Transitioning from an upright to a grand
CBCGKO
I've recently realized a life-long dream and bought a wonderful grand
piano (L series).
Having played on a well maintained UE-1 upright for numeorus years, I
thought it would be an easy transition from a nice instrument to a great
instrument. However, I'm finding that the action, sound, and the overall
tonal quality are really played havoic with my technique: I am having to
re-evaluate my overall technqiue.
Has anyone else experienced anything similar? Is it just me?
Gary Coombs
CBCGKO <cbc...@aol.com> wrote in article
<19961224130...@ladder01.news.aol.com>...
I bought my grand 9 years ago. I had gone from a studio upright to a 7'5"
grand and found the transition truly delightful. The action on the grand is
smoother, easier, and fast repetition was now really possible. And I now had
an open beautiful sound with a thunderous low end.
Have you experimented with the lid open and closed and various degrees thereof?
This will, of course, effect the sound a great deal. What kind of room is
your grand in?
What are you experiencing in the action that is different? You should find a
decided improvement in the action. Is your grand new? If so, was it set up
properly before delivery? If it is an older grand, have you had it examined by
a qualified technician to make sure it is regulated properly?
Fill us in on the details !!!
Happy Holidays,
--
Gary....@MindSpring.com
http://www.mindspring.com/~coombs
cc...@aol.com
In article <19961224130...@ladder01.news.aol.com>, cbc...@aol.com
(CBCGKO) writes:
>Having played on a well maintained UE-1 upright for numeorus years, I
>thought it would be an easy transition from a nice instrument to a great
>instrument. However, I'm finding that the action, sound, and the overall
>tonal quality are really played havoic with my technique: I am having to
>re-evaluate my overall technqiue.
>
>
I've met many people who have practiced on uprights and played on grands
and almost always preferred the grand (including myself, and I've had
several uprights and several grands). So maybe your upright or you grand
has unusual action. Perhaps you are one of those who like to play soft
music. In that case, close the grand and use the soft pedal much more
than you used to. In a small room with no carpets, an open grand may be
more difficult to play softly.
C. C. Chang
Beddingfield
In article <19961224165...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
cc...@aol.com wrote:
>has unusual action. Perhaps you are one of those who like to play soft
>music. In that case, close the grand and use the soft pedal much more
>than you used to. In a small room with no carpets, an open grand may be
>more difficult to play softly.
Really? I always felt it was much easier to play softly on a grand. Of
course, mine was on carpet and I rarely opened the case. BTW, I've been
trying to remember after reading this article, what is the term used to
describe the ability of a piano (or the degree of a piano) to play both soft
and loud? It might not be an "official" term, but I believe I remember some
term that was coined by a female pianist.
Anyhow, back to the grand. I also seem to think that a grand is actually
quiter (is that a word? ;-)) to the player than an upright because of the
aligment of the strings. With a grand piano, the strings are horizontally
aligned, so the sound tends to go up and down. While with an upright, the
strings are vertically aligned, so all of the sounds tends to go straight out
at you, in addition to the reflected sound off of whatever wall your piano is
up against (which is where uprights are usually placed in a home). I know
this from personal experience: I learned to play on a baby grand piano and
every time I still play on an upright, it always seems so darn loud and I feel
apprehensive about pressing the keys to hard.
---
Richard Beddingfield
http://users.southeast.net/~habedd/index.html
cc...@aol.com
In article <5a0uq2$2...@ns2.southeast.net>, hab...@users.southeast.net
(Beddingfield) writes:
> With a grand piano, the strings are horizontally
>aligned, so the sound tends to go up and down. While with an upright,
the
>strings are vertically aligned, so all of the sounds tends to go straight
out
>
>at you, in addition to the reflected sound off of whatever wall your
piano is
>
>up against (which is where uprights are usually placed in a home). I
know
>this from personal experience: I learned to play on a baby grand piano
and
>every time I still play on an upright, it always seems so darn loud and I
>feel
>apprehensive about pressing the keys to hard.
>
>
I agree with you that the grand is generally easier to play, and also
softly, because of the unique way in which the soft pedal of the grand
works (see a partial excerpt of my description of this in my web page
http://members.aol.com/cc88m/PianoBook.html), so I am really puzzled by
the original post. But I don't understand the loud upright part. Baby
grands are notoriously poor pianos; most good grands 5-7 and up are much
more powerful than almost any upright.
But you also bring about a very important topic I have not heard discussed
in detail anywhere; this is the way sound is projected from the piano.
This is how much I know:
Uprights: the most important factor is distance from the wall. If you
place the upright right up against a wall, no sound comes out (assuming
the wall is a good reflector of sound and does not have sound insulation).
This is because the sound reflected from the wall suffers a 180 degree
phase shift and exactly cancels out the sound from the sounding board. If
you place the piano 1/4 wavelength away from the wall (usually about 8
inches for the important piano frequencies), the total path traveled to
and from the wall is 1/2 wavelength which is 180 degrees and exactly
cancels the 180 degrees upon reflection and therefore, the sound
interferes constructively and you get maximum sound. Obviously, distance
to wall and type of wall insulation are important.
Grands: When the grand is closed, most of the sound comes out the bottom,
so the type of floor, especially the carpeting, controlls the sound. If
you remove the top cover, sound comes out of both top and bottom, but the
top sound is 180 degrees out of phase with the bottom. Since the ceiling
is much more that 1/4 wavelength away, this phase difference has very
little noticeable effect. If the cover is opened at nearly 45 degrees as
on most grands, you will hear three sounds: from bottom, from top (180
degrees shifted) and from the cover. Since the cover is at 45 degrees,
the phase shift of sound reflected from this cover is not exactly 180
degrees, but close. To this, you must add the distance to the cover
(which increases rapidly with frequency), and you get a very complex sound
response which depends on exactly where you are standing near the grand.
Therefore, the only way to get "good" sound out of a grand is to stand
more than 10 feet away so that all these interferences have much less
effect if you move slightly or turn your head.
Does anybody know of an "official" treatise on this subject?
C. C. Chang
Roy Ulrich
Beddingfield <hab...@users.southeast.net> wrote in article
<5a0uq2$2...@ns2.southeast.net>...
> In article <19961224165...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
> cc...@aol.com wrote:
>
> . Of
> course, mine was on carpet and I rarely opened the case. BTW, I've been
> trying to remember after reading this article, what is the term used to
> describe the ability of a piano (or the degree of a piano) to play both
soft
> and loud? It might not be an "official" term, but I believe I remember
some
> term that was coined by a female pianist.
I believe that the word you're looking for is "Pianoforte" - what pianos
are, soft and loud. piano, and forte. Maybe not, but that's my guess.
Roy Ulrich
cc...@aol.com
Kaisers
I'd like to reply in a somewhat different vein. Anyone who has proven
over the course of a few years--mainly to themselves-that they are
serious about the piano should make evey effort to scrape together the
money for a grand, even an old one (see below.) It has helped me
tremendously and I'm shocked, in retrospect, that it took me nearly 20
years to take the plunge. My son, meanwhile, has started on it, and I
know it has helped him enormously, too. I think you learn better
technique, and of course you do get better sound.
Now the thing is, my grand is the only one of its make I've ever
seen. The make is Jesse French and it was made in the 1920s, I think,
in Indiana. I found it in a Boston second-hand piano loft. It
obviously needed work (I put in about $1000 eventually), and it had very
heavy action (still does--I'm used to it.) But it had tremendous tone,
especially in the high treble, where most Steinways of that age are
dead. It has held up very well, although it needs another $500 worth of
miscellaneous work (the soft pedal is screwed up), and I remain quite in
love with it. Does anyone else out there have one? (My tuner, who is
one of the top Steinway rebuilders in the country, always says, "This
piano plays better than it should!")
David K
Beddingfield
In article <01bbf511$596d3900$193c92ce@default>,
Thanks for the response, but that's not what I was looking for. In fact, it's
not any synonym for "piano" at all; it's a term that simply describes the
ability (and degree of) to play loudly and softly. I've only heard it once or
twice, so it might not be all that "official".
A Anderson
On 24 Dec 1996, CBCGKO wrote:
> Having played on a well maintained UE-1 upright for numeorus years, I
> thought it would be an easy transition from a nice instrument to a great
> instrument. However, I'm finding that the action, sound, and the overall
> tonal quality are really played havoic with my technique: I am having to
> re-evaluate my overall technqiue.
I had exactly the same problem about 18 months ago, though not with a
Steinway (gnashes of envy) - a smallish Yamaha was difficult enough. The
day it arrived I was so appalled it nearly went straight back. It
took me 6 months to feel I was getting it under control. Here's
what I learned:
(1) it magnifies all your technical errors - the ones you always had but
the upright disguised them. If you do something badly, it's 10 times
worse. The up side is that what you do well sounds 10 times better.
(2) Note articulation is more difficult - the grand "comes back" at you so
much faster, you get a feeling that all your scales are wobbly, and all
your chords are ragged at the edges.
(3) it has *far* more resonance, you have to learn to control this. Things
sound messy because there are all these wonderful harmonies lingering
around longer than you expected (the upright just goes dead sooner)
(4) there is a lot more to be gained from playing further in towards the
baseboard. The "lever" is so much longer that there's a long gradation of
control from outside to in. This is pretty much absent on an upright, with
its stubby action. In fact I think many upright players, especially
small-handed people, probably have the bad habit of playing too far
out because there's nothing to be gained from going in. (Problems of doing
this on a grand are magnified because when you have to go in, all of a
sudden, there's a hiccup). You can get *much* softer and *much* louder.
What I did, rather than send it back:
(1) go back to basics and play a lot of slow, soft scales every day, as
slowly as you can play them absolutely evenly & legato. Playing them
"staggered" - i.e. CC'DD'EE'FF' with RLRLRLRL helps even more.
(2) play lots of loud, then soft sustained chords in semi-staccato, as
crisply as you can, e.g. chord inversions up and down. Concentrate on
hitting and taking your fingers off all at the same moment.
(3) use a *lot* less sustaining pedal and stop using it
"automatically" (everyone uses too much anyway, except for Vladimir
Ashkenazy)
I play a lot better now than I ever did on an upright. You won't regret
it. But I still haven't figured out how to exploit the sostenuto pedal
properly (I put it down and forget to take it off again...very strange
effects...)
...........................................................................
Alison Anderson ali...@fit.qut.edu.au
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ralph Thomas
In article <19961224130...@ladder01.news.aol.com>, cbc...@aol.com (CBCGKO) says:
>
>
>I've recently realized a life-long dream and bought a wonderful grand
>piano (L series).
>
>thought it would be an easy transition from a nice instrument to a great
>instrument. However, I'm finding that the action, sound, and the overall
>tonal quality are really played havoic with my technique: I am having to
>re-evaluate my overall technqiue.
>
>
>
a fast action, with excellent control of dynamics. You might have a tech check the action
next tuning. Sometimes action problems can have some strange results as in touch problems that
translate into bad sounds.
KathyPiano
I went from a full-size Kawaii upright (U50) to a 6'1" Yamaha grand (C3)
about five years ago, and I know exactly what you are talking about. Even
going from a good upright to a good grand is a transition. The grand
scared me at first, but now it's such a pleasure to come home to after a
day of playing students' crappy spinets. Just kee playing it - it will
feel like "home" shortly.
Kathy
Edward Green
KathyPiano <kathy...@aol.com> wrote:
Yeah, I know what you are talking about too. After many years of
playing an assortment of hand-me-down uprights a reconditioned Knabe
grand more or less fell into my lap. Fortunately the injuries were
not all that serious, and when I recovered I noticed how much more
strength the action required, and how much louder it was! Now my
fingers are so built up I can strangle chickens with my pinkies. ;-)
Ed
C.J.
e...@panix.com (Edward Green) wrote:
>Yeah, I know what you are talking about too. After many years of
>playing an assortment of hand-me-down uprights a reconditioned Knabe
>grand more or less fell into my lap. Fortunately the injuries were
>not all that serious, and when I recovered I noticed how much more
>strength the action required, and how much louder it was! Now my
>fingers are so built up I can strangle chickens with my pinkies. ;-)
Oh oh!! Sounds like another case of mistaken identity
Ed, get yourself a "GOOD" Registered Piano Tech right away before you
end up with Carpel Tunnel Syndrome!! No way is that Knabe supposed to
be heavy to play.
The vast majority of pianos (uprights and grands) are designed to have
balance weights of approximately 52 grams down in the bass to 48 grams
down in the high treble. In this group are all the well known brands
including Knabe!
What this means is that your fingers need to exert (in the bass) 52
grams of force to move the key down to the point of escapement. The
amount of force needed lessens as you travel up the keyboard. Why?
Because 1) the hammers get smaller and 2) because piano manufacturers
realize this is where speed counts.If I had a dollar for every time
someone advertised the sale of Steinway like this: "Steinway Grand,
Solid Action - or they say Strong Action, - or they say Good Heavy
Steinway Action". Heck, I could go away for a month.
Heavy actions or actions that drive like a truck or need alot of force
behind them to make them move usually suffer from a condition called
verdegris. It's sort of like an infection of the pivoting points in
the action - seizing them up gradually over years.
If that piano was reconditioned by a hack - he might of put the wrong
hammers in there and now you're feeling the results.
Ed, I have a Knabe in the shop right now (and I've had them before)
and if anything that action is lighter than the norm. Do your tendons
a favor and get a good tech to look at it. If your current tech
doesn't know what this is about - get a second opinion.
Charles Flaum, RPT
Perfectly Grand Piano Service, Inc.
c...@infi-net.com
Daniel Wilson
Ed <e...@panix.com> said:
> Now my fingers are so built up I can strangle chickens with
> my pinkies.
Is this before the interval or after ? Don't you get people
complaining ? Audiences are very squeamish these days.
Dan Wilson