RE: [F_minor] Re: Zenph 55 G'bergs released! (Brad Lehman)

[Bill Larson <william.larson@yahoo.com>]

paul wiener <pwiener@ms.cc.sunysb.edu> wrote: I think you're overestimating how exact the technical specs have to 
be to reproduce sound. Remember, Gould was in love with technology 
and depended on it, even expected it to save music from live 
performers.  How come he wasn't worried about these issues?  I'm sure 
even Gould himself couldn't have reproduced exactly the performance 
he had recorded.

 There are so many factors which affect tone, and which are limited by the reproducing eqiupment.  As a pianist, my reservations would be that the technology may not be able to successfully resolve the following (for example):

--pedal shadings vs. overlapped notes (and the differences in instrumental resonance that ensue)-- this would be my main reservation, and I'm afraid that tape hiss, room noise, and noise from the performer himself may obscure some delicate shading to the equipment doing the analysis, and confuse it into making a slightly wrong judgement; 

--subtleties in hammer velocity derived from arm weight usage, which can create a more room-filling sound rather than simply a louder sound; 

--melodic voicing, which may be determined by perhaps a weak or an overly-bright characteristic to the piano being recorded upon, or even determined by individual notes on said piano which were not up to spec-- in other words, poorly voiced hammers may cause a pianist to play a melody line slightly louder than usual, to make the sound penetrate more; the analysis equipment would only perceive the volume of the initial hammer attack, not recognizing the performer's deliberate overcompensation; the pianist may not play the melody as loud on a better-voiced instrument, but we get to hear an artificially-and-erroneouly-emphasized melody line on a reproduction instrument with perhaps better voicing; 

--playing in a manner which complements the recording space, but doesn't work as well with the reproducing space;

--specific to the 1955 Goldbergs: the fact that the recording qulity was light in the bass region, and the reproducing software would have to have a reverse bass-emphasis curve to complement the roll-off on the original tape machines.

--for recordings using improperly-calibrated noise reduction:  a faster-than-intended decay of the notes may trick the reproducing software into thinking that the key was released slightly to squelch the sound, or that the note was released earlier than it was;

--the general hammer force being the same as the original recording.  For example, if Gould plays in a piano-to forte dynamic range, and the reproducing piano plays the same material in a mezzo-forte to fortissimo range, there will be some brightness and force to the rendition which were not present in the original;

--how can the piano tell exactly when the soft pedal is being applied?  My feedback from a given instrument may cause me to sometimes depress it the whoule way, or just partway.  There's even so much more garadation to the use of the sustain pedal, which as I said before, can be mistaken for finger-overlapping of tones.

--bad original edits, which can cause errors is volume, sudden shifts in voicing, etc.

None of this may matter (or be detectable) to 99% of listeners, but it matters to me, and to many of you.  We can say, "oh, that sounds so much like the original", but if we hear the original first, lack of subtlety can be apparent.  Unfortunately, some people will hear only the reproductions, and never know exactly what the pianist was really capable of.

I could go on and on about this, and in fact I want to; I'm being expected uptown in ten minutes to have a beer, so goodbye for now.


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