Topic by pergol

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  • pergol
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Topic: Repeated notes with pedal and high dynamic range

Take e.g. the K1 model and set the dynamic range to 100 dB.

Now if you press the pedal and play a forte note followed by several pianissimo notes, you will notice that even though the pianissimo notes are barely audible, they dramatically dampen the forte note.

Is this behavior on purpose? I would have expected the sound to be somewhat akin to a cymbal where the light hits don't really dampen the sound all that much since the stick only comes into contact with the cymbal for a very short amount of time. Likewise you would expect a dynamically-reduced pianissimo note to not dampen the sound as much as a (louder) normal-dynamics pianissimo note...

Of course because increasing the dynamic range of a piano is a non-physical operation there is no absolute "right" or "wrong", but it just seems weird to me.

Reply by Philippe Guillaume

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  • Philippe Guillaume
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Re: Repeated notes with pedal and high dynamic range

When playing a note forte followed by pianissimo notes, the hammer absorbs energy during each contact time. With 100 dB dynamics, the absorbtion, being proportional, is more important. Note that measurements show hardly more than 50 to 60 dB dynamics on an acoustic piano.

Philippe Guillaume's Website

Reply by pergol

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Re: Repeated notes with pedal and high dynamic range

Yes, I was precisely questioning the axiom that the absorption should be proportional. As I understand it, you are viewing increasing the dynamics as more or less applying an expander to each note. But maybe you could offer another dynamics increase mode that would reduce the influence of each note the less velocity it has (that is, the hammer transfers less energy to the string and dampens it less). This is not enough to entirely define the behavior as you will also have to tweak other parameters to match the traditional dynamics increase mode, such as increasing the absorption of strings so that forte notes don't get too overpowering, and making various non-linearities less sensitive to dynamics. Maybe it's worth exploring?

Last edited by pergol (20-12-2010 18:47)

Reply by skip

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Re: Repeated notes with pedal and high dynamic range

I had a little attempt at testing this behaviour on a real grand. I was playing a note forte, and then, straight away, play a note as softly as possible, and releasing the key only partially, so as not to allow the damper to come into contact with the strings. (I didn't want any sympathetic resonance so I did not use the sustain pedal. I guess I should have used the sostenuto pedal though) I felt that there wasn't as much deadening of the sound as I expected, but it was hard to say how much, because of the normal decay of the note.   It'd be interesting to send some MIDI to a Disklavier or similar to do further testing.  (either using the sostenuto pedal or exploiting double-escapement)

Greg.

Last edited by skip (20-12-2010 21:48)