[CAUT] Rzewski forearm smash

[Zeno Wood]

I was just told that a piano professor wrote in on a jury form, under
"intonation", that "Zeno always does a good job"!

-Z

On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 5:24 PM, Paul T Williams <
pwilliams4 at unlnotes.unl.edu> wrote:

> I don't pound hard at all when I tune.  It's not ffff, but mearly an mf to
> f.  There's no reason to pound on the piano at all.  I've used the forearm
> smash, but conservatively.  Sure with the pedal down, this will expose your
> tuning mistakes, but that's all you need. Then you set the pin correctly,
> and your good to go.  Now hundreds, if not thousand or 2 of important
> concert tunings, and never a complaint yet! ( oh yeah, just one, but he was
> a major DIVA!)
>
> When Steve Brady demonstrates this technique, he doesn't get on top of the
> piano and smashes it!!!  He pushes the damper pedal down, and "smashes" it
> at about forte or maybe FF.  No pounding is ever needed.  It's just not good
> for the piano or your ego.
>
> Best,
> Paul
>
>
>
>  From: Zeno Wood <zeno.wood at gmail.com> To: caut at ptg.org Date: 12/16/2010
> 04:04 PM Subject: Re: [CAUT] Rzewski forearm smash
> ------------------------------
>
>
>
> Agreed.  It's a diagnostic tool, and I like the definition you added there,
> of pounding the tuning out, not in.
>
> That said, my original post was more a comment on the physicality of
> Rzewski's piano works.
>
> -Zeno W
>
>
> This appears to be a variant of the way too common misinterpretation of
> "pounding". Jim's description seems to be of the most common. It's not a
> tuning technique, or shouldn't be. It's a test of the tuning technique that
> got you to this test. I almost said something about it a few days ago when
> someone mentioned pounding a tuning in. That's exactly the wrong approach.
> You don't pound a tuning in. Any pounding done is an attempt to knock the
> tuning out, to find out how you did. It's a small flash of light into a big
> dark place, that might just tell you something important. The "smash"
> doesn't stabilize a piano, it's just a committee test blow after the fact.
> It also won't destabilize pitch any more than a test blow does, and won't
> cause a note to go out of tune the next time it's played any more than will
> a test blow. It's a diagnostic tool that, like a test blow, is one of the
> very very few indicators we have of how close we got to equalizing segment
> tensions during the tunings.
>
> Ron N
>
>
>
>
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