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11
THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
JULY 9, 1921
O u r TECHNICAL DEPARTMENT
CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM BRAID WHITE
THE WEIGHT OF TOUCH
Some Observations on a Greatly Misunderstood
but Very Important Subject
The following request is not one of the com-
monest, but it is very interesting, nevertheless,
and I am glad of the opportunity of discuss-
ing it:
"Dear Mr. White: I have numerous calls for
the making of a lighter or heavier touch in
pianos. Often they will refer me to some
teacher's or some friend's piano with just the
right kind of touch. As a rule, I am perfectly
familiar with the certain piano of which they
speak and many times it is right opposite from
what they think they want. In such cases the
'touch' must be in the head instead of being in
the piano.
"It might be well for some people to get this
'touch' (and a few other things) out of their
noodle and get a little tone fixed in it, so they
can tell when their piano needs tuning. Not-
withstanding all this, there are pianos that cer-
tainly do need touch regulating, and while I
may have my opinion in regard to this matter,
I am going to ask how you perform this light
and heavy touch business? This note does not
refer to lost motion or kindred ails. Sincerely,
Will H. Gary, Stafford, Kansas."
What Do They Mean?
Let us begin by discussing, not what we prac-
tical piano men mean when we talk about
"touch," but what the piano owner, the student
and the piano teacher are likely to mean.
During my years of experience with all sorts
and conditions of pianos and owners thereof I
found frequent cause to explain what is meant
by "weight of touch." But if it should be asked
whether the explanations were generally suc-
cessful the answer would have to be in the nega-
tive. They were accurate enough, I think, but
somehow they did not penetrate the conscious-
ness of those who listened to them.
The reason for this lamentable state of affairs
was, of course, that technical men make the
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great mistake of supposing that it is easy to
make the layman understand the meaning of
technical terms. In plain fact the layman
seldom, if ever, understands what one is talking
about, and so it is better not to attempt the
hopeless task of enlightenment, save when one
finds a man (it is scarcely ever a woman, un-
fortunately) who can understand the mechani-
cal principles of tone production in the piano.
When the layman speaks of the "touch" of a
piano being heavy or light he or she is likely
to mean any one of several things. It may
be that the action is so badly out of regulation
that a go'od deal of special effort is required to
get a powerful tone through the lost motion
between action and keys. It may be that the
hammers have been softened down too much,
so that the tone quality is mushy and weak. In
such a case the owner will sometimes describe
the touch of the piano as very "heavy." What
is meant is simply that the performer has diffi-
culty in extracting from the instrument a tone
of suitable power and falls into the error of sup-
posing that the trouble is with the mechanical
action.
I have frequently heard the owner of a piano
say that its "action" is very "light" and have
found out that in reality the instrument had a
hard tinny tone and could be made to sound
"nice and loud" without much physical effort
in the keys, even in presence of much lost mo-
tion.
These considerations are adduced for the pur-
pose of reminding Brother Gary that he is very
likely to have the same sort of experiences him-
self and that in consequence he had better be
careful before he acts. It is essential to find out
what the other party means before one starts
in on regulating the touch-weiglit of a piano
action. It may turn out that the owner did not
really mean touch-weight at all, and then the
results are likely to be distressing.
It may turn out, please remember, that the
trouble is in the hammers or in the lost motion.
And it may turn out that it refers to tone quality
alone. It is as well to be sure before one sets
to work.
Some Possibilities
But if it should turn out really to be a case
of the weight of touch being too great or the
reverse some careful examination must be made
before anything else is done. The keys may
be slightly sluggish in their action, or at least
may hug their pins a little too closely. Again,
they may be weighted excessively in the back
for some reason or other which is not always
immediately apparent. If the tuner finds that the
keys are actually weighted too much a lead
may be knocked out from each. But this is not
likely to be the case.
Springs
What is more likely is that the damper
springs are too stiff, if the action be upright.
TUNERS
FACTS ABOUT TOUCH WEIGHT
How This Element Has Varied During the
Development of the Piano-forte
It may be interesting at this point to say
something about the actual weights which have
been common at various times during the de-
velopment of the piano. This instrument is on
the point of celebrating its two hundredth birth-
day, for it was in 1726 that Cristofori finally per-
fected his escapement which made the hammer
action practical and brought the piano into
being. During the first fifty years of its exist-
Here are
BASS STRINGS
(Continued on page 12)
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On a grand piano the excessive weight will be
in either the damper springs or the springs on
the repetition lever, or both.
To strengthen or weaken such springs is
sometimes easy and sometimes not so easy. The
repetition lever springs in most grand actions
can be adjusted by a screw, although this rule
is not universally applicable. But the other
springs can only be strengthened or weakened
by bending, and that is at the best an uncer-
tain sort of procedure.
Don't Meddle!
The fact is that thus to meddle with the
mechanism of the piano action is nearly always
a very undesirable sort of thing. That mecha-
nism has been put together by men whose whole
experience is far greater in quality and in
quantity than the experience of any individual
possibly can be. That mechanism is admirably
adapted to the uses to which it is put and in
the present state of the art of music there is
very little reason to believe that any improve-
ments in it would have any particular effect or
work any general benefit, even if such improve-
ments did not make the mechanism less prac-
tical and less nearly fool-proof.
If I can help it I never touch the springs or
the fundamental adjustments of the action. In
ninety-nine cases out of every possible hundred
it will be found, I truly believe, that the com-
plaint as to lightness or heaviness of touch arises
from some other cause than that which is
alleged. The tuner who wishes to handle a case
of this sort without getting himself into trou-
ble of one kind or another had better devote
his energies to finding out, as diplomatically as
possible, what the owner who makes the com-
plaint is really thinking about. In most cases,
as I have said, it will then turn out that the
difficulty is not where it was supposed to be.
Often if one takes up lost motion and then
restores the hammers to something like their
original shape the complaint about heavy touch
will vanish. Often, again, if the tone is softened
a little by judicious treatment of the hammers
the belief in light touch will also disappear.
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