Music Trade Review

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THE MUSIC TRADE
JANUARY 25, 1919
REVIEW
Player Manufacturers Who Are Endeavoring to Improve the Tone of Their
Instruments Should Remember That the Secret of Good Tone Lies Largely in
the Action of the Hammer and the Manner of Its Contact With the String
If you are going to design a mechanism which
is to play the piano, under what control soever,
in a manner which shall be tolerably artistic,
you must find out, first of all, in what consists
the mechanical process of tone production.
Many men have, designed players, and sold
them, too, without thinking enough of this, and
in consequence have made expensive mistakes,
which they have been obliged later to undo.
The mechanical process of playing the piano
consists in causing the hammer to strike a
string and immediately rebound therefrom. At
the moment of its contact with the string the
hammer is not, and must not be, in contact with
the impelling action. It must have been tripped
up out of the contact an instant before. This
is so that the hammer will not block against
the string after striking it and so smother the
latter's vibrations.
An Experiment
Now, of course, it is obvious that any sort of
mechanism which will actuate the machinery
whereby the hammer is thrown at the string
is, in a sense at least, the sole needed actua-
tion. But it is only necessary to make a few
experiments to find out that tone production is
not such an easy matter. Let the amateur go
to a piano, sit down at the keyboard and strike
a key very hard. What does he hear? A loud
sound, and also a sound which can only be de-
scribed by the very unsatisfactory word "harsh."
That is to say, the amateur finds that he can
make a loud noise but not a noise both loud
and agreeable. If he now resolutely sets him-
self out to produce a pleasing quality of tone
from the piano he will find himself producing
sounds by no means so loud, and at first he will
think that these sounds are very pleasant. If
he can run a broken chord up and down the
piano he may get a loud result or a result less
loud. He may get a pleasant or an unpleasant
sound. But it is almost certain that he will not
succeed in getting a sound at once loud and
pleasant or soft and pleasant.
The softer
sounds will be more pleasant, of course, but
they will probably be mushy and uncertain, and
in trying not to make them harsh the amateur
will very likely press the keys insufficiently in
some places and so get no tone at all.
The Artist
Now if our amateur goes to hear a real artist,
a pianist of the first rank, play the piano, he will
hear something altogether different. It matters
little whether the hearer "understands" the mu-
sic he hears or not, what he is now to do is to
listen only to the "quality" of the sound produced
by the pianist. He will find that even when the
piano is emitting sounds of tremendous inten-
sity, there is nothing of "hitting" about the
feeling one gets from the sound. It seems as
if the hammers "draw" the tone from the strings
instead of getting it by a percussive process.
The hammer stroke seems to disappear and one
gets a feeling as if the hammer were a bow,
the bow of a violin. When our pianist is play-
ing with very slight power and the tone he pro-
duces is light, we notice, when we have learned
by practice how to do so, that there is still an
incisiveness, a crispness, a certainty about the
tones that seem to drip from his fingers, which
the poor amateur cannot even think of produc-
ing. Here, then, is piano playing as it should
be. What is it that the pianist does which the
amateur does not?
The Key
He does much, and also there is much he
does not. He does not in the least use an ac-
tion or a key different from the amateur's on
his piano. Moreover, if the action of the piano
be carefully examined it will at once be seen
that the key itself, which the pianist presses
with that wonderful hand of his, might be taken
away altogether from the action if only the
pianist's hands could manipulate the hammer as
easily without it. In a word, it is seen on ex-
amination that the key of the piano action is
put where and how it is only because the hand
is how and where it is.
The Action
Thus if our amateur is thinking about tone-
production with reference to a piano player ac-
tion he will soon see that he must go beyond
the key for his secret. The secret is some-
where, and the key is necessary to the artist's
hands, but the secret is not in the key, since the
latter's only function is to convey a motion to
a vertical rod. This rod, in turn, conveys its
motion to a swinging arm, which in turn con-
veys it to a shouldered trip, which pushes the
hammer near the string, releases it to travel
to the wire by its momentum, when it is instan-
taneously drawn back. It is fairly plain that
no amlount of work on the key will by itself
affect the tone of the strings.
The Hammer
It is plain then that the secret must be found
in the travel of the hammer itself. But this
conclusion again only leads us to another ques-
tion. The hammer turns on a fixed center
through the arc of a circle and the last portion
of its path by its own momentum, the action
being momentarily disengaged from it by a
special contrivance delicately regulated for the
purpose. It is evident that since the path of
the hammer cannot be changed, any changes or
modifications or treatments which the pianist
contrives to make, must have to do solely with
the speed of its travel, with the material of
which it is made, or with its shape.
Now the last two of these may be disre-
garded, because we know that unskilled persons
cannot produce from a piano the fine tone which
the artist will evoke from the same instrument.
The speed of the hammer is then the first and
principal element in the control of tone produc-
tion, after the density, thickness and shape of
the hammer have been settled and fixed.
The Element of Touch
There is, however, a second element. We
note that the string which has been struck con-
tinues to vibrate as long as the hand remains
on the key or on some part of the action whose
retention will keep it in its rebound position
against its back-check. When the key or ac-
(Con tinned on page 8)
traube
Player-pianos in the past year have been
the means of establishing an enviable pres-
tige for dealers in many parts of the country.
Straube Dealers
new and old, KNOW that any goods they
handle bearing the name STRAUBE are
built by men who have standardized the
highest ideals of workmanship (plus good
material) and tonal qualities in their manu-
facture.
Straube Upright, Style K
"Sing Their Own Praise"
Stranbe Player, Style 15
"Sing Their Own Praise"
STRAUBE PIANO CO.
HAMMOND
INDIANA