Phil wrote: >An engineering study is more interesting to me since it may yield >results that are applicable to the real world. I think you had said >before that you were going to share the findings with the world. Is >that still the plan? Yes indeed. All the research results will eventually be published and presented wherever appropriate. >I think I understood the point. But, with my limited imagination, >I'm having trouble imagining the sort of radical things that you >have in mind. I can imagine all sorts of materials and >manufacturing processes that have never been used before, but I >don't think they would result in a piano that's more economical to >build. I can also imagine several building or manufacturing methods >that would make the piano more economical to produce, which would >probably be fine for a low end piano and might drive the price down >a bit. But it's not clear to me that they would result in an artist >quality piano. Perhaps you and your grad students have better >imaginations than I do. Care to share an example? Well, at the moment I'd like to keep the ideas out of public, if only to avoid looking too stupid when they don't work. Also we're just exploring some of them anyway, so can't say which will turn out the most promising. The logic of discovery can be easily laid out, along the lines of my questions at the end of last email. These key points need to be answered as the starting point of a new design: How much of the current design of a modern piano is needed merely to accomodate the limitations of the materials and methods being used to make it? What are the critical design aspects that define the modern piano aesthetic? The latter are the things you don't change. Everything else is fair game. [With trepidation: The pragmatist would say that the piano is really just a complex machine and it ought to be possible to manufacture it like one. But that most definitely doesn't apply to the current design.] >I agree that it will be fun to try. I wish somebody had been doing >this stuff when I was thinking of going to graduate school. ...... >Granted. But my point was that most violinists are convinced that >they need to pay a lot of money to get a good instrument, are >resigned to that circumstance, and factor that into their financial >plans. Pianists, in general, are not. Perhaps this stems partly >from the fact that violins are perceived to be works of art or >craft, and pianos are perceived to be factory made commodities. >Figuring out how to re-engineer a piano to make it more efficient to >manufacture isn't going to change that perception. At the moment I'm treating this as a fun applied exercise, just to see if we can do it. Commercial and economic constraints are definitely a driver for the project but we have nothing to lose if we crash and burn, unlike someone who is working as an entrepreneur and needs success to survive. We can afford to just make the journey. The bottom line is that it's still a great interdisciplinary engineering project for students here to work on. I should clarify the objectives of our group. The main focus is an engineering investigation of the conventional piano. That's the research where the grad students are involved. Traditional engineering and conventional pianos. The re-engineering project is independent and periperal to the research group, involving some undergraduate engineering students who also have an interest in the piano and/or music technology. >had thought at first that the aim of your research was to find out >more about how the piano works, in order to provide information to >builders with the goal of building improved pianos. Now, I'm not >sure that I understand the goal. Nothing has changed in that research goal. The project described in the newspaper article is not the main focus of the group. >Is it to build a 'better' piano than currently exists? In this context "better" is firmly in the eye of the beholder, so it doesn't make much sense to claim a design as "better". The goal of the research is to increase understanding of the physical connections between the piano (design, technology, materials, manufacturing), the pianist, and the technician. >Is it to build a piano that's as good as a current high end >instrument more cheaply? Is it to rejuvenate the Canadian piano >industry? That's the goal of my peripheral project as described in the newspaper. >I believe what our craft, and the pianistic world, needs is >diversity of choice. Exactly. That's what CFT killed in 1869 when he forced Henry Jr's design on the world. Diversity died in 1869. We need the Overs's, Stuarts, Fazioli's, Fandrich's and so on to give some meaningful choices instead of slavishly copying ancient designs. This is the best way to rejuvenate the industry. >In other words, the availability of instruments with real individuality. Agree 100%. Stephen -- Dr Stephen Birkett, Associate Professor Department of Systems Design Engineering University of Waterloo, Waterloo ON Canada N2L 3G1 Director, Waterloo Piano Systems Group Associate Member, Piano Technician's Guild E3 Room 3158 tel: 519-888-4567 Ext. 3792 fax: 519-746-4791 PianoTech Lab Room E3-3160 Ext. 7115 mailto: sbirkett[at]real.uwaterloo.ca http://real.uwaterloo.ca/~sbirkett
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