Re[2]: Something more Gouldian . . .

["Mark Williamson" <mwilliamson@alston.com>]

     Indeed, you make some excellent points.  On the other hand, 
     one of the things I enjoy about my Roland A-30 is that, 
     going back and forth between that and my piano, the A-30 
     (being only "lightly weighted" or "half weighted") feels 
     (IMHO) more like an 18th century keyboard than the piano.  I 
     love my piano, but being modern its action is just heavier, 
     and more work to play, than anything you would have 
     encountered before 1800.  (But I am having this worked on, 
     and expect some improvement by the year 2010.)  And I 
     believe Mr. Gould had similar feelings about the tendency to 
     make modern pianos so loud and heavy.  The A-30's 76 keys 
     are also similar to what you would have encounted before 
     1800, and you will never run out of keys with Bach or 
     Mozart.
     
     On the other hand, I have played some of the "high end" MIDI 
     controllers, and I don't like them at all.  Those are 
     intentionally made to have a very heavy action, like a grand 
     piano, and yet -- as you say -- you still cannot have the 
     tactile "connectedness" of an acoustic, mechanical 
     instrument.  So you have the worst of both worlds.  The only 
     thing I like about those controllers is that they allow you 
     to access the unlimited tonal spectrum that MIDI makes 
     possible.


______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re: Something more Gouldian . . .
Author:  "John P. Hill" <jphill@frank.mtsu.edu> at internet
Date:    5/9/97 2:02 AM


     
Hey, Mark:
     
I'm not at all sure about how GG might have responded to/interacted 
with MIDI technology.  On the one hand, the easy access to *many* 
different sounds and tonal colors would probably have attracted him. 
He loved SWITCHED ON BACH, for example, and enthused about the MOOG 
synthesizer's timbral and expressive capabilities in the realization 
of Bach.  That was almost 30 yrs. ago!
     
On the other hand, he seemed to be very wired into the specific 
*tactile* sense that one gets from moving a key, which controls a 
hammer, that hits a string and then flies back in a very predictable 
way to generate a piano ADSR.
     
As a keyboardist, I'm *nowhere* near GG's level, but I find even 
very good MIDI controllers sort of a drag to play.  The weighting
and ballistics are never quite right and the lack of a direct mechanical 
sensation with the tone-producing mechanism is always a bit off-putting. 
One can certainly *adjust* (kind of like playing Clavinet, Rhodes, 
Wurlitzer and a PF80 all in one session), but there's just nothing
like the feeling of *connectedness* that one gets from interacting 
directly with a nice, responsive Steinway D.  One of the things GG hated 
most about touring, after all, was having to deal with a wide variety of 
awful pianos;  he said that in some cases, the only way he could get 
through a particular concert was to completely *ignore* the instrument 
he was having to play.  So, the tactile thing seems to have been pretty 
important to him.
     
Still, it's hard to say.  Oscar Peterson liked the Synclavier enough 
to own one.  And I recently saw a VH1 special on THE BAND that showed 
keyboard virtuoso Garth Hudson in his home studio playing a MIDI 
controller that was firing a very tired-sounding tine piano-ish patch. 
Yeesh...time to spin that old live version of THE GENETIC METHOD from 
ROCK OF AGES...
     
greetings to the collective......maybe that should have been RACH of AGES?
     
jh
     
     
On Thu, 8 May 1997, Mark Williamson wrote:
     
> 
>      So we have finally reached a consensus to talk about things 
>      more Gouldian (I have tried to be as neutral as possible on 
>      this; IMHO you're *all* wonderful).  What do you think about 
>      playing *certain* Goldberg Variations on the piano?  That 
>      is, the ones marked "two claviers," not "1 clavier" or "1 or 
>      2 claviers?"  Of the ones marked "two claviers," there are 
>      one or two that come off fine on a single keyboard, but most 
>      of them are about ten times as difficult on one keyboard as 
>      they are on two, because of the fingering complications.
>      
>      Now, admittedly, Mr. Gould pulls it off beautifully.  And I 
>      suppose for a player of his ability, there is no 
>      philosophical question presented at all.  But for mortal 
>      players, is it worth all the time it takes to work these 
>      things out solely in order to master a difficulty that Mr. 
>      Bach never intended?  I mean, for all the talk about Bach 
>      not being an "idiomatic" composer, he really does try to 
>      think about the player and what the everyday player is 
>      capable of.
>      
>      If one does not have ready access to a two-keyboard organ or 
>      harpsichord, one solution is to buy a couple of Roland A-30s 
>      (a *bargain* at $630 a pop) and wire them into your MIDI 
>      system . . .  I possess one of these beauties already and am 
>      tempted to buy another just for this purpose.  I have 
>      previously posted my opinions speculating that Mr. Gould 
>      would by this time be a MIDI fanatic if he were still alive. 
>      
>      Warm, fuzzy feelings to all of you. 
>      
>      Mark
> 
> 
>