TRISTATE PIANOWORKS

First of all I commend David Stanwood for his “Improvisations,” and taking a stab at playing the piano. I met him on isolated occasions and found him thoroughly likeable. Yet with this I introduce some problems with his understanding of the piano that have yet to be unequivocally stated.

 

Stanwood video: https://youtu.be/5cT5GOcprEY?si=lVN2m0FFccy_kHnI

Stanwood Website: https://stanwoodpiano.com/first.html

 

1. The 3 piano actions.

 

The piano is best understood to have 3 actions:

 

a. The front action

b. The top action

c. The back action

 

One of the glaring errors of Stanwood was to attribute precision to his conclusions when not considering a third of what goes into considerations about touchweight in a piano: i.e., the back action. Damper timing, i.e., the moment of damper engagement by the key, is different in every piano; it may be immediately after engaging the key, it may be engaged halfway through the key stroke, it might be two-thirds after engaging the key. Usually damper levers contain lead also. There are numerous action centers in the back action as with the whippens in the top action, well as the hammer shank flange, there is also the damper guide rail to consider. To some extent this argument contends friction in action centers, as well as the damper guide rail and key bushings, is negligible; from an engineering perspective, what matters is that these vectors are static, that there is no sideways motion, or free vibration introduced when the key is struck, producing vibration or sound we do not want, and that the hammer is mated to the string precisely, not altered by any sideways motion not effected by the shift pedal. Granted as demonstrated when inhibiting proper function of the actions in the component of design devoted to optimizing motion from dynamic vectors in previous posts, these static vectors must by eased; i.e. friction reduced. In fact as can be seen in the photos submitted, there are no damper levers in the high treble part of the piano for the back action, which constitutes a stark contrast to touchweight consideration in the front and top actions. Until introducing considerations about alterations of touchweight due to the effects of the back action, there can be no precision in the analysis of the front and top actions that Stanwood introduced.

 

2. Weight or Mass?

 

Another error introduced by Stanwood involved hyperbole concerning the concept of weight. Within the piano business from manufacturing to distribution to performance and teaching most ignore that Isaac Newton and one largely considered the inventor of the piano, Bartolomeo Cristofori, were contemporaries. In a perfect world I would do research, in Europe, into the possibility the 2 corresponded. The equation, F=MA, the foundation of Newtonian mechanics, has a prominent role to play in piano restoration and the design of the hotly debated accelerated action of New York Steinway. Many argue specifically with the accelerated action introduced by NY Steinway in 1931 that the action was compromised by adding more weight-not mass-to the keys in the process of modifying the balance rail punching from felt to rounded wood which felt is bonded to for the key to pivot on. Yet 6 minutes into the video Stanwood asserts about in the process of restoring a Hamburg Steinway D, not a NY D, reducing the lead in the keys as a result of his methods. Largely paraded is the inferiority of NY Steinway for introducing the Accelerated Action with extra Lead unlike Hamburg Steinway. So how did this argument for those familiar with the debate become solely about the NY accelerated action having too much lead? Stanwood did the same thing to a Hamburg D as explained in this video, i.e., get the lead out.

What should be considered is the property of lead not as altering weight but mass. The most conspicuous distinction between the two gets galvanized by gravity, which alters weight, but not mass. What augmenting mass in the key should be understood to do is without due to gravity augmenting weight for the pianist augmenting both force and acceleration without any skill or effort from the pianist. This is the foundation for arguing it improves repetition, and is perfectly valid from the perspective of Newtonian mechanics.

 

3. Hammer weight is not a constant

 

Another problem with Stanwood’s considerations is that from no time in the history of hammer design and engineering was hammer weight considered to be a constant until Stanwood. It simply is impossible to maintain a piano with the conclusion that hammer weight is a constant. However, the mass of the key for the most part is. In the engineering of the piano action, is it not truer in the design of the piano to see key weight as a constant than hammer weight? The hammer weight constantly needs to be altered with modifications in density for voicing and when reshaping the hammer. It defies centuries of R@D in hammer felt to define hammer weight as a constant.

Hammer weight as a determinant in upweight in a piano key is inferior to mass in the key itself as well due to jack escapement and the separation that emerges from the key stroke between the knuckle of the hammer shank and not only the jack, but the repetition lever.

 

4. Considerations of piano performance technique

 

Dorothy Taubman invented a technique for piano playing called the Taubman Technique. It is piano specific, and not effective for organ playing; one will lean on the keys to shift feet when playing organ, while organ requires not playing flat fingered but curve fingered; the Taubman technique is a flat fingered technique, a term not to be taken pejoratively. It saved the performance career of Leon Fleisher. One of her discoveries involved the fact that solely alterations in velocity, not weight, modifies the tone or sound the piano produces. There are many expression markings that appear in the piano literature that betray this fact, applicable to bowed string instruments, markings for spiccato, like marcato, pesante; all these can only be achieved in 2 ways on the piano, by altering velocity of the finger, and sustain. The only consideration of weight for the pianist is for conservation of energy, i.e., using little weight as possible, according to the Taubman technique. I have heard this described of the finger on the piano key as an elephant foot smashing a mosquito; it matters not how hard the elephant presses, so use little weight as possible to achieve the desired end. In this integrated context, considering both the job of the pianist and the technician, touchweight is insignificant.

Newton was a Natural Philosopher. He was a product of a time nature was revered, and attempted to establish a priori laws that did not involve the positivistic conceptions of modern science, a posteriori conclusions produced by experiment, trial and error, learning through research and development. Nature was predictable, like meteorology; we could predict what would happen due to a series of variables in nature. Aural tuning is not an experiment, it is following natural laws discovered in the harmonic series, known as natural harmonics by string players. When I aural tune, I am not stumbling upon some harmonious conclusion that I discover sounds good after the fact, some sort of remarkable coincidence, but following natural laws that beforehand determine what is harmonious.

One of my earliest memories is Bob Grijalva, again, my first piano teacher, telling me to breathe when I play piano. Instead of interpreting this as phrasing, I literally breathed when the measure appeared he told me to breathe in. He proceeded to laugh and claimed, “Well yeah breathe,” and then began to describe musical phrases to me. The rest, one of my later teachers observed, is more important than the note. This we in part accomplish the proper execution of with the back action, not the front or top actions.

With piano performance technique, there are 2 things to consider, velocity of the finger, and sustain, which also involves, pedaling. There are no scalars representing touchweight, these when considering good piano performance technique would not be a consideration. Taubman taught us how to put the mass of the entire body behind the velocity of the finger; what is the scalar for one key reacting to that even if integrating the vectors of the back action into it in our equations? Until we consider the back action, there can be nothing precise about touchweight analysis and correction nevertheless; even then there would be other hypotheses, such as contending the mass in the key reacts to not only the mass or lead in the damper lever, but also the hammertail contacting the backcheck-another source of stress to the pianist who actually catches the hammer after jack escapement counteracted upon not only by the repetition lever spring but the mass in the key-to prevent the pianist from being fatigued by these reactions.

So what do we do as piano technicians? Just like every other expertise, argue endlessly about our practice without changing anybody’s mind.