The Stuart piano has unique attack and decay transients of the sound. The responsiveness of the piano together with the tonal variations offered by the four pedals opens up a much wider palette of sounds and timbres than is possible on other more traditionally designed pianos.
Whilst most classical music has been written as a time-based series of sounds (hence the importance of rhythm), the advent of tightly controlled electronic sounds heralded by the Moog Synthesiser has allowed a much greater focus on the ways in which sounds blend together and the frequencies and behaviour of their harmonic interactions. In this way, the individual sound is the critical thing rather than a sequence of sounds in the classical sense.
Much of this work was pioneered by Brian Eno, originally from Roxy Music. He is credited with the development of ‘ambient’ sound, where the tonal and time variability of the sound itself is an inherent part of the music. In his excellent book on Eno, Eric Tamm describes this as the vertical (as distinct from horizontal or time based) colour of sound. To quote from Chapter 1,
“Timbre is a term that refers to the colour of sound itself: it is what makes the same note played on a violin, a trumpet, or a xylophone sound different. This aspect of musical sound can be thought of as ‘vertical,’ since it depends to a large extent on the harmonics, or barely audible frequencies, that are stacked up ‘vertically’ on top of the primary heard note itself.”
Whilst it may seem that traditional acoustic instruments are not suited to this new scenario, in fact the reverse can be true. Eno comments that
“I like it because of the complexity of its sound. If you hold the sustain pedal down, strike a note and just listen ... that’s one of my favourite musical experiences. I often sit at the piano for an hour or two, and just go ‘bung!’ and listen to the note dying. Each piano does it in a different way. You find all these exotic harmonies drifting in and drifting out again, and one that will appear and disappear many times. There’ll be fast-moving ones and slow-moving ones. That’s spellbinding, for me”
One of the major design philosophies of the Stuart piano is to reinvent the piano to be relevant to 21st century music as well as offering new scope for traditional classical music. In this sense there are a number of features which make it ideal to explore this vertical colour of the piano sound.
1) the clarity of the sound – the frequency band or width of each note is narrower than in other pianos and consequently the harmonic interactions with other notes are much clearer and cleaner than on other pianos
2) the unique behaviour of the attack and decay transients of the sound
3) the almost total lack of low frequency masking which is the tendency of the lower frequencies to obscure or over power the upper frequencies
4) the extended keyboard range which allows a much wider frequency canvas to be explored
5) the unique pedal arrangement which allows a multitude of different types of sound within the one sustained canvas
This opens up a vast number of possibilities in interpreting piano music, not only 21st century but also mainstream piano music from all eras. Naturally enough, this would make your average traditional pianist take to the Stuart piano with an axe. Such things require a totally different mindset, a very good ear and a willingness to let go what has been learnt in the past and explore uncharted but exciting waters.
Anybody for swimming?