Saturday, November 29. 2008We nailed it ...
I must admit there is a good feeling to participating in a function which is successful in raising over $20,000 for homeless children in Vietnam. Last night, our little impromptu band (various saxophones, keyboard, drums and bass) did a very good job in playing for around 700 people at the beginning of the night. All of our rehearsals came good in the end, and overall our sound had a very professional feel about it and I must admit I had a good time. The function was very well organised, and I even ran into a few old friends that I hadn’t seen for a while. Small world.
I was particularly pleased about David’s performance and he handled the stresses and strains of lead instrumentalist very well. He was able to use a professional wireless microphone which clipped onto the bell of the saxophones, and the sound (once we got the tonal balance right) was very good. His only hiccup came when the photographer for the night shined a very strong spotlight in his face but then again that sort of thing would distract anyone… It’s amazing how much music gear we have, and how much we needed to take for the occasion – keyboard + stand, saxophones, music stands, cables, computer (David did all of the audiovisual productions as well) and a great number of odds and ends. Fortunately we didn’t need the keyboard amplifier, microphones, microphone stands, mixer etc otherwise we would have needed to hire a truck. I learnt a few things about our family members too. I never knew my delightful niece could shimmy like that – I wonder how much the photographs are worth. So now back to normalcy, at least once we’ve unpacked the car. On the Stuart front, things are fairly quiet, although the same thing cannot be said about some of the noise I’m making at the moment. The good thing is that my eye has settled down well and I suspect that my appointment with my specialist this week will be one of the ‘looks good, see you in three months’ type of appointment which most surgeons find is the best kind. Now perhaps I can settle down a bit and get some practice done. Saturday, November 22. 2008
Musical instruments expand to fill ... Posted by Dr Christopher Moore
at
20:54
Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) Musical instruments expand to fill the space available…
… and I was reminded about this general, obvious but totally conjectural and unproven principle today when we held a full rehearsal for our playing at the fundraising function I mentioned previously.
So, all in all, we had the following in my music room. • 1 x Stuart & Sons 2.2 metre grand piano • 1 x Kurzweil SP2X electronic keyboard + Behringer acoustic instrument amplifier • 1 x Professional Drum Kit (acoustic of course) • 1 x Bass Guitar + Bass amplifier • 1 x Yanagisawa 910 soprano saxophone • 1 x Temby Alto saxophone • 1 x Temby Tenor saxophone And, of course, four people and music stands etc. We didn’t make that much noise, really. In fact things went off very well and I’m confident we will make a good impression when we play. Steve on drums is a very experienced musician (OK, so some people will demur at my classing drums as musical instruments but I’m being polite here) and he and I are quite used to large audiences, we are anticipating between 650-700 people being there. But this will be the biggest audience David has played to, and given his saxophones will be the lead instrument on most of the songs there will be a lot of pressure on him in that regard. But I’ve been really pleased (and impressed) with how he’s handling all of this and he will come out of it a much better and more confident musician than before, and that cannot be anything but a good thing. I must admit, I’m enjoying it too. It’s good to get back into a group environment again, if only for a short time. On the Stuart front, things are progressing well, and my playing (as long as I pick pieces that don’t require too much acrobatics) is sounding OK, at least to my ears. I’m exploring much more modern repertoire these days, and whilst I’m having problems understanding the musical languages of many of the composers, there are some which I’m storing away for future examination when I have more time. More of that anon. Oh, yes … my music room has much more space in it now. Tuesday, November 18. 2008
The Information Age and the Quality ... Posted by Dr Christopher Moore
at
23:25
Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) The Information Age and the Quality of Information
Reporter John Lawton, speaking to the American Association of Broadcast Journalists in 1995 said "The irony of the Information Age is that it has given new respectability to uninformed opinion." I suspect that there are two main reasons for this.
1) It has allowed more people (including myself I must admit) to contribute information 2) There are very few checks and balances on the information being disseminated. Now, of course, both of these conditions apply to this blog, and so it can be argued that Lawton’s quote applies to me equally if not more so to anyone else. But in practice much of what I write either is the result of my direct experience with the Stuart piano (and therefore can be tested in the Hume’s Fork sense) or else based upon my many conversations with people with intimate and accurate knowledge and experience with the Stuart piano. Which makes it all the more galling when this gem of wisdom is published on the internet: “Wow! I almost never visit piano manufacturer web sites. Nor do I read brochures. It occurred to me early on that 1) all pianos are much the same 2) the only way you can differentiate is to play them. The marketing stuff is mostly either obvious or nonsense!” a) if you don’t visit websites or read brochures how do you know about the pianos on offer – even if you consider the information contained therein to be ‘crap’ at least you know the piano exists. b) All pianos are not ‘much the same’. All right, they have cases, strings, keyboards, pedals etc etc but this statement has as much truth and sense in it as saying all cars are the same because they all have engines, seats and a steering wheel. As I and many others have opined, the Stuart piano is certainly and quite demonstratively not the same as any other. c) If all pianos are ‘much the same’ how can you differentiate them? And, if you can differentiate them, surely they’re not ‘much the same’ no matter how you define the word ‘much’? d) It is easy to recognise nonsense in ‘Marketing stuff’. Many manufacturers rely heavily these days on their websites to generate interest in their products, and Stuart & Sons are no different and indeed perhaps more than any other manufacturer place significant emphasis on the website to disseminate quality and factual information about the pianos. To dismiss all ‘marketing stuff’ in this way is errant nonsense. Indeed, some people have commented that they consider the Stuart website to be best of all of them in those terms. It is a truism that a speculative conjecture made in a post in a forum or other mechanism on the net soon becomes accepted wisdom in following posts made by people who have absolutely no clue about what they are talking abut. And that includes the original poster as well. If this blog is seen to avoid that trap, then the effort I put into this will not be in vain. Monday, November 17. 2008Now where were we up to?...
My eye got a YACBOH last week (≡ Yet Another Clean Bill Of Health) and so far things are looking up, another pun intended. I have another lens in my glasses for my left eye and this one as I expected is decidedly thinner than the last one. My vision is still a bit wavy, but by and large is better than it was.
My brain appears to have decided on its own accord that it prefers the right eye to the left, and I’m finding particularly when I play the piano that I’m not getting the left eye interfering nearly as much as it did before the latest operation – which I suspect is a good thing. As a result my piano playing is actually quite good and I’m getting more and more confident that I can get back to somewhere near my previous standard which will mean I’m in a good position to ‘finally’ do some recording. I’ll be helping my son do some music for a function in two weeks time to help raise money for homeless Vietnamese children, and so have been busily arranging various pieces both familiar and unfamiliar to play on that occasion. David is getting quite good now (despite a lack of practice time for him due to pressure of work) on the saxophone, and we’ve come up with a good range of songs for his soprano, alto and tenor instruments and the sounds he is producing are actually getting to be quite professional, although he would be the first to admit he has a long way to go to really become fluent with the instruments. Nonentheless he is showing good improvisational skills and also has the unteachable knack of being able to recover from wrong notes – something that his father has had much experience in doing for many years now. We’ve had a good time together working through the programme, and the Stuart piano has been quite superb in its ability to blend in with the saxophones without overpowering them in any way, even when played hard. I began to think about how I could transport the piano to our function but having seen the stage we will be on I’m not sure that the stage is big enough… We were playing together at a mass last Sunday, and I began to realise that my venerable KS32 keyboard just wasn’t good enough any more as a performance instrument. Given the professional saxophones that David has, my brother-in-law’s drum kit (he plays professionally too) and the importance of the occasion (we are expecting between 600 and 700 people to attend) I knew that I had to ‘up the ante’ as it were if I was to produce an appropriate keyboard sound and feel when we played. So I have acquired a new keyboard – an 88 note Kurzweil SP2X. Kurzweil have always had an excellent reputation for the quality of their keyboard sounds and having kept tabs on keyboards for quite a while in anticipation of having to upgrade this was the one I thought would be the best value for money – and so it proved. Very nice piano sounds, decent effects and although it doesn’t have the full MIDI sound set, I don’t really need all of those and if I do I can always hook the keyboard up to my notebook computer anyway. I bought the keyboard locally and got what was really a very good deal considering the current exchange rate of the $Aus. So that’s one problem solved – albeit a fairly quick decision when I actually made it, but as I intimated one that I had been thinking about and doing my research on for quite a while. But… • Does it sound like a Stuart? No. • Does it play like a Stuart? No. • Does the treble ring like a Stuart? No, of course not. No electronic instrument I’ve come across can get close – but for my purposes the Kurzweil doesn’t need to. Incidentally, I was also able at the same time to reacquaint myself with some nice-looking Bechstein grand pianos. • Did they sound like a Stuart? No. • Did they play like a Stuart? No. • Did the treble ring like a Stuart? No. Nonethless, let me not sound rude and stupid here. They were very good quality pianos – even though I thought the 190cm one was much better than the 220cm one that was there – and it was half the price too, but that might just be a voicing problem. It just goes to show how good the Stuart piano really is. Wednesday, November 5. 2008
Today is an important anniversary… Posted by Dr Christopher Moore
at
08:56
Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) Today is an important anniversary…
…inasmuch as my family arrived in Sydney on the SS Orion fifty years ago today, after a six week voyage from England that included Gibraltar, Naples, Port Said, Aden (through the Suez Canal), Colombo, Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne and finally Sydney. Today is also the traditional Guy Fawkes’ day in England – I’m not sure that the two events are related in any way.
I remember my first day in Sydney, walking across Glebe Island bridge when it still had traffic on it, and wondering what all the strange cars were (they were called Holden, actually). It was a few months later having settled into our home at Cronulla when I started learning piano – my first piano was an old upright which we brought out from England with us because we couldn’t sell it, and was placed strategically in our garage so that no-one could hear me. It ended up in a scout hall in Cronulla, I seem to remember. I suppose it’s impossible at that early age to imagine where one will end up but overall I’m really grateful for my musical experiences as I was growing up – I was the school choir accompanist at the age of ten and have always been a good accompanist since then – I learnt to listen and anticipate, both skills absolutely essential as an accompanist. I’ve played many types of music in many different places with many different people over the years but my roots have always been in classical music and that is why my adventures with the Stuart piano have been so valuable to me, because at my age you don’t normally get an opportunity to reinvent what one has done over a long period of time, and, quite possibly, got into a rut from which it is very difficult to extract yourself. But that is what has happened, and now that my eye is hopefully OK for the long term (it received a clean bill of health yesterday) it’s time both to reflect on the past fifty years and to plan for the next fifty. There are a number of ideas that have been floating around in my mind for a while now, and whilst I have the opportunity it’s an ideal time to further those and see where they may lead. I’m certainly continually looking for more pieces to explore the sonorities of the piano and recording these and the others I already have secreted away will become more of a priority over the coming weeks. Sunday, November 2. 2008
I don’t normally read newspapers… Posted by Dr Christopher Moore
at
14:17
Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) I don’t normally read newspapers…
…at least not the hardcopy variety since I find that the internet provides me with quite sufficient bad news these days, but this article in the Australian in September caught my eye.
Objects of desire : Plastic banknotes, a funky shoe ... Vogue Living editor David Clark nominates 20 triumphs of Australian design from the past 20 years. … of which number nine is the Stuart piano, and I quote: “There are only 50 in the world, they take a year to make, and cost up to $200,000 each. They’re made in a small workshop in a converted church in the centre of Newcastle, but the beautifully crafted Stuart piano has reinvented piano technology. Wayne Stuart felt intuitively that piano design, which hadn’t changed since the 19th century, could be improved. His innovation was to alter the way the strings attach to the soundboard. Traditional pianos clamp the string to the soundboard horizontally, causing the sound to disharmonise and decay. Stuart’s invention keeps the string clamped vertically; that is, in the same plane as it is struck. The result is a constant vibration that produces a more dynamic range, longer sustain and greater clarity. He also added more keys and an extra pedal. Stuart’s new sound aesthetic has technicians and artists around the world in raptures.” I’m not so sure about the converted church bit, although I quite understand that music is a religion to many people. The agraffe of course is not the only technical innovation that Wayne has introduced – there are many, but it certainly seems as though it is the critical advance around which all of the others are built, resulting in the piano as I know it today. It’s particularly interesting that it is an editor of Vogue who made the choice – I’ve always felt that a piano has to be the ‘complete’ package as it were, both acoustically and visually and there’s no doubt that the piano looks as plays like a million dollars (current exchange rates notwithstanding). Despite this, there still seems to be a considerable dead weight or inertia towards any ‘advances’ in pianoforte technology that upset the staid old status quo of 100 year old music being played on 100 year old (design-wise) pianos. I am slowly and carefully coming back to playing the piano again after my last operation and for some reason what I’m hearing is different to what I was hearing before the operation – there is a sensitivity in the sound and a certain control in the fingers that I haven’t experienced before. This applies not only to ‘modern’ classical music but also to the classical and romantic repertoire that I’ve been working on for a while now. I don’t know the reason for this – it just seems that my feedback channel between the ears and fingers is working somewhat better than before. Of course I have no way of knowing objectively if this is the case – the feeling is totally subjective but I do know that when I’m feeling comfortable at the piano (and I do now) then something is going right. The piano is still in very good tune after six months of abuse, the action is fine and the touch on the keys feels both sensitive and sure at the same time. I’m also totally used to the pedals of course, and I’m finding that I don’t need to think about my use of the dolce and una corda pedals nearly so much as I used to. So I’m now in a position to start on the recordings. Should be difficult, frustrating, annoying and fun. After all, that’s one of reasons I got the piano in the first place. Friday, October 31. 2008I suspect that there are …
… a plurality of methodologies for performing taxidermy on a feline - in this case, disposing of the gas bubble in my eye. You can wait for it to slowly disappear, as I did some months back, or else you can take more drastic and somewhat faster measures, like having another operation on the same eye …
… which is what happened to me last Saturday. The eye had been feeling a bit ‘tight’ on Friday night but that may have just been due to tiredness. When I woke up the next morning I knew instinctively that I needed some urgent treatment on the eye and so I booked myself into the Sydney Eye Hospital again. It turned out that the scar tissue in my eye had tightened and I had two small tears in the retina which in fact had pulled quite a bit of the retina away from the eye. Nothing of course that my trusty eye surgeon couldn’t fix, which he did in the afternoon (people of his quality don’t get weekends off – emergencies don’t happen 9-5 on weekdays) but this time to ensure that the retina stays on I have silicone oil in my eye rather than the gas bubble. Of course, the oil has a completely different refractive index to the fluid that was previously in there and in fact I can see much more clearly through the left eye than I could before, even allowing for the normal distortion and fluid effects. I’ll get a new lens for my glasses next week, because the one I got a few weeks ago is now so far out that looking through it all I can see is a blur, no kidding. Where does this leave the piano? In the same place, mentally as well as physically. Although I really shouldn’t do it yet, I have played the piano since the operation and am pleasantly surprised by how well it is coming out from my fingers. I have a suspicion that once my settles down I will be doing some recording so I will go back over my plans and programme and see what I think needs changing, if anything. The next couple of months could be quite productive musically. Tuesday, October 21. 2008Why the Stuart & Sons piano? (reprise)
I started off this blog in March with the intention of trying to put into words my reasons for getting and my experiences in playing a Stuart piano. This was not so much a egotistical and self-congratulatory exercise (although obviously as I stated I have been able to achieve much of what I set out to do, eye problems notwithstanding) but to try to counteract much misinformation and misunderstanding about the why's and wherefor's of the piano.
As I went along it became clear that much of that misunderstanding was due to the inability of people to make the quantum leap necessary to move from a traditional 19th century-inspired instrument to one which quite deliberately set out to be different and to break the shackles as it were to allow pianists to totally reinvent the way they interpreted the music they played – from the 15th to the 21st century. By now, I’m familiar enough with the instrument to be able to see why many pianists can’t handle this and I’m certainly of the view that whilst not many people can afford to buy a Stuart piano, there are some people who could afford to buy one, but most certainly shouldn’t buy one in a month of Sundays. Take this question from the Pianoworld fora. “As an attorney, I ‘occasionally’ find myself amidst a snob or two (or thirty). One highly overcompensated member of a hyper-endowed gathering this past Saturday night is in the market for a grand piano, and was wondering what to purchase. His ‘decorator’ said to keep it under 7 feet (preferable around 6), and he wants to make a splash. He doesn't want something ‘as banal as a Steinway’. Fyi -- he currently owns and drives a Bugatti Veyron and a Lamborghini Murcielago (among his several other "vehicles"), he lives in Greenwich, he (of course) is a hedge fund manager that seems to have avoided catastrophe in recent weeks, owns several Patek wristwatches, etc. etc. etc. He's really quite insufferable, come to think of it. In any event, he wants to add a sub-7 foot grand to his ‘collection’. I suggested that he ‘needs a F212 Fazioli with a custom made artcase with his portrait inlaid.’ Did I do my friend justice? Oh, and he admonished me that he ‘isn't Liberace or Elton John, so nothing bejeweled’ would be acceptable." There were a number of replies, advising various high quality pianos – for example “I would suggest he either looks to purchase something highly unusual such as a Stuart and Sons”. Good suggestion, or is it? I had a god think about it in terms of my own experience and then realised that this whole thing was really just an exercise in cynicism of the Oscar Wilde variety, so I added my bit to the conversation as follows: "My advice is simple and perhaps somewhat irreverant - but tell him not to buy one. The reason? Simple ... pianos are meant to be played, not looked at. As an owner of a Stuart piano, there's no doubt in my (and many others) mind that Stuart pianos match and indeed exceed the criteria you have mentioned. But each Stuart piano is hand-crafted from top to bottom, and takes on the average twelve months until completion. Each piano is unique - no two are alike, and great care is taken to set up and voice the piano properly before it leaves the factory. Making top quality pianos is a labour of love for those who do it. Now would you like to spend twelve months of very patient and delicate work only to have the instrument sit in some admittedly splendid surroundings and never get played to anywhere near its potential? Sure, your hip pocket may be happy but that would be the only part of your body that is. Tell him to buy a cheap Asian clone with a pretty veneer and I guarantee very few would notice the difference - because I doubt that the thing would ever get played." Imagine someone buying a Stradivarius or Guarneri violin and putting it in a display case. I imagine it does happen, unfortunately. I have no gripe with art collectors doing similar things as long as they display their acquisitions appropriately. But to buy an expensive hand-crafted piano simply for show would be an absolute anathema to me. If I were a salesman of such pianos (and maybe its fortunate that I am not) said people would be straight out the door. Good quality instruments are built to be played, not looked at. I must admit, however, that the Stuart piano I am fortunate enough to have can be played and looked at at the same time … Monday, October 20. 2008
It's now the middle of the month... Posted by Dr Christopher Moore
at
10:30
Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) It's now the middle of the month...
… give or take a few days, and so it’s a good time to take stock of what’s been happening since my last post.
Nothing much, really … My eye is progressing well and got a clean bill of health (again!) from my surgeon last week. My musical instruments are sounding good, my playing is improving and I like playing with my iPhone. I’ve tried making VoIP calls through the iPhone via Fring and Skype, but the voice quality is not good at this stage. I’m on a cheap unlimited Australian call plan through Skype, the major benefit of which is I get to talk to Wayne more often without having to pay someone exorbitant costs for it. I can also do conference calls with up to twenty four people. Neat. I spent fifty minutes last night talking to my sister and her daughter. I got the occasional word in edgeways. They always were good at talking – my niece is an extraordinarily good marketing manager – and you need to be able to talk in that line of business. I’ve been experimenting a bit with various touch techniques on the piano, whether that be by bouncing or stroking the keys, and how much force to use with whichever pedal combination I’m using at the time. Some of the sounds I’m getting from the Tan Dun Watercolours are quite intriguing and having had the opportunity recently to play a couple of other pianos (no names, no court martials) I can’t get anywhere near the sound I can get on the Stuart. One pf the pieces I’m doing with my son at the moment is, of all things, the theme from St Elmo’s Fire by David Foster. I’ve known the piece for a long time of course, and it’s noticeable for a neat use of an electric piano as emphasis in the high registers and also a tenor saxophone solo, once again in the high registers of the instrument giving it a less nasal quality than say playing the same notes on a alto or soprano saxophone. What I found is that those notes meant for the electric piano positively ring out on the Stuart, played in a rather bouncy way that only the Stuart can produce. I’ve tried the same thing on my (now) venerable Ensoniq KS32 keyboard and the results (as may be expected) fall very flat. How I’m going to do it in performance I have no idea – I can’t take the Stuart with me, so I suspect I’m stuck. Another reason why you can’t beat an acoustic piano. Another practice session coming up… Wednesday, October 1. 2008
Whatever is the world coming to? Posted by Dr Christopher Moore
at
18:02
Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) Whatever is the world coming to?
I just tuned my Martin D18 guitar because I suspect my son will use it tonight because he has some friends over. So what, you might say? Haven’t you tuned guitars before?
Of course I have, many, many times. But this is the first time I’ve done it using an iPhone. I’m using an iPhone application called Cleartune. You play a note and the tuning appears on both a note-wheel interface and a fine tuning meter. You don’t need to set for a particular note – this application finds it for you. You can even sing into it (don’t worry, I was home alone when I tried that – but it worked). So the guitar sounds good, even though it’s apparent that I need new strings on it. Tomorrow, I get to tune the 12-string guitar. Wow… I couldn’t resist the temptation and took the iPhone and plonked it on the Stuart piano. According to the iPhone, the tuning is still pretty much spot on – a few notes have dropped about 2 cents but that’s hardly noticeable for someone with my eyesight. Even better, most of the high and low notes were picked up pretty quickly. The high notes are sharp according to the iPhone – I suspect this is deliberate on Wayne’s part to try to make the notes cut through a bit more, and the bass notes are really spot on still. With some of the low notes, the iPhone picked up a harmonic rather than the fundamental, but the harmonic was in pitch. Not bad at all considering the piano hasn’t been tuned for four months. This thing really does hold its tune well. The good thing about this application is that it handles different temperaments, including various mean tone, Pythagorean and well-tempered tunings. Even better, the next version will allow me to define my own temperament. The iPhone really does redefine what you can do with a handheld computer – mp3 player, video player, games, tuning, web browsing etc. The ability to make phone calls is purely a bonus, but a necessary one at that. Sunday, September 28. 2008
The pitfalls of an electronic piano Posted by Dr Christopher Moore
at
22:08
Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) The pitfalls of an electronic piano
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
at
16:35
Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) Yes, I know I shouldn’t be doing this, but…
…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
at
18:42
Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) Lightning never strikes twice in the same place …
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. |
Calendar
QuicksearchArchivesCategoriesSyndicate This BlogBlog AdministrationStatisticsLast entry: 2011-06-01 11:23
121 entries written
11 comments have been made
|