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@jon-nyc that is hysterical!!
For whatever reason, Japanese TV is (or used to be) obsessed with Sagrada Família. When we still lived there, it seems like there was always some TV show where a Japanese celebrity would visit Spain and they would do a segment on Sagrada Família and its history etc. It made me want to visit there!
@mary-anna your house sounds wonderful! And the full size piano pic is indeed glorious! 
@RealPlayer how sad!
@mary-anna Whoops, scrolling up I see that you have shared some photos. It looks fabulous! There's not much I like more than a room with a piano and Christmas tree in it! 
(Although you seemed to have shared the thumbnails rather than the full photos)
We decided there was room on the first floor for the big piano, after all, so I was able to keep it instead of trading it for something smaller.
Oh!! This makes me so happy!!! That is a glorious piano, it would have been awful to have to let it go.
(Getting rid of my Yamaha U1 upright when we left Japan was hard enough! 
re postimages... I usually post links to individual photos, so I'm not sure about posting a link to an actually album within Postimages.
But I selfishly hope you're able to figure it out! 
@RealPlayer I love it!! I would absolutely buy a sandwich from that guy!
(Why didn't they insulate under the kitchen floor? Why does the insulation the kitchen wall stop a foot above the floor, causing the water line to the dishwasher to freeze up? We will never know, and we have washed our hands of them. We've got somebody who will fix these things properly.)
Why are there contractors who do stupid things? It's so frustrating. I'm glad you have someone else to deal with it.
How is your piano room? Am I remembering right that you were trying to decide whether or not to keep it in a 2nd floor location??
It's not often you can say
"That piano is way too small for the room"
Good grief, that piano looks comically small, not just in that space but also amongst all those other things...
If you can afford 20+ cars, your own private bowling alley and arcade, at least get yourself a 7-footer. It's embarrassing. it looks like a Schoenhut in there!
Both of these incidents are terrifying to me. I feel like there’s less news attention to ICE’s activities, but the activities themselves continue.
I would compare it to a monument to a King. And that disturbs me. We don't have kings here. $850m for a library that is not even a library, built on public lands as a monument to a living person? We are surely on the wrong track. The glorification of the president's role and office is out of hand. I believe it was meant to be a humble office.
No, there are no books in this building, which is why it's not officially called a library. This adds to what I find disturbing. If it were actually a library, perhaps my thinking would be different.
This whole business of making celebrities of presidents disturbs me.
Agreed. I hadn't thought much about it before your post (I haven't been following the development of the Obama Ctr closely), but I think everything that Trump's doing kind of has a "numbing" effect such that it makes other things (e.g., this center) look normal.
That's not a good trend to participate in.
I still haven't read the full article... but when did that ever stop someone from commenting?
The reason I don't get how it works is that my understanding of the physics of a piano is that the motion of the hammer is out of the pianist's control at the time it hits the string. We can control the speed with which it hits the strings
Well, given all the parts along the line of action from the finger to the string, isn't it possible that different kinds of touch (e.g., my comment above about flat fingers vs finger tips) would create different kinds of movement (vibrations??) in different parts of the action such that when the hammer connected with the string, there would be more factors at play (har) besides just velocity?
I don't have enough control to "certify" that my flat-fingered play and finger-tip were the same velocity, so maybe differences in velocity is actually what caused the sound difference.... But still, I feel like it makes sense, mechanically. You use your body differently, it causes the hammer to "be" different when it strikes the string.
I don't know. I'm out of my depth here if the focus is physics. But it's quite interesting to consider!
What are you playing these days?
Ok I lied (I'm still spamming)... So I can't remember where, but I am certain I have seen this author's name before (Shinichi Furuya), he is connected to Sony and something called the NeuroPiano Institute. (Maybe he was discussed in the BulletProof Musician's blog?)
Ok, looking at his Google Scholar page, I'm guessing that the BulletProof Musician is where I've seen his name.
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=IphDyJcAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra
Such a cool research agenda, thanks for posting this @mary-anna
I don't know how this could possible work, based on what I know about how a piano works.
Or maybe the way to think about is exactly the opposite? A piano works mechanically, by objects moving through space and time and connecting with other objects.
Why wouldn't the sound change if there were changes in how that movement or connection occurred?
Ok, I'll stop spamming your thread!
Ok that article @mary-anna linked was bugging me because it's so short on details, so I googled and found this, maybe this is what the article is referring to?
https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.2425073122
Motor origins of timbre in piano performance
I haven't read it yet, but I'll C&P the abstract and significance summary.
Abstract: Creativity in the arts, such as painting and musical performance, hinges on the ability to produce a wide spectrogram of perceptual experiences. In music, it has long been believed that the timbre of tones can be altered by nuanced movements of performers. Previous studies have described relationships between fundamental elements of auditory perceptions (e.g., loudness, tempo) and physical movements (e.g., force, speed), but it remains unknown whether and how delicate features of perceptual experiences such as tone timbre are manipulated through dexterous motor skills. Here, we bridge this gap using a twofold experimental approach. First, our listening test revealed that the timbral qualities pianists intended to express in piano playing were perceived as intended by both pianists and musically untrained individuals, with pianists showing a greater perceptual sensitivity to different timbres. Second, through a motor behavioral experiment using a noncontact, high-resolution sensing system, we identified five specific movement features in piano touch that were intricately linked to three categories of perceived timbre; weight, clarity, and brightness. Furthermore, the direct manipulation of a specific key movement feature resulted in systematic changes in perceived timbre, providing evidence for a causal relationship. The result indicates that pianists share common motor skills to modify perceived tone timbre by manipulating specific movement features. Our findings underscore the pivotal roles of subtle physical gestures in creating the rich timbral palette of piano tones, advancing our understanding of the intersection between motor control and artistic expression.
Significance: Understanding the mechanisms by which artists create nuanced perceptual experiences, such as tone timbre in music, has remained a longstanding scientific and artistic challenge. While it has been debated whether pianists can manipulate timbre through touch over a century, empirical evidence linking dexterous motor actions to specific timbral qualities has been lacking. Furthermore, appreciation of music performance is largely influenced by visual information, questioning auditory perceptibility of nuanced tones. A listening experiment demonstrated that the timbral qualities pianists intended to express could be reliably perceived by listening tones. Motion analyses identified a set of key movement features that allow pianists to modulate tone timbre. Our findings revealed the critical role of motor dexterity in shaping artistic expression in music performance.
Fascinating!!
