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Among Pro players using these things for gigging, they really don't........and they will probably continue "as is".

It's not much of a feature, really. The little click you feel when letoff happens isn't a very important thing for playing in my opinion...more of an annoyance, if anything. Evidence that the piano isn't perfectly regulated. Something to be minimized in acoustics if possible.

Like a previous poster, I think the graded weights are a more important in making it like an acoustic. There can be a pretty noticeable apparent difference in key inertia as you go up and down an acoustic. It seems like this difference is greater than it is in even graded digital pianos. I'd much rather Yamaha implement graded weights on their high end stage pianos and Kawai jump on board with Yamaha and Roland implementing a third sensor, which actually affects your playing speed where repetitions are concerned.

Can anyone play the following piece well on an acoustic grand, let alone a digital instrument?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyzzAV9GhHQ

Erm, no... just no. The best grands in the world have this "notch". It's simply a part of the working mechanism.

Certainly true. But that doesn't mean it's a good thing or that manufacturers and technicians do not try and minimize it. In a well regulated and functioning piano it's hardly noticeable.

I would dispute that technicians are actively trying to minimise it. Technicians try to adjust the action to operate as efficiently as it can. The notch is in the design itself, it will always be there. When the action is properly regulated the notch is unobtrusive, but it's untrue to suggest that technicians try specifically to remove the escapement notch. They know it will always be there. Moreover, if a technician actually somehow removed it from a piano, the player would not thank him for it because it is a feature of all grand pianos. You wouldn't want your piano to be different from all the others you play. It's not something to be irritated by or changed, it simply is. Players have accepted it for centuries and they can even use it to guide their soft playing.

This talk about it being so undesirable is your own feelings/theories/opinions masquerading as fact - both about the objectives of piano technicians and also about the way people feel about the escapement feel. I accept that you don't like it or recognise its usefulness, but it's really not a big issue for players. Go and have a look on the Pianist Corner and see how many complaints there are about the piano's action. There aren't any. They just accept that that is how a grand piano functions.

FWIW, I did a bit of research into this, and I mostly agree with Ando, however it's a complex, and somewhat grey, area.

Technicians don't try to remove it, because it's inherent in the design. However, there HAVE been attempts to change the design to reduce the let-off friction, and the most recent one I'm aware of is the Steingraeber "rolling knuckles" - the knuckle on the hammers can actually rotate, so that when the jack is moved sideways from under the knuckle, there is less friction. So, you might think that this proves that it's a bad thing, because a reputable piano manufacturer has come up with this idea to reduce the friction. Unfortunately, it's not that simple - pianists don't necessarily like it, and the rolling knuckles are an option, too.

There is a technique of playing called "playing off the jack", which involves gently pressing down the keys to the let-off point (i.e, where the resistance increases - the "notch"), and then playing forcefully. On a very well regulated piano, this results in extremely softly played notes, even though that final press is done quite hard. Regardless of everything else, this is one technique that would be harder to use if the let-off friction were removed, because the player would not know how far down to press the keys initially, due to the lack of tactile feedback.

Greg.

Very interesting. I guess I still think the graded weights and third sensors are more important. It is my opinion that the let-off jitter is undesirable overall. Playing off the jacks is not in my technique. I can imagine other people who want it, though.

I could but I'd need a bottle and a half of Crown Royal and a few nice lines first .... but after that ...I can play anything (at least I think I can )

And despite all that flowery prose, the lowly P-155 and stately CLP-440 employ virtually identical sound generation (via the DPBSD): the same stretch group count and sizes, the same attack and loop sample lengths (within the margin of error), same audible layer switch point, same passing / failing of key and pedal tests, etc. They in fact, they have the exact same spectral signatures, which means the sample set is from the same recording session and processed in the same way:



Figures 1a & 1b. Spectral pan view of the stretch test, mid notes, normalized to -1dB to increase clarity, Yamaha P-155 above, Yamaha CLP-440 below. Same stretch group locations and sizes, same phase signatures within groups, etc.

So from a sound technology standpoint, I think RGE boils down to "we took a P-155, added note-off-velocity-based release samples, weak key sympathetic resonance, a much higher price tag, and some pretty words in a brochure" and that's it.

And GH3 rather than GH action. Got that magical third sensor.

Very funny!!!

There was some considerable discussion about this on the Pianoteq forum (the originator was a piano tech). He suggested (correctly I believe) that the let-off was an inevitable quirk of the action, and that it would have been eliminated if it had been physically possible.

Glenn

Quite true, but now that it's been there for nearly 200 years, it's not something that is being worked on except a few small inventors here and there who are determined to reinvent the wheel. It's not something that will be accepted because it's so embedded in the tradition of playing now. They should have "fixed" it before it became so accepted.

Good pianists are able to play pppp and sotto voce by pressing the key down from a half-depressed position. The notch may or may not help with this - if you misjudge, the note won't sound. I've heard lots of concert performances (in person or via radio) of classical piano music where the odd note 'disappears' during very soft passages when the pianist miscalculates. Unless you're very familiar with the action of your piano (and most pianists obviously can't use their own pianos for concerts), relying on the 'notch' is risky.

In other words, the 'notch' (like the graded keyweight) isn't a desirable part of the key action, which is not to say that some pianists (don't) make use of this artifact.

Not that I'm a Lady Gaga fan, but in her latest concert in Manchester, England, she was playing on a Roland V-Piano Grand. The concert was broadcast on BBC TV.

I believe she normally plays Steinway, though she used Yamaha earlier in the year in another UK concert. That was before the launch of the Roland V-P Grand........

That's one of the reasons top classical pianists will have an extensive rehearsal on the piano before a concert - just to dial in to the touch and dynamics. Once you make a note of how it responds to various levels of effort, it's not so hard for top players because they have such good control over their own touch. Of course, pianists are always going to miss notes when playing ppp. But I would suggest that they miss even more when the notch isn't there. Regardless of how much some people dislike it here, it does add a predictability to soft playing that isn't there when the notch isn't there. I have an upright piano at home and even though I play on it every day, I still feel like I have less consistent control over the softest dynamics than when I play an unfamiliar grand with let-off.

Here is a little comment from David Stanwood regarding Steingraeber's rolling knuckles, and friction in general: http://mail.ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech/2003-April/131820.html
(Stanwood appears to be a specialist in piano actions, and has is own very precise and scientific methodology for action regulation and design)

As I say - it's a grey area.

Greg.