Disklavier

PianoBench@... a \ufffdcrit :

> Good morning, everyone.
>
> In a message dated 12/2/03 11:04:02 AM, re_p_g_c@... writes:
>
>> Why velocities should be not greater than 96 (100)?
>
>
> This velocity issue comes up every now and then, and I would like to 
> address it from another perspective.
> .../...
> PianoBench
>
This latest contribution by PianoBench is very interesting and a very 
good contribution to a question that people who have used "plastic" 
instruments -I mean synthesizers- like me  were asking.
Is the yamaha disklavier /really  /a midi instrument ?
My DU1A actually plays from a minimum of 30 up to something like 95 or 
100 velocity. Very disappointing for somebody who wants a 1-127 dynamic 
range !  PianoBench gives here a very sensible answer.
Now I guess the "Pro" models have been designed to ameliorate the lowest 
velocities, those when you finger will go "climb backward" down the key, 
then just at the end give that little velocity that will just caress the 
string. There's no other way for a disklavier to do that and it is : 
controlling the hammer and key movement /all the way/ during its travel 
tawards the string. Remember when you have a key half depressed in a 
Chopin Nocturne, and the just feed the little energy that will have the 
hammer just "humming" at the end of a phrase ?  This is something 
exquisite and normal, but Midi cannot take care of, if only because it 
was designed as a physical model of movement : you're getting the 
velocity plus the exact moment you depress the key (Midi keyboards are 
sophisticated but  basically an off-on system  plus a velocity the 
weight of the key when striking the bottom of the keyboard bottom) The 
movement of even a child's first attempt to play the piano is a much 
more sophisticated  one !   
I really would like to be able to afford a pro system, but I guess it 
will still not be able to capture life's movements. Anyway, when I hear 
Rubinstein pays "l'amor Brujo" on a 1920 piano roll, on my DU1A, I 
shiver and I think I get his very touch on a very deep and moving way  
(check it on those scanned rolls that Terry Smythe so gently offered us 
! http://members.shaw.ca/smythe/library.htm ) . I do not know where that 
comes from. Maybe it's my imagination ? The Yamaha's technology plus my 
imagination have been filling the gap, and that's good news !

I tend to think that this is the way we should consider any musical 
instrume, be it a mechanical one : /This outstanding piece of its 
century technology /(a Stradivarius for example, or a Yamaha DKV) /plu/s 
/our imaginations. 

Please sit down a t the piano, dear Arthur Rubinstein, dear  Scott 
Joplin, dear Rachmaninoff. Would you mind playing a tune for my beloved ?
/


Music has always had some magic in it. The technology will never be able 
to capture it all. So when it suddenly  comes out of a mechanical 
pianoplayer, however sophisticated, it must come out of somewhere else.  
I tend to think it comes from heaven.