Modern Tone

Horace Greeley hgreeley@stanford.edu
Fri, 04 Mar 2005 08:58:09 -0800


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Barb, Dale,

Actually, it's nice for the subject to come up...again...some of us simply 
throw up our hands in frustration.

People forget (or, perhaps, never learn to begin with) that voicing is an 
art.  The reason that some art is memorable and some is not goes in part to 
the technique, or lack of it, of the artist.  It's the same old story - if 
you cannot play the scale evenly at a slow tempo, you certainly cannot play 
it evenly at a fast one - and - you do not get there over night.  What did 
Richard Davenport use to call his voicing class?...."Blood on the Hammers", 
I think.

Since it is also relevant to another recent question, it is also important 
to note that "voicing" is much more than the normally conceived 
manipulation of the hammer.  At the absolute minimum, it refers to tuning, 
regulation and hammer manipulation.  These three are too interdependent to 
be completely decoupled.  Yes, they need to be studied, discerned and 
carried out in somewhat disparate steps, as it were.  However, carrying 
this approach too far leads to a fragmented understanding and results in 
diminished quality in the "final" product...a result which can be heard on 
the vast majority of concert stages...thin, diminished tone, actions 
clearly uneven, truncated/reduced dynamic range...as one very well known 
artist put it some time ago:  "88 different notes - 88 different 
sounds"....pretty well describes a great many instruments.

Hmmmm....it's too early for this much philosophizing...time for more 
caffeine...

Best.

Horace


At 08:21 AM 3/4/2005, you wrote:
>In a message dated 3/4/2005 8:18:30 A.M. Pacific Standard Time, 
>piano57@flash.net writes:
>    Barb
>   Oh yeah,  big time. I thought I was the only one hearing this stuff or 
> being accused of being too picky. No More.
>   Dale
>My encouraging you??!!!!   Well, it *is* nice to find partners in 
>crime........  ;-)
>
>Barbara

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