S & S capo

[Ron Torrella]

Horace, I think you've said it before, and you've said it here; that (in
my words) pianos have a natural tendency to have zings and buzzes, that
they sound different on stage from how they sound at a distance. I think I
agree on the last count, but not the first.

When the legendary "Franzie" was here, last year, he iterated that he
didn't like to take credit for what you hear in Horowitz's recordings
because Horowitz would never let Franz voice the piano properly - wouldn't
give Franz the time he needed. Consequently, when you hear those obnoxious
"oinks" and zings, you can bet that Franz wouldn't have wanted those
things there.

In the case of other recordings, I suspect that similar situations are
responsible for (at least to my ears) those embarrassing unmusical sounds.

Perhaps it's the anal-retentive side of me at work, or perhaps it's just
that I listen so hard to the piano that I can't stand the shift zings and
damper oinks. (I've gotten so discouraged about eliminating the
shift-pedal oinks that I've actually shied away from using full shift when
playing PP or PPP passages! Makes for challenging playing, to be sure!) I
don't think it's such a bad thing to be watchful of. Certainly,
eliminating extraneous noises isn't any less important than, oh, say,
measuring centerpin friction with $170 gages, right? <E-E G> :-)

Ron Torrella, RPT
Piano Technician		"And like that...he's gone."
University of Michigan		     - Roger "Verbal" Kint (Kevin Spacey) 
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