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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