to – and that is not going to be easy for someone of my limited organisational skills.

One thing I have found is that having to focus on performing again has really sharpened my mind and made me concentrate much more on the sounds I am hearing. When you play only for yourself, you tend to hear what you want to hear, but when other people are involved, for some reason or other you need to consider very carefully what your audience is hearing and that adds an extra dimension to your interpretation, which cannot be a bad thing. As I said previously, I’m much more relaxed sitting at the piano now, and my task is to carry that into any recordings or recitals I do in the future.

Fortunately, the piano makes that much easier than you would think.

… in that I hosted a marvellous group of people for a lunch and recital which once again raised a good deal of money for the Bo Children’s Hospital project.

Three of my students played, each very well given the pressures that are on any performance in front of an audience, and for my own part I felt somewhat more relaxed and confident about what I was playing that I did last time. I played a variety of music dating from 1530 to the present day, in a variety of styles, moods and sounds, and overall was able, once again, to demonstrate to full range of effects and musicality that this piano allows me to do. Much of what I did was tailored to the piano in a number of ways, and the sounds I produced could not, in all honesty, have been produced on any other piano other than a Stuart.

Food-wise, everyone brought a plate of something and, added into what we prepared ourselves, the resultant quantity of food was still too much for us all, whilst the quality was quite exceptional.

I plan to expand these occasions not so much in terms of the number of people involved (although there were a number who would have liked to come but had other commitments) but certainly more events and variety of music, always however with a focus on the Stuart piano. I would like to think that I can put on at least another three before the end of the year, and I’m confident that the support is there for me to do that.

Speaking of which, the sound was, as usual, quite superb. The instrument, as I have said many times now, has really settled into a groove and is a real pleasure to play, and from what I was told, a real pleasure to listen to.

It is certainly gratifying from my perspective that I’m still, after all these years, able to perform to quite a reasonable musical (if not technical!) standard. Somewhat surprisingly, my eyesight did not seem to be so much of a problem this time – suggesting that my brain has finally come to what is left of its senses and has accepted the fact that my left eye has now been superceded.

And about time, too…

I haven’t added anything for a while because there hasn’t really been much to add (now if that is not a circular argument I don’t know what is…). I’ve been working over much of the repertoire I’ve recorded and also added a couple more to the mix that I’ve picked up fairly recently, and I’m beginning to think that another extended recording session to produce the final product is beckoning.

But that won’t be for a while yet, because:

a) There are a number of performances I feel I can improve on, although obviously I have to draw a line somewhere.
b) I don’t know where I will record – either at home or else at the factory, and this will depend of course on Wayne’s good graces and which piano he and I think will be the ‘best’ at the time.
c) In two weeks time, I’m putting on another fundraising event for the Bo Children’s Hospital in Sierra Leone.

I put on the first of these in May last year, and, due to great assistance from many people, it was a great success not only in raising money but also for me personally in the sense that it was the first public recital I’d given for quite some time and naturally I was very nervous as to whether I could pull it off.

As it turns out, I did – even though I was in hospital for the first of my eye operations very, very soon afterwards – I hope that this next recital will not be a precursor to something similar.

I also plan to put on further events in early August and December, so I’m trying to structure the repertoire accordingly to try to have some consistency over the three recitals. I now have three students who are good enough to play in public, and so this will be good experience for them as well.

I’m probably going to look at the repertoire somewhat geographically this time – playing music from France, Spain, England, the Russian Federation and China. This should provide a great range of music to show off the capabilities of the piano, if not the performer.

After having done all of this recording and having played many pieces from pre-baroque to modern, I think I’m a position to be able to comment, at least from my perspective, on the ‘performance’ of the piano and its ‘suitability’ for various type of music.

I haven’t found any issues at all. I can get the sounds I want and the interpretation I want without any effort now and the piano has proved itself to be able to handle (at least at my level) any style, speed or dynamic range I throw at it.

A somewhat amusing but entirely logical result of many of my recordings is that the piano’s sustain is such that my final chords seem to take an eternity to disappear into the darkness of silence. The bass notes on my piano have a forty second sustain time so it is possible to have a one minute piece and (at least) a twenty second (say) final chord – and this comes out very cleanly on the recording. In practice what I have done in a majority of cases is to get to the stage where the decaying sound is beginning to show signs of being affected by the background noise and then fade it out.

As I have noted previously, the piano’s dynamic range is such that I can easily outdo the dynamic range of the CD. In practice, I didn’t have too much trouble with this since even when the volume meters began to get clipped the sound is still very clean and not distorted in any way. The soft parts are still quite audible and hopefully when people play it back they will able to hear everything, but I suspect the better the speakers the better.

Finally, the clarity of the piano itself comes out very well overall. The real tests of a piano in my view are the high treble and the bass, and in both cases the sounds come out remarkably well. Even when there are a great range of sounds, the bass and the treble are clearly delineated and very clear, and the bass does not interfere either in terms of volume or frequency masking in any way.

The recordings show quite clearly that the ‘hype’ surrounding these pianos is not just ‘hype’. I couldn’t do on any other make of piano what I’ve done here – there really is a different world of sound to be explored and experienced. These pianos are not for the faint hearted as I’ve said many times and you need to have a good deal of musical sensitivity and aural perception to appreciate what these pianos can do, but from all of this there is one point that becomes very clear.

If I can do all of this with my limited abilities, imagine what others of greater ability (and there are many) can do. There is no reason any more to stick with tradition. One has to progress. Piano music has progressed far past the 19th century piano designs. This is the only piano I’ve played that can do justice to any kind or period of music.

After a few days of tinkering around with files and listening to what I have done so far, I’ve re-recorded a few tracks which to me were beginning to sound very laboured in the way I was playing. I must admit that at times during my recording I was playing safe and making sure that at least I was able to play the piece without too many mistakes, but on reflection I felt I wasn’t being nearly positive enough in my approach to some of the pieces, and so I redid them and overall the new performance are much, much better than the old ones. It seems as though I’m getting more confident in my approach –perhaps I didn’t think I could really play them in the way I now can.

I’ve swapped a few pieces from CD to CD to better balance out the individual programmes, but after listening to the tracks I’ve done so far Wayne is of the view that there are a couple of unisons on the piano which are slightly out of tune. I must admit I can’t hear them nearly as well as he can, and that probably means my sense of hearing is perhaps not as good as it once was, but these things become apparent only over time, and whilst they are not serious it does mean that eventually I will have to redo a number of tracks, quite probably at the factory in Newcastle where Wayne can keep a fatherly eye on proceedings and I can get my hands on a 2.9 metre piano…

If I ever think that these recordings can be issued publicly, I am going to need to make sure that everything is spot on and that includes my playing. Whilst I am happy with the achievement so far, it has proved to me that given the right repertoire and environment I can, even at my age, produce something that approaches ‘professional’ quality, whatever that means. Some of the tracks I’ve done so far really do bring out the best qualities of the piano and since I’ve come this far I really think I should give it a go and see how it comes out.

After all, right at the beginning of this blog I did say that the piano was challenging. I’m beginning to understand more fully what that means.

The other learning curve has been in the recording setup. I’ve now got it as optimum as my equipment will allow – and overall the sound is pretty much indistinguishable from a professional CD. This also has the advantage of no equalisation or compression whatsoever, and I’ve also managed to get the noise levels down to -108Db, which is not bad going. It makes we wonder whether I need to perform noise suppression any more – so far the results indicate maybe not. But then again, I’m not in a soundproof room or recording studio, so I’ll need to monitor this fairly carefully for future recordings.

This is fun.

(with apologies to a certain William Shakespeare) … i.e. I have finished forty-eight tracks altogether, and now have two CDs as a result. Now I have to decide what to do with them…

As I mentioned before, one of my aims was to see how much things had changed since my last recording efforts now almost three years ago. Overall, I have to admit that the sound quality is very good. I doubt that many people would be able to work out that the equipment that I used was not exactly what you would find in a professional recording studio, but nonetheless it is the overall sound that matters and not how you got there.

Secondly, I find it much easier to listen to these new recordings than it does to listen to my old ones. That is not to say that my old ones weren’t good – I’ve had some very good comments from people about those – but it is just that I seem to be more at home with the piano (this is not surprising) and that my interpretations are much more consistent over a range of styles.

There is no doubt that you can produce professional sounding results without having to resort to a professional studio, or even expensive ‘professional’ equipment. Whilst it may be argued that ‘professional’ equipment gives better results (and certainly 24bit 96 or 192 kHz recording gives a better quality overall) when the results are distilled onto a CD it is very difficult to tell the difference.

I’ve found out a great deal about how I play the piano these days, and how I’ve needed to adjust to compensate for my eyesight problems. Certainly it has helped that my memory is improving, although I still have a long way to go to really get it back into the kind of shape I would like, and that may not be possible given my advancing years, but if I play music that doesn’t require much jumping around the keyboard then the results normally come out well.

My control of the pedals and dynamics of the piano is fine, and I’m able to bring out many nuances in the music that perhaps the composer did (or even didn’t!) intend to be emphasised.

Now for my next project …

… and as a result have only about five or six more tracks to put down before I finish the recording phase of the project. As I’ve intimated in previous posts, it has been much harder this time around since I’ve been much more critical of what I am playing, and I hope this is reflected in the final result. As I write this, I’m listening to the tracks as mixed and I’m feeling quite relaxed about the whole thing, which is a very positive sign.

One of my major conundrums has been dealing with background noise in the raw recordings. Initially I was doing a full 100% noise reduction and that seemed to give good results until I noticed that where there was a lot of sustain, the end part of the sustain was being identified as noise and being chopped off. If I only did a 50% noise reduction, this got rid of most of the background (it is there, but inaudible unless you turn the volume up full, and then only right at the very end of the piece, which is insignificant in real terms.

The other major modification was a result of my son borrowing the Rode shotgun microphone I use to pick up room ambience. During its absence I decided to run with just the two microphones inside the piano and basically found that the sound was identical to the four microphone set up. So now I’ve gone back over all of the tracks and remixed accordingly and there is no doubt that the sound is better.

It is surprising to me that making such a small change (in terms of the noise reduction) had such a significant effect on the sound quality, particularly when viewed (as it were) through a good set of earphones. The full noise reduction tended to make the sound very watery, and reducing the noise reduction made the sound much more integral over the whole frequency range.

I also found, as I expected, that the Stuart piano’s dynamic range is greater than that of the recording and CD playback. I am beginning to understand why many commercial recordings use limiters to ‘squash’ the dynamic range, but I’ve been determined not to do that. I’ve yet to fully sort that out, but it is entirely possible that in order to fit in the ‘loud’ bits, the ‘soft’ bits may well be very soft coming out of the speakers. There isn’t really that much I can do about it (the piano is just too good!) and it will simply mean that people will just have to listen more carefully to fully appreciate the extremes of the piano, both volume-wise and tonally.

… some of the technical advances in the Stuart piano over and above what may be called the status quo. But in talking about these, many people lose sight of the fact that the driving force behind these changes was not technical but musical.

Take the agraffe for instance. This modifies the termination of the strings so that they are terminated vertically, not horizontally as in all other grand pianos. Whilst this has received the most publicity (i.e. marketing) over the years, it has to seen in the context of many other advances in piano design present in each and every Stuart piano.

This hasn’t stopped other people from jumping on the bandwagon and by implication or otherwise trying to convince others that they had an important role to play in the development of the agraffe principle. This recently occurred in one of the PianoWorld fora where it was claimed by a technician who had developed his own agraffe about twenty years ago for Baldwin (it was never taken up by that company) that :

“An almost identical bridge agraffe is now being used by Stuart (Australia). The bridge agraffe developed by Steingraeber is similar to this.”

Now this seems an innocent enough statement except that:

1) I doubt that he’s even seen a Stuart agraffe
2) The Steingraeber agraffe (actually designed by Richard Dain from Hurstwood Farm in England) is quite different to the Stuart agraffe in both its design and application.
3) It could be construed from the wording that somehow the Stuart agraffe is based upon or draws upon the Baldwin work.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In my view the statement at best ambiguous and at worst dishonest.

The Stuart agraffe was initially trialed in 1974, refined over about a decade to its first stage implementation and then further refined over a further decade to its present form. There can, of course, be no specific claim on this concept as similar devices have been around for well over 150 years. It should be noted that Wayne Stuart developed his device in isolation of any contemporary efforts. His focus was never on the agraffe per se but rather, the principle of vertical coupling such a device could achieve. This was driven, not by any perception that the bridge pin system is primitive and inadequate, but to take advantage of the need to change the soundscape from the old lineal, two dimensional, time based notation and ideology that essentially ended with the rise of Impressionism.

Since that time essential musical ethos and motifs have required a three dimensional soundscape to be effectively communicated. This important driving force in contemporary music seems to have passed by the traditionally focused piano makers and technicians who are bogged down in 19th century ideologies and fashions in sound. Stuart’s work is not about better bridge coupling/agraffes but about the exploration of the vertical colour of sound which readers might be better informed on if they read the Dr. Erik Tamm work, Brian Eno - His Music and the Vertical Colour of Sound. – a free download on the Brian Eno website and a subject which I have already covered in this blog.

… is very much like the fourth dimension – everyone knows that it is there but very few know what it is, or what it means.

With regards the Stuart piano this was brought home to me in no uncertain terms by reviews of the NAMM piano manufacturers and dealers exposition held last month in Los Angeles. Given the state of the world economy in general, and the piano industry in particular, is not what one could call healthy, it was no surprise when attendances appeared to be less than in previous years.

But even so there were still some things happening and claims being made which quite frankly are so far off the planet it wasn’t funny. For example, Mason & Hamlin – the world’s finest pianos. Good pianos they are – but that claim is going a bit far. I don’t even make that claim about the Stuart (although privately it would take a lot to convince me otherwise). And Fazioli were making great store with their fourth pedal as if it were the latest ‘invention’ from a brand that was trying to make its name as innovatory.

Well, I hated to burst their bubble, but of course Stuart pianos have had this fourth pedal since the beginning. The other crazy thing about the Fazioli is the placement of the pedal – it’s in such a weird position that it is impossible to control both soft pedals at the same time. Talk about a waste. It seemed to me that they were making out that the major advantage of their fourth pedal was playing very softly on a large grand piano. Little to they know I can do that on a 2.9 metre Stuart piano without any pedals at all. The use of the pedals allows me to play more softly still …

In fact, in the Stuart & Sons piano this is only a minor part of the whole philosophy behind the fourth pedal. Like the Fazioli, not only are the hammers moved closer to the strings but the key depth is reduced. This is a consequence of the fact that the distance the hammer and the key travel are vital in the production of certain harmonics which are translated into what we hear and feel as the sound’s attack and decay transients.

In the normal context of the correct regulation of the grand piano action, a reduction or narrowing of the hammer’s striking distance from what is considered the minimum distance (45mm) for so-called normal function affects the sound envelope by reducing certain harmonic developments which give the sound a particular warm or cloistered effect and removes the vertical driving projection from the sound envelope. This can be interpreted and indeed, experienced as a more lateral projection of the sound envelope. This peculiar effect can give the sense of a more distant, less aggressive sound. A similar effect can be obtained by reducing the travel of the key only. This is the reason this pedal is called the 'dolce pedal'.

It must be noted that decreasing both the striking distance and the key depth in this way by depressing the fourth pedal magnifies the combined outcome and produces a distinctive quality that cannot be achieved by finger control alone. This is the result of mechanical dynamics in a leverage system designed to convert kinetic energy into an acoustic response disregarding the nature of the playing technique employed. This is something many players do not fully appreciate, understand or like to hear as it means that there are certain mechanical limits to the artistic aspirations of the pianist. This is also a factor in the Steingraber Phoenix's combination of the two functions in the one pedal - clearly a very limited attempt to harness a very wide tonal pallette.

What the Fazioli misses by the somewhat obscure pedal placement, and Steingraeber in their 'two into one' pedal mechanism, in their approaches to a fourth pedal function is the crucial importance of independently utilising both the dolce or kinetic moderator function of the fourth pedal together with the shift or reduction in the number of strings struck function of the third pedal. These functions have significant potential to reveal a whole new sound pallette for musical interpretation and from my own and others' experience on these pianos, only those who have mastered the concept of the two pedals on the Stuart piano can have any idea of this importance and significance. Those who fully understand the function and can hear the results have been ardent supporters of this advanced addition to influence the dynamic and textural aspects of a composition. To bring together such potential for artistic sensitivity hitherto unavailable in the standard piano must surely be an advantage.