A Piano Question

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>For the last several years, Yamaha has had a program in which they loan
>C7s and
>DC7s to universities and then sell them as used at the end of the year.
>
>Stanford participated in the program as did some other schools. I'm not
>sure if
>the program is still going, but you might find radio and newspaper ads
>announcing such sales if there is still such a program in your area.>>

I've attended several of such college piano sales (not limited to Yamahas) &
generally found they were selling off a lot of small instruments from lesser
makers, lots of mediocre Kawais, etc, so be sure to get there early to see if
any real instruments are still available.

Scott Fraser

 

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Scott Dorsey wrote:

> So you don't have to hold them all down so long. Otherwise you'd need
> something like thirty fingers to play Satie's Gymnopedie because you'd
> be holding everything down all the time.

My next door neighbor just got a baby grand. I understand it now. The pedal lets the
pianist press a set of notes, and when the pedal is pressed just those notes will
sustain and you can play many other notes on top of it...sort of like a crude tape
recorder with sound on sound.

> With this fancy technology,
> you only need thirty fingers for the Rachmaninoff second.

Fancy indeed...Rachmanifoff. My neighbor was playing some George Winston stuff that
utilizes the pedal for big giant sustained and augmented chords. Tricky to do.


--
Nathan

"Imagine if there were no Hypothetical Situations"

 

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hank alrich wrote:

> So that those notes played will sustain when you move your fingers to
> different keys, yet _all_ the strings won't be singing.

I'm almost embarrassed to say I have never known that. Oh well I do now. My
next door neighbor just got a baby grand and he demonstrated some tunes using
the pedal. Pretty cool stuff.
--
Nathan

"Imagine if there were no Hypothetical Situations"

 

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Nathan West wrote:

> The pedal lets the pianist press a set of notes, and when the pedal is
> pressed just those notes will sustain and you can play many other notes on
> top of it...sort of like a crude tape recorder with sound on sound.

No hiss, no wow, no flutter. <g>

--
ha

 

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On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 20:20:37 +0200, Dave Martin wrote:

> Actually, two piano questions. First, does anyone know why there are
> both two pedal and three pedal Yamaha C7's? I've been told that the 2
> pedal versions are gray market pianos imported from Japan, but that
> doesn't really answer the question of why there are only 2 pedals on the
> Japanese versions. Or why 3 pedals are better than two, other than the
> fact that there's 'one more'.

One pedal is for sustain, lifting all the dampers
One pedal is for soft, shifting the hamers so only 2 out of three strings
are hit.
One pedal is for sostenuto, keeping the dampers lifted of the keys pressed
at the moment the pedal is pressed. This pedal is not allways present.
One pedal, a piano pedal, changing the mechanique, so one can play
softer and still using all three strings. This is a typivcal Fazioli
feature. This 4th pedal is not present very often.
Some, mostly upright piano's, use the middle pedal (locked) to reduce the
sound of the piano: a rehearsal pedal.
--
Chel van Gennip
Visit Serg van Gennip's site http/www.serg.vangennip.com

 

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If memory serves rightly, the middle pedal was added in the late 19th
century to allow pianists to imitate an organ "pedal" (which is why
the mechanism is limited to the lower piano strings). The organist of
course has only to leave his foot on one of the pedals for it to
continue sounding forever. He then noodles away on the manuals. The
middle piano pedal is a substitute that will get you though several
bars without having to hit the key a second time. Transcriptions of
organ works for piano are the most common places to find examples.

 

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hank alrich wrote:

> Nathan West wrote:

>>The pedal lets the pianist press a set of notes, and when the pedal is
>>pressed just those notes will sustain and you can play many other notes on
>>top of it...sort of like a crude tape recorder with sound on sound.

> No hiss, no wow, no flutter. <g>

Yes, but at least when the tape recorder is playing back a single
note, that one note won't be out of tune with itself...

- Logan

 

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Chel van Gennip wrote:
> One pedal, a piano pedal, changing the mechanique, so one can play
> softer and still using all three strings. This is a typivcal Fazioli
> feature. This 4th pedal is not present very often.

Is it really that uncommon? I'd say that most uprights I've played
use that method of reducing the volume rather than shifting the
hammers laterally to strike only two strings. In fact, I have only
seen the shifting hammers feature on grands, but I haven't played
a huge number of pianos. (Or at least I haven't paid close attention
to what the pedals do on all of them.)

- Logan

 

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Logan Shaw wrote:

> Yes, but at least when the tape recorder is playing back a single
> note, that one note won't be out of tune with itself...

Depends on how mis-aligned it is when you are getting print through from the
record head...he he.
--
Nathan

"Imagine if there were no Hypothetical Situations"

 

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On 10 Sep 2004 14:30:43 -0400, kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

>Hardly anyone ever uses the middle pedal. On _most_ pianos with one, the
>middle pedal is a sostenuto, and it sustains only the notes that are held down
>when the pedal is pressed (unlike the right pedal, the damper, which
>sustains all the notes while it's pressed). This requires a whole lot
>of mechanical stuff to implement, and it is used only in very few classical
>works.


This is the "correct" function of the middle pedal. However, if you
include upright pianos as well, I think by FAR the most common
function of a middle pedal is to introduce a mute for low-volume
practice. The pedal, which latches, brings a felt strip between
hammers and strings.

In commercial premises you sometimes see the same mechanism used to
bring up metal strips for a jangle effect.

CubaseFAQ www.laurencepayne.co.uk/CubaseFAQ.htm
"Possibly the world's least impressive web site": George Perfect

 

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On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 13:29:58 GMT, Nathan West <natewest@nc.rr.com>
wrote:

>On my piano's all the notes I hold down sustain naturally....so why would I want a
>pedal to do that?

On your piano's what?

Because you haven't got 88 fingers.

CubaseFAQ www.laurencepayne.co.uk/CubaseFAQ.htm
"Possibly the world's least impressive web site": George Perfect

 

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Laurence Payne wrote:

> Because you haven't got 88 fingers.

A lot of woman have told me I do.
--
Nathan

"Imagine if there were no Hypothetical Situations"

 

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The middle pedal on most grands and a few uprights ( have seen a 1924 Baldwin
and some Mason & Hamlin uprights with this) is called the sostenuto.

It works in the following manner. Play a chord, press the pedal. the chord will
be sustained and none of the other notes being played will sustain unless you
add the use of the right hand sustain pedal.

On other pianos, the middle pedal may only sustain all of the bass notes and
not the treble notes OR it may operate some other device such as the "practice
mode" that I have seen on some Kawai uprights.

The practice mode was enacted by pressing the middle pedal and then sliding the
pedal to the side.
The pedal then stayed down until released and moved it to its normal position.
Richard H. Kuschel
"I canna change the law of physics."-----Scotty

 

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Thanks, Guys - some excellent responses. But one of my original questions
still remains largely a mystery to me, and that's the specifics of the CS
series of Yamaha Grand pianos. Scott Fraser remembers them as being hand
made (unlike the C7) and Scott Dorsey remembers them as not sounding as good
on the east coast as they did in Hawaii (by the way, I agree that the setup
and maintenance is the single most important thing...), but until this
month, I'd never head of them at all.

Might anyone else have some more info about them?


--
Dave Martin
Java Jive Studio
Nashville, TN
www.javajivestudio.com

 

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"MarkSG" <glinskym@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:Ewn0d.9731$yp2.815@newssvr30.news.prodigy.com...
>
> My C7 is a grey market from Japan, and it has 2 pedals.
>
> > If there's a third question, it would have to be, "Where can I get a
> > wonderfully great deal on a wonderfully great piano at least 7 feet
long?"
>
> Buy a grey market piano from Japan.
>
Next question - Yamaha's web pages (and those of several Yamaha dealers)
make a point that the woods are chosen and seasoned specifically for the US
market while the gray market pianos are not. Does this sound kinda like
marketspeech to y'all? After all, Tokyo's temperature and humidity is just
as unpleasant in the summertime as Manhattan's - why would the wood be
treated any different for different markets? (I could come closer to
understanding if they were talking about pianos built for Denver or built
for Florida, but they don't appear to be that specific - just the US versus
Japan...)

--
Dave Martin
Java Jive Studio
Nashville, TN
www.javajivestudio.com

 

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In article <c301d.24161$Wv5.22095@newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net> dmainc@earthlink.net writes:

> Next question - Yamaha's web pages (and those of several Yamaha dealers)
> make a point that the woods are chosen and seasoned specifically for the US
> market while the gray market pianos are not. Does this sound kinda like
> marketspeech to y'all?

It sounds more like "don't buy gray market because . . . . " when they
really mean they don't want their legitimate dealers undercut.

I knew a few people who brought cheap 12-string guitars from Mexico
into the US back in early '60's because they wanted to look like Pete
Seeger and nobody in the US was making a 12-string. They sounded good
for the first few months and then fell apart. But occasionally someone
would hear of a good maker down there, buy a more sensibly priced
guitar from him, bring it into the US and it lasted as long as it
should.

I don't see any reason why Yamaha would use wood that wouldn't hold up
world wide. However, I could see them setting up the piano at the
fractory for the kind of sound that seems to be most popular in that
segment of the world. It might involve different gage strings or felt
of a different hardness - nothing that a local setup job couldn't fix,
but it makes it easier for dealers to sell to the typical customer who
will just put it in the living room and leave it alone for 20 years.


--
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However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

 

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Dave Martin wrote:

> Next question - Yamaha's web pages (and those of several Yamaha dealers)
> make a point that the woods are chosen and seasoned specifically for the US
> market while the gray market pianos are not. Does this sound kinda like
> marketspeech to y'all? After all, Tokyo's temperature and humidity is just
> as unpleasant in the summertime as Manhattan's - why would the wood be
> treated any different for different markets? (I could come closer to
> understanding if they were talking about pianos built for Denver or built
> for Florida, but they don't appear to be that specific - just the US versus
> Japan...)

I wonder if it's just that Yamaha thinks US buyers prefer a type of
voicing that is more easily achieved by using specific woods? Otherwise,
while pianos certainly do change their act when the climate changes, I'd
think many instruments are kept in pretty well regulated environments,
possibly somewhat negating the temp/humidity related shifts. That said,
it'd take some serious isolation here to put my room anywhere near a
room in Austin TXm, for example. I'd need to install lawn sprinklers on
the ceiling.

--
ha

 

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"hank alrich" <walkinay@thegrid.net> wrote in message
news:1gjzzpv.19eypxl11ofti2N%walkinay@thegrid.net...
> I wonder if it's just that Yamaha thinks US buyers prefer a type of
> voicing that is more easily achieved by using specific woods?

I'm sure that's most of the story. The first Yamahas I ever encountered in
the early '70s were voiced really bright in a very strange way. By the '80s
the ones from the rental companies were pretty decent and really consistant
relative to any other brands.

--
Bob Olhsson Audio Mastery, Nashville TN
Mastering, Audio for Picture, Mix Evaluation and Quality Control
Over 40 years making people sound better than they ever imagined!
615.385.8051 http/www.hyperback.com

 

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In article <df8183d5.0409101955.242fddca@posting.google.com>,
eagner2@yahoo.com (Eric Agner) wrote:

> Jay Kadis <jay@ccrma.stanford.edu> wrote
> > For the last several years, Yamaha has had a program in which they loan C7s
> > and
> > DC7s to universities and then sell them as used at the end of the year.
> > Stanford participated in the program as did some other schools. I'm not
> > sure if
> > the program is still going, but you might find radio and newspaper ads
> > announcing such sales if there is still such a program in your area.
> >
> > -Jay
>
> Um. I went to one of these sales several years ago at a conservatory,
> and the smell of "scam" was thick. They were bringing in truckloads of
> upright pianos of all sorts and setting them up in the school
> represented as these "played only by conservatory students" deals. The
> halls were lined with cheap digital pianos for the folks without much
> cash. High pressure sales tactics. The whole thing just stank.


Maybe, but someone got a great DC7 Disklavier we were using and hated to part
with. The Stanford sale is the coming weekend if anyone's interested.

-Jay
--
x------- Jay Kadis ------- x---- Jay's Attic Studio ------x
x Lecturer, Audio Engineer x Dexter Records x
x CCRMA, Stanford University x http/www.offbeats.com/ x
x-------- http/ccrma-www.stanford.edu/~jay/ ----------x

 

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ScotFraser <scotfraser@aol.com> wrote:

> I've attended several of such college piano sales (not limited to Yamahas) &
> generally found they were selling off a lot of small instruments from lesser
> makers, lots of mediocre Kawais, etc, so be sure to get there early to see if
> any real instruments are still available.

These days it seems like there is one of these sales every couple of weeks.
At least, here in Toronto.

Rob R.