In my opinion you are both correct. Your piano teach friend is correct - the pianist is in charge of tone. However, this does not mean that the pianist can change the physical tone production of the piano. The pianist must be in touch with the different tones that the instrument produces at various volume and sustains and must adjust the input to the piano via the hands to select the best tone for a particular passage being played. This is sensitivity on the part of the pianist. That's the "love" part. From the pianist's perspective, she/he is changing the tone. I have heard the same piece played on the same piano on the same day with different pianists. Some pianists instinctively understand what is coming from the instrument and know how it can be used to relate the music. Others cannot, and will get inappropriate sound out of the same instrument, because they bang through at wrong volume levels. Doug Knabe Dallas John Dorr wrote: > In your experience and philosophy can different pianists create > different tones on the same piano, at the same volume (velocity of the > hammer striking the strings) with different touch techniques? It > seems to me that the player always throws the SAME weight at the SAME > target and doesn't have a direct connection with the string at the > moment of impact, so would therefore have no control over what the > tone generated by the instrument is, except and unless they could > somehow control the checking point of the hammer so that it influenced > a very small part of the acoustics. <snip> > I ask because I have a piano teacher friend who insists that SHE and > her students are ultimately in charge of tone.
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