Modartt user forum - Harpsichord dynamics.

Re: Harpsichord dynamics.

2019-07-09T19:52:11Z

Enjoyable post Beto-Music, love the sound of the first instrument (some videos in the side bar on YouTube that show up have some interesting music being played on instruments like it).

Enjoyable read too sandalholm - makes me hope enough people are learning to keep the skills of building and maintaining such instruments.

Great to see the images - I wonder if a way to rotate the plectrums would be possible (setting them differently) for pedalling. Round and sharp sides of the tongue making soft and louder plucks.

Looks not possible, but a rod through it, maybe with 2 plectrums, so rotating wouldn't be the prob, but pushing one out further perhaps. Or just 1, length affected by pedal (a few mm? for a heavier pluck).

Made my day, reading, listening and pondering, cheers.

Re: Harpsichord dynamics.

2019-07-09T18:30:41Z

Some ilustrations to help visitors to get a clear idea of your nice text :

Voicing a harpsichord :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4EZ0dZSQC0

Maybe modern harpsichords could have a eletronic action, like using mini fast response micro electric motors to position the plectrum/quill accoding the velocity of the key strike.

Other thing I wonder is to simulate what would be the sound of a modern grand piano if they could have power to pluck the piano strings.

sandalholme wrote:

A very quick answer. I owned a harpsichord for 20 years, knew the maker very well and helped play his instruments in before shipment. The quills of a harpsichord are sized/shaped to suit the thickness of the strings, so do in fact have a different timbre between registers, down to quill, string and position of the plucking point on the string - how far from/near to the bridge. However, the length of the quill which plucks is very short and the mechanism - sliding the registers by hand stops - is quite basic. When listening to discussions in the workshop, both David and one of his (very expert) staff experimented with what they called "half hitch", which is playing at half the plucking length, therefore lower volume. It worked but was not reliable in real life playing. Nowadays, modern technology might well be able to create a way of shading the sound, but even modern delrin quills don't last forever and it's one job - plus tuning and re[lacing strings - that a harpsichord owner needs to learn.
Very short, but was due out of the house a few minutes ago.

Re: Harpsichord dynamics.

2019-07-09T18:19:53Z

A "nostradamic" feeling perhaps...

Maybe Philippe, as a mathematician, would like to fun around with the Bible Code, developed by a mathematician, Michael Droskin, supposed to predict future using the math code applied to the Bible. But they applied the same code to the book Moby Dick and also found a lot of supposed predictions, since everything could be something that already happened if in a given contest, among thousand of other things that leaded to nowhere.

But just for fun I wonder what else could they found. Maybe a preddiction to pianoteq. Why not find out a prediction for a Bosendorfer add-on for 2020?
;-)

Roland use to put harpsichords with dynamics in the sound data banks of most of their digital pianos, and if you want the fair harpsichord behavior you need set to fix velocit . People want dynamic... But a harpsichord can be good to practice when searching perfectionism, since any tiny mistake, like also soft hiting a unwantred key near the target key can became evident on a non-dynamic instrument like harpsichord.

dazric wrote:

When Delius wrote a Dance for harpsichord (1919) he seems to have assumed that the instrument was capable of dynamics and had a sustaining pedal! See the score at https://imslp.org/wiki/Dance_for_Harpsi...Frederick) . Maybe he had a premonition of the capabilities of Pianoteq?

Re: Harpsichord dynamics.

2019-07-09T08:42:29Z

When Delius wrote a Dance for harpsichord (1919) he seems to have assumed that the instrument was capable of dynamics and had a sustaining pedal! See the score at https://imslp.org/wiki/Dance_for_Harpsi...Frederick) . Maybe he had a premonition of the capabilities of Pianoteq?

Re: Harpsichord dynamics.

2019-07-09T08:31:19Z

A very quick answer. I owned a harpsichord for 20 years, knew the maker very well and helped play his instruments in before shipment. The quills of a harpsichord are sized/shaped to suit the thickness of the strings, so do in fact have a different timbre between registers, down to quill, string and position of the plucking point on the string - how far from/near to the bridge. However, the length of the quill which plucks is very short and the mechanism - sliding the registers by hand stops - is quite basic. When listening to discussions in the workshop, both David and one of his (very expert) staff experimented with what they called "half hitch", which is playing at half the plucking length, therefore lower volume. It worked but was not reliable in real life playing. Nowadays, modern technology might well be able to create a way of shading the sound, but even modern delrin quills don't last forever and it's one job - plus tuning and re[lacing strings - that a harpsichord owner needs to learn.

Very short, but was due out of the house a few minutes ago.

Harpsichord dynamics.

2019-07-09T02:30:59Z

Ok, it's a iberian clavichord, and not a harpsichord, but the action looks very simple and have a welcome dynamics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxRv8sNTh1A

Why the simple clavichord have dynamics and harpsichods don't ?
Different actions is the answer... Clavichords are not plucked.

But I wonder why nobody today managed to find a way to give harpsichords some nice dynamics. As far as I know only digital harpsichord have such thing.