Hi, Ron, At 01:07 PM 10/13/2010, you wrote: >On 10/13/2010 12:47 AM, Horace Greeley wrote: > >>While I suspect that it is, for many, sheepdip; I can relate from direct >>experience that there were (at one time) at least four pianists who >>definitely could detect this phenomenon: They were (or, in a couple of >>cases, still are): Ivan Moravec, Eugene Istomin, John Perry and James >>Boyk. These could and did directly identify this, and other, kinds of >>fairly low-level action-related issues when I have worked with them. I'm >>sure that there were others who at least cognated such things even if >>they did not necessarily have ways in which to articulate what they were >>experiencing. > >Hi Horace, >Well, there's always someone isn't there? <G> Yeah...and, these were just the first four that came to mind...later on, I remembered a number of others, including ones like Pogorelich, Argerich, and, in her prime, Tureck...and some surprising names from Jazz. In any event, the more I thought about this presenting issue and things like it, is that all of these folks were/are exceptionally particular about many things in their lives. > Did any have a preference, and give reason(s)? Yes...several did. Since it's painless, the person has now passed, and, besides, since it was as difficult for me as it was for them, I'll relate one story and suggest that it is paralleled by a number of others (and, I am very sure, many, many more from this group). Some years ago, I wound up tuning for Eugene Istomin for a recital series that turned out to be one of his last ones. On this particular tour, he had made the unusual decision of not bringing his own D from NY. So, a hopefully suitable piano had been painstakingly prepared, delivered to the recital location; and I had just finished tuning when he showed up to rehearse. He walked through the upstage door and out to the door in the stage shell, stopped, looked at the piano and said - "I cannot possibly play that instrument!"...Yeah...right. It turned out that, believe it or not, he had spotted not only the (relatively) too "sharp" (high) crown in the keyheight, he had also seen that the heads of the keys were too long (being seriously old-school, he still called them heads even though he knew they were plastics). As soon as I had recovered, I called a limo and we drove over to the selection room (this wasn't Boise), where I knew that, not including new stock, he had at least 7 Ds from which to choose. On the ride over, he was unbelievably gracious...explaining that there was nothing that had been done wrong; and that, in reality, the piano, itself, was probably just fine...he, himself, was the problem...and, he knew it. By way of demonstration, when we got to the selection room, and entered the door, he once again (from nearly 20' away) correctly noted which instruments had flat/curved key heights, but also listed off and had me write down the lengths of the heads (in mm) as he called them off. He then started to play one of the two instruments he thought might work...while I dutifully measured the key height and head length on each piano in the room and compared those measurements with what he had had me write down. He was spot-on with every key height; and missed one head length by barely 1 mm. If I had not seen it myself, I would never have believed it. Oh...yes...the recital was wonderful...a real musical gift from a great artist. Very briefly, some years ago I had a call from James Boyk (who was, for many years, Artist in Residence at CalTech), who was tearing his hair out because "someone had ruined" his piano. After spending an embarrassing amount of time in diagnosis (because I had not really paid attention to his description of the problem...very much my bad), I finally figured out that whoever had last regulated the jacks/reps/springs had (apparently) somehow changed the angle at which they were viewing the stack (through moving either themselves or the action) in such a way that they had wound up leaving the jacks in the treble part of the action minutely (as in roughly 0.5mm) farther under the knuckles than they had in the bottom part of the stack. All of which goes to: >>That said, as you note, I strongly suspect that these kinds of things >>are largely non-events for most players under most circumstances. > >Largely, I'd say. Oh, wait, I already have. Precisely so. It's not at all the case that there aren't people out there who can, and do, detect incredibly minute differences in how an action is regulated...there are. Rather, there are two other factors, the first is that, by the grace of the Infinite, there aren't very many such people on the planet. The second requires one last story: Nearly 35 years ago now, I was at dinner with several other technician friends and a few of their non-technical spouses/significant others. As you might imagine, the conversation was largely (and, quite loudly) about pianos...most especially about manufacturing and regulation issues. Those of you who know me know that I tend to take specifications with several grains of salt...guidelines or suggestions, as it were...preferring to try to figure out what works for whatever specific instrument happens to be in front of me. So, as the conversation wore/dragged on, I gradually became increasingly withdrawn. Over time, I noticed that one of the other folks there, the professional mechanical engineer spouse of one of the other technicians, had also become exceptionally quiet. We looked at each other and smiled and looked back into the relative wisdom of our single malt. Eventually, others noticed that we had effectively left and asked what was up. My friend looked at me and then, turning to the group said: "Remembering that I am mechanical engineer, your conversation does not make much sense...so, let me get this straight: You're going to take a bunch of disparate kinds of wood, cloth, metal, leather, glue, and other stuff; and, conceptually, you're going to dump it into a machine in which it's going to get all mushed together, strung under several tons of tension, get bashed around for a while - and then, you're telling me that you're going to tune this thing to tolerances of only a few cents (or less) and regulate it to within fractions of a millimeter? You are joking, right? From an engineering standpoint, that's insane...you do know that, right?" OK...let's be very clear...the above is categorically _not_ an argument for sloppy, slipshod work...quite the opposite, it is very much an argument to do the very best that we reasonably can..._and_...that's the rub... The point of the parable is that there aren't many Eugene Istomins or James Boyks in the world. As technicians...no, as human beings, we need to learn to be reasonable with our expectations of our selves and the ones we hold for others. FWIW, believe me when I tell you that Istomin would much rather have been less like Istomin (in this regard) and more like Rubenstein...who also certainly knew the difference, but was not inextricably bound by that knowledge. Ah...yet another ponderous tome destined to gather electronic dust for a decade or so before being released from it's well-deserved archival sepulchre...sorry! Best. Horace -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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