Piano action

HI there,

There is another variable at least - on some pianos at least. It affects
the timbre you get when you play without the pedal held down.

The amount of acceleration or deceleration as you press the key affects
the quality of the note.

The reason is that as you press the key, often there are two pointe
where things happen like this

time line:

Start pressing key ... Hammer enters free motion ... damper lifts

Once the hammer enters free motion you can't affect its velocity
But you can delay the lifting of the damper. If you decelerate
then the damper can stay on the string for just long enough to
dampen the attack, giving a soft cantabile sound. If you
accelerate then it lifts promptly so that the attack doesn't get
dampened at all and you get a bright attack.

With some pianos it is possible to find a position between
those two stages and when you press the key, abruptly stop
at that point. The result is that the note still sounds
but is totally damped as the damper never lifts from the
string - quite an interesteing effect. You can play
melodies entirely in that fashion, and they don't need to
be played quietly, it's quite possible to play forte and totally
damped (maybe I was lucky in the piano I was experimenting
with?).

You could use this to some effect I'm sure as long as the
dampers are not completely raised from the string.
I think this may be something to do with why some players feel
they can vary the touch so much on a piano with notes
at the same velocity.

Some pianos seem to have it the other way round:

Start pressing key ... damper lifts ... Hammer enters free motion

in which case you can't do this. Those pianos have a more
uniform kind of a feel to them, you have more of the same
tone quality all the time (maybe a nice cantabile or whatever
but you can't vary it in quite the same way).

Robert