Piano party on 12th September (more pictures)

Courtesy of Min Liang.

Ummm....me.

Sauter Omega 220

Inside the piano

From the tail-end

Wzkit at the keyboard

Sauter

On the plate

The buffet table

Piano party on 12th September

I hosted my second piano party last Saturday, 12th September 2009. As with the previous piano party that I hosted in February 2009, a lunch buffet was catered. The food was Peranakan, and from the same caterer as the last time.

There was a good mix of repeat and new guests. Earliest to arrive were Bihua and her husband (after her antenatal classes). Followed closely by Wzkit. It took Wzkit barely 2 minutes to get seated at the piano after stepping in the door. Here they are:

The first three guests

At the previous piano party Lynnette Seah (co-leader of the SSO) suggested that I invite different instrumentalists to play with piano accompaniment. Good idea, but none of the pianists I knew had any experience as an accompanist. As luck would have it, one of the new guests, Josh, likes to accompany violinists and always has a few pieces ready. So when he suggested accompanying Lynnette on some Kreisler I jumped at the chance, reminded Lynnette to bring her violin, and told her about Josh’s suggestion.

And so she turned up with her fiddle and some of her own scores! And not just Kriesler. After everybody had eaten we settled down for musical dessert.

Settling down for musical dessert

Josh and Lynnette started out with the following Kreisler pieces: “Liebesleid” (“Love’s Sorrow”), “Praeludium and Allegro,” “Schön Rosmarin,” and “Rondino on a Theme by Beethoven.” Wzkit was the page turner.

Josh & Lynnette, and Wzkit turning pages

Some of the engrossed guests

A couple of the guests had never heard the violin played live, and by a good violinist. While Lynnette was playing one said that the next musical instrument he wants to learn to play is the violin. What a daunting task that would be!

After the Kreisler pieces Lynnette pulled out more sheet music, Vittorio Monti’s “Czardas”. But none of us had the sight-reading skills nor chops to accompany her at full tempo. So we ended up with music for two pianists and violin. The two pianists were Jon (playing left hand) and Seng Kiat (playing right hand).

Intrepid performers gearing up for "Czardas"

Josh thought that it was a great idea to have two pianists share the piano load! Of course, this guaranteed that the fast bits would definitely not be at full tempo. Rachmaninov’s “Vocalise” (violin transcription) was also attempted, with Seng Kiat on left hand and Jon on right hand. There was one more, but I forgot what it was.

Czardas

We were very grateful for Lynnette being so sporting.

There was a bit of a lull while the caterer came to collect the buffet equipment. Needless to say the leftovers were retained.

Three happy guests

The picture above shows the Sauter dealer Alvin, Roxane (Steinway B), and Barnaby (Sauter Ambiente). Roxane and Barnaby are of course their PW nicks.

Roxane takes her ABRSM Diploma performance exam tomorrow 16th September, and played for us chunks from her programme. Fj_s tickled the keys for a short while, citing unpreparedness after an 11-year lay off as the reason. He still managed to tease with the opening page of Schubert’s “Wanderer Fantasy”. He’s promised to play more the next time.

We weren’t quite done yet with the piano accompanist thing, because Jon brought along his bassoon and played for us, accompanied by Seng Kiat. They were playing “Vocalise” from Lynnette’s score.

Jon on the bassoon, Seng Kiat on the piano

All-in-all it was a great afternoon of music, food and conversation.

Gala concert — SSO and Li Yundi

Last night, Friday 24th July.

Singapore Symphony Orchestra
Lan Shui, cond.

Programme

Karl Goldmark
Rustic Wedding Symphony, Op. 26

Intermission

Peter Tchaikovsky
Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, Op. 23

I arrived 25 minutes early at 1905h, which was just as well because security was tight, on account of the recent bombings in Jakarta and the fact that there were a number of VIPs in the audience. It took me about 7 minutes to clear the security screening (bag search, metal detectors). After a quick visit to the washroom, I seated myself at 1915h.

I booked late for this concert so only managed to get a seat in the gallery behind the stage. Better than nothing, and worth being there at least once for a different point of view. I was seated at about the 1 o’clock position (from the conductor’s rostrum). Being the naughty person that I am I snapped a picture with my phone’s camera before the concert began:

The security screening and the full house caused the start of the concert to be delayed by 15 minutes to 1945h.

Sound-wise the gallery is definitely not the best place to be. The balance was odd, being a complete reversal of what one hears when seated in front of the stage. The first and second violins sounded distant and thin. The chance to be close to the players and to have a player’s view of the conductor sort of made up for the poor sound.

There was a minor scare just before the start. A patron entering the gallery tripped on the stairs and stumbled THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP down towards the low wall separating the gallery from the stage. She managed to stop her descent in time, to prevent herself from ending up amongst the double basses.

I’d never heard Goldmark before so didn’t know what to expect. I must say I rather enjoyed it. The SSO players were in pretty good form. Perhaps its because they’ve been working on it for the album that is being recorded right now. The only sour point was between the first and second movements. Maestro Lan Shui had his baton up and the players ready to go, but he had to pause when someone’s phone alarm rang at 2000h, from the gallery of all places. DING-tika-DING-tika-DING-tika. (I know it was an alarm because the concert hall is completely shielded from the mobile networks.) At first I thought that the percussionist, who was poised with triangle in one hand and beater in the other, had decided to start the second movement early!

After the 20-minute intermission we had the main event, Li Yundi playing the Tchaikovsky No. 1. The orchestra seemed to be under-rehearsed. One of the French horns wobbled on the 3 dotted minims in bars 78 to 80. On the last one in bar 80, the French horn went completely flat and almost broke. On the whole the ensemble playing could have been tighter.

As for Li Yundi’s playing, I can’t make any meaningful comment here. The piano sound was awful, no doubt due to my being seated behind the orchestra and therefore on the wrong side of the open lid. The poor balance caused the loss of a lot of the tension derived from the changes in tempi and dynamics. Li Yundi seemed a little disconnected from the performance at times, and missed a bunch of notes. I don’t expect note-perfection from pianists in live concerts. But that coupled with all the other negatives made the entire experience somewhat underwhelming.

Postscript 15th September 2009: My poor impression of Yundi Li’s Tchaikovsky was spot on, it seems. I didn’t read the reviews in the press the next day, but I was recently told that all the reviews panned the performance. I was also told that he did not prepare for the concert, and over-pedaled to cover up the messier bits. I hope the young man doesn’t think that Singapore is some cultural backwater where audiences wouldn’t know a bad performance even if it kicked them in the guts. He tours Germany and the UK in October next year with the SSO. I presume that he will be much better prepared for that.

Better control over relative humidity at home

The volume of air in my living/dining area is large, and I have pretty good weather sealing around the large patio doors. This means that the piano is safe from the high RH outside the flat. Even opening and closing the front door to enter or leave the flat does not change the RH much at all.

I do have a RH control problem all the same — the RH swings a lot — from around 38% when the aircon is turned on for an hour at 26°C (outside temperature about 30-31°C ), to about 65% when the aircon has been left off for a few hours. As the RH goes through its gyrations the tuning on the piano also drifts. Not so much now that I’ve learned to set the pins and strings better when I tune the piano, but still enough that it bothers me. Now I think I have found a way to keep the RH around 60% and limit the swings to about ±5% around that mark — the Sharp KC-850E humidifying air purifier.

I was actually looking for an air purifier with HEPA filter to reduce the cat dander at home. I have a mild allergy to cat dander, and have a chronic low level allergic rhinits. A friend who visits often has an even stronger reaction. After about 5 minutes in the flat he starts to tear, sneeze, and get a runny nose and blocked sinuses.

The humidifying air purifiers from Sharp attempt to keep the RH at around 60%. Of course, they are intended for use in low RH climates and in air-conditioned spaces. They can also be used without the humidifying function by leaving the water tank empty.

With the KC-850E running (its very quiet!) I get cleaner air, and RH swings between about 55% and 65%. I also got the smaller KC-840E for my home office because it adjoins the living/dining area, and the KC-850E alone can’t handle that big of a space. They aren’t that cheap but these things last for years. And they are on sale now (in Singapore) until 31st July 2009.

Temperament changed to EBVT III

A week ago I tuned my piano to Bill Bremmer’s EBVT III, but with slight offset corrections (as discussed HERE). I actually used the original EBVT for about five months last year, but switched to the Lehman temperament for the past seven months out of curiosity — I wanted to hear what music sounded like in what is purported to be the temperament used by Bach.

The piano sounded darker after the change to EBVT III. This was expected because EBVT III is a milder form of Well temperament than the Lehman, even milder than the original EBVT. But now that my ears have adjusted to the tonal changes, I have decided that I will stick with the EBVT III for a while.

I had a couple of issues with the Lehman temperament. Some keys were rather too ’spicy’ for my taste. Some dissonant intervals were bordering on the offensive. And in general the piano sounded tended to sound out-of-tune fairly quickly as the tuning drifted due to changes in temperature and humidity.

The EBVT III temperament, on the other hand reduces ‘colour’ differences between keys, but yet has enough key colour to avoid the every-key-sounds-the-same characteristic of Equal temperament. The piano also sounds more in tune with itself, and tuning drift is less objectionable than with the Lehman temperament.

16th Singapore International Piano Festival — Day 4/4

Sunday, 28th June 2009

Yevgeny Sudbin

Scarlatti

• Sonata in F minor, K. 466
• Sonata in G major, K. 455

Haydn

• Sonata in E minor, XVI:34

Chopin

• Mazurka No. 3 in F minor, Op. 7
• Mazurka No. 4 in B-flat minor, Op. 24
• Mazurka No. 2 in D major, Op. 33
• Mazurka No. 4 in B minor , Op. 33

Medtner

• Fairy Tale No. 1 in E-flat major, Op. 26 Allegretto frescamente
• Fairy Tale No. 1 in B-flat minor, Op. 20 Allegro con espressione

Prokofiev

• Sonata No. 7 in B-flat major

Technically very sound. Incredibly clean articulation and very accurate.

Musically, not completely satisfying. The Scarlatti was awesome. Haydn has never turned me on, so I’ll pass on that.

As for the Chopin Mazurkas, I wonder if there is a modern Chopin revisionism going on. Every visiting pianist I’ve heard in the last year plays Chopin much straighter than say, Horowitz, Rubinstein, or Arrau. Much less rubato than the old masters, and less dynamic range.

I am unfamiliar with Medtner’s music.

The Prokofiev was pretty good, if lacking a little in tension. Not my cup of tea (at least not yet).

16th Singapore International Piano Festival — Day 3/4

Saturday, 27th June 2009

Pascal Rogé

Various Composers (played consecutively without a break)

• Fauré — Nocturne No. 1, Op. 33 No. 1
• Chopin — Nocturne in C minor, Op. 48 No. 1
• Poulenc — Nocturne No. 1 in C major
• Debussy — Prélude: Les fées sont d’exquises danseuses
• Chopin — Prélude in D-flat major, Op. 28 No. 15 “Raindrop”
• Debussy — Préludes: La fille aux cheveux de lin, Le vent dans la plaine, Ce qu’a vu le vent d’ouest
• Chopin — Prélude in B minor, Op. 28 No. 6
• Debussy — Préludes: La terrasse des audiences au clair de lune, Les collines d’Anacapri
• Debussy — Étude No. 6, pour les 8 doigts
• Chopin — Étude in A-flat major, Op. 25 No. 1 “Aeolian Harp”
• Debussy — Étude No. 11, pour les arpèges composées
• Chopin — Étude in C minor, Op. 10 No. 12 “Revolutionary”

Pascal & Ami Rogé

Schubert

• Fantaisie in F minor, D.940

Ravel

• Rapsodie espagnole

Tonight’s programming in the first half was very interesting, being a compendium of characteristic pieces by French composers (if you allow Chopin’s time in France being enough to make him sufficiently French).

The second half of the evening comprised two-handed works played by Rogé and his wife Ami. It was fun!

16th Singapore International Piano Festival — Day 2/4

Friday, 26th June 2009

Nikolai Demidenko

Chopin

• 24 Preludes, Op. 28

Schumann

• Faschingsschwank aus Wien, Op. 26
• Carnaval, Op. 9

I had booked the tickets for the piano festival only just a week and half ago. By then all the good seats for the Demidenko concert were gone. But I managed to score a pair from the organiser. There was even an upgrade to the best seats in the house when the Prime Minister and his wife didn’t show up. The PM’s wife had a cold, so to set a good example (during the current H1N1-A ‘flu pandemic) they thought it best to cancel.

At first I had mixed feelings about Demidenko’s take on the Chopin Preludes. But during the intermission I thought about it some more and decided that I liked all of what I heard.

The rubato was more restrained than one typically expects in a more dramatic (over the top?) reading. The dynamics in some of the preludes were different from the score (well, at least the two editions of the Preludes that I have). In about three or four transitions he bridged the adjacent preludes by holding the last note of the preceding prelude in order to allow a seamless segue into the next prelude. This is the first time I have ever heard all of Op. 28 played as a complete set in recital. Demidenko made the 24 preludes sound like an organic whole. Yes, I still prefer Arrau, but Demidenko’s Preludes is a good alternative view. In fact, for some individual preludes I prefer Demidenko to Arrau.

Then after the intermission, came the Schumann. I have never heard either Faschingsschwank aus Wien nor Carnaval played live before. Demidenko was stunning. What more can I say. Music like this and last night’s Pictures amply demonstrate that the concert grand piano has no equal as a musical instrument.

There were three encores.

16th Singapore International Piano Festival — Day 1/4

At the Victoria Concert Hall.

Thursday, 25th June 2009

Vladimir Feltsman

Bach

• Partita No. 1 in B-flat major, BWV. 825

Chopin

• Polonaise No. 1 in C-sharp minor, Op. 26
• Polonaise No. 2 in E-flat minor, Op. 26
• Ballade No. 3 in A-flat major, Op. 47

Mussorgsky

• Pictures at an Exhibition

Didn’t care for his Bach Partita nor the two Chopin Polonaises. He got going with the Chopin Ballade, and fired up more with Pictures. I like his tone — rounded and robust. Reminds me of Claudio Arrau, but with less articulation.

Feltsman played two encores. I didn’t recognize the first one (which isn’t surprising given my rather meagre knowledge of repertoire). The second encore was Chopin’s Waltz in C-sharp minor, Op. 64, No. 2.

What a cat can do on a piano

See all of Nora’s videos HERE.

What two people can do on a piano

Shame on you if you had naughty thoughts!

Sometimes a heater bar is just not enough

A local piano tech well-known to me recently went to fix a problem that a Yamaha upright owner had with sticking keys. This piano is not a grey import — it was bought from Yamaha Singapore. The cause of the problem was obvious — the keys had swelled because of the heavy rain we’ve been having everyday for the past couple of weeks. (For those who don’t live in Singapore, during a torrential tropical downpour the raindrops are the size of cows, not cats nor dogs. And it comes down in bathtubs, not buckets.) The piano was situated in the non-airconditioned living room.

The usual advice that all piano dealers and techs give is that for uprights in Singapore, an always-on heater bar in the case is all that is needed to keep the action in good shape. Indeed, even I have said that before, but now I will correct myself. We’ve all forgotten that the front length of the keys are outside the case, and therefore not protected from high RH.

Fortunately, the swelling is reversible. You just have to lower the RH around the piano to between 50% to 60%, until the keys have dried out sufficiently to un-stick. Obviously the best long-term solution is to aircondition or dehumidfy the room to keep the RH between 40% to 60%, but that’s not practical for some owners.

Britain’s got talent — Susan Boyle

HERE. (Sorry, Youtube has disabled embedding of this video.)

• Prime example of why one should not judge a book by its cover.
• Everyone has talents, big and small.
• Never give up on yourself.

Her innocence and talent and their effect on the judges and audience make your heart leap for joy.

Roland RD-700GX YouTube playlist

Roland RD-700GX Stage Piano

See the playlist here. Check out the breathtaking playing by David Benoit and Brian Culbertson!

Pianoteq 3.0 audio demos

Pianoteq (like the Roland V-Piano) uses physical modeling to generate the sounds of an acoustic grand. Version 3 was released in February this year. Here are some audio demos. I would be lying if I said that is sounds like a real acoustic piano, but its really not bad at all.

The Roland V-Piano

I’m making the rounds of the various digital piano dealers in Singapore to help my brother in the U.S. select one for his home. While doing my homework I visited the Roland website and saw this: the V-Piano.

Roland V-Piano

The demos on the V-Piano microsite sound good! It’s not cheap though — the street price in the US is around USD6,000. And there is a long waiting list. It’s so new that the keyboard specialist at the local Roland agent didn’t know about it!

Kosuke Atari – An interesting voice

Kosuke Atari is a Japanese folk/pop crossover singer with an interesting vocal technique and tone.

From jpopasia.com:

Hailing from Amami-Oshima in southern Japan, Atari Kousuke is a young singer currently signed to Epic Records Japan. He is a self-trained musician, and performs in the difficult ’shima-uta’ (or ‘island-song’) style of his hometown.

While his style of music is close to mainstream pop, his vocals have an undoubtedly traditional Japanese flavour, and his inspiration still comes from his traditional roots.

When Kousuke was in high school, he became a fan of Hajime Chitose. Inspired, he began to teach himself how to sing in shima-uta style.

In 2000, he won the Amami Folk Song Grand Prix’s ‘New Member Award’. He also won the Japanese Folk Song Association Award. He continued to participate in numerous Ryukyu based folk festivals and tournaments.

What Yo-Yo Ma and friends really played at the Presidential Inauguration

Piano party report & pictures

Twenty-two people turned up, and we had a really fun afternoon. The piano playing was in a way secondary to the whole event. It was more an excuse to get some people together to have a good natter, some good food, and also some music.

There was a rather eclectic mix of non-musicians (some close friends of mine), classical pianists, a jazz pianist, and a violinist. The range of ‘real’ occupations was interesting. They included piano tech, piano dealer, economist, computer scientist (ex-academic), mechanical engineer (academic), music teacher, professional musician, IT project manager, HR officer, IT systems analyst, marketing executive, student (forensic science), school teacher, finance director, IT sales rep, and lawyer.

The professional musician was the violinist, Lynette Seah, co-leader of the Singapore Symphony. She was kind enough to attend, and was thoroughly delightful. She even obliged with a couple of short excerpts from Bach and Bruch. Sadly the cheap violin and shrill steel strings were not up to scratch. Lynette said that she would have gladly brought her own violin if I had told her that she had to play for her lunch!

The caterer arrived at 11.05h to set up the buffet table and start warming up the food. Shortly after that Alvin arrived to (a) fix a clicking damper pedal; (b) touch up my tuning; and (c) change the una corda from 2.5 strings to 2 strings.

Lunch commenced at 12.45h, and people kept eating from the buffet throughout the whole afternoon. For the record, here’s the full menu:

• Crabmeat/Chicken Ball Soup
• Nonya Cold Dish Platter
• Nonya Mee Siam
• Nonya Fried Rice
• Ayam Buah Keluak
• Itek Sio
• Spicy Grilled Prawns
• Ikan Chuan
• Nonya Chap Chye with Black Mushrooms
• Assorted Nonya Kueh
• Lime Juice

Of course, sambal belacan was provided as well. The food was pretty good on the whole. The only let-down was the soup — it was deliciously flavourful, but a little on the salty side. Lynette is no slouch in the kitchen with peranakan food, and she made approving noises while eating. So, for those who want to know, the caterer was Chilli Api Catering, a subsidiary of the Chilli Padi peranakan restaurant in Joo Chiat.

Myself and several guests played during the afternoon. Some were initially too shy to play, but eventually it became clear that everyone was there to enjoy themselves and not be music critics or snobs. It didn’t matter whether you played well or not. Everybody was welcome to have a go.

Now for a few pictures.

Ready for visitors

The caterer had just left, and Alvin had finished tidying up my tuning.

Where are they?

Right after I snapped this shot the first visitor arrived. It was my neighbour Jonathan with wife and young daughter.

Jonathan

Jon has fantastic facility on the keyboard. I can sometimes hear him pounding out Rachmaninov and Chopin (the ‘Military’ polonaise mainly) on his Yamaha upright. He says he plays loud to relieve stress. Jon did a lot to help me relax the guests. He got me, Wzkit and Roxane to play duets of solo pieces with him. Interesting. It turned out that Jon and Wzkit have known each other for many years, since the time when they were members of the Piano Ensemble at NUS.

One end of the buffet table

The other end of the buffet table

Lynette and Clarence

Lynnette always looks glamourous, even when dressed casually! Clarence is a close friend who lives nearby with his family. His whole gang (plus extras) came over to enjoy the company, music, and food (not necessarily in that order!).

Some guests

Some of the people in this shot are PW members, but I won’t associate person with PW nick, other than to say that in this shot you see snoopycar, cmk, and Roxane.

Darned paparazzi!

I led off the playing (not that I had any choice). Started with two Chopin preludes — #7 in A major and #20 in C minor — followed by the first movement of Beethoven’s sonata #12 in A-flat major, op. 26. Here I had just screwed up (one of several times) and I blamed it on the camera flash popping during Variation II of the Beethoven.

Lynette playing for her lunch

She played short excerpts from Bach’s ‘Loure’ (Partita #3), and the second movement from Bruch’s 1st violin concerto.

Listening to Lynette play

More people listening to Lynette play

And Jonathan was humming loudly!

Which one of us is Warus?

One of these ladies is the PW member ‘Warus‘. All the PW members present had thought that Warus was a guy. We were very wrong!

Wzkit at the piano

He’s great company, and a really good pianist. Here he’s playing Tchaikovsky’s ‘Octobre‘.

Wzkit playing some more!

Here he was playing Bortkiewicz’s ‘Consolation‘. The microphones in the foreground show that I had actually set up to record the piano. But mild stage fright caused me to forget to start recording before my stint at the keyboard. After that we collectively decided to just forget it this time around.

The leftovers!

So how do we finish all this food? The prawns weren’t touched at all the whole afternoon, probably because shelling them would have been a nuisance. So a few of us sat around and nibbled at the food until about 20.00h. Then I packed some to take to my parents for their dinner. We ate some more at around 21.30h (when the prawns were completely polished off!) and then some more late in the evening. We never did finish up all the food.

How long did people stay? Well, Roxane left around 18.30h while Wzkit left at 20.15h when I stepped out to take some leftovers to my parents for their dinner.

By all accounts the afternoon went well. I hope everyone enjoyed themselves. I certainly did!

Will there be more? Maybe. I suggested to Lynette that if there is another piano afternoon that she bring her violin and an accompanist with her and play a violin sonata. Well, why just stop at violin, she said. How about having different instrumentalists visit on each occasion? Now that’s a thought, isn’t it.

One more thing I forgot: Norman, the jazz pianist, also played for us. To be honest, I am personally jealous of jazz pianists and their great musicianship skills.

European piano makers boycott 2009 Frankfurt Musikmesse?

At least that’s what I heard on the grapevine. Apparently the European manufacturers are unhappy at being relegated to a poor location while still being charged more than last year’s already high exhibitor fees. So this year it will be Japanese, Korean, and Chinese pianos galore at the messe, especially Chinese.

Piano party

Now that the Omega has settled in well, I’ve decided to host a piano party at my home on Saturday 21st February.

I had originally considered making it an open house event for PW members in Singapore, but the lack of space in my flat ruled that out. So, its an invitation-only event. The invitees include some PW members whom I’ve corresponded with, and some of Wzkit’s and Alvin’s piano friends. One of my friends is trying to rope in one of the piano professors from the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory, but we are secretly hoping that he can’t make it — would be too intimidating for us amateur pianists! For variety I’ve also invited a friend who is a violinist with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. There are about 20 people confirmed attending. Should be a fun day.

For lunch I’m having a buffet catered. The menu is all peranakan cuisine, also known as nonya food. For those who aren’t familiar with peranakan cuisine you can find out a little more about it HERE and HERE.

If you are adventurous in the kitchen (and can get the necessary ingredients where you live), then the cookbook by Shermay Lee is a good starting point. (There is a second volume.) These cookbooks are actually updated versions of the cookbook written by her grandmother, Mrs Lee Chin Koon. (Mrs Lee is the mother of Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s founding Prime Minister.) Unfortunately these two volumes don’t cover peranakan desserts, something that the cuisine is famous for too. The cookbooks by Mrs Leong Yee Soo have been around for a long time as well, but they are not recommended. Many of the recipes just don’t work — they’ve obviously never been tested.

Cringeworthy crap

So I’ve changed the template of the blog to one that is vastly better than the one that I was using before. Much better in visual terms.

Can’t say the same for some of the stuff I’ve written since I started this blog last May. I went back to read many of my old posts and I could only slap my hand to my forehead. Oh well, we learn all the time I guess.

The Omega is now 6 months old!

The six-month mark was reached on 8th February.

Yesterday Alvin came by to do the first service. The action was regulated, and minor niggling problems fixed, such as a little squeak when the soft pedal is released. There is still a tiny click when the damper pedal is released. We know what the cause is, but will be consulting the factory on how best to fix it. Not a big deal.

Alvin also did some tuning, but not to change the temperament (which is still the Lehman). The tuning was to even out the voicing of the top two octaves of the keyboard, and to mute the slight tendency of a group of notes to twang when played forte, namely E3 to A#3. This latter problem is quite mysterious. The fact that the notes are grouped suggests  an issue with the room’s acoustics (specifically reflection off the ceiling, side wall or back wall). Anyway, the factory is being consulted about this too. The twanging can be completely removed by careful tuning, but it will come back again to varying degrees as the tuning drifts.

Overall the tone of the centre 3/4 of the keyboard has become more refined, due of course to the fact that that’s where most of the playing happens. The last two octaves in the treble will take more time to develop, but already the lowest notes of those notes are starting to open up more.

All the anxiety that I felt about buying this piano sight unseen has gone. The Omega is turning out to be a marvelous instrument.

The Magnetic Balanced Action

The Magnetic Balanced Action was invented by Evert Snel and Hans Velo about nine years ago. A couple of manufacturers offer it as a factory-fitted option — Fazioli comes to mind. It can also be retrofitted to existing grand pianos. What’s even more interesting is that it is available in Singapore from Emmanuel & Sons, at a cost of between SGD5,000 and SGD7,000. Needless to say, installing the MBA into a piano still under warranty will instantly void the warranty. (Heck, even tuning your own piano voids the warranty!)

How good are piano techs in Singapore?

The right answer is, of course, ‘don’t know’.

In the U.S. one can attend piano tech courses at tertiary level. Here’s one that ‘Kenny’ from PW is attending right now. And these are the course descriptions. I wonder how many techs in Singapore can get a passing grade on the exams.

In the U.S. piano techs can become members of the Piano Technicians Guild after passing the PTG exam. Again, I wonder how many techs in Singapore can pass the PTG exams.

For those who don’t know, a guild is an association of craftsmen whose members are certified to be competent in their craft. Of course, not all PTG members are equally good, but at least if you engage a PTG member you have a good chance of getting a competent tech to work on your piano. Of course, there really isn’t a huge demand for techs in Singapore who can rebuild a piano, but you know what I’m getting at.

These scale exercises work!

Jason Sifford (‘Kreisler’ in PW) posted a draft of a document describing how to practice scales. Download it HERE. Read the original thread HERE.

As a quick test I tried one exercise to see if it would work. The ‘Dotted Rhythms’ exercise helps you to play scales more evenly, accurately, rapidly and with better articulation. I first played all the major scales using the dotted rhythms pattern, left-hand and right-hand separately, and then played them again the usual way, with a straight rhythm. The improvement was immediate. I then played the same scales hands together, and experienced similar improvement. Quite remarkable and mysterious.

Edit: And it works too with fast passage work! I just tried it with a couple of Hanon exercises.

ETD offsets for the Jencka temperament

For those who are interested, here are the offsets from Equal temperament for ‘programming’ ETDs with the Jencka temperament (alternative interpretation of the Bach graphic than the Lehman temperament). They come courtesy of Rafael Melo (‘Gadzar’ in PW).

A 0
A# 5.87
B 0
C 5.87
C# 3.91
D 1.96
D# 5.21
E -1.96
F 7.82
F# 1.96
G 3.91
G# 4.56

Notice that the F is almost 8 cents (almost 1/16th tone) sharper than an Equal F. Ron Koval says that if you don’t require A=440 exactly then the temperament can be ‘balanced’ by dropping all the offsets above by 3:

A -3
A# 2.87
B -3
C 2.87
C# 0.91
D -2.96
D# 2.21
E -4.96
F 4.82
F# -2.96
G 0.91
G# 1.56

This means that all notes are within 5 cents of Equal.

Rafael is somewhat skeptical of the Jencka interpretation, wondering if back in the 1700’s that anybody could have accurately tuned 1/18th of a Pythagorean Comma.

About “key colour”

In a Well temperament, each of the 24 keys has a different characteristic ‘feel’ that is largely determined by the beat rates of the major/minor thirds and fifths. A very romanticised and, uhhh, colourful description of key colours was written by Christian Schubart in 1806. You can read a translation here.

In Equal temperament all keys have the same character. This renders meaningless the key choices that composers made in the Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods. And that pretty much covers the vast bulk of piano repertoire that we play and listen to the most.

Equal temperament? Just say no!

The Well tempered guitar!

So I was asked if it was possible to tune a guitar with the Lehman temperament. Of course I didn’t know, so I went looking for information (as usual). And guess what? The answer is yes, with Anders Thidell’s True Temperament fretting system.

Doesn’t come cheap though. An unlacquered neck, for electric guitar, will set you back EUR528 + 7% GST when it lands in Singapore. The necks fit all guitars that meet the industry standard Fender® Stratocaster® specifications, with no modifications. Optional finishes cost more. Or you can buy a complete guitar from one of several companies listed at the TT website.

If you want a Well temperered acoustic guitar, then you’ll have to pay EUR3,600 for a Sanden VRB TT! No nylon-strung guitars available yet, but TT has a prototype already finished.

Alternative interpretations of Bach’s graphic

Yesterday, I attended a Christmas gathering hosted by an early music exponent whose piano I had recently tuned to the Bach Lehman Temperament. I was talking about the ‘discovery’ of the BLT with a guest when it suddenly struck me that perhaps Bradley Lehman’s interpretation of the graphic in the WTC might not be the only valid one. So I went searching on the Web.

And sure enough there was some skepticism in the music community, some of which can be seen in correspondence published in The Journal of Early Music, vol. 33, no. 3, pp. 545-548. It was suggested by one correspondent, David Ponsford, that while Lehman’s temperament is a good one, that it should be called ‘Lehman 1′ rather than ‘Bach Lehman’ so that it leaves open the possibility of alternate interpretations of the graphic. Another correspondent, David Jencka, in fact does offer an alternative here. So being my usual an*l self I edited the title of my previous post accordingly.

The Lehman Well Temperament (a.k.a. Bach Lehman Temperament)

I have been using Bill Bremmer’s EBVT on the Omega for the past four months. The piano sounds great. Some dissonant intervals are rather ’spicy’ but EBVT (with the right stretch) is on the whole a very pleasing temperament.

Some time ago I read some intriguing comments on PW about the Bach Lehman Temperament (BLT), and decided that it was going to be the next one to try after EBVT. So today I used Verituner to help me put the BLT on my piano. I used Ron Koval’s ‘big’ stretch style. Ron also very kindly provided me with the temperament offsets for BLT. (Offsets for BLT and many other historical temperaments can be found at rollingball.com.)

Why is the BLT so interesting? This temperament was discovered by Bradley Lehman on the first page of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. Read the fascinating story of the discovery here. If Lehman’s thesis is correct (and there is no reason to believe that it is wrong), then this is THE temperament that Bach tuned his harpsichords to, and which he had in mind when he wrote WTC. Here is a quote from Lehman’s web site:

“In J. S. Bach’s obituary it was reported: “In the tuning of harpsichords, he achieved so correct and pure a temperament that all the tonalities sounded pure and agreeable. He knew of no tonalities that, because of impure intonation, one must avoid.”

“I believe that Bach’s elegant diagram at the top of his Well-Tempered Clavier title page defines that “correct and pure” temperament. It establishes a specific set of sounds for every musical scale and for all harmonies. Every major scale and minor scale sounds different from every other. This allows music to project a subtly different mood or character in each melodic and harmonic context, with a pleasing range of expression as it goes along. It builds drama into the music.

“A tuner of harpsichords or organs, making the intervals very slightly compromised on purpose (as Bach’s drawing indicates), ends up with a keyboard tuned beautifully for music in all keys. This carefully balanced result was apparently Bach’s preferred system, and it solves all the practical problems in his music and the music of his sons. Indeed, it turns out to be an excellent tuning solution to play all music, both before and after Bach’s.”

That last sentence intrigued me. More descriptions of the character of the Bach temperament here spurred me to finally put in on my own piano. I’ll use this temperament for the next few months.

OT: Pictures of the 2008 Singapore F1 Grand Prix

I am not a motorsport fan, but these pictures of the 2008 F1 race in Singapore at the end of September are stunning! They were selected by the Boston Globe from several news agencies.

Even better tuning!

After my earlier post about tuning the Omega to the EBVT III temperament, I felt that something wasn’t quite right. So I consulted Ron Koval (RonTuner) and he gave me a fantastic tip about the correct use of Verituner’s ‘coarse’ and ‘fine’ tuning modes.

For a new tuning (i.e., new temperament/stretch) you must use a two-pass approach. The first pass is with Verituner in ‘coarse’ mode. This allows Verituner to dynamically recalculate the stretch for the whole piano as the IH for each note is acquired. For the unisons you just need to coarse-tune one of the strings.

The  second pass in done in ‘fine’ mode, where VT locks in the final inharmonicity data for each note. It is now much easier and faster to get each string to 0.0. The only really difficult notes were all at the top end of the keyboard.

The coarse tuning needs to be done only once. Thereafter all re-tunings and touch-ups of individual notes are done in ‘fine’ mode.

When I re-tuned the piano with this 2-pass regime, I found that I had to tweak most of the notes. They typically off by about 4 – 5 cents.

de Larrocha had small hands

The great Spanish woman pianist Alicia de Larrocha (HERE on YouTube) has small hands. Well, small compared to Rachmaninoff I guess. She comfortably spans an octave, but it looks like a ninth might be a tough stretch for her. And yet she plays Rachmaninoff in her repertoire! Yes, yes, I know that there are ways of ‘cheating’ to play music-written-for-freakishly-large-hands.

Incidentally, I read that Beethoven spanned a tenth in a bit of a stretch.

How do you know your hammers need voicing?

So, your piano has now been properly regulated and accurately tuned. You now want to know how to check for voicing problems. I didn’t know how to really go about it properly, so I went looking for enlightenment on the Web. It’s amazing what you kind find there.

On the Renner USA web site I found this article: Voicing the Renner Hammer, by Rick Baldassin. The voicing techniques pertain to the Renner Premium Blue hammer, and may not apply to the hammers in your piano (note the caveat). But what was really useful was the information on how to check if one or more of your hammers require voicing.

And just in case I didn’t make it clear enough, your piano must be in good regulation and properly tuned first. If not you might be wasting your time and your money calling the tech in to fix a non-existent hammer problem.

A good, accurate tuning solves lots of problems

Every piano, even the most expensive concert grands, has problem notes. Some may twang a little, others may ping. If the strings have been properly rendered, leveled and mated to the hammers during prep then those twanging or pinging notes will have to be dealt with another way. I have discovered a good and accurate tuning can either sharply reduce or even eliminate twangs and pings.

A good tuning is also essential prior to deciding whether or not any hammers need voicing. During my tuning sessions with the Omega, I have found that individual notes that either sounded dull or too bright have been put right by very careful accurate tuning. This of course implies that the piano was properly voiced by the factory prior to shipment.

How well does the Sauter factory prep its grand pianos?

Very well, apparently.

I mentioned in my post about my visit to the Sauter factory in March that all grand pianos pass through three sound-proofed prep and voicing rooms in one corner of the factory floor. Once done each and every one of them must pass Master Kaufmann’s critical evaluation before they are certified fit for shipping to the dealers.

The dealer then performs the following actions before delivering the piano to the customer:

• Check/adjust plate bolts for tightening
• Check/adjust hammer travel
• Check/adjust hammer let-off
• Check/adjust keybed seating
• Tune

In my case, the piano arrived at my home straight from its crate. So the above actions were performed in my home. The next check (at least for my piano) is in February 2009, six months from delivery.

Biting the bullet on a Fujan tuning hammer

I’ve been using a NewOctave Global tuning hammer since I started tuning my pianos myself. While it works fine, the flex in the shaft means that precision movement of the tuning pins is difficult to achieve. And because I am still learning the finer nuances of hammer technique, each tuning takes me quite some time. A temperament or stretch style change takes about three hours, while a maintenance tuning takes about 2 hours.

After reading about how the Fujan CarbonTube hammer can increase tuning precision and save some time, I decided to dig deep into the pocket to get one.

I ordered the 11″ hammer with a 15° head, 5/8″ tip extension, Watanabe #1, #2, and #3 tips, and a tip wrench. I rationalize away the cost of the hammer by amortizing it over the life of the hammer (which is a lifetime).

New tuning, and the piano sounds even better

A couple of days ago I tuned the Omega to an ‘improved’ version of Bill Bremmer’s EBVT temperament, known as EBVT III. For stretch style, I used the one that Ron Koval’s uses for most grand pianos. The result is even more pleasing than EBVT 1992 that I been using for a month with Verituner’s built-in Clean stretch style. In particular the bass now has more depth and clarity. Overall the voice of the piano is now even more open, brilliant yet rounded and creamy. It’s very pleasing.

The treble seems to have gone a little bit flat. I’ll check later to see if it because of insufficient stretch, or if the tuning has in fact drifted downwards in the treble.

I did briefly try EBVT III with Clean stretch but the result was pretty awful in the bass. The notes from A0 to G#1 were between 12 to 25 cents flat, i.e., about 1/8 to 1/4 tone. Ugh.

Rachmaninoff had big hands

This is one of the skits from Igudesman & Joo’s show ‘A Little NIGHTMARE Music‘.

The idea for the routine is not original, but good nonetheless. The title of the show is also not original but, well, the show is still good fun to watch.

Vladimir Sofronitsky

Last Sunday, I visited Wzkit to take a look at, and play and listen to his Sauter Delta. (Two weekends ago he’d visited my home to do the same with my Omega.) While visiting with Wzkit, he introduced me to the sublime world of Vladimir Sofronitsky. See the entry for Sofronitsky in my Artistes page.

I will miss my piano

Two business trips coming up. Leaving tonight for five days in Amsterdam. Back for six days, then off to Ottawa for nine days. The Ottawa trip will be brutal — 26 hours either way. Not fun. I’ll bring some scores with me, and the Arrau book.

New Beethoven sonata scores & book about Arrau

I finally took delivery of two very interesting publications:

• The Beethoven piano sonatas (Vol. I and Vol. II) edited by Arrau and Hoffmann-Erbrecht from Edition Peters; and
• ‘Arrau on Music and Performance‘, by Joseph Horowitz.

I had to order the scores online because I couldn’t find them in Singapore. They are available only on EP’s New York web store, and ship only to US addresses. The book by Horowitz on Arrau is no longer in print, so I had to buy a second-hand copy from another book retailer, via Amazon.com. Again, shipping is only to US addresses. I had both orders shipped to my brother (who lives in Fairfax, VA), who in turn sent them on to me. It took a while though because he was renovating and moving into a new home, and kept forgetting to send them off.

I mentioned in a post sometime ago that Arrau’s Beethoven piano sonata cycle is now my preferred one, so I was excited to discover that Arrau had edited an ‘urtext’ version for Edition Peters. Like the Schnabel edition, Arrau also offers performance markings, but better in the sense that his editorial markings are clearly differentiated from those of the composer’s.

First recording

HERE. It’s the theme from the first movement of Beethoven’s piano sonata Op. 26. Done after a couple of hours of tuning an Almost Equal temperament with clean stretch. My hands were pretty stiff after the tuning session so the playing was pretty shaky and I got my fingers in a twist in the two trills. The microphone technique and position are not right yet. The resonance and brilliance of the tone have not been properly captured. The acoustic is also too dry. I was using Mid-Side stereo. Might try a Blumlein pair next, or maybe a pair of spaced omnis.

Two major piano tweaks

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it) for those with piano OCD, there are not that many tweaks you can do yourself to your piano. Of course, if you happen to also be a tech, then you can regulate, tune and voice your piano until there is physically no further improvement possible.

But there are two major piano tweaks that you can consider, if you really really think that you can’t live with your piano in its present condition.

Wapin Bridge

The Wapin bridge is actually a re-work of your piano’s existing bridge’s pins. Practically all piano manufacturers angle the bridge pins slightly in towards the strings. This is to ‘trap’ the strings so that string vibrations don’t cause the strings to gradually work their way up and off the pins over time.

The Wapin system replaces the angled pins with vertical pins. It is claimed that by using vertical pins the strings are allowed to vibrate more freely, giving clearer fundamentals and partials, and longer sustain. An angled third pin is inserted between the two usual pins to provide the required string trapping.

Stanwood Precision TouchDesign

In this tweak, the action for each note is analysed and then adjusted so that the touch is ultra-even across the keyboard, with static and dynamic touchweights set to what you want. The action parts for each note are weighed and measured, and the geometry analysed. Minute adjustments to the weights of individual parts and to the geometry are done, and the friction of the action centres are normalised. Here are the ‘before’ and ‘after’ weight and friction graphs of one particular piano.

Whether or not either of these tweaks are meaningful in a high-end piano is subjective, and also subject to the law of diminishing returns. This is somewhat like high-end hifi. How much are you willing to pay to squeeze the last iota of performance out of your system, and can you even hear it? I’m not saying that these two tweaks don’t work. In fact, I think that they do. What I question is whether or not they make me a better pianist.

The Omega’s extra register

The Sauter Omega includes an extra register in the form of coloured lines on the soundboard. These lines indicate where to touch the strings to get the first, second and third order harmonics. If you touch a string at the point of the lines and press the key or pluck the string, you hear the correspondent harmonics and partials.

• The first order harmonic is available across the keyboard, from A0 to C8, indicated by the black line furthest from the dampers.
• The second order harmonic from A0 to G2, and from D3 to A4, indicated by the red line. The gap from G#2 to C#3 is due to the fact that these strings cross under the bass strings and are therefore not accessible.
• The third order harmonic from A0 to G2, indicated by the blue line closest to the dampers in the bass notes.

Sauter Omega extra register lines

The damper of every white key is etched with a white bar. The picture below from the Sauter web site shows the extra register lines more clearly.

Sauter Omega extra register lines

I doubt that I (and probably 99% of pianists) would ever use the extra register, but it is interesting nonetheless that Sauter made the Omega for prepared piano compositions. It seems that grand pianos around the 7-ft size are ideal for prepared piano. Full-sized concert grands are too long for the pianist to reach the harmonic points while standing at the keyboard.

Here is the track “I’m Broken” from the album Bitter and the Sweet, by the Cécile Verny Quartet. It demonstrates the use of the Omega’s extra register.

DP-10 problem solved (for now)

On advice from Pianoteq’s support, I am now using MIDI-OX to re-map CC64 values 24-127 to 0-127. I then use MIDI Yoke to connect the output of MIDI-OX to the input of Cantabile.

Unfortunately it causes problems for Cubase, and I have not been able to track down the cause yet.

I personally think that the DP-10 is faulty, but will wait for Roland to respond to my query. I really really don’t want to use things like MIDI-OX and MIDI Yoke if it can be avoided at all.

DP-10 problem not solved!

Damn! The pedal problem is still there. Stupid me forgot to set the DP-10 back to ‘continuous’ mode so it looked like the damper pedal was working correctly when it actually wasn’t. I’ve just called Roland Asia-Pacific in KL, so let’s see what they come back with.

I guess I can take come consolation in that my legato pedaling technique has improved to the point where I didn’t notice that I was getting full-on and full-off sustain.

My homebrew digital piano

Today I got all the issues with my home-brew digital piano resolved. Everything now works as it should and is very stable.

Parts List

• PC
• Gigabyte GA-73PVM-S2H motherboard
• Intel Core2 Duo CPU @ 3.16 GHz, 3167 MHz FSB, 4GB RAM, 500GB hard disk
• This is the PC that I built solely for audio use, i.e., for audio recording and for hosting a software piano.
• Operating System
• Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 3
• If your PC comes with Windows Vista I strongly suggest that you ‘upgrade’ to XP, or you’ll be sorry.
• VST host
• Cantabile Lite
• Most software pianos available today can be run either as standalone applications or as an instrument plug-in for DAW software such as Steinberg Cubase.
• Absolutely free (you pay for the Pro version, but its not needed for this simple use).
• I use Cantabile Lite because it allows me to easily record and playback MIDI files with it so that I can listen to my own performance. Simple audio recording is also possible.
• Software piano
• Pianoteq.
• After I posted about it previously I bit the bullet and bought it online. And now I wish I had come across this first before spending money on the competition. Of course it is not a real piano, but for what it is, Pianoteq offers an amazing amount of nuanced control, and the half-damper feature works really well. I have played on the high-end Yamaha digital pianos, and Pianoteq (when used with a good weighted keyboard) more than holds it’s own.
• Keyboard
• Roland A-80 MIDI controller keyboard. Made in 1989. Has a weighted ‘piano’ action that is still considered to be among the top three of all time. Play any currently available weighted keyboard or dedicated digital piano, then play the A-80 and you will know why. I tweaked my lower back slightly when carrying it. The beast weighs all of 30kg!
• Roland DP-10 damper pedal. Supports half-damper capable software pianos.
• An old Roland DP-? for the soft pedal.
• Roland KS-7 keyboard stand.
• Digital audio/MIDI interface
• TC Electronic Konnekt 24D
• Loudspeakers
• Blue Sky EXO.
• I perched the two satellite speakers on the flat top deck of the A-80. They are angled in to get the flatter on-axis frequency response.
• The subwoofer is placed on the floor underneath the A-80 and to the extreme left and angled inwards.

I haven’t tried it with my Mac laptop yet.

PC/Windows Optimization

Windows absolutely must be optimized for audio use. The best starting point is a completely fresh installation of Windows XP, with its registry in a clean, pristine state. You then have to do the following:

• Disable all services that are not used. (But leave networking alone. Just enable/disable the network adapters as and when you need to got on the ‘net.) You will need to have some working Windows knowledge to do this, or get one of the Windows XP optimization books, or get help from someone else.
• Disable all audio drivers that are superfluous.
• In my case, I am using the Konnekt 24D outboard digital audio interface. It has it’s own ASIO driver. The motherboard has two on-board chipsets that are no longer needed – the ’standard’ Realtek HD audio chipset, and the on-board Nvidia graphics chipset’s HD audio bits. One or both of them was interfering with the Konnekt24D’s driver and was delivering poor quality audio from Windows Media Player to the Konnekt24D. So I zapped both, and Windows now detects only the Konnekt ASIO driver on boot, and uses that by default. No more problems!
• You can of course use your PC’s on-board audio driver. But if you have more than one audio chipset on the motherboard, make sure that only one is used, and disable the driver for the others.
• When you are recording. make sure that only the requisite audio applications are running. Disable all network connections.

Setting up the damper pedal

This one stumped me for a few days.

I bought a Roland DP-10 sustain pedal. A small switch on the side allows you to select either ’switch’ (on/off) mode, or ‘continuous’ mode (for half-damper support). But something was wrong. Even when the pedal was not depressed I could hear a little bit of sustain, like about a quarter pedal. Pianoteq’s support people (they are wonderfully responsive!) took a look at some MIDI files that I recorded for them and discovered that the DP-10 was sending MIDI values 24 (when not depressed) to 127 (when fully depressed). It should be 0 to 127.

What to do?

1. Disconnect A-80 from MIDI interface, and power it down.
2. Plug in DP-10 into appropriate port (FC3 in my case).
3. Power up the A-80.
4. Connect the A-80 to the MIDI interface.

That allows the A-80 to figure out what voltage from the pedal should be recognized as MIDI 0, and then present this to the MIDI interface.

[Edit: This doesn't work. See the next post why.]

This doesn’t work for the Yamaha FC3 sustain pedal though. This one has its polarity reversed, where fully depressed = off!

Sending old Schimmel console to ‘Dr’ Kwan’s piano hospital

Mr Kwan (Emmanuel & Sons) came by my sister’s home today to assess the old Schimmel console piano that my grandfather bought for my sister some 43 years ago. It will go to Mr Kwan’s piano hospital next week for some work.

Mr Kwan’s assessment agreed with mine. The piano is still in remarkably good condition considering where it has been. First there was about 10 years in Singapore, then about 6 years in Hobart, Tasmania (where it was very dry in summer and damp in winter), then back to Singapore where it has been for the past 24 years years. Plus a couple of years in storage in between moves.

The only care that was taken with the piano was to have the heater bar switched on all the time. Nobody obsessed about temp/RH levels, etc. We didn’t know any better then. The entire left side of the piano and the bottom of the case were replaced because of a white ants infestation about 35 years ago.

It’s clear that the soundboard has lost some crown, because the sustain is not what it used to be. The hammers are also rock hard and need to be voiced down, the veneer is cracked and lifting a little in parts, and practice pedal mechanism is not working well, the felt bushings need to be replaced, and of course the action needs regulation. So Mr Kwan will address all these things for about $500, and then we’ll do another assessment. We won’t re-crown the soundboard even if it is possible to do so. That’s major work and expense which we would like to avoid if possible.

The piano will remain in my sister’s home for her daughters to tinkle on.

Environment monitoring for the paranoid

I have three temperature + RH meters at home (two with wireless remote sensors, to put into the piano) to monitor the environment in and around my K-8 (when it was still around). I use three because I can’t trust any single one of them, so I average out the readings.

Although all of the meters record minimum/maximum over a 24 hour period I really would like to know how much the temperature and RH levels change, and I would like to know whenever the temperature/RH levels are outside of set limits. In other words, I need logging meters with realtime alarms.

Furthermore, I need RH sensors that I can trust. This means that the off-the-shelf units from the local hardware store or even from companies like Radio Shack and Scientific Oregon cannot be trusted unless they are calibrated once a year.

So back in early April I started doing some research online, and came up with two alternatives.

Option 1 – Veriteq SP2000 + Digi Connect Wi-SP

The Veriteq SP2000 temp/RH data logger is industrial grade, intended to be used as a replacement of the traditional charting units. Temperature is accurate to +/- 0.1degC, RH is accurate to +/-1%RH. One or more temp/RH data logger can be connected to via Wifi to a Windows PC. The Wifi links are encrypted using WPA2. The standard software provides configuration, management, data retrieval and presentation of data from the loggers. The data logger is tiny – just 7.1×5.3×2.0 cm. It contains a 10-year battery and no external power is needed. The wireless transmitter is also tiny – 10.64×4.267×2.537 cm.

There is also additional software (at additional cost) that allows realtime monitoring and display of data from all the loggers on the network, and has immediate visual, e-mail, or audible alarm notification of out-of-compliance conditions. Wifi connectivity to the control PC is done via the Digi Connect Wi-SP module.

The entire system is not cheap. The cost of each sensor location is SGD1685.25 (incl. GST). The cost of the management station is zero, unless you have to buy a PC with Windows XP. I assume that there is already a Wifi network in place. If you want realtime monitoring and alarming then the software will cost SGD963 (incl. GST) to manage up to 5 sensors.

RH calibration is done in Singapore.

Option 2 – Fourier Systems MicroLog System

A cheaper alternative is Fourier System’s MicroLog PLUS wireless data logging solution. It adds wireless (but not Wifi) transmission capability to their MicroLog range of data loggers. A two-sensor package (with the higher resolution sensors) costs about USD1000. Each additional sensor (with wireless transmitter) costs USD370.

It is sufficient for environmental monitoring purposes for pianos. Temperature measurements are accurate to +/- 0.2 degC, while the RH measurements are accurate to +/- 2%.

The data logger page is here.
The wireless transmitter page is here.

RH calibration is done in Singapore.

The ship has left Hamburg port

Arrival in the first week of August.

Tinnitus getting worse

It’s pretty loud now, and lower pitched meaning that my high frequency hearing loss is creeping downwards. In both ears. I attended my niece’s school play last night, and had trouble following a lot of the dialogue because I couldn’t hear the consonants. I’ve got to find a way of slowing down this deterioration. The ENT specialists are all shrugging their shoulders and saying that they haven’t a clue why my hearing loss has accelerated in the last few years.

Learning how to use the pedals

I was taught to use the damper pedal for assisting legato playing. And even then I had to figure out some things for myself. What I was never ever taught was how the damper pedal can and should be used for the at least equally important function of tonal colouring. And of course I got zero instruction on the use of the soft pedal.

A few days ago I received two very useful books on pedaling.

The first is The Art of Piano Pedaling. It is a combined reprint of two books – the 1897 book Guide to the Proper Use of the Pianoforte Pedals by Anton Rubinstein, and the 1919 book Possibilities of Tone Color by Artistic Use of Pedals by Teresa Carreño. Rubinstein (not to be confused with the 20th century virtuoso Artur Rubinstein) was probably Liszt’s closest rival, while Carreño was the leading woman pianist of the late 19th century.

The second book is Joseph Banowetz’s book The Pianist’s Guide to Pedaling. This book is especially useful because it expands greatly on the techniques described in the first book.

Although both books appear to be aimed at the advanced pianist I think that a good number of the basic techniques for pedal legato and tone colouring should be taught to piano students from about ABRSM Grade 4 or 5 onwards.

To give an idea of how thorough and (for me) exciting Banowetz’s book is here are the topics and sub-topics covered in Chapter 2, ‘The Right Pedal’.

• Legato pedaling
• Legatissimo pedaling
• Legato pedaling in a low register
• Lifting the pedal early in legato pedaling
• Large rolled chords in the left hand
• Large rolled chords in the right hand
• Finger pedaling
• Maintaining an unbroken accompanimental texture
• Finger pedaling by silently re-depressing notes
• Finger pedaling indicated by the composer
• Finger pedaling in Alberti bass figurations
• Redistributing notes between the hands
• Harmonic outline
• Finger pedaling to sound sympathetic partials
• Pedaling melodic material
• Pedaling an unaccompanied melody
• Pedaling a melody with accompaniment
• Upward-moving melodies with accompaniment
• Downward moving melodies with accompaniment
• Diatonically moving melodies with accompaniment
• Nonharmonic tones in a melody
• Ornaments in a melody
• Underplaying nonharmonic tones to minimize blurring
• Avoiding breaks in a legato melody
• Connecting a technically awkward passage
• Connecting a melody played over a large roll
• Pedaling accompanimental figurations
• The relationship of melody, accompaniment, and bass line
• Pedaling with chord inversions
• Stressing the fundamental bass part
• Unbroken sonority in accompanimental figuration
• Pedaling as an aid to phrasing and articulation
• Using the pedal when phrasing
• Clarifying a tied note
• Releasing the pedal slowly at the end of a phrase
• Pedaling slurs
• Pedaling a portato touch
• Pedaling a non-legato touch
• Pedaling a staccato touch
• Passages with contrasting articulation
• Pedaling through articulation indications and rests
• Using the pedal to project rhythm
• Pedaling written accents
• Pedaling to accent a staccto sign
• Accent pedaling
• Pedaling unwritten accents
• Pedal release as a form of accent
• Pedaling to project a syncopated rhythm
• Avoiding negative pedaling accents
• Pedaling and dynamics
• Swell effects on a single note or chord
• Forte-piano effects
• Dampening the sound after a loud chord
• Pedaling a long crescendo
• Pedaling a crescendo in a tremolo
• Pedaling glissandos with crescendos
• Scale passages with crescendos
• Pedaling a long descrescendo
• Anticipatory pedaling after a silence
• Anticipatory pedaling for unbroken sonority
• Simultaneous pedaling for richness of tone
• Sudden drops in dynamic level
• Echo pedaling
• Blurring for color and special effects
• Pedaling whole-tone and pentatonic scales
• Pedaling cadenza figurations
• Blurring in ostinato figures
• Blurring for special mood effects
• Partial changes of pedal
• Partial changes with a bass line or pedal point
• Flutter or vibrato pedaling
• Using flutter pedaling for color
• Flutter pedaling to reduce sonority
• Combining finger and flutter pedaling
• Partial releases of damper sound
• Releasing 25 percent of damper sound
• Releasing 50 percent of damper sound
• Releasing 75 percent of damper sound
• Passages without pedal
• Achieving variety in repetitions
• The pedal as an attaca device

Ironically, one of the problems with pedaling on the modern piano is that it is far more resonant and has longer sustain than pianos in the Classical and Romantic periods. A lot of the discussion is about how to get legato, resonance, and tonal colour while also controlling the build up of sound.

Chapter 3, “The Middle Pedal” contains the following topics:

• Holding bass pedal points
• Avoiding breaks in the melody
• Contrasting touches during a pedal point
• Catching notes within chords
• Breaking the hands to catch a pedal point
• Holding implied pedal points
• Anticipatory use of the sostenuto pedal
• Using the middle pedal to achieve a clear damper pedal change
• Clarifying a melodic line
• As a form of finger pedaling
• Facilitating awkward technical passages
• Catching and releasing notes by key level
• Sounding sympathetic partials
• Special acoustical effects

Chapter 4, “The Left Pedal” covers:

• Positioning the left foot
• Written directions for the left pedal
• Echo effects
• The left pedal in the middle of a phrase
• Shaping slurs or phrase endings
• In accompanied figuration
• For intensity of tone
• In transcriptions
• Using all three pedals simultaneously

These are followed by chapters on using the pedals when playing Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Debussy and Ravel.

The use of the pedals is an art, some of which demands a great deal of skill. Banowetz stresses that ultimately the use of the pedals depends on one’s conception of the music, what one believes to be the composer’s intent, and on personal taste. What is also clear is that the music score has to be examined almost bar by bar in order to figure out how to pedal it, and use whatever is appropriate for the particular piano being used, the acoustics of the room, and your keyboard technique and touch.

Pedant Alert: The modern piano’s soft pedal is often also referred to as the una corda pedal. Strictly speaking this is wrong because una corda means ‘one string’ (in a 3-string unison). On the modern grand piano the soft pedal shifts the action to the right so that a 3-string unison hammer strikes 2 or 2.5 strings. On upright pianos the soft pedal is implemented as a half-blow, where the action is moved closer to the strings so that the hammer travels about half the usual distance.

The Schiff lectures on Beethoven’s piano sonatas

Back in 2006 Andras Schiff gave a series of lecture-recitals at the Wigmore Hall in London, covering the 32 Beethoven piano sonatas with opus numbers. I downloaded the entire series over a year ago, and I’ve been dipping into it on and off since then. It is a very good layman’s introduction to the sonatas. If you listen to the late-period sonatas (the last five from number 28, Op. 101 to number 32, Op. 111), you will find that the music still sounds very fresh, and indeed already points strongly in the direction of Romanticism.

Pianoteq – yet another software piano

I’ve downloaded the free 40-day trial of the French software piano Pianoteq. This is the second software piano I have tried in the past week, the other being TruePianos. Pianoteq sounds much better than TruePianos. It takes an interesting approach – rather than sample a piano it actually models a piano’s soundboard in realtime.

What is particularly impressive is that unlike many other software pianos (particular those based on samples of real pianos), the volume and timbre of each note is spread over all 127 MIDI levels. This gives very good control of dynamics. Also, the damper pedal is not just on or off; half-pedal effects are possible. The amount of tweaking you can do to an instrument is incredible. There are also many free alternate piano modules.

It will be interesting to see how Art Vista Virtual Grand Piano and Malmsjö GVI stack up against Pianoteq. The latter is pretty darned expensive though, around EUR 250!

New metronome

Picked up a Wittner Taktell Super-Mini Series 880.2, in an oak wooden case. I have a Seiko electronic metronome, but the click isn’t loud enough. I was actually looking for a Series 800/810 in a wooden casing, but there weren’t any. The plastic ones of the same shape and size with the faux wood finish are extraordinarily expensive. I shudder to think what the wooden ones cost.

Incredible piano samples from Art Vista!

After I bought and downloaded TruePianos I came across Art Vista’s fantastic piano samples Virtual Grand Piano and Malmsjö GVI. Malmsjö (pronounced morlm-sheu, silent ‘r’, sorry it’s hard to render Swedish vowel sounds with the English alphabet) is the name of a now-defunct Swedish piano maker. The grand piano which was recorded was made in 1894. The Malmsjö GVI samples are very impressive. You can read more about the way the piano was sampled and how the different velocity samples were stacked here.

The Roland A-80 MIDI controller keyboard was well-known for its good weighted action. This plus the Malmsjö GVI will make a very very good digital piano for ultra-late-night practice!

Lang Lang dueting with his dad (on erhu)

This duet between Lang Lang and his father was at a concert in Carnegie Hall. I’ve always wanted to learn how to play the erhu. But if my attempt at the violin is anything to go by, maybe I should just give up the idea. I know my cats would appreciate it very much. :p

Problem with awful digital piano sound solved

Someone in PW posted about using TruePianos. So I visited their website, listened to their demos and downloaded the 40-day trial. It installs as a VSTi instrument in Cubase.

Ahhhhhh! Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but a zillion times better than the awful awful piano samples in the E-mu Proteus 1/XR.

Piano on hard floor question answered

In this post I asked the question whether or not a piano will sustain long-term damage if it is put on a hard tile-on-concrete floor. Both Ulrich Sauter and Ron Overs say no.

Here is Ulrich’s reply:

There is absolutely no danger for your piano, but you have to consider two things:

1. The solid-borne sound might spread into the building structure more than with the use of cups with dampening pads. What your neighbours hear from your piano is only about 20 % airborne sound and 80 % solid-borne sound.

There is a theory around that pianos sound better if the connection between the piano and the floor is as much disconnected as possible, for example with the castors sitting on springs or on air filled cushions in order to keep most of the vibration energy in the piano and to prevent the solid-borne sound from escaping. In our experience it works to reduce the noise for the neighbours, but I doubt a remarkable improvement of sound quality.

2. Moving the piano can always have a negative impact on tuning and regulation, but not much. Simply check it, nothing serious can happen.

With my best regards from Spaichingen,

And this was Ron’s, where most of it comprised tips for quickly figuring out the acoustic damping needed in the room:

Your piano will not sustain any damage from being placed on a hard floor.

However, the tonal characteristics of the piano might be somewhat overwhelming if you place the piano directly on a hard reflective surface. But don’t worry about it until you try the piano once it is in place. If the room sounds too live, you could try placing an old bedspread under the piano to see how that helps. If this is a step in the right direction, then you could choose a suitable rug or mat to place permanently under the piano. The Sauter 220 will almost certainly have a high sound output. It is a very good design.

If the room is still too reverberant, try placing suitable wall drapes or cloth on various of the flat surfaces until you reach the acoustics that you are happy with. Once you have established the optimum area of non-reflective surface, you can choose suitable wall hangings to achieve the same acoustic result.

All the best with your wonderful new instrument.

Best regards,

Do you really want to DIY?

In one of my early posts I wrote about the mysterious double-strike problem that I was having with my Kawai K-8. When my regular piano tech couldn’t get to the bottom of the mystery I started to do my own research and self-education about the upright piano action. I also bought a basic set of regulation tools to get my hands on the one that allowed me to more easily adjust the let-off distance. It was this action plus asking on PW that led me to believe that I had a fundamental problem. Robert Piano could not discover the cause of the problem, despite calling in two more supposedly very experienced techs. RP eventually replaced the K-8 (still under warranty) with a new one. It was the only thing they could do.

The book that I started my investigations with was Arthur Reblitz’s book ‘Piano Servicing, Tuning & Rebuilding’. From this and other sources I learned that there are three major aspects to keeping a piano in good shape: tuning, regulation, and voicing. Which of these, and how much of them should you consider doing yourself?

The one thing that I believe you should seriously consider doing yourself is tuning. It can be self-taught and be done quite simply with the aid of an electronic tuning device (ETD) such as Verituner Pocket. But it is time consuming, and you must do some reading about temperaments, mute positioning, and tuning hammer manipulation techniques.

I started to tune the K-8 myself because I was reading about how any mild Well Temperament will sound much better than the Equal Temperament that the vast majority of tuners in Singapore give you. (Actually by using Verituner Pocket I got a much better ET than what my regular piano tuner was giving me.) An ETD in the hands of an amateur gives good results. An ETD in the hands of an expert aural tuner can give spectacular results.

Piano regulation is another ball game. Assuming that the action was well-regulated to begin with the two aspects that you can easily check yourself and adjust are let-off distance and lost motion. And that’s it. You can do more of course, but it starts to get more and more risky. Some adjustments require you to take the whole action stack out of the piano. Do this only if you can afford to mess things up!

However, regardless of whether or not you do any regulation work you absolutely must educate yourself about the piano action and regulation. This is so that you know the difference between a piano that is playing well to one that is having problems in one or more keys.

Finally there is voicing. This is absolutely one thing that you do not want to even think of doing. It involves string work and hammer work, and is something for the piano tech to do (assuming that yours knows how to do it and has the ear for it).

There is now a sailing date!

The ship to Singapore departs Hamburg port on 15th July. Scheduled arrival is on 6th August. Fastest customs clearance takes 3 days, after which the piano will be taken to the shipping agent’s warehouse to be un-crated. I have asked to be present to witness the uhhh emergence from the ‘egg’. So delivery to my home looks like it will happen in the week of 11th August.

Look after your piano and it will last a lifetime

I have been following this thread on the longevity of pianos made in China, Indonesia and Korea. It gets particularly interesting following this post by Del Fandrich on page 4 of the thread. In case you don’t know who Del is just google on “Delwin Fandrich”. The other rebuilders participating in the thread know what they are talking about because they have been in the business all their lives. In Rod Verhnjak’s instance he followed his father into the business.

This thread basically says: If you buy a recently made ‘value’ piano or one from Kawai or Yamaha, it will last you a lifetime if you look after your piano and get it serviced (i.e., regulated and voiced) once or twice a year and properly tuned 3 – 4 times a year (my recommendation). The question is then whether the piano is worth spending the money on. I say it is because it enhances the playing experience, regardless of whether you have a Tier 1 or Tier 4 piano.

Many people are skeptical that proper regulation, voicing and tuning can make that much of a difference, until they experience it for themselves with their own pianos. But does your dealer have the ability to help you bring out the best in your piano?

Desperate times, desperate measures?

For want of a keyboard to play on I finally set-up my ancient Roland A-80 MIDI controller keyboard, sending MIDI data to an equally ancient E-mu Proteus 1/XR. Both keyboard and sound module date back to 1990. The Proteus’ analog outputs were sent to the Konnekt 24D (operating in standalone mode).

So I now had something to play on. But the sound! Oh, the sound!! It is simply awful!!! I guess there wasn’t much E-mu could do back in the late 1980’s to cram more than basic samples into 4MB of ROM. I also have to use headphones and my tinnitus is now worse than ever. I think maybe I will just wait out the the rest of month for the Omega to arrive.

Oh, the agony!

I just got email from the Sauter factory. The Omega will be sent to Hamburg port next Monday. And that means arrival in Singapore in the week of 28th July, nearly 11 months after I placed the order!

Let’s see. All good things come to those who wait. The thrill is in the wanting, not the having. Not long now, not long now.

Playing by ear

Here is an interesting recent PW thread on playing by ear. The response that really caught my eye was from Gyro. Below I quote in full what he wrote. Something simple to start with and to build on. No music theory needed!

Practical by-ear playing is not that difficult. Starting on the C one octave below middle C, and going up the white keys, play the 7 four-note chords using every other white key:

CEGB, DFAC, EGBD, FACE, GBDF, ACEG, BDFA.

This is the foundation upon which all chords for by-ear playing are built. (In some songs, particularly older songs and rock and country oldies, sometimes only 3-note chords are used: CEG, DFA, EGB, etc.)

Note that each of the 4-note chords above can easily slip into a second chord without changing the first two notes: for example, CEGB can slip easily into CEFA, or CEGA, etc. This is very easy to play on the piano, because the fingers that played the first two notes of the first chord remain in place and only the other finger or fingers move to slip into the notes of the second chord. When you play such a two-chord sequence, like CEGB/CEFA, you’ll note that the sound is very familiar: this is the “ta-dah” pattern that you hear so often in all the music we are familiar with.

Similarly, DFAC slips into DFGB, or DFAB, etc. And so forth. When playing by ear, when you determine that, say, the chord DFAC fits with the melody, then the next chord is often one that DFAC slips easily into, that is, DFGB, or DFAB.

Note that each of the 7 four-note chords above can be easily changed into a chord that differs by only a few notes, for example, CEGB can be changed into CEbGBb or C#EG#B, etc. Thus, in and around those 7 chords are all the chords you would need to play any song by ear.

Note the ear playing is not an exact science, and there are no absolutely correct chords for any song: the chords or melody in your by-ear version might differ considerably from the commercial sheet music version of the song–that’s okay by ear-playing standards.

To give some practical examples, say you want to play Way Down Upon the Swanee River without looking at a sheet. You can pick out a melody (try to stick with white keys mostly because our 7 base chords are from C maj., all white keys): EDCEDCC (one octave up) ACGECD (the first E is an octave above middle C). To harmonize this, note that is is an older song so the chords will be mostly 3-note chords instead of jazz-style 4-note chords. This is done by experimenting by ear, as there is no exact formula for doing it: CEG (the C is an octave below middle C), played together with the first E of the melody; EGC (this is CEG inverted one time–the C is put one octave higher–you can often simply invert a chord instead of looking for a completely new chord, or for filling in, as is the case here), played with the second D of the melody; GCE (this is CEG inverted twice–the C and the E are put an octave higher), played with the second E; FAC played with the second C; ACF (FAC inverted) played with the first A; CEG played with the first G; EGC (inversion) played with the third E; GBDF (a four-note chord) played with the third D; FGBD (GBDF inverted downwards) played after the previous chord, with no note in the melody. And so forth by ear.

Suppose you want to play Misty without looking at a sheet. Picking out the melody by ear:

GEBGABbAAGAGECA

FGACEGGGFGFEFGCDEFAABCDE

Since this is a modern jazz-type song the chords will be 4-note chords. Experimenting by ear, it seems that this song can be played with a lot of inversions, for the first stanza: CEGB played with the first B; EGBC (inversion of CEGB) played between the first B and the second G, no melody note; GBbDF played with the first Bb; FGBbD (downward inversion) played with the fourth A; FACE played with the fifth A; EFAC (downward inversion) played after the fifth A, no melody note.

For the second stanza: FACE played with the first A; DFAC played with the second G; FACD (inversion) played with the fifth G; EGBD played with the second E; GBDE (inversion) played with the second C; DFAC played with the fourth F; FACD (inversion) played with the first B;
EGBD played with the fourth E; GBDE played after the fourth E, no melody note. Etc.

Alfred Brendel on music

This is actually the title of a collection of essays by Alfred Brendel, combining most of two earlier essay collections Musical Thoughts and Afterthoughts (1976) and Music Sounded Out (1991). The combined collection was published last year, and includes extensive revision of a few articles. For those who are interested, the publisher is Chicago Review Press, and the ISB number is 1 55652-408-0

As you probably already surmised from my earlier posts I am primarily exploring the two composers who straddled the Classic and Romantic periods, namely Beethoven and Schubert. This book is tremendous! Brendel’s views about these two composers are illuminating. Even if you don’t play the music yourself, these essays help you to at least listen with better ears.

Brendel really has something to say. Even if some of his views can be rather controversial, at least he has formed them from a position of deep scholarship and as one of the foremost interpreters of piano music by Beethoven and Schubert.

I’ll probably add new posts as I work my way through the essays.

DVDs are a god-send!

The age of relatively inexpensive digital video in the form of the DVD is surely a god-send to classical music buffs. Many old performances captured on film and analogue video tape are being re-mastered and re-released, material that the vast majority of us would otherwise not have the chance to watch and listen to.

It was Barenboim’s Beethoven sonata cycle on DVD that got me all fired up about Beethoven (particularly the late sonatas). I first encountered this DVD set when I watched Barenboim giving a masterclass with Jonathan Biss as pianist, on a flight way back in early 2007. It took me months to find it before accidentally coming across a link to it in the EMI catalogue.

Now it is Brendel’s Schubert DVD set that has helped me discover Schubert’s piano works for two hands. I saw it on Amazon.com some time ago, and finally decided to get it on account of some remarks that Brendel had made about Schubert (can’t remember where now). Each piece is accompanied by an introduction by Brendel. The performances are riveting. I am particularly grateful to the director of the series, who shot mostly from the left and slightly behind but some distance away from the piano. This allows the viewer full view of Brendel’s hands and feet. The latter allows the viewer to watch Brendel’s pedal technique. You can see how much he uses the damper pedal (I think too much), and how much (actually a surprising amount) he uses the una corda pedal to help him control dynamics.

If you are wondering why I am only now getting into Beethoven and Schubert, well, blame my past teachers.

My next piano will be…

…an Overs 225. I just need to find the space and the money for it! It’s frustrating when you can’t win the lottery on demand heheh.

Jokes aside, Ron Overs is a piano maker based in Sydney, and he makes the most astounding pianos. His website is here. You can listen to samples of the Overs 225 No.003 here. He hasn’t been updating the website much lately, but tells me that at least the ‘Pianos for sale’ section is up-to-date. Orders are now open for Overs 225 No.008!

One of the things that tipped me towards the Sauter Omega 220 was Ron’s recommendation to a couple of PW members to take a serious look at the Omega during their piano searches. He reckons that the Omega is a fine example of what can be achieved in a modern grand piano of this size. You can find the postings here and here. Also, back in 2006 there was a big fuss about whether or not Larry Fine would move Sauter into Tier 1. This was Ron’s comment. When someone like Ron says he likes a piano then there must be something there worth investigating.

[Edit: I was reading some old posts from June, and realised that I'd already written about Ron's opinion about the Omega! My apologies for repeating myself and sounding like a Sauter zealot in the process!]

If my aural memory of the Omega is reliable, I’m guessing that the Omega and the Overs 225 have similar tonal characteristics. I’ll know soon enough.

Two more Beethoven sonata editions!

I visited Sweet Classics in Shaw Centre yesterday, but they were closed. It was my first visit and I was hoping to find the Schnabel editions of the Beethoven sonatas there. I was also looking for the Schubert piano sonatas and the Wanderer Fantasy. I rang Sweet Classics many times this afternoon. Nobody picked up.

By mid-afternoon I was at The Adelphi, so hopped onto the MRT at City Hall station for the short ride to Dhoby Ghaut station and thence Plaza Singapore and Yamaha Music Plaza’s sheet music shop. And got partial satisfaction. I managed to get the Schnabel edition of the Beethoven sonatas, and the ABRSM/Cooper edition as well! Sadly, no Schubert, at least not what I was looking for.

These two editions are to supplement the Schenker edition which I usually play from. I use Schenker because it is generally considered to be the best researched ‘urtext’ edition. The Schnabel edition dates back to the first half of the 20th century. It famously includes very detailed editorial markup by Schnabel, who was considered to be one of the greatest Beethoven interpreters of the modern age. That’s of course subjective, but nevertheless pianists turned to Schnabel for ideas of interpretation and alternate fingering suggestions.

Cooper’s edition printed by the ABRSM is the most recent one, published in 2007. It too is an ‘urtext’ edition, and includes new Beethoven scholarship done by Cooper and others in the last 50 years or so. Cooper’s edition is spread over 3 volumes, and includes new commentary in the form of CDs (one per volume) and full-sized inserts containing very detailed notes.

Of students and piano teachers

My elder sister started piano lessons when she was in Primary 2. Our maternal grandfather bought her a Schimmel console piano to start her off. I was then in Primary 1.

Once a week Miss Penny Tang would come by to teach, and I’d hang around either outside door of the closed room or outside under the window just to listen in on what was happening. A couple of years later I asked to be allowed to take piano lessons as well. My sister and I would then visit Mrs Tan’s home studio (she’d gotten married by then) in River Valley Road for lessons.

My sister and I thoroughly enjoyed our lessons with Mrs Tan. She was very motivational and interacted very well with kids. I used to learn material ahead of what she assigned because I thought that the pace was too slow.

A few years later we switched teachers to a woman named Flora Lim. This was also when my two younger brothers were started on the piano. Unfortunately, this woman (who came with good recommendations, how I will never know) killed any interest that my brothers might have had for the piano. She was mean and draconian. She rapped hands with rulers, poked kids in the side of the head with the blunt end of her pencil, scolded and berated students for being unable to do what she wanted or expected. It was so unpleasant, bordering on the traumatic, that my brothers asked to stop piano lessons. They were nearly hysterical with fear when my parents were initially reluctant to let them stop.

I of course wanted to continue with the piano, but asked to be allowed to skip exams, playing only for enjoyment. My parents agreed, and switched my sister and I over first to Ms Cheung Mun Chit (a well-known accompanist) and then Mr Simplicius Cheong (a fairly well-known local jazz pianist). I even completed ‘O’ Level music with Mr Cheong. I can’t remember why we switched from Ms Cheung to Mr Cheong — must ask Mum tonight.

My brothers never returned to the piano, though my youngest brother did eventually pick up the guitar much later in life.

Our family moved to Australia after I finished Secondary 4. By then, my lessons-without-exams had gotten me to roughly ABRSM Grade 8 standard in terms of keyboard skills (but my theory lagged by a long way). There we had lessons with a Mrs Eileen Johnson. I was doing OK for a while, even winning the Intermediate piano section of the local Eistedfodd with the first movement of Beethoven’s Op.81a sonata. It was around this time that I started to feel the frustration that eventually led me to abandon the piano and not to resume until 2006.

As I advanced in ABRSM grades, none of the teachers that I had ever taught me how to practice nor showed me different keyboard technique to tackle specific problems posed by the music. In the meantime, my repertoire ambitions were growing, but my keyboard and practice skills were letting me down badly. Eventually I just gave up after a forced absence from the piano due to having to return to Singapore to do National Service.

I only found out what my teachers weren’t giving me when I started digging up piano-related material after starting again in 2006 and teaching myself. I don’t really regret what’s happened anymore. What’s important is that I am now so hooked on the piano, and enjoying myself immensely. I don’t plan on taking lessons, preferring instead to rely on my own reading, listening, watching (DVDs) and experimentation.

So the lessons learned from my frustrations are these:

• If you or your child decides to take the lessons-without-exams route, make sure the teacher covers the exam pieces in addition to any other music that student and teacher agree to do. The exam pieces were chosen to test on-going development of keyboard technique and musical sense, so being able to play them successfully will give the student some indication of how well they are progressing. It is also useful to have your music theory more or less congruent with your playing level.

• If you want your child to progress well and enjoy his/her time at the keyboard, ask to sit in on the occasional lesson to see what goes on. Also get feedback from your child about whether or not he/she is enjoying the time with the piano teacher. Educate yourself about the piano as much as possible. Who knows, if you don’t play yourself, you might just decide to do so and join the ranks of the adult beginners. It truly is never too late to start.

• In all cases, have a chat with the teacher and ask him/her to explain to you if and how they teach their students technique and practice skills.

Omega has left the factory!

Will know ETA once Alvin receives the shipping documents. I’ll be in Tokyo from 9 – 12 July, so it’d better not arrive then!

Do you get the value that you paid for?

This thread on PW is about problems that a PW member in Singapore is having with his/her Brodmann BG187 grand piano. I’m always upset when I hear of people paying good money for a supposedly value-for-money piano, and then not getting the value that they paid for.

The danger of buying a mass-produced piano is that QA levels in the factory are lower than in a low-volume manufacturer like Sauter, Grotrian, Bluthner, Boesendorfer, or Steingraeber. The high-volume manufacturer’s expectation is that the dealer becomes an extension of the manufacturing process, providing the finishing and final prep that would normally done by a low-volume manufacturer in the factory. If the dealer either doesn’t want to (or is not capable of) doing that work then the buyer ends up with a piano that is not close to what it can be.

Admittedly the money that the dealer must spend to prep a piano before delivery eats into their thin margins. So most dealers just give their pianos a quick tune and polish and shove them out the door. How much time and money is needed after that to get the piano to approach its full capability depends on the manufacturer. You’ll likely suffer less pain with the likes of Yamaha and Kawai and others who have reasonably high QA standards despite being high-volume piano manufacturers.

Withdrawal symptoms getting worse

I now bring photocopies of the two Beethoven sonatas I am working on with me on business trips, and familiarising myself with the score and trying out fingering on an imaginary piano!

Waiting for Alvin to confirm that the Omega did indeed leave the factory last Friday as scheduled.

Edit: Actually come to think of it, I’ll continue to do that because it helps to keep my ‘piano muscles’ in reasonable shape.

The difference between me and Claudio Arrau

A recent post on PW about Charles Rosen’s views on creating a beautiful sound prompted me to finally write this post about something that I’ve been struggling to put my finger on for a long time.

I have heard it said that the same piano can sound very different in the hands of different pianists. To me that is a self-evident truth. But some people then go on to imply that it is somehow possible for a better pianist to play individual notes in such a way that they sound qualitatively ‘better’ than when played by a less accomplished pianist. The question is how differently can a single note be played, and how do pianists really sound different from each other.

The only controls you have over a single note are how loud it is and how long it lasts for. If you are lucky and you have a half-decent piano, then the timbre of the note also changes depending on how loud the note is played. In other words, if Claudio Arrau (for example) and I were both to play the note A4 on the same piano at exactly the same loudness and hold it for exactly the same length of time, then it would sound exactly the same tonally. It is impossible to stroke the key of that A4 in any other way to make the note sound tonally different at the same loudness and sustain time.

Loudness and timbre depend on the impulse that the hammer applies at the strike point on the string. (Impulse is the force with which the hammer strikes the string and the time interval over which that force is applied.) In all upright and grand actions, the hammer is in free flight over the last 1.5 – 3 mm before it strikes the string because, after let off, it is no longer being mechanically accelerated by the key stroke. (I don’t think the flex in the hammer shank makes a difference once the hammer is in free flight.) The mass of the hammer is constant, which means that Newton’s Second Law of Motion is in effect, and it says that force = mass x acceleration. So with hammer mass constant, acceleration nil, and hammer in free flight, the force applied at the strike point is mass x velocity. I am glossing over some of the physics (in particularly the vectors), but in essence I believe that there is no way of applying ‘body language’ to the way the impulse is applied. Pianos are not pinball machines!

So if I can play any individual note in exactly the same way as Claudio Arrau can, then what, in general makes one pianist sound completely different from another, assuming that both can ‘play the notes’ without error. Here Rosen offers the difference. It is one of balance, that of individual notes in relation to other notes. That balance is both vertical and horizontal.

It is vertical within a chord, where the balance lies in how loud one note is in relation to the others.

It is horizontal, where the balance lies in how loud and long one note is in relation to the others before and after it in time. That balance is strongest within the same rhythmic group, then within the phrase, then within musical sections (e.g., first subject, second subject, development, recapitulation, theme, variations, movements, entire piece).

This intersection of the vertical and the horizontal means that there are an amazingly large number of ways of playing even very short and simple pieces of music. And that’s why it is impossible to play a piece exactly the same way every time. The only way to exactly reproduce a performance is to record the performance on a player piano. And even then it isn’t technically speaking 100% accurate (even though it may sound so to the human ear).

And the difference between me and Claudio Arrau? Apart from the fact that he’s a virtuoso and I’m a keyboard klutz? He does the ‘balancing’ act much better than I do.

Edit: Here is one investigation of the mechanics of tone production. The authors are ambivalent about whether or not the pianist’s touch can influence the tone of a note in any way at all. What is truly amazing is that the hammer/string interface is very complex. It is dependent on the location of the strike point, the mass and length of the string, the flex and vibrational modes of the hammer shank, the compression characteristics of the hammer felt, and the overall mass of the hammer/shank assembly.

Withdrawal symptoms

It is pouring with rain. Big, fat, heavy drops, in torrents. Not of the cats and dogs variety, but of the elephants and hippos type. And I sorely miss having a piano at home. I largely work from home when not on business travel, so I quite often go and play on the piano during breaks. Haven’t had a chance to pop into Raffles Piano to play on on the Sauter Alpha. But Alvin is not well, so I’d rather not bother him anyway.

Looks like I’ll really have to pull the old Roland A-80 keyboard controller and the EMU Proteus 1/XR sound module out from mothballs. Maybe next weekend after I’m back from Dubai.

Another delay :(

I heard from Alvin this morning that the Omega will finally leave the factory for crating on June 20th. That means an arrival sometime in mid- to late-July. Don’t know what the delay is, but that’s OK. I have complete trust in the factory to prepare this piano properly, so if they say it has to be delayed then so be it.

Beethoven piano sonata #28, Op. 101

I have been dipping into Claudio Arrau’s 1960’s Beethoven piano sonata cycle since getting it a month or so ago. Over the past few days I have been listening often to the op. 101 sonata in particular. Arrau plays the first movement much slower than any of the other renditions that I have, and it is 4′50″ of the most intense yet lyrical playing I have ever heard.

The op. 101 first movement is going to the head of my ‘will play soon’ queue. I won’t be attempting the rest of the sonata for a while yet, if at all. It is frightfully difficult, particularly the polyphonic parts. It is second in difficulty, apparently, only to the op. 106 ‘Hammerklavier’. You know the pianist is in for a hard time when Beethoven, himself a virtuoso at the keyboard, described this piece as a ’sonata that is hard to play’.

I think Arrau’s cycle is becoming my personal favourite, slow tempi and all.

101 years old, and still playing the piano

Piano tunes in the key of a 101-year-old’s life. She’s played for seniors since she was 84

Wednesday, May 21, 2008
BY SUSAN L. OPPAT
The Ann Arbor News

Agnes Warren has played the piano since she was a child and has a repertoire of thousands of songs.

They’re all stored safely in her memory, dating back to before she was born – more than 101 years ago.

The fact that her music selection goes back so far is important to the seniors at The Oaks adult daycare center in Ann Arbor, where many find it easier to remember the words of a 60-year-old song than what they had for lunch that day.

Warren, of Ann Arbor, was 84 when she started volunteering through the Catholic Social Services Retired and Senior Volunteer Program to play at The Oaks and several senior residences around Ann Arbor.

She’ll be honored on June 19 as the oldest active volunteer in RSVP, a 600-volunteer program.

Warren’s hands are now gnarled, her left thumb bent outward at a nearly 90-degree angle. The joints in her fingers look like swollen knots on her tiny hands.

She rests one hand on her daughter’s arm when she walks, mostly because she can’t really see where she’s going.

But she’s still engaged in what she can do for others.

Every Wednesday, Warren plays at The Oaks at the Ann Arbor Church of Christ. She pops in at other local senior residences like Lurie Terrace, Hillside Terrace and University Living every month or so.

On a recent day, Warren – at 4 feet, 7 inches and decked out in peach slacks and matching peach, pink and purple blouse – plunked down at the piano for nine members at The Oaks. The big-screen TV was off, the piano front-and-center.

With no sheet music, Warren swung into a 25-minute set, sliding effortlessly from key to key and song to song. She moved from up tempo to jazzy, swept into swing, threw in a little boogie woogie, slid back in time to ragtime, then further back to the gay ’90s – the 1890s.

Her playlist included “It Had to be You,” “Stormy Weather,” “Danny Boy,” “Amazing Grace,” and even a favorite of one Oaks member – “How Much is That Doggie in the Window.” Her music got some of the seniors on their feet to dance with each other or staff – even if the dancing was simply swaying back and forth or swinging their hands to the beat.

“It means a great deal to them,” Oaks program assistant Judy Kopa said. “It brings back memories.”

Adds site director Greg Perkins, “Working here, you deal with a different reality, and that reality can change second by second.” With the music, he said, “They go back in time.”

Warren was born in Scotland and is the last surviving of nine siblings. Her family immigrated when she was 3, and she was raised in Montrose, near Flint.

She started playing the piano as a child, studying to be a concert pianist in music conservatories in Flint. She learned to memorize the music from a teacher who wouldn’t let students who needed sheet music perform in recitals.

“It doesn’t look good, having music on the piano,” she said.

Warren played in her teens at silent movie theaters in Montrose, where she chose her own music to accompany the films and expanded her repertoire.

Her father wanted her to study for a music career in France, but then she met Eric Warren at a dance.

“When I met him,” she recalled, “I didn’t think about the piano.”

They married in 1929 and had six children.

“I didn’t miss the piano. I had one in my home, so I had my piano, and him too,” she said. “I had it all.”

The couple moved to Ann Arbor when Eric got a job in radio repairs, and he eventually opened his own radio and television repair and sales shop downtown.

Warren kept a hand in her music, playing at places like the Grotto and the Liberty Cocktail Bar. Eric died of a heart attack in 1961.

Warren now lives with her daughter, Yvonne Gillies, who moved in with her after a divorce.

Warren had a health scare when she turned 101 in December and came down with pneumonia. She had to get a pacemaker – but got back to volunteer work as soon as she could.

“I like to play for them,” Warren said. “It gives me a lift. It would be very dull if I couldn’t play the piano.”

Susan Oppat can be reached at soppat@annarbornews.com or 734-482-1166.

Omega ready for shipment

The next step is for the specialist piano shipping company to take it away to be packed into a custom-built crate. I’m hoping that the strikes and blockades in Spain and France don’t cause problems for the ground transportation to whichever port the piano will be departing from. Arrival in the week of 16th June is starting to look a little optimistic. I wonder to which gods I have to make offerings in order to ensure a timely and safe delivery!

Prepping a new grand piano

In this PW thread Keith Kerman gives details of the minimum 20 hours of work that he spends on prepping a new grand, either before or after delivery to the customer. Obviously pianos from some manufacturers come out of the factory in very good shape, so many work items would be just a check to make sure that everything is within spec. I have cut-and-pasted from his post, below:

The following is standard operating procedure at Piano Craft for all new Grand Pianos. This is nothing new. It comes from our experience, and the recommendations of manufacturers such as Mason & Hamlin, Bluthner, Steingraeber etc. This work is appropriate for all grand pianos.

The following is regulation and does not include the multiple tunings required for stability, voicing, or multiple follow up services. I know a lot of this will need explaining, so I am hoping the fine techs who contribute to this forum will chime in. You will notice a lot of redundancy in this process.

Phase 1: Estimated time 12 hours

1 Bed key frame to key bed
2 Lubricate key frame guide pins
3 Polish capstans
4 Level keys
5 Set key dip
6 Regulate end keys of each section completely
7 Adjust hammer height on remaining keys to match samples
8 Escapement on remaining keys
9 Drop on remaining keys
10 Space hammers to string ( square and travel as needed)
11 Space repetitions to hammer shanks
12 Space back checks with bending pliers
13 Adjust jack to knuckle
14 Adjust back checks
15 repetition springs
16 repetition lever height
17 readjust hammer height to samples
18 readjust hammer line slightly if needed for after touch
19 even out aftertouch on sharps with front rail punchings
20 retighten all action screws

Phase 2: Estimated time 8 hours

1 Adjust hammer height on remaining keys
2 Escapement on remaining keys
3 Drop on remaining keys
4 Space hammers to strings ( do not square and travel with this step)
5 Check spacing of repetitions to hammer shanks
6 Space back checks with bending pliers
7 Adjust jack to knuckle
8 Adjust back checks
9 Repetition springs
10 Repetition lever height
11 readjust hammer height
12 re-evaluate aftertouch on naturals, adjust slightly if needed
13 even out after touch on sharps by adding or removing front rail punchings
14 retighten all action screws
15 readjust back checks to 1 1/4″ if geometry permits

Above times do not include the following:

Lubricate trapwork and tighten all trapwork screws.

Regulate damper pedal:

1 lost motion at 1/4″
2 Key bed upstop adjusted or present to allow damper lift slightly above that of sharp damper when lifted with key
3 Up stop adjusted slightly above lift of dampers with sustain pedal pushed

Shift Pedal

1 Check each hammer for excessive shift.
2 Check pressure of cheek block guide plate on guide pin in action
3 Shifts easily and smoothly

Sostenuto

1 doesn’t pick up dampers when depressed
2 holds any and all dampers lifted by key before pedal is pushed

Also interesting is the Joe Swenson’s article ‘New Piano Preparation‘ at the PTG web-site. He says that many piano technicians have done far fewer complete regulations than tunings. Swenson says:

This lack of experience can lead to an incomplete awareness of the musical value of proper regulation. The fact is that, within a given time frame, time spent regulating a piano can often effect a greater musical improvement to the the piano than say, voicing can…the quality of voicing is actually dependent, to a degree, on the quality of regulation.

Assembling my home recording kit

After much research over the past few months I have settled for the components listed below.

Microphones I – A pair of RØDE NT2-A, with SM2 shockmount.

• The NT2-A has a reasonably flat frequency response down to about 20Hz, low self-noise, and quite decent off-axis response. The switchable polar patterns will allow me to try various stereo mic techniques.
• I will be starting with Mid-Side stereo first, then XY, then AB spaced pair, in that order.
• Mic stands will be from Sennheiser.

Microphones II – Shure SM81

• Had an opportunity one up at a very good price. Will use it for close miking in conjunction with the NT2-A’s.
• Will also use it as an alternative to the NT2-A as the ‘Mid’ mic. Preliminary tests show that the dual NT2-A combination for Mid and Side sounds subjectively better.

Mic Mount – Sabra-Som ST2 Two Mic Bar

• This is the only neat one-vendor solution I know of that allows the easy mounting, on one mic stand, of two microphones in a vertical head-to-head orientation for Mid-Side or Blumlein recording.

Audio Interface – TC Electronic Konnekt 24D.

• It has great mic preamps, and overall clean and detailed sound in a relatively inexpensive package. Another really neat feature is the ability to daisy-chain the first unit together with up to 3 additional Konnekt 8’s or Konnekt 24D’s to increase the number of inputs and outputs. The Konnekt 8 is identical to the Konnekt 24D, but without the built-in effects.
• I figure that if TC Electronic gear is good enough for the legendary mastering engineer Bob Katz, then it is most definitely good enough for amateur use.
• Update 2008-06-01: TCE is having problems with their drivers on the OS X platform. You might want to consider one of the other alternatives if you have only a Mac to work on.
• Update 2008-06-05: The latest version of Leopard (10.5.3) and the Konnekt 24D version 2.0.1 drivers appear to be stable for some people using the latest Macs. The Konnekt 24D is rock solid for me on a Windows XP Home (SP3) machine, with both Cubase LE1 and Cubase SL3.

DAW Software – Steinberg Cubase SL3.

• I already have this. Bought at the tail-end of my MIDI phase three years ago. It’s presently running on a decently spec’d Windows PC that I got for free with a 19″ screen when I renewed my cable TV/broadband contract also around that time. I’ve just installed it on my Macbook Pro and upgraded to version 3.1. Not sure if its worth upgrading to version 4 just to get the phase inversion button on the mixer channel strips (for Mid-Side decoding). The phase inversion can still be done by selecting the track and doing a ‘Phase Invert’ from the Audio menu.
• [Update 2008-07-31: Upgraded to Cubase 4]

Field Monitors – AKG K 271 Studio.

• Attractively priced to clear because it has been superceded by the K 271 MK II.

Mixdown/Editing Monitors – Blue Sky EXO.

• I already have this. Costs about the same as the Bose Companion 5, but has better audio quality I think. Having balanced inputs on the controller unit is very useful, at least in my context. It was clearly designed for use as ’serious’ desktop monitors.

Microphone Cable – Mogami Neglex Quad #2534.

• Two 6-metre lengths, terminated with male/female Neutrik XLR connectors.
• Mogami is legendary in the pro-audio world for offering fantastic cables at reasonable prices. The Neglex Quad is very quiet, and has very good RF rejection. Excellent for home studios where control over RF emissions is often difficult or impossible.

Patch Cable – van den Hul Patch Bay B5.

• To connect the main outs of the Konnekt 24D to the EXO speakers, or to my home hifi’s power amps (which have balanced XLR inputs because the manufacturer also makes pro-audio gear).

The piano has left the house

Just 10 minutes ago the K-8 made its way out of the flat, on the way to its new home. I’ll be heading over there in about an hour’s time to tune it for the new owner. The flat suddenly looks very empty!

Update: And it arrived safely. It’s tuned, and sounding lovely in a somewhat larger space with higher ceilings.

On buying a piano in Singapore

The single most useful source of information is Larry Fine’s Piano Book, and its latest Annual Supplement. I bought my copy from Books Kinokuniya. If you can’t find it there or at other major bookstores such as Borders or Harris then you can (obviously) buy it from online stores like Amazon.com or from IPG. The Annual Supplement can be purchased as an online download from here.

Two things about the Piano Book.

First, the prices in the Piano Book are valid only for the U.S. But you can still use them as a rough guide to relative pricing differences in Singapore. But it doesn’t always work. For example, Steinway pianos in the U.S. are made in their factory in Astoria, NY. Steinway pianos in Singapore come from the Hamburg factory, and their prices are significantly higher than the equivalent NY Steinway models. Also, some models that a manufacturer offers in the U.S. aren’t available in Singapore, and vice versa.

Second, the piano categories (referred to in the piano world as ‘tiers’) must not be taken as the Gospel Truth. Even Larry Fine himself warns against that, but many people seem to think that he is the God of Pianos and therefore what he says must be so. Nevertheless, the Piano Book’s categorization is still useful because it gives an idea of how a manufacturer stands in relation to all other brands. It may not be entirely accurate and is subjective to a point, but there is nothing else out there that even comes close to bringing some structure and sanity to the task of buying a piano.

After having been suitably educated, you then start making the rounds of the dealers and playing on on as many pianos as you can, good and bad. That’s if you are looking for a new piano. If you are in the market for a second-hand piano then you will have to also scan the newspaper classifieds, supermarket bulletin boards, etc. It is useful to set yourself a budget to start with, and have an idea of how much upward flex you have. What many, many piano buyers (including myself) have found is that piano shopping is Very Bad (TM) for your wallet.

If all you’ve ever had exposure to was the upright (on which you clawed your way up to Grade 8 or ABRSM diploma) and the examination piano, then you are new to pianos. In other words you have not had exposure to a good range of what’s available, from the very best (in Larry Fine’s Tier 1), to the inexpensive mass market brands (in Tier 4).

Therefore, in order to make an informed choice, you need a baseline from which you can reference and compare other pianos as you do your search. You can use any piano or brand as your baseline, but I strongly suggest that you pick a brand from Tier 1 or a good one from Tier 2. Even better (if your skin is thick enough, heheh) is to sample as many pianos from the Tier 1 & 2 brands as you can find. None, I repeat, none of the brands are intended to sound or feel alike. There will even be variations within a brand.

The idea is to work your way down the brands in the Piano Book’s tiers until you find a piano that meets your budget and has the most agreeable tone and touch for you at that price.

I am almost certain that at some point in your search you will at least toy with the idea of increasing your budget by some big number! But please be sensible OK? Don’t sell the dog, wife, kids, and home just to get the piano of your dreams. A more modestly priced piano can still be a tremendous instrument to play on if it has been properly prepped and tuned. It is especially surprising how tuning the piano to a mild Well Temperament such as the EBVT can turn it from a ho-hum performer to a significantly better-sounding instrument. Trust me on this one.

So, now that you are about to embark on your top-down piano search, you run up against your first problem. Not all of the Tier 1 brands are represented in Singapore, even though their web sites may list one or more Singapore dealers. Grotrian is one example. Then, of the Tier 1 brands that are really represented in Singapore, not all their models are available for demo here. But that’s OK if all you want is a reference point.

But if you are buying a Tier 1 piano then there are two ways around this: buy sight unseen, or visit the factory. Buying sight unseen is not for the faint-hearted, and you must have enough trust and confidence in the manufacturer’s ability to deliver a piano with their signature tone and touch. The tech in Singapore then must be skillful enough to be able to do fine adjustments to the voice to suit the buyer. The tech must also be competent enough to be able to troubleshoot and fix all but the most serious problems that might arise.

And then the next problem – not all dealers of Tier 1 and even Tier 2 pianos properly prep nor tune their showroom units. That’s a shame. It’s like walking into the BMW showroom and going for a test-drive in a car with under-inflated tires or not firing on all cylinders. Also, showrooms can be acoustically dreadful. Some are so acoustically dead that the piano sounds dull and lifeless. Some are so ‘live’ that you get aurally fatigued after playing for 5 or 10 minutes. You’ll have to try to compensate mentally for the showroom acoustics.

By the way, one of the best ways of getting a better sense of a piano’s tone is to have someone else play the piano while you step away from it. The piano bench is actually not where you hear the piano’s full and true tone.

As for piano inspections, you must do them if you are buying a second-hand piano from a private seller. Also ask about the piano’s history. There just aren’t many piano techs in Singapore that you can confidently engage to assess a piano for you, so you’d better learn how to do it yourself. The Piano Book give you some useful tips about this. If you are buying the piano (new or second-hand) from a dealer, then you’ll just have to trust that the dealer has prepped and/or repaird the piano properly, and that the warranty means something.

The piano trade in Singapore seems to be particularly vicious compared to say in the North American continent and Europe. The market is small, popularity of the piano is falling, and there are too many dealers. As a result, some dealers resort unnecessarily to ‘creative’ sales and marketing tactics that are sometimes downright distasteful (such as bad-mouthing other brands and dealers). Be wary of a dealer that does this instead of selling his or her pianos on their own merits. Actually if I hear Dealer A saying bad things about Dealer B and the brands that he carries, my instinct would be to go and check out the competition!

So it is in your own self-interests to forearm yourself with enough knowledge about the piano before you prise open your wallet. At the very least you must have a basic understanding of how a piano’s mechanicals work and something about the maufacturers and brands that are available in Singapore.

Suppose that you have now bought your piano. You’d better hope that the dealer’s piano techs are up to the job of helping you keep your piano in good shape. This is where we in Singapore are at a disadvantage. There just aren’t that many good piano techs here.

Lastly, here is an essay by the recently retired and much celebrated pianist Alfred Brendel titled “Coping with Pianos“. It gives an idea of what he looks for when selecting a piano for his purposes.

Recording the piano at home – Part 6: The Simplest Solution

The simplest solution for recording your piano at home is to use an all-in-one standalone digital audio recorder. The most popular ones are:

• Edirol R-09 Pocket Digital Recorder. Review here. Latest version is Edirol R-09HR Pocket Digital Recorder. Comes with Cakewalk “pyro Audio Creator LE” wave-editing software.
• M-Audio MicroTrack II Mobile Digital Recorder. Predecessor MicroTrack reviewed here.
• Zoom H4 Handy Recorder. Review here. PW Zoom H4 ‘how-to’ here.
• Zoom H2 Handy Recorder. Review here.
• Marantz PMD620 Professional Handheld Recorder. Review here.

No mess, no fuss. Pop it on a stand, find a good location for it, and record away. Note that the M-Audio MicroTrack II does not have provision for a stand, so you will have to improvise.

For editing and simple mastering you can either use the supplied software, or else use Audacity. It’s free, has a good feature set, and you can even get free plug-ins for it, e.g., Voxengo’s MSED plug-in for doing Mid-Side decoding. Audacity is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, and Linux.

Recording the piano at home – Part 5: Digital Recording, Editing & Mastering

What is a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW)?

You can now do digital recording stuff on your laptop that was either impossible or very expensive or both just five years ago. All thanks to cheap and powerful CPUs, cheap memory and mass storage, and cheap and good graphics processors. For example, on a current model MacBook Pro laptop with sufficient RAM you can run digital audio workstation (DAW) software and USB/Firewire audio interfaces that allow you to:

1. Do analog-to-digital conversion, capture and editing of digital audio sampled at 24-bit/192-kHz resolution;
2. Create/record, and edit MIDI tracks;
3. Create composite MIDI/audio multi-track recordings;
4. Do mastering and output the final mix in different compressed and uncompressed digital audio formats, and in stereo or surround sound;
5. Do digital-to-analog conversion and play out mixes in analog stereo or analog multi-channel surround sound.

You can read more about DAWs in general here:

• Wikipedia – Digital audio workstation;
• WikiRecording – Digital Recording;
• Sweetwater Sound – 5 Steps to Building Your DAW.

If you already have a good laptop or desktop with one or more fast CPUs, lots of RAM and hard disk space then what you need to do next is to select your audio interface. Many of these audio interfaces come bundled with DAW software that provides enough functionality for producing pretty decent sounding recordings.

Digital Audio Interfaces

Since we aren’t producing commercial quality recordings then we need consider only the lower-level interfaces. Even then, many of these consumer or prosumer level audio interfaces contain dedicated digital signal processors (DSPs) that allow even the amateur to do some really fancy things with the audio signal. Here are some audio interfaces available on the market in Singapore:

• MOTU UltraLite & Traveler. Firewire interfaces for Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. Comes with AudioDesk 1 workstation software for the Mac. (If you are using a Windows computer you must supply your own workstation software.) AudioDesk can be upgraded to AudioDesk 2, or to Digital Performer. Here is comparison of the three.
• Focusrite Sapphire LE & Sapphire. Firewire interfaces for Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. Comes with Steinberg Cubase LE (Mac/PC), upgradeable to Cubase 4.
• Alesis iO|2 (USB) & iO|14 (Firewire). Comes with Steinberg Cubase LE (Mac/PC), upgradeable to Cubase 4.
• TC Electronic Konnekt 24D. Comes with Steinberg Cubase LE (Mac/PC), upgradeable to Cubase 4.
• RME Fireface 400. Firewire interface for Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. No DAW software included.
• Digidesign Mbox 2 (USB) & Mbox 2 Pro (Firewire). Comes with Digidesign Pro Tools LE 7.

Some audio engineers may warn about the microphone preamps use in the audio interfaces listed above. They say that the mic preamps used in these low-cost audio interfaces can be a little noisy and lack dynamic headroom. Frankly, it doesn’t matter. The recordings you produce with them have noise floors below that of most if not all of the analog-to-digital transfers of old pre-digital master tapes.

Just make sure that the recording level is set so that the loudest passages in the music do not cause distortion. You can use limiters in your DAW mixing console during recording, but should avoid that if at all possible. Doing so will not allow you to capture the full dynamic range of the piano.

Digital Audio Editing

A good overview of some basic techniques can be found here. For most piano recordings that you do at home, the most common things that you will be doing are:

• Removal of extraneous noise before and/or after a take. For example, removing the click of the ‘record’ button being pressed on a handheld recorder.
• Splice together two or more takes of the piece that you are recording.

Once you have completed the editing you will then master the recording.

Mastering

Mastering is the art (some say black magic) of tweaking the audio waveform in ways that enhance the sound. The enhancements include things like:

• Performing frequency equalization (EQ) to emphasize or de-emphasize specific parts of the audio spectrum. This is done for things like ameliorating a particularly nasty resonance in the room.
• To apply compression to the waveform so that the overall dynamic range is reduced. This allows the track to sound louder because the softer sounds now are at a level that is closer to the louder sounds. This isn’t necessarily a good thing for piano music, but is something that is widely practiced for various reasons.
• To boost or cut the levels of specific events during the recording.

You can get an idea of the art of audio mastering from The Audio Mastering Handbook and from Bob Katz’s The Secret of the Mastering Engineer.

Recording the piano at home – Part 4: Microphone Technology & Stereo Microphone Techniques

I’ll assume that we’ll be recording in stereo. This will allow the recording to give the illusion of space and size to the piano, rather than have the piano reduced to a point-source when the recording is played back through a stereo system. This post is split into two sections. The first covers microphone technology, while the second covers microphone placement techniques for stereo recording.

There are a few things to keep in mind:

• The microphone’s frequency response must match that of the piano’s. On an 88-key piano the frequencies range from A0 (27.5Hz) to C8 (4136Hz). The Bösendorfer Imperial 290’s lowest note is C0 (16.35Hz), but can be ignored unless you are playing Busoni’s transcriptions of J.S. Bach’s organ works! Although you rarely play the bottom few notes, it is said that sypathetic vibrations of those strings (particularly when the damper pedal is used) adds richness to the sound. Most microphones will meet the frequency range requirement for the piano, but may have sonic signatures objectionable enough that you have to apply more EQ than you otherwise would during mastering. Others designed specifically for vocal use roll-off sharply in the bass to minimize the proximity effect.
• What the better mics have are higher maximum SPL, wider dynamic range and lower self-noise.
• You will have to use trial-and-error to find the best mic technique and mic position in terms of tonal balance and amount of room acoustics that you like. Trust your ears – have someone play the piano while you walk around the room. You may even have to get higher and angle the mics downwards so that they point at the strings. It’s largely a matter of personal taste, and depends on the kind of sound you like or are trying to achieve.

Microphone Technology

• Microphone characteristics
• Microphone technology guide
• The Bidirectional Microphone

Stereo Microphone Techniques

There are several different microphone placement techniques for recording in stereo. The most common are shown in the following diagram:

As the arrow on the left of the diagram shows, these different techniques give different kinds of stereo image. Those at the top of the diagram give very distinct and up-front left-right separation of the sound source. Those at the bottom of the diagram yield a stereo image that has less distinct left-right separation but more apparent front-to-back depth. Details about mic techniques can be found at the following resources:

• WikiRecording – Microphone Techniques
• Wikipedia – Microphone Practice
• DPA – Stereo Techniques
• SAE College – Recording Pianos & Organs
• Basic Stereo Microphone Perspectives
• Tape.com – Stereo Microphone Techniques
• Streicher & Everest – The New Stereo Soundbook

The tape.com article gives the best summary of the differences between several of the most commonly used mic techniques. The Streicher & Everest book is probably the best complete layman’s reference on the why’s and wherefore’s of stereo recording. Highly recommended.

Micing a Piano

See the following for suggested techniques:

• DPA – Grand Piano
• WikiRecording – Guide to Recording Pianos
• Paul Cantrell – Piano Recording Method

You might want to start by trying all of the following mic techniques: AB omni spaced pair, XY pair, DIN Stereo, and Mid-Side. If the room is problematic or good mono playback is important to you then try coincident (or near-coincident) pair techniques like XY and Mid-Side first.

The great thing about Mid-Side is that you can vary the stereo spread and amount of room ambience in post-production. Even if you don’t have a decent figure-8 mic you can achieve the same effect by replacing it with a pair of cardioids, one pointing left the other right, with their capsules as close to the centre mic’s as possible. The Mid-Side technique is often overlooked because it requires you to do some work either during the recording or during post-production to generate the sum-difference matrix. Some audio interfaces (such as the RME Fireface 400) come with on-board mixers that do Mid-Side decoding. Alternatively you can do the Mid-Side decoding in DAW software such as Steinberg Cubase 4, or MOTU Digital Performer. Even Audacity, which is free, can do Mid-Side decoding using a third party plug-in.

A Blumlein pair is also worth trying. The mics are positioned exactly the same as XY, except that a pair of figure-8 mics are used instead of a pair of cardioids. It gives a near-holographic image, but needs a good room. The AB omni spaced pairs technique is very tricky to get right, but can give a very natural sounding stereo image at least as good as that of the Blumlein pair.

Paul Cantrell’s interesting mic technique gets some pretty decent results but largely excludes the room ambience. It also requires you to do a lot more work in post-production.

Microphone Choices

The first thing to do is decide which microphone technique you want to use and note the polar pattern of the microphones required. For example:

• AB spaced pair – both mics omni-directional, and either matched or at least the same model.
• XY pair – both mics cardioid, and either matched or at least the same model.
• Blumlein pair – both mics figure-8, and either matched or at least the same model.
• Mid-Side – one mic cardioid, one mic figure-8.

If you already have mics with the necessary characteristics, give them a go first before buying anything new. You should be able to get at least a half-decent result. If nothing else you at least have a reference point from which you can work towards a better sound.

If you are buying new and you are likely to experiment with different mic techniques then you might consider multi-pattern mics. If you get modular small diaphragm capsule (SDC) mics then you also have the option of having using interchangeable capsules with different polar patterns. Large diaphragm capsule (LDC) mics don’t have interchangeable capsules, but some have switchable polar patterns.

You then have to decide whether to get SDC mics or LDC mics. The general wisdom is that SDC’s give smoother and more extended off-axis response and are less coloured. Frankly, for home recording purpose, it doesn’t really matter. As for specific brands and models, they range from relatively inexpensive jobs to mortgage-your-home kind of mics. Visit Sweetwater Sound’s ‘Condenser Microphones’ section for an idea of the range of condenser mics in the market. All of the established brands are represented in Singapore by pro-audio dealers.

You will also have to get mic stands, shockmounts for the mics (particularly if the floor is not concrete), a stereo bar or dual-mic mounts, decent cables (with the correct plugs on the ends!), and so on. What you eventually end up with depends on how elaborate you want to go, and how deep your pocket is.

Recording the piano at home – Part 3: Room Acoustics

This is tough one, because you will never have a room that is perfect in every way. You can find a good general discussion about room acoustics for piano here. It is reproduced from Larry Fine’s Piano Book; the section starts on page 229. If you are already an audiophile then you probably already know about room acoustics. But what you will discover (if you haven’t already done so) is that what you hear on most piano recordings is nothing like what you experience live and in your home.

Actually, addressing the room’s acoustics is something that you should be doing anyway, regardless of whether you plan to do any home recording or not. Homes in Singapore are typically acoustically noisy. If you live in any multi-storey dwelling you probably have a concrete slabs above and below, and walls of either poured concrete or hollow concrete brick. There is also a lot ingress of noise even when the doors and windows are closed. For an idea of what you can do relatively cheaply see Acoustic Treatment for Home Studios. Although it says ‘home studio’ you can apply the same ideas generally for your home to make it acoustically more pleasant to live in.

Incidentally, the wall construction described in the article above is gypsum board with fibreglass filler. It is common in Western countries but rarely seen here. That might change in the future because of the sharply higher price of cement. There have already been calls in the construction industry to look at alternative construction methods that reduce the use of cement.

For more information about room acoustics you can try the Room Acoustics Forum at Audio Asylum.

If you want do fix your room acoustics quickly then you can try these people in Singapore: Alpha Acoustics. The cost can vary from relatively inexpensive to very expensive, depending on how bad your room is and what you want to achieve.

Recording the piano at home – Part 2: Prepare the Piano

The first thing you have to attend to when preparing to record your piano at home is to make sure that the piano is itself in good shape. By that I mean that it has been:

1. Tuned accurately to your temperament of choice;
2. It’s action properly regulated; and
3. Hammers voiced to your satisfaction.

In that order. But try to avoid Step #3 if you can. What I have read about hammers suggests that touching them should be the last resort in getting the piano voiced properly.

Many perceived voicing problems can in fact be resolved by having the piano tuned carefully. I had heard that mentioned before on the PW forums, and experienced it first-hand when I started tuning the K-8 myself. Many (I wish it was all!) of the twangy whangy sounds I heard disappeared. Some notes used to have timbres that were slightly different than adjacent notes. Those too are mostly gone. Yes, there are still about four or five unisons (all either bi-chords or tri-chords) where one of the strings in the unison has false beats, but you don’t really hear them during normal play.

About temperaments and tuning:

• The Piano Book, Larry Fine. See the section on ‘Tuning’ starting on page 222.
• Music Theory Online: Pitch, Temperament & Timbre.
• Historical Tunings on the Modern Concert Grand, Edward Foote.
• An Introduction to Historical Tunings, Kyle Gann.

About regulation:

• Technical Bulletin #2: Regulation, Piano Technicians Guild

About voicing:

• Technical Bulletin #4: Voicing, Piano Technicians Guild

And then I tune to EBVT

I bought Verituner Pocket and a tuning kit for two reasons:

1. To keep my piano in tune as much of the time as possible; and
2. So that I can try different temperaments.

It would have been too costly to hire somebody to do these things. Besides, I had little confidence in finding a tech in Singapore who could give me the temperaments I wanted to try. Heck, most of the time an attempt at ET results in a tuning that is not ET!

So, the morning after my first attempt to tune the K-8 myself, I started to tune it again. This time to something other than ET.

The first temperament I wanted to try was Bill Bremmer’s Equal-Beating Victorian Temperament (EBVT). It is a mild Well temperament, invented by Bill back in 1992, and tweaked a couple of times since then with the help of people like Owen Jorgensen and Jason Kanter. I had read Bill Bremmer’s posts on PW where he described the reaction of people playing on pianos tuned to EBVT. It was as if they playing on a completely different instrument, one that sounded more musical. So EBVT it would be for me too. After loading up Verituner with the EBVT profile and the Average stretch style, it took me 3 hours to get the job done.

I didn’t know quite what to expect. How much difference could there be? Well, I was blown away by what I heard. The piano sounded fantastic! I’ll stick with it for a while before trying another temperament. In the meantime, it appears that the Verituner’s EBVT programming needs a little bit of tweaking. There is discussion in this PW thread.

The next temperament I will try is likely to be Just. My interest in it was sparked by a couple of articles by Kyle Gann here and here.

I tune the K-8 myself for the first time

I love playing on a piano that is in tune. The first thing I do right after the tuner has left is to sit down at the piano and play. After that it’s just a slow downhill slide in satisfaction until the next tuning.

It is said that a new piano’s tuning will drift more in the first year as the strings stretch and the soundboard acclimatizes to the relative humidity in its new environment, and therefore the tuner should be called in at least three times during that period. After the first year a couple of tunings each year will usually suffice, unless the piano experiences large seasonal swings in relative humidity.

But I had two new pianos in the space of nine months: The first K-8 with the mysterious double-strike affliction I wrote about earlier, and the K-8 that Robert Piano gave me in exchange for the sick one. So I started to toy with the idea of getting an electronic tuning device and a tuning kit to tune the K-8 whenever I though that it had drifted too far out of tune for comfort.

In the meantime I was learning more about historical temperaments, and about how the Equal temperament might not (some say should not) be the temperament of choice for just about all music from Bach to Beethoven and maybe also beyond. And of course ET is what just about all tuners in Singapore attempt to give their customers. Some tuners do better than others, but most of the time the end result is not ET.

I finally caved in three months after the second K-8 arrived, and went online to buy a tuning kit. I also sprang for Verituner Pocket for my PDA phone. The tuning kit arrived in early April.

The first temperament I tuned the piano to was Equal Temperament, primarily for use as a baseline for comparison with other temperaments. It took me six back-breaking hours to complete my first ever tuning because I had to:

• Learn how to position the mutes;
• Learn how to manipulate the tuning hammer; and
• Learn how to operate Verituner Pocket.

Along the way I also discovered that despite Kawai’s reputation for good quality control in the factory, my K-8 (and probably every piano that comes out of the factory) needs a good final prep by the dealer before delivery. Sadly that’s something that most dealers don’t do because it eats into their margins. I’m not saying that the K-8 was in bad shape, but that it could be in even better shape.

When I finally finished the tuning I was surprised at what I heard when I played the K-8. The piano sounded really clean. The tuning was clearly better than what I’d been given by the tuners who had worked on both K-8’s. (I’ve read that when an aural tuner attempts the ET, there is a 90% chance that what he gives you isn’t really equal at all.) What was particularly interesting was that the piano now sounded too clean and somewhat sterile. Something was missing.

By then it was pushing 03h00 in the morning, and my whole back had seized up. Anything else would have to wait till later.

The Klavier-Roller piano transporter is sheer genius!

The piano mover’s lot in Singapore is a tough one:

• About 87% of the population live in high-rise housing.
• Some of the blocks have surprisingly poor access from the road or from the nearest carpark.
• Some of the blocks have lifts into which you can’t fit an upright piano standing on its end.
• Many blocks have lifts that do not stop on every floor (although that’s slowly changing with the HDB’s progressive Lift Upgrading Programme).

So every piano mover employs a gang of strong lads to do the heavy lifting, in particular the hefting of pianos up and down multiple flights of stairs. They charge around S$150 dollars (sometimes more) per floor. The craziest move I know of is the hauling of PW member Wzkit’s Sauter Delta 185 up 24 floors to his flat. Read all about it here and here.

The use of manual labour to haul pianos incurs two risks: Injury to the guys doing the heavy lifting, and damage to the piano if it is accidentally dropped. These are rare occurrences, but the probability of either or both happening is most definitely non-zero.

But what if the piano mover had that sensationally brilliant invention called a Klavier-Roller?

They don’t come cheap of course. The estimated minimum investment is some number upwards of EUR20,000, depending on the size of Klavier-Roller and the accessories you get to go with it. However, a clever piano mover could still charge the same rates as before, and then use the “safer for the piano” marketing line to reel in the customers. He could do more jobs per day, and reduce his labour costs significantly. A quick back-of-the-envelope estimate suggests that the cost of a single Klavier-Roller can be recouped in about six months.

What to put under the Omega’s casters?

I was told that if a grand piano is to be located on a concrete or tile-on-concrete floor that something should be put under the casters so that strong vibrations that are conducted down through the legs are not reflected back up from the floor.

Is there any truth in this? Who might know? I’ve posted on PW but have not gotten any definitive answer so far.

I was thinking that the only way that these reflected waves can cause damage in the long-term is if they resonate sufficiently strongly at specific frequencies within the piano to cause micro-damage at glue joints and cause de-lamination over the long term.

The Omega has big, locking double-casters (picture below) and I’ve never come across caster cups that would be large enough to go under them. In any case I don’t want to use caster cups because I may have to move the piano very occasionally (e.g., when I tweak the piano’s position). It also means that I can’t (and don’t want to) put the piano on a large rug because it makes it difficult to roll the piano and then reposition the rug under the casters after that.

I used Magiglide sliders under the casters of the K-8, and they worked very well. I moved that piano around a lot in my effort to find the best location for it in my living room. I could use the larger Magiglides (in pairs) under the casters of the Omega, but I’d like to avoid them if possible because they just aren’t all that visually appealing.

Gary McBride and his Sauter Omega 220

While gathering together the materials for this blog I rediscovered Gary McBride’s web site. Gary was a full-time musician but chucked it in for a job with IBM. He has a Sauter Omega 220 at home. There are recordings on his webbie of the house concerts that he gave over the past two Christmas Eves.

PW thread on why there aren’t any ‘great’ composers today

Here. The ensuing discussion was very interesting. It more or less concluded that there are indeed great composers today. They include people who write pop music and composers who write the ’serious’ stuff. The former are far more visible because of the monetary ‘top of the pops’ angle, while the latter are not generally visible. Some composers were mentioned. I’ll check them out when I can.

The Kawai K-8 has been sold!

PW member macdoc and his wife saw my post in PW last week, and came by on Sunday 18th May to have a look and play on the K-8. He rang me on Tuesday 20th May to make an offer, which I accepted. His piano movers will be picking the piano up on Wednesday 28th May.

So, I’ll be without a piano to play on for 3+ weeks (assuming that the Omega arrives as expected in the week of 16th June). I wonder if Alvin will let me camp out in his shop to play on the Alpha?

Use of the damper pedal when playing Beethoven

Beethoven was known to be a particularly fussy composer, marking up his music sometimes in great detail. Yet, when I listen to recordings of his sonatas by the likes of Kempff, Barenboim, Brendel, Schiff, and Kovacevich I am struck by how the use of the damper pedal often results in the non-observance of staccato marks, and non-observance of phrasing indicated by slurs. Sometimes I also hear the damper pedal being held across rests! As an example, listen to how any of the above-mentioned pianists play the first movement of the Op. 26 sonata.

But it bothers me. If the pianist has taken so much liberty with the score, then is he or she also missing too much of the composer’s intent?

I’ve read that Beethoven didn’t usually indicate pedal markings unless he absolutely wanted the dampers lifted. It seems that the practice of the time was for the pianist to use the damper pedal judiciously, and at his or her discretion, to help with tone production and technique.

To check this I pulled out the three editions of the sonatas that I have – Schenker, Tovey and Schirmer. All have different pedal markings and varying degrees of other markings as well, with Schenker having the least markings. Since Schenker is an ‘urtext’ edition (some people say the best researched) I assumed to be editorial anything else that appeared in Tovey and Schirmer that wasn’t also in Schenker.

Tovey has the most pedal markings, and they largely observe staccato markings and slur boundaries. Among the exceptions include an indication to pedal through the repeated staccato in bar 9 of Op. 26 1st mvmt theme.

So even if the pianists I mentioned played from Tovey (which I seriously doubt, but who knows!) they shouldn’t be pedaling the way that I hear them doing in the recordings.

Last week I got my hands on Claudio Arrau’s Beethoven sonata cycle from the 1960’s. His much ‘drier’ pedal technique is a revelation. The difference really hit me when he played Var. III of Op. 26 1st mvmt. Just about everybody I’ve heard pedals the left-hand staccato. Arrau does not, and the result is quite arresting. It opens up the texture of the music tremendously.

The next question is whether or not many pianists use the damper pedal to simplify the technical demands of playing Beethoven’s piano music. Take for example bar 26 of the 1st mvmt theme. Everybody except Arrau holds the dampers off on each semiquaver too long so that the right-hand portato on the repeated Eb is completely lost. But dang it, only the Eb is played portato, which means I must play the bottom two notes of the RH chords and all of the LH chords legato without pedal, or else do some fancy half-pedaling. It’s not easy for me but I would have thought that concert pianists of the calibre I referred to earlier would have no problems.

Sauter factory visit, 17th March 2008

On Sunday 16th March, Ulrich Sauter fetched Alvin and myself for the drive in his car down south to Spaichingen. The Frankfurt Musikmesse had ended the day before and it was now time to visit the Sauter factory in the south of Germany.

We eventually made it out of Frankfurt around 10h00, and headed first for the small city of Sinsheim, about 30 minutes drive away. There was a hobby fair there and Ulrich wanted to stop in for a few hours to buy parts for his airplane modeling hobby.

While Ulrich was at the hobby fair Alvin and I went to the Sinsheim Air & Motor Museum. If you happen to be in the area I strongly recommend a visit. I can now truthfully claim to have been in the Concorde and the Russian TU-144. On the same day. There is one of each perched on steel pylons high over the roof of the museum.

At 17h00 we continued on south, and reached our hotel in Tuttlingen (just 10 – 15 minutes from Spaichingen) around 19h00.

Ulrich fetched us from the hotel at 09h45 on Monday 17th March. And spent the rest of the day with us. He is such a kind and hospitable person.

About two weeks ago Alvin told me that there were two strungbacks from which I could choose. However once my visit to the factory was confirmed it was decided to use those two strungbacks for a couple of Vivace’s, and start on a new one, timed for my visit.

And so we wandered up to the factory floor, to look for parts of my Omega 220. The first thing we found was the soundboard. It had been mated to its bridges and inner rim, and the bridges were in the final stages of being notched.

We then found the outer rim. The veneer I had selected was bubinga, and it looked beautiful even before staining and varnishing.

Next to be found was the iron frame. It was in the process of being prepared for varnishing. Frame preparation includes removing all the casting burrs by chiseling or sanding, drilling all the holes, filling the surface to achieve nice smooth surfaces, and finally priming for painting.

We then went for lunch.

Sometime after lunch we went back into the factory, and I discovered (to my excitement) that the soundboard had just had its final sanding done. And the bridges had also been pinned. As we walked away after admiring the soundboard, Ulrich gave it a thump near the middle with bottom of his clenched fist. The soundboard went “BOOooonnnnng!” like a very big drum. “Good soundboard!”, said Ulrich, and turned and walked away. Of course, Alvin and I couldn’t resist giving the soundboard a few thumps ourselves!

And yet later in the afternoon, on my third visit to the factory floor, I found that the soundboard had made its way to the spray shop. There I watched the extra register lines being applied, and then the soundboard being sprayed with a special sealing varnish.

Around 17h00, Alvin and Ulrich were busy with business matters, and we were all waiting for Russell, Bill and ‘Mike’ to arrive in Spaichingen and join us for dinner. They had spent the day visiting the Steingraber and Blüthner factories.

So I went into the showroom and noticed that the Concert 275 had been wheeled back in. I opened up the grand, set my music folder down on the unopened music desk, and played the first dozen bars or so of Beethoven’s Op.27 No. 2 (Moonlight) sonata. I could feel goosebumps rising as this rich yet clean and delicate sound murmured and shimmered out of the piano. Each note was distinct through the long pedaled phrases.

I was sighing to myself, thinking how wonderful it would be if I could have the Concert 275 in my home. Then I raised the music desk. And I was completely stunned to see the Greek ‘Omega’ symbol inlaid on it.

I just sat there flabbergasted, not quite able to believe that I was going to have one of these exquisite (Turandot calls them disturbingly beautiful) pianos in my home. Unprintable words were flashing through my mind.

Unfortunately, delivery of the Omega to Singapore will be delayed by another couple of months, with arrival anticipated in the first half of June 2008 instead of end-April. Just before we left for dinner, Ulrich suggested that the custom veneer work that Alvin and I had asked for was not going to be visually as pleasing as we thought. After some discussion we decided to change the veneers on the underlid and fallboard. But since these were in process (though we didn’t find them during the factory tour) the changes meant that new ones would have to be made. And hence the delay.

Pictures are HERE. Guest password: ‘digit’. When in slideshow viewing mode, hover your mouse pointer over the comment below a picture to see the full comment (if there is one).

I occasionally felt obliged to ask if I could take pictures in the part of the factory that we were in. There are “No Photography” signs all over the place. This is the result of a visit to the factory by a group of Chinese after one year’s Musikmesse. The second they stepped onto the factory floor the group dispersed through the factory, taking pictures of any and everything. I am therefore all the more grateful to Ulrich, who allowed me to snap away, and only gently suggesting at a couple of locations that I shouldn’t take pictures of what the craftsmen were doing.

There are also “No Smoking” signs everywhere but that’s another story!

And here is where I publicly thank Ulrich Sauter, his staff, and Alvin for their kind hospitality and the time they spent making my visit so exciting and memorable. I could not have had a better visit to the Musikmesse and the Sauter factory.

I learned a lot about the art and science of piano design and piano manufacturing, and what makes a Sauter piano so special. I now understand why Ulrich is not losing any sleep over the Chinese copycats, because there is absolutely no way they can replicate the sound and feel of a Sauter piano. This is a good example where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Frankfurt Musikmesse, 14-15 March 2008

By a stroke of good fortune my business travel schedule opened up in March 2008. There was a window of time during which I could travel to Germany to visit the Frankfurt Musikmesse and then to visit the Sauter factory (which I will write about in a separate post). I would be meeting Alvin in Frankfurt.

I arrived in Frankfurt after a 12-hour flight from Singapore. The show actually started on 13th March but I couldn’t travel any earlier.

As usual I used the opportunity of a long flight to catch up on some sleep, and I managed to get in a solid eight hours between supper and breakfast. Getting through immigration and customs at Frankfurt airport was a breeze. It’s not exactly peak period at 06h00 in the morning!

From there it was a quick 20-minute dash in a taxi to the Marriott. It was a little alarming to see that the driver was doing 140 km/h in the rain. I checked to make sure that my seat belt was fastened. Then looked up to watch another car whiz past us at something in excess of 160 km/h.

Alvin met me around 09h30 for breakfast, after which we walked the 100 metres or so to the Musikmesse. The show is enormous. It is spread over nine vast halls.

Disclaimer: My notes below are my own observations. If you don’t agree with my assessment of the various pianos please don’t flame me because those are my opinions and could be wildly wrong. Or I could be extremely biased.

Pictures are here. The guest password is ‘digit’. Some of the pictures have comments that are long. When in slideshow viewing mode, if you hover your mouse pointer over the comment below a picture, a bubble will pop up showing the full text of the comment.

Miscellaneous Notes

• The forte section in Hall 6 is noisy. (But not the noisiest. That honour goes to the section selling gear for DJs and dance clubs.) Imagine, pianos everywhere, and being played, sometimes pounded, on a lot of the time. By far the noisiest part of the hall was at the end where the Sauter booth was located, because in close proximity were Grotrian-Steinweg, Blüthner, Seiler, Steingraber, and Petrof.
• Most times it was very difficult to hear the piano one is playing. So you try to play snatches during the quieter moments. Good to have somebody else with you to do the listening and as a cross check for what you hear.
• The Musikmesse’s regular ‘artiste’ Paul Davis played everyday to an entourage of admirers. He apparently spends most of his time on Tier 1 concert grands. On two days that I was at the show he played piano arrangements of Gershwin “American in Paris”, Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2, and Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1. Fantastic technique, thunderous power. Seems to enjoy the attention!
• Steinway and Bösendorfer have not participated in the Musikmesse for over ten years. Notable absentees from last year are Bechstein and Schimmel, and Fazioli.
• Booth fees are very high. Maybe that’s why some manufacturers aren’t there. Or maybe some think that they don’t need to be there?
• After playing all the Tier 1 and lower tier pianos in the show, I’ve come to the conclusion that people hear and feel what they are pre-conditioned to hear and feel. So when they go to play a Tier 1 piano they look for the instrument’s strong points and go into denial about the weaknesses. Me included. (Perhaps the name on the fallboard should be masked when the piano is being auditioned!) But if you are happy with your choice then it is as good as any other, weaknesses and all! All in all, I believe that the Sauter Omega 220 that I ordered is a complete piano with very few weaknesses.
• The worst pianos sounded like they were made from rubber bands stretched over a wooden crate.

Sauter

• Located at one end of the forte hall.
• Peter Maly designed the booth, booth furniture, all the [edit: designer] uprights and the Ambiente. The armchairs and sofa have great ergonomics. All his designs have clean, almost organic forms.
• Showing almost the entire range of instruments. No micro-tonal piano, no Alpha 160, no Vivace.
• Palatino, a Chinese company, was showing a counterfeited Sauter Rondo upright at their booth in Hall 3. Sauter (and Maly) found out about it when they saw it in an a Palatino advertisement in the trade show daily. I went looking for it on Saturday 15th, but it had been removed from the show floor. Looks like somebody had a quiet word with Palatino.
• At the end of the day on Friday 14th somebody sat down at the Ambiente and played ‘Besame Mucho’. Wow!
• Met Russell Kassman, Bay area Sauter dealer, and friend Bill Kuntzman (who works 3 days a week in the shop). Delightful gentlemen. Russell is passionate about his business, and takes great pride in presenting his instruments in the best shape possible. He once sent a customer away for suggesting that a Yamaha upright was under-prepped to make it sound bad next to a Kawai.
• Saturday 15th was the last day of the show, open to the public. Lots of families and kids. Sauter likes to have the little kids and teenagers play on their pianos, because these are future customers!
• Almost all of the pianos on the floor were sold to dealers. The only instruments that weren’t sold were the Concert 275 and the Ambiente.
• There was gossip on the trade show floor about recent purchases by the Oslo Opera House. They were shopping for grand pianos and uprights, and sent a team of three people around Europe to evaluate all the Tier 1 vendors. They ended up buying 4x Sauter Omega 220, 5x Sauter Delta 185, 4x Sauter uprights, 4x Yamaha S4 grand pianos, and 1x Steinway grand piano (don’t know which one).
• One of Russell’s customers, whom I shall call Mike (not his real name), showed up in the early afternoon of Friday 14th. He’d come all the way just to choose between Steingraber and Blüthner for his home, to augment an old 1890’s Steinway he already had. He had never considered Sauter, but it became one of his choices after visits to Steingraber, Blüthner and Sauter. Certainly he enjoyed the company at the Sauter booth, spending the rest of his time there after the visits, snacking on pastries and mini-pizza, and sipping on some nice German beer.
• ’Mike’ subsequently visited the Steingraber and Blüthner factories on Monday 17th March, and the Sauter factory the next day. All of us had a great time over dinner at an Irish pub in Tuttlingen on 17th March, it being St Patrick’s Day and all.

Steingraeber & Söhne

• Beautiful cases, but the fit of some parts could be better if some of the precision cutting is done by machine rather than by hand.
• Treble bright and piercing, bass big but not articulate in dense music.
• One grand had a carbon fibre layer under the soundboard, attached to the soundboard by numerous screws. The idea is to help the wooden soundboard resist warping due to changes in relative humidity. Maybe the piano wasn’t prepped properly because it sounded really bad.
• Not quite sure why they are making such a big deal out of the Phoenix System. Needs more critical listening in a better environment?
• Trade show floor gossip: Steingraber uprights contain Yamaha action parts. And the sales rep was rubbishing Yamaha upright actions. Oops! Maybe there is a difference between using action parts and using whole actions from Yamaha?
• Sales rep was claiming that Steingraber was the first piano manufacturer in the world to use an accelerated action in an upright to mimic the grand’s repetition action. Wrong. Nearly 500 accelerated actions were invented since the early days of the upright piano, many are variations of the same thing.

Grotrian-Steinweg

• Top two octaves and bottom two octaves don’t match the middle. Needs the assistance of a smaller more acoustically sympathetic space in which to get a lift?

Seiler

• Not a friendly, inviting booth design. The entire space was enclosed in curtains, and brightly lit with very bright white lights so that you can see through the curtains.
• Average sustain, OK action, tonally bland, dynamic range average.
• At the end of the show on the last day all the Seiler staff came over to the Sauter booth for drinks. The piano manufacturing industry in Europe is small, and everyone knows everyone else. At the NAMM 2008 show Seiler arrived with instruments and an empty booth. Sauter bought furniture and supplies for them.

August Förster

• The AF190 sounded dull and muffled. Their concert grand was too one-dimensional, and lacking dynamic range.
• After Alvin took one picture one of the AF guys told us to stop taking pictures of their pianos!
• I think the Chinese manufacturers are really making the old establishment very nervous. It’s almost embarrassing to be of Chinese ethnicity and think that some Chinese manufacturers have absolutely no respect for other people’s intellectual property. This selfish, make-money-at-all-costs-and-screw-the-others attitude has to (will?) change if China is to become a respected economic superpower. Now that China is a member of the WTO, it must ensure that counterfeiters and pirates can be prosecuted and that the courts are willing and able to hand out punitive, deterrent sentences.
• But I got my pictures in the end, on Saturday 15th. I shot with a telephoto lens from across the aisle.

Blüthner

• New Blüthners are not as good as the old ones.
• Dynamic range is average. Timbre does not change with loudness, no tonal complexity.

Mason & Hamlin

• The American sound is not for me. Upper half of the keyboard is too bright and jangly.
• Has a Chinese party taken a controlling stake in the company? I hear that there is at least one Chinese national present at the M&H booth at every show, in some capacity or another.
• Attention to detail is lacking. Felt strip at the back edge of the fallboard (visible when the fallboard is up) is frayed and looks to be of poor quality.
• The most interesting exhibit at the booth was the Sync-A-Vision gadget (best used with the PianoDisc iQ system).

Schoenhut Pianos

• The larger ones contain a real piano action!

Brodmann

• Did not take pictures.
• Too much hype and too little substance. The BG187 felt and sounded like the one I tried in Singapore – lacked dynamic range, tonally dull and boring, OK action. On the other hand, if there is a strong demand for the piano, I guess people might be juiced up enough by the hype to pay the new premium anyway.
• Uprights are tonally uneven. There are timbre differences between adjacent notes!

Kawai

• OK dynamic range. Lacks timbre change with volume.
• Springy, rubbery feel at the bottom of the keystroke still feels odd to me. When I first encountered it in Singapore I thought that it felt good, but now I think that it robs the feel of some precision.

Yamaha

• Enormous booth taking up most of the ground floor of a building.
• And they need the space, because they have an enormous range of products.
• The best environment for listening to their top end pianos. A separate room accessed through a soundproofed door, and with the acoustic tuned by large movable baffles. Unfortunately you can hear the brass band doing their demo in an adjacent performance space.
• On display were an S4, S6, CFIIIs, U7, and YUS5. All other models of grands and uprights are outside in “Piano Avenue” and “Grand Piano Way.”
• Perhaps a better piano could be had by using the Yamaha action in a Kawai piano!

Why I chose the Sauter Omega

All the high-end pianos are very good, when prepped properly. Although each make has its own signature voice, one could conceivably be happy with any of them, all things being equal. However I took into consideration two very important factors. The first was access to a good piano tech. The second was overall perceived value for money.

Pianos are very personal things, and you really do need to have access to a technician who is able to bring out the best in your instrument. This is true for all pianos, but especially true of high-end pianos. I believe that the money one pays for the instrument must also guarantee the availability of a first-rate tech who can not only keep the mechanics in regulation, but who can also voice and tune the piano to your requirements. The more one pays for an instrument the stronger that guarantee should be. Only two dealers gave me the feeling that my piano would be well looked after – Emmanuel & Sons (for Fazioli and Estonia), and Raffles Piano (for Sauter).

When I played on the Fazioli F183 and F212 I was thrilled with the buttery smooth action, but the signature Fazioli voice was too clinical for me. I went back again for a second time, and decided that the Fazioli action was actually too smooth. I found it very hard to control even after spending close to an hour trying to get used to the action. Maybe it was because my technique was inadequate.

The Estonia L190 was also interesting initially. But I eventually felt that the dynamic range was a tad limited and that the voice too complex for my tastes.

There was also a five-year-old Schimmel 189T in the E&S showroom. Beautiful fit and finish. But the bottom one third and top one third of the keyboard weren’t as strong as the central one third. Quite disappointing.

That left only the Sauter Omega. I had briefly considered getting a Delta 185. But if I could stretch enough for it I would be getting a truly superior piano that many knowledgeable people consider to be without peer among all the high-end pianos. The build quality is impeccable, with an almost fanatical attention to detail. The voice is clear, but with a rich timbre that changes across the very wide and very controllable dynamic range. And the clincher of course was that there would be Alvin around to help take care of the piano.

There were of course the ringing endorsements from PW members, both owners and dealers. But the one endorsement that to me was the most significant was from a high-end piano designer and manufacturer with no vested interests in recommending the Omega or not. It was from Ron Overs in Sydney. His comment is here, in a PW thread about alternatives to the Steinway B. He said:

“One model which chopin952 omitted to mention, and which is very much worthy of consideration is the Sauter Omega. While it is a slightly longer piano than the B, it is also a much more modern design with a better string scale (the B breaks at E20/F21 while the Omega breaks at G23/G#24 – the past thirty years has seen quite some design progress with some makers). The tone will be a lot more even across the bass treble break and it will hold tune better with changes in temperature and humidity, due the lower deviation on the percentage of breaking strain across the compass of the instrument.”

And also here:

“I’d recommend that you try the Sauter Omega before you finally make a choice.
EJ Sauter has taken some good images of his Sauter Omega, and it clearly is a very well made instrument. EJ Sauter’s images of his Omega can be found at;
http://www.sauter-pianos.com/Pictures-Pianos.htm

“With a 23 note bass, this piano has a good contemporary scale. Various other manufacturers continue to build 7 foot class instruments with 20 and 19 note basses, but they are old world scales, and suffer from inferior tuning stability and a lack of imedance and inharmonicity balance across the break, when compared to the latest generation of 7 foot scales. So I’d strongly recommend that you have a good look at the Omega.

“I haven’t seen the latest versions of Grotrian’s 7 foot instrument, so I am unable to comment on them, but they received some good reports on various internet forums following the recent NAMM show. But again, I’d start by looking at the cross over point. Any 7 foot instrument with less than 23 bass notes would be off my list.”

It is done!

On Sunday 9th September 2007 I rang Alvin and told him that I will be placing an order for an Omega. Extracted below are parts of my post to the PW Piano forum on 11th September 2007:

“It’s really unnerving to buy such an expensive piano sight unseen (sound unheard?). However, strong endorsements from knowledgeable PW members, via posts and PMs, gave me confidence that I would not be disappointed.

“My Omega will be a custom job in terms of finish and voicing. The piano will be mostly polished black, but Alvin and I are looking at options for different finishes for the plate, fallboard, cheek blocks, underlid, and inner rim. (Would it be too over-the-top to have my name inlaid on one of the cheekblocks?)

“Delivery is slated for April 2008, so its going to be a long nine-month wait. At least that will give me time to re-organize my flat to make space for the new baby (it will be a boy, by the way). Please don’t ask me how on earth I managed to swing an April delivery when production until July 2008 has been spoken for.”

If not now then when?

After the health scare I decided then that I would really try to see if I could swing the purchase of a high-end grand piano. I was certain that I would have to go more in debt to fund it. It is not financially prudent, but maybe I should fulfill my dream now, while I can still play (and hear). Life is short, and I’d like it to be as fulfilling and meaningful as possible.

I asked Alvin for the price of an Omega. I got the number after a few days. An attractive discount had been given, but the nett price was still an enormous number. The only things I had ever paid more for were my flat and my car!

Alvin had one request, that I allow him to bring prospective Omega buyers to my home to play on the piano. He got halfway through asking the question, but I guessed what was coming, and said ‘yes’ before he finished the sentence. I had already decided that I’d offer that to Alvin should I decide to buy the piano.

After some financial juggling it looked like I might just be able to swing the purchase of an Omega.

What are you doing for the rest of your life?

On 3rd September 2007 I finally went to do my long-overdue post-40 health screening. It was with my classmate from school, Cheong Wei Kuen, now a gastro-enterologist in private practice at Mt Elizabeth Medical Centre. I arrived at 10h00 for the initial consultation and to have my blood drawn for the battery of tests. I checked in to a ward to prep for and then have the gastro- and endoscopy done.

The next morning Wei Kuen told me that my ’scopes were clear, and most of my blood tests were fine. The only concern were very high cholesterol levels. I checked out of the ward and went straight to see a cardiologist, Dr Tan. I was put on a treadmill for an ECG. Halfway through the test the cardiac technician asked me if I was feeling any discomfort. No, I said. She repeated the question several times, and then asked Dr Tan to come in. He took one look at the ECG trace and terminated the test. The trace was showing an S-T inversion, indicative of a blockage of the right anterior artery. He scheduled me for a heart MRI scan that very afternoon.

To my great relief the MRI scan showed that there was no blockage in the artery. There was also no sign of calcification of the heart muscle. The only visible trace of anything was some low density plaque in another artery. It wasn’t significant. So, the S-T depression was a false positive. Later that evening I found out that Dad had it too, and it was therefore likely to be genetic. That was a relief!

What about the high cholesterol levels? Diet and exercise could possibly bring it down by about 10%, which would leave it still too high. So I will have to go on a life-time course of statins. Of course, the diet and exercise would still have to be done.

In between the treadmill ECG and the heart MRI scan I also decided to have my hearing evaluated. This was because my tinnitus had gotten louder and I was concerned that my hearing loss had worsened. I was right – my hearing beyond about 8 kHz was shot.

Then it hit me. For the past 11 years or so, after leaving my teaching post at the National University of Singapore, I had spent so much time working at my job that I had neglected my personal life and health.

On the PW Adult Beginner Forum, loveschopintoomuch wrote about why so many people in their middle-age either start or return to the piano:

It tends to come as one gets older. As we age, we realize what our priorities should be. Naturally, famly and friends come first. (I guess you have to throw in “job” somewhere only because it allows us to provide for our families.)

The happiness that we once thought material things would provide now just leave us cold. This is the time when we feel that void within that begs to be fulfilled. A new car or that big screen TV just doesn’t do it anymore.

Now we know that happiness comes from within. And to express ourselves as we believe we are is what we strive for. That’s why so many older people take up hobbies (painting, etc.). And returning to the piano for many of us is the perfect outlet. Also we really “hear” the beauty in music now (I’m typing this listening to Beethoven’s Moonlight).

Please realize that I am speaking in general terms, for I know there are many “younger” people who already possess this “wisdom.” And I applaud them with all my heart and wish them well, for learning to play the piano is (IMO) the most difficult and frustrating task a person can do. Oh, we oldsters are also more obsinate (and patient…usually) and that’s why we don’t give up as easily as we did when we were younger.

The little voice whispers again

By about June 2007, some 6 months after the K-8 arrived, I had made slow but steady progress in regaining my keyboard technique. I had even started to play scales again, and the book of Chopin waltzes was now making an appearance. I’d even started to ‘get’ Beethoven after watching, on a flight, a very enlightening masterclass that Daniel Barenboim gave to Jonathan Biss (playing the third movement of Op. 109).

I had also learnt a lot more about all aspects of the piano, from its construction, to its regulation, its tuning, tone, and touch. One Friday afternoon I happened to be in Robert Piano’s Millenia Walk showroom browsing the music scores they had for sale. Out of curiosity I asked to play one of the Shigeru Kawai grand pianos on the floor. I recall that it was an SK-6. Hmmm, interesting! But the price was way above anything I thought I could afford.

Then I remembered how Wzkit on PW wrote in such glowing terms about his Sauter Delta 185, and about Alvin Wee, the Sauter dealer in Singapore. I also remembered how Robert Chiu and some of his sales staff had bad-mouthed Alvin. Sounded like Sauter might be something worth checking out. I immediately got Alvin’s shop number from Directory Assistance and rang. He was going to be in shortly, so I scooted over. Very nice chap. Seemed to be very knowledgeable about pianos. And of course he had to be because it turned out that he was also a piano technician and had apprenticed in the Sauter factory.

He had a Sauter Alpha 160 in the shop, and I played on that for a short while. I was a little puzzled about its seeming lack of tone and projection. And then I realised why – the pianist’s bench is not the best place at which to be listening to a piano. I discovered this fact when Alvin played on the Alpha while I was standing away from it. Absolutely sensational!

From then on I started to visit various dealers in Singapore to play on all the high-end grands that I could find. The main reason was to educate myself more about the differences between the high-end pianos and the rest. In Robert Piano’s Millenia Walk showroom I played more on Shigeru Kawai’s of different sizes (SK-5, SK-6, SK-7) and on Hamburg Steinways (Model A; the B had been sold). I tried Yamaha grands (C3, C5, C6, C7, S4) in Yamaha’s Plaza Singapore showroom. I experienced Estonia (L190), Fazioli (F183, F212) and Schimmel (189T) at Emmanuel & Sons, and Brodmann (BG187) at Pianoman. Then there was Bluthner Model 6 in Robert Piano’s Centrepoint showroom.

I told myself that I had no intention to buy a high-end grand because I simply couldn’t afford it. They ranged in price from about S$50,000 to S$180,000! And yet, I started to subconsciously harbour the thought that if I juggled my finances properly I might just be able to fulfill a lifetime dream.

Out of curiosity in early August I asked Alvin for the price of an Omega. He said that he had a personal policy of giving a deep discount on the first of every model he sold after regaining the Sauter dealership. If I bought an Omega these discounts would apply. But how deep they would be he couldn’t say for sure until after he had a discussion with Ulrich Sauter. He’d check and get back to me.

I got the number after a few days. Under S$100,000, but still an enormous number. The only things I had ever paid more for were my flat and my car! Oh, well. I’ll just have to buy more lottery tickets, or rob a bank!

The K-8 stutters, and is replaced by a new one

Around about June 2007, I started to have problems with the K-8’s action. A couple of notes here and there started to double-strike when played ppp. After some research I figured that maybe the let-off distance was too close. By July the problem had gotten worse to the extent that many notes in the treble were double-striking at ppp, and a few in the tenor section as well. A check via a post on Piano World told me that the the let-off distance of about 1mm I was seeing in the K-8 was within spec.

I thought I’d try increasing the let-off a little to see if that had any effect, so I bought a regulating kit online. Sure enough, setting the let-off distance to about 4mm resolved the double-strike problem. But the piano’s regulation was now out of spec. That couldn’t be right! For the next three months I got Robert Piano to send out three different tech four times, each time they would set the let-off to spec, but then be unable to stop the double-strikes. Michael Thien, Robert Piano’s general manager, came along on the final visit with Eddie Low (resident piano tech at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music). All were completely baffled by the problem.

Michael decided that RP should replace the K-8 with a new one. I selected one of two units prepared for me to test in the Parkway Parade showroom. It was delivered on 9th October 2007.

Where should the piano go?

When the K-8 arrived I told the piano movers to put it at my chosen location, where the piano is at right angles to the wall. This was because I had some other stuff in the vicinity that precluded the siting of the piano with its back to the wall.

The stuff was eventually cleared away and the wall was freed up. I got some friends to help me put some Magiglide furniture glides under the K-8’s casters, after which I could move the piano around relatively easily by myself. And so I pushed the piano up against the wall.

Oof! The sound was intolerable. It was too in-your-face, too loud, and tonally unbalanced. Are upright pianos really designed to be backed up against a wall? I experimented with different back-to-wall distances and different angles but could never find a satisfactory location. The alternative was to put some sound absorbers between the back of the piano and the wall, but that would have been too ugly. (A popular trick used in many Singapore homes is to put a thin foam mattress behind the piano, but that would have been really ugly.)

After a couple of months I moved the piano back to its original location, perpendicular to the wall, with the back facing into part of the living room.

Here are a couple of pictures of the K-8 at its final location.

Where are my hands?

The last piece that I played decently just before abandoning the piano was the first movement of Beethoven’s piano sonata Op. 81a, ‘Les Adieux’. I’d even won the intermediate section of the piano competition that was part of the local Eisteddford in the Australian city where I was living at the time. I didn’t need anybody to tell me that the road back to being able to play this again would be long and hard.

I bought Hanon, and started work on the first five exercises. And that’s pretty much what I played for the first two months, with the occasional dabble with Op. 81a, and some other miscellaneous simple pieces. Well, they would have been simple if I still had my ‘hands’. My fingers and forearms had become weak, I couldn’t stretch comfortably beyond an octave, and I’d lost my mental keyboard map.

Slowly, slowly. Build up strength, even tone, even rhythm. Surprisingly, I found that the business travel was helpful. Being away from the keyboard for a few days after a week or so of practice allowed my muscle memory to improve and my muscle fatigue to dissipate. I would come back from a trip, warm up a little, and find that there’d be some improvement. Sometimes more, sometimes less. But there was always improvement. Very encouraging. And I was able to play more and more of Op. 81a’s first movement.

The spark re-ignites

I do a lot of business travel for my job, and use the airlines like a very expensive bus service. Back in the middle of 2006 I was going through a particularly heavy two or three months of travel and was feeling frustrated and burned out. I was even thinking of quitting and going back to teaching, willing even to take a major hit on my income. What I needed was something that would allow my mind to focus on something else other than work, to recharge a little.

Get a life, whispered a little voice in my mind.

A few years earlier I tried to scratch the musical itch by buying an inexpensive, but surprisingly decent second-hand Suzuki violin from the deputy leader of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. I told her that I wanted to pick up the violin, maybe self-teach from the one of the violin method books (I can’t remember which one now). She started to giggle and wished me luck. After a few weeks I found out why. I might have kept at it, except that my cat got stressed out every time I practiced.

So now I thought that maybe I should consider the piano instead. I had stopped playing the piano about 25 years earlier, due largely to having a musical ambition that was frustrated by an inadequate technique and lack of proper teaching. Although I had dabbled with electronic keyboards, including a pretty decent MIDI rig, it was subconsciously not fulfilling. There was of course the fact that I didn’t have a piano.

Get a piano, whispered the voice.

So I started to look half-heartedly for a second-hand upright. Maybe I might be able to get something really decent for about S$5,000. Frustration quickly set in. Although I had played the piano as a child and teenager, I knew absolutely nothing about how to go about selecting one, let alone a second-one with an unknown ownership history. Besides, my heavy travel schedule meant that I just didn’t have time to spend weekend after weekend doing the rounds of the piano shops and looking through classified ads in the newspaper.

So I started to think that maybe a new piano might be a better proposition. To cut a long story short, I ended up with a Kawai K-8 upright piano. At S$12,600 it was rather more than double my original S$5,000 budget. The piano was was delivered in December 2006.

Foreword

I started this blog today, 20th May 2008, some one-and-a-half years after returning to the piano keyboard in December 2006. There is a lot to catch up on, and I will attempt, as much as I can, to put events in chronological order. Some of the entries were reconstructed from posts that I had made on the Piano World Forums.

I have had a lot of fun finding out about the piano and teaching myself on the keyboard. I gathered a huge amount of material in the process, but it is scattered all over the place. Some of it I forgot I had. So I thought it best to organize the material with the help of a blog, and this is it. I hope that you find at least some of it useful to you. If some of it seems obsessive, well, it is because I have a natural curiosity about things that are of interest to me.

I am not a good pianist and my repertoire is minuscule. I don’t know much about western classical music, and even less about Chinese classical music (though I am Chinese by ethnicity). But I derive tremendous enjoyment and satisfaction from teaching myself how to play the notes and then to play the music embodied in the notes.

As in such endeavours, the frustrations and small triumphs are all part of the experience. The value is in the journey and the musical discovery, not necessarily the destination. If I had known this 27 years ago I am certain I would not have stopped playing this amazing musical instrument.

And lastly, please don’t be upset or surprised that the contents of posts change from time to time. I am doing a ‘core dump’ to the blog so will re-arrange or re-write material as more content is published. Also, since I live in Singapore there are of course posts in which the content is appropriate only to the Singapore context.