now what?, (hammer choices)

[Stephen Airy]

For me, what makes the perfect sounding piano for me depends on what song
I'm playing.  For some songs, I like a piano that has a fairly mellow
sound with emphasis on the fundamental, while for other songs, I like an
in-between sound, and for yet more from my repertoire, I like a very
bright, full sound with a lot of high harmonics (for example, but not
inclusive, > 8KHz) especially on hard blows.  Also, even with the same
song or the same piano, I sometimes like a different type of tone when
hitting certain notes certain ways.  For example, I've noticed that
pianos that have plain strings from, say, A2 up to D3, for example, have
a different sound than pianos that have wound strings in the same range. 
(although I'm sure this isn't the case with every piano.  I've played
some pretty good pianos with wound strings that I thought they had plain
strings until I looked.)  Sometimes I like to have the plain-string sound
as low as D2, D#2, F2, or somewhere around there, and sometimes I like to
have wound strings as high as A2 or A#2.  (although, if I wanted to play
a rock guitar riff on a piano, I'd probably want wound strings up to
where they are often found on a spinet so I could get that edgy or growly
or whatever-it-is tone that is often found on the accompanying chords on
a distorted electric guitar.  (although I wouldn't choose a spinet to
play the songs on, cause I would also want a good strong bass section all
the way to the low A (and lower if it's something like a Bosendorfer 290
for example).

----- Original message -----
From: A440A@aol.com
To: pianotech@ptg.org
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2003 20:58:32 EDT
Subject: Re: now what?, (hammer choices)

    I am known on music row, sorta, as favoring mellower, and the studio 
owners are always careful to caution me about getting "classical" with
their 
pianos.  That may be because of my long term involvement with the Blair
School at 
Vanderbilt, but over there,  a lot of them think I favor excessively
bright 
pianos!   Somewhere in the middle is the perfect sounding piano for
everybody, 
but I haven't found it yet.  
-- 
  Stephen Airy
  stephenairy@fastmail.fm