Touch and Vibration

[Richard Brekne]

Hi folks

Got permision to send you all a little question I posed Dr.
Alex Galembo followed by his answer, which I thought was
really quite interesting.

I welcome your thoughts

RicB


> One question in particular I would like your thoughts on.
It is said by some
> that pianists can feel at the keys with the fingers,  the
impact of the
> hammer on the strings. Do you have any studies that go
directly to this
> point ? And in anycase, what do you think of that
assertion ?

I think all the papers listed in my previous message in some
way contribute to
answering this question somehow. What I think, that it is
necessary first to
define what we mean under "to feel an impact" - what
parameters of the impact we
mean? After the impact the hammer  returns to the action and
the pianist, over a
haptic perception,  is able to compare (very indirectly) the
velocities of the
hammer before and after the impact, thus somehow  evaluating
a general kinetic
energy change  in the hammer, that, in turn,  informs about
the effectiveness of
the blow. But this effectiveness depends on many factors,
related and unrelated
to the hammer itself. It looks  similar to how a basketball
player, by dropping
and catching feels how the ball impacts the floor. And now
imagine, that the
basketball player is blind, he plays not by a hand, but by a
bendable rod, the
hammer is asymmetric (say, elliptic), and  the player is
asked about the ball
properties after one blow.
On another hand, an information about the quality of the
hammer-string impact
comes over the tone perception, and being strongly connected
mentally with the
haptic information, it gives much to an experirnced pianist.



--
Richard Brekne
RPT, N.P.T.F.
UiB, Bergen, Norway
mailto:rbrekne@broadpark.no
http://home.broadpark.no/~rbrekne/ricmain.html