Sunday, September 28. 2008
The pitfalls of an electronic piano Posted by Dr Christopher Moore
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22:08
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I must admit that I’ve always been interested in electronic pianos, not so much for the piano sound but because as they developed they offered a range of sounds not available up to that time. That annoyed my old music teacher, who was very traditional in many ways and hated the fact that I could play Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor on something that sounded like a cross between a brass instrument and some percussive instrument of no fixed abode. Of course I could see his point, but to me the ability to experiment with different sounds was rather exciting at the time.
These days electronic keyboards can mimic virtually anything, but as I’ve mentioned previously in this blog they will never totally (I hope!) replace the real thing. But that’s not the point of this exercise. This evening I played at a Mass with my son in a church where we have played a number of times over the past few years. I played keyboard (electronic, of course) and he played soprano saxophone (well, of course). However, the church has installed a new sound system and mixer (which we were not allowed to touch) but in doing so have completely screwed up the entire sound balance. Whereas before I could play the keyboard at a high volume setting and hear what I was playing, this time if I tried that setting I deafened the entire church and eventually had to settle for a very low volume setting on the keyboard so that the congregation didn’t suffer tinnitus or other form of permanent hearing loss. This meant that I couldn’t hear what I was playing since the other instruments, choir and congregation (when they sang) drowned out the sound from the keyboard. So one part of the normal musical feedback loop – brain, fingers, keyboard, sound, ears and back to brain – was missing, and I must admit it was very disconcerting. I had to imagine what I playing – and hope like anything that what I was playing in my mind was indeed what was coming out of the speakers. An ‘acoustic’ piano (in the sense of an acoustic vs electric guitar) doesn’t have that problem since the pianist is normally close enough to the piano to hear what is coming back. But it makes me wonder how deaf musicians can actually play and understand what they are doing – Beethoven is the obvious example here. Blind people can feel, but they still hear. Deaf people cannot hear, but they must be able to feel. My eyesight problems have certainly been the focus (pun intended) of my thoughts for a while now, but considering the problems I had tonight I’m of the view that given a choice between the two I would rather hear than see. As a musician, a silent world would be close to unbearable. I would rather hear a Stuart piano than see one – pleasurable though both aspects may be. How did I actually play? My son told me it was the best I’d played in a while. I don’t know whether to believe him or not – but there are occasions when he does have quite a sophisticated sense of humour. My fault, I suppose. Saturday, September 27. 2008Inanity reigns supreme
I have mentioned before my somewhat perverse attitudes to some of the piano-centric fora on the net. Whilst I have basically given up trying to glean any important information or ‘correcting’ what I see as misleading information about Stuart pianos and their ilk, every now and again there comes something which really makes me choke on my breakfast.
The question was raised: “I have been thinking that will handcraft pianos always be better than those which are made by auto-machines? Shouldn't those machines that have better precision in handling the manufacturing process than those artisans?” A fair question up to a point, but it fails to recognise the fact that all pianos are different – very subtly maybe but different nonetheless, and it is impossible, particularly with a high quality piano like the Stuart for any machine to be able to recognise and indeed adapt to these differences. That is not to say that machines are not used – the casing, strings, frame etc are all basically machine made, but the point is that they are controlled by craftsmen – they are not ‘auto-machines’ as mentioned above. There were a number of reasonable responses along these lines: “While machines can make less errors and are absolutely good in performing repetitive, relatively simple assembly tasks, they cannot take an instrument that is essentially 88 different machines in one box and get them all to perform in consistency with each other. This takes a human touch to perfect regulation and voicing of any piano.” Of course, this did not stop some really crazy comments coming out of the woodwork. “Piano makers that tout their hand crafting don't sell enough pianos to fund the expensive automated machinery. They attempt to make, in effect, a virtue out of necessity.” Oh yes? Whatever happened to freedom of choice? And what automated machinery are we talking about? (Reminder: buy Wayne a robot for his birthday. That’ll please him no end…) “When an automated computer-controlled machine can be used, it will produce quality far beyond that achievable from a master craftsman.” Yipes, I’d better not tell Wayne or any of his master craftsmen that one. That would create another Newcastle earthquake infinitely more catastrophic than the one twenty years ago. “I think it's fair to say, for example, that a hand crafted automobile would be a disaster…” Urk…ever heard of Rolls Royce? Morgan? Ferrari? Bugatti? …the list goes on. Well I shudder to think that I can pour a whole load of woodchips, wire and steel into a bucket, press a button and wait for a piano to pop out the other end. I take it that you could then seat a robot in front of it and get it to play like Horowitz. Sigh. But then again, there are some people who think that Horowitz did play like a robot late in life. Fiendish Russians – you never know what they can get up to. I was sorely tempted to reply, but I didn’t want to risk my health. My eye specialist did tell me to rest, after all, and rest I shall. Friday, September 26. 2008
Yes, I know I shouldn’t be doing ... Posted by Dr Christopher Moore
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16:35
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…if you have a Stuart piano, the last thing you want to do is not play it. So even though I need to keep my head down as much as possible for the next few days after my operation (and indeed have been doing so except for the last 50 minutes when I’ve been on the phone trying to get my mobile telephone bills fixed), I couldn’t resist the temptation to sit down at the piano and let loose for a short while.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that I really was suffering no apparent ill effects – and despite having literally a one-eyed approach to playing found that the musical flow and sound generated by my fingers was actually a bit better than before the operation since my left eye was no longer interfering with my vision. The moral of the story? Have a retinal detachment every four months. Somehow, I don’t think that’s the answer. But it is, as I’ve experienced before, essential to know where one is on the keyboard at any one point in time and my visual problems have only accented that need. We all take things for granted until they go wrong and it really points out the necessity of taking advantage of the good times (where the word good means ‘not bad’) whilst you can. I have another two months at least at home now, and so once my eye settles down a bit I really must try to progress further in the piano, oboe and cor anglais. I’m going to have a good look at a lot of modern classical music to try to identify music that would suit the Stuart – there is much good stuff out there ready to be examined and it will a good intellectual exercise for me. The cor is coming along nicely although I’m still working on how to switch octaves properly and also how to play the C# better, since my little finger on my right hand is just a wee bit too small. I had the oboe examined by a very good double reed technician a couple of weeks back and he identified a crack in the top joint which needed some extensive repair work. After some consultation with Patricola in Italy, they asked me to send the oboe to them for repair. I did that, and was somewhat surprised when they were unable to find the crack – it had apparently closed completely. Nonetheless, they replaced the upper part with a new one and it’s now on its way back to Australia (it’s currently somewhere in the East Midlands in UK which is actually not such a bad place to be). Now I have to set up my recording equipment again… Wednesday, September 24. 2008
Lightning never strikes twice in the ... Posted by Dr Christopher Moore
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18:42
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If you think about this, you’ll realise that it is a load of nonsense. For any event that is random, each occurrence of the event has no relationship with nor effect on any other event of the same type. If you toss a coin twenty times and get twenty heads, then the probability of the next toss being heads is still 50%, no matter how much you expect tails on the next toss.
What has this got to do with this blog, you may ask? Well, a couple of days after my recital in May I had an operation on my left eye to correct a retinal detachment. Last Sunday, I gave another recital, as I detailed in the last posting. What I didn’t say then was that on the way home I noticed I was losing some sensitivity in my left eye and it appeared as though a yellowish film was spreading from the top left hand corner. I left it for a day to monitor its progress and to see if it was transient (as some of these things can be) but when it was still there on Tuesday morning I decided to visit my trusty eye specialist. The result? Guess…. I had another small retinal detachment in the same eye. I don’t have it any more – the result of another operation (by the same surgeon) which has left my eye back where it was four months ago. In this case the detachment was very small and not easy to see, but such is the skill of the surgeon that he not only identified and fixed it but also lasered more of my retina to make sure that such things would not occur again. For the next week I’m fairly comatose, but thankfully not so much as last time. This time, we got it early, but it will still be another eight weeks until the gas bubble disappears. I’m getting good at this. So, once again, my piano will get a rest, and I will need to go through the same long process as last time to adjust once more to changing visual acuity. At least I know what to expect this time. Monday, September 22. 2008Progress ...
… is actually pretty good at the moment. My part of the recital yesterday went off pretty well, I thought. As well as accompanying two very good singers in music that we didn’t really have much time to rehearse, I played a few pieces that felt pretty good under the fingers and my eyesight didn’t seem to be too much of an issue. Overall, I played:
- Odeon, by Ernesto Nazareth - Prelude in B minor by J.S.Bach, arranged by Alexander Siloti - Drift Light, from Three Pieces of Light by William Baines - Four Mazurkas Opus 24 by Frederick Chopin Audience reaction was very positive and overall I felt that I’m still on the right track as far as my piano playing is concerned. For me, however, the interesting part was listening to myself and comparing how I played on the performance piano as distinct from the Stuart. I’ve commented a number of times on this blog about the differences between the Stuart and other pianos and how pianists have to adapt to those changes – after all that is an essential part of the philosophy behind these pianos. I played on a six-seven year old Kawai upright. Compared to what I’m used to I found the bass and the overall sustain lacking, as you might expect, and the action a bit uneven. That is not a criticism of the piano as such, because you can’t expect any more than that given the age and incipient quality of the piano. So I found that: a) I had to hit the bass harder than I would like, which resulted in a fairly rough and percussive sound which died away fairly quickly. In the Baines piece in particular, this meant that I couldn’t rely on the sonority of the piano nearly so much to produce the complex tonality typical of the piece, and so I found myself unconsciously playing the piece a bit faster than I would normally do. The overall sound was adequate – but as expected the piece was nowhere what it should have been in terms of piano sonority. b) The Chopin Mazurkas fitted the piano much better than I thought they would. The bass is nowhere near as prominent as it is in the Baines, but by the same token the midrange and treble are much more important and given that these pieces are not nearly as sonorous in the sense of requiring sustain (it should be remembered that Chopin was very happy to play, and thus compose for, upright pianos) I still found that I needed to play a bit faster than I would on the Stuart, and also I tended to use more damper pedal than I do on the Stuart. c) The Kawai had a dolce pedal as distinct from a una corda, but I found it next to useless because the hammers were shifted to be very close to the strings and this sounded very muted and throttled. Obviously good for practicing (the recalcitrant neighbour syndrome) but not much else. So, overall, very much as expected. There is no doubt that different pianos require different playing – that much is intuitively obvious. It points out that pianists have to adapt – and quickly – to optimise their performance given the materials at hand. There is no point in playing an upright piano as though it were a grand, as indeed there is no point in playing a Stuart piano as though it was a Steinway, and vice versa. Wayne was right in that he told me that if I played another piano after a Stuart piano my playing would ‘regress’ in the sense that I would obviously not be able to reproduce what the Stuart is capable of doing on another piano that couldn’t do it. I was comfortable with what I did given what I had to play on, which as I said was not shabby by any means. Pianists need to pick performance repertoire to suit the piano at hand and there is no point in blaming the piano if it can’t handle what you throw at it. Once thing I can say is that the Stuart can handle anything I throw at it, and from what I’ve heard, anything that anyone else can throw at it as well, from Bach to Berio, Weber to Vine etc etc. I don’t think you can get better than that. Thursday, September 11. 2008So where am I at now?
My left eye is not quite what it was, but I have a new glasses lens for it and whilst I don’t use it for reading (I use my right eye which is still perfectly OK) my distance vision is good. So which eye I use depends upon distance, and as a result I find that I need to use my right eye to play the piano. This is a trifle awkward since my brain stubbornly refuses to change its old ways and still tries to look at the left hand side of the keyboard through the left eye. This does not necessarily result in any degree of technical accuracy, as might be expected.
I must admit that I’m now quite sensitised as may be expected to potential visual acuity issues and when I woke up this morning I had flashes and floaters in my right eye – the one that was not operated on. Alarm bells with a vengeance. I was somewhat relieved when about half an hour later the flashes etc had disappeared but nonetheless I hightailed it to my surgeon who had a good look at the eye and informed me must to my relief that the eye was perfectly OK (as was the left still) and what I had experienced was a slight readjustment in the vitreous gel within the eye. Back to the piano… By and large I’m pleased with the way I’m adjusting and I will test this out in a short recital I will give for a friend of mine in two weeks time. The Chopin mazurkas opus 24 are on the menu, and also possibly a piece by William Baines (Drift Light from Pictures of light) depending upon timing and I may also play Alexander Siloti’s transcription of a Bach Prelude in B minor which is quite delightful. The problem of course is that I won’t be playing a Stuart piano but nonetheless I’m sure the piano will be up to my limited skills. It will be interesting to see (or hear, actually) how I play since I will not be able to use the touch or pedals etc that I am now quite familiar with on the Stuart. Don’t think I’m being snobbish here, but I have made the point in previous posts in this blog that I will not be able to play other pianos the same way as I play the Stuart (and vice versa of course). That is a fact of life and I have to guard against my expectations here and accept that I am playing on a different instrument. The Baines piece in particular comes out spectacularly well on the Stuart’s very clear and sustained bass, and I shall need to adjust my playing accordingly. The Chopin mazurkas require very careful touch in a number of places – I have been practicing without using the una corda to prepare myself for a piano without one (!) and I think I’ve got the tone reasonably right. So I hope things go off well. Once again it’s a step towards bringing my sense of self confidence back to a reasonable level. On another note I’m beginning to get the hang of European cut cor anglais reeds. I recently had my cor anglais serviced by one of (if not the) best technicians in the business and it is now so much easier to play its not funny. So if my eyesight eventually does turn pearshaped (and that is not beyond the realms of possibility given what has happened to me over the last few months) I have a possible musical alternative. You never know, I may have to rename this blog… But not yet. Monday, September 8. 2008Computers and their role...
I’ve mentioned before that over a (by now) rather long career I’ve been exposed to many computers of varying sizes, sophistication and speed.
I recall with fondness DEC PDP8 computers with paper tape loaders, front dip switches and the ubiquitous ASR-33 teletype. I’ve dropped boxes of punched cards (whilst not being drunk) and marveled at wall-to-wall flashing lights, whirring tape drives and devastatingly fast line printers. I was in the forefront of microcomputer networking and sat fascinated in front of an NEC APC computer with a colour screen with more power than an IBM 7040 of a previous generation. So what, you might say? Well last month, I acquired my latest computer. It plays games, has full web access, does my email, tells me where I am and can work out how to get home from where I am, gives me pictures of my house from on high (including those of our relatives in Los Angeles and Manila), and plays (extremely well I might add) my recordings of my piano as well as playing full movie videos if so required. Rather usefully, it has a very neat metronome application that looks and sounds just like the real thing and a superb Mandelbrot application which draws incredible designs on my screen. To top it all off, I can generate a rotatable 3D image of the copper-containing plant protein Plastocyanin derived from the leaves of some rather large poplar trees outside St Paul’s College at Sydney University during my time as a PhD student in the Crystal Structure Group in the School of Chemistry – complete with copper atom in green, the sulphur atoms of the cysteine and methionine in yellow, and the nitrogens of the two histidines in blue. Oh, coincidentally, this thing also makes mobile telephone calls through the 3G network, and sits very comfortably in the palm of my hand. It’s an iPhone. I must admit it is very impressive. Now I can carry around with me photographs, sounds and videos of the piano (and of course lots of other things as well) to the tune of 16 gigabytes. It just goes to show that the march of technology is getting faster and faster. This doesn’t have much to do about the Stuart piano other than as I said I have much better access to the sounds and looks of the piano, but it is indicative of the ability of people now to access copious quantities of information from wherever it is and wherever they are – instantaneously. So it is possible for me to look up the website and play the sound samples directly on the iPhone. I can access iTunes and download (if they are there) tracks from artists playing the Stuart piano – from anywhere as long as I have 3G access. The mind boggles as to the possibilities – it really does. I wonder if I’m getting too old for this stuff? Now which game do I want to play now… |
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