Tone

 

Much has been said and written about tone quality. Most people would agree you want a beautiful tone at the piano. However, virtually no one can describe what makes a tone beautiful (or not beautiful), much less how to achieve it. As for what makes a tone beautiful, they would probably just say "you'll know it when you hear it" -- not very useful if you are a student of the piano. There are myriad ways that teachers of the piano will tell you how to achieve a beautiful tone, but, as with many other aspects of playing the piano, there is a lot of "hokum" out there, that is, ideas and beliefs that have been passed down from one teacher to the next, and so on, without having been actually investigated to see if those ideas can be substantiated.

Of course, a great deal of the tone quality will be determined by the instrument itself. Its workmanship, materials, overall condition and age will all be very large factors in the tone quality. However, a poor pianist will still not sound beautiful on a magnificent instrument, and a superb pianist can make a mediocre piano sound wonderful. Clearly, there is more to it than just the instrument itself.

On the violin, for example, your left hand is in direct contact with the string, which gives you some control over the sound. However, it is the bow drawing over the string which actually creates the sound, so you are still one step removed, so to speak, from the direct contact with the the string with the right hand, which draws the bow. (The hand on the string creates the vibrato, which is a major element of the sound.)

On the piano, however, neither hand is in direct contact with the strings. Your hands depress the key which triggers the hammer to strike the string. At first glance it might be hard to see how you can have much control at all as to how the hammer hits the string. It is fairly easy to recognize that if the hammer hits the string with more force the sound created will be louder, and softer if it is hit with less force. So the question is, besides dynamics (loud vs. soft), is there any other aspect of tone that we, as pianists, can control? 

Before I answer that, I'd like to tell you what one one my earlier teachers (who had been a famous pianist) told me about tone quality (which was told to him by his teacher, and so on down the line, back many generations). He said that to achieve a beautiful tone, you must depress the key all the way down to the key bed, meaning as far as it can go. It was assumed that going deep into the key translated to a "deep" sound. You can probably see one problem with this right away. How would you achieve the light effervescent sound required by much of Debussy and Ravel? That lighter-than-air, extremely delicate sound (such as in Jeux D'eau by Ravel, which is supposed to evoke the sound of a fountain), could not possibly be achieved by depressing the keys to the key bed. And yet, when well-played, you would certainly say the tone is beautiful.

The other problem with this theory is that the physics, or mechanics, of the piano don't support it. Press a key down slowly and you will feel a point of resistance; it is exactly at that point that the hammer is triggered. You can still depress the key a small amount past that point, but it doesn't do anything at all. So any depression of the key past the point where the hammer is triggered is pure waste. If you were wanting to play lightning fast, for example, you can't afford any waste.

Despite the obvious problems with this idea, it persists among teachers, and students continue to be given this misinformation.

Some people reading this might vehemently disagree with what I am about to say. But here it is: the only thing we pianists have to control the so-called tone are dynamics and timing.

Imagine a long line that you draw with a pen on paper. Now imagine that that line is actually comprised of thousands of tiny dots, or points. (Which it is, according to math!) If any dot on that line is too large, too small, or slightly out of place, you will notice it and the long arc of the line will be disturbed. 

Now imagine that the line is a long phrase in music, and the points are the notes. It is really the line you want to be aware of more than the individual points. This is  the paradox: although the notes make up the phrase, it is really the phrase that you find beautiful. One or two or three notes by themselves are not terribly interesting; you must have the phrase to have music. If, as you are playing a phrase of music, some of your notes are too loud or too soft they may be out of place and the phrase will be disturbed, or broken. When I say too loud or too soft, I mean relative to the notes around it.  Our ear picks up that something has "jumped out" of the line. In other words, the dynamics must be so well-controlled, whether the overall phrase is loud, soft, and moving between loud and soft, that nothing is out of place.

The other way a note (or notes) will be heard to be out of place is if they are out of rhythm, even if only by a fraction of a second. (It's amazing, but true, that our ears can hear this, especially if you are a trained musician.) I'm not speaking here of learning the rhythm incorrectly, but rather of a faulty technique which causes some notes to be a fraction "ahead" or "behind" of where they should fall on the line, again, relative to the notes around them. This is often the result of a technique based solely on fingers. The arm is necessary to create the long line of a phrase.  Whether the particular passage is fast, slow, speeding up or slowing down, timing must be exquisite if the music is to sound beautiful.

This is where masterful technique comes in to play -- creating phrase after phrase each of which has a "long line," with nothing jumping out to disrupt it. The phrase is like a wave which propels you forward in the music.

In summary, when you hear someone play and think they have created a beautiful tone, in fact what you are hearing is their beautiful phrasing.