Hi

I was reading about a thing called Sympathetic Vibration, has any one heard of this ?

The idea is that on a piano if you press and hold down a key without it sounding and while holding it down strike the same key an octave below it with a really hard staccato strike the full soundboard will resonate and produce a new sound which is a mixture of both notes and the harmonics from the soundboard.

I have tried it but can't get it to work, I have a straight strung upright piano, I'm not shure if it only works on over-strung or grands.

I would love to know if this works because I'm shure it could be used to great affect in playing some tunes.

If anyone has tried this and can get it to work can you tell me how to do it?

Try it the other way round... silently hold the lower note.

This effect is most evident when using the sustaining pedal. Listen to the difference between the sound of a note or chord played with and without pedal. With pedal it is a much warmer sound due to the harmonics of higher notes sounding as well as the noted of the chord. This is a valid reason for using pedal even if it is not required for purposes of obtaining a legato.

The one time I needed to use harmonics on piano, I had to silently put down as many black notes as I could with my left fore-arm from Bb below middle C downwards, and then play accented chords with my right hand.

It worked pretty well on my upright, if you take off any books you have on top of the piano and open the lid you can hear the harmonics a bit better.

I think its lower notes that have to be compressed to create higher harmonics, and the compound octaves and compound fifths above any notes you compress with resonant naturally whereas any other notes will only sound while you're playing them. I'm not an expert though and I only know this through having a go myself.

You shouldn't be any less able to hear harmonics on an upright piano assuming you're silently compressing and playing the right notes at the right time!

good luck!

honrplayer xx

QUOTE (johnny1 @ Apr 19 2005, 03:17 PM)

Hi I was reading about a thing called Sympathetic Vibration, has any one heard of this ? The idea is that on a piano if you press and hold down a key without it sounding and while holding it down strike the same key an octave below it with a really hard staccato strike the full soundboard will resonate and produce a new sound which is a mixture of both notes and the harmonics from the soundboard. I have tried it but can't get it to work, I have a straight strung upright piano, I'm not shure if it only works on over-strung or grands. I would love to know if this works because I'm shure it could be used to great affect in playing some tunes. If anyone has tried this and can get it to work can you tell me how to do it?

I know of two ways to demonstrate this:

1) Open the lid, hold down the sustaining pedal and sing a vowel into the piano, loudly and for two or three seconds. You will hear a similar sound coming back at you, and although the vowel will not be represented precisely, different ones will produce different responses.

2) Hold down some low notes without sounding them, and play a short sharp note in the upper register, chosen from the harmonic series of the lower ones. For instance, you could hold down F, Ab, C and the next F in the bass, and play top C. The undamped strings will vibrate to the pitch of the high note, until you release the key. You need to play the high note FF.

This is indeed something that works best on a large grand, but I just tried it on my son's Yamaha upright, which is with us at present, and got both these effects.

And the downside of having a digital...

Hi

Thanks for all the input.

I have tried doing it the other way holding down bass notes without sounding them and striking high notes with and without the sustain pedal, still didn't work. I can get the soundboard to resonate by hitting the high note hard but I could get it to do that anyway without holding down silent notes, with the notes held there is no real change in tone or pitch, I'll try experimenting more with other notes.

Can anyone suggest any other tricks or tips to change the sound of the piano, I have heard of putting screws and other things between the strings, is this a worth while experiment, what works best between the strings and how far up or down the strings do you put something to get a good sound ?

QUOTE

what works best between the strings and how far up or down the strings do you put something to get a good sound

Using someone ELSE's piano...

This is really only a practical proposition with a grand I suspect - the strings are in the horizontal plane so you position objects under/through them without having to defeat gravity.

On an upright you could put some cloth onto the strings so that the hammers hit the cloth rather than the strings directly - you may already have a "middle" pedal which does this.


I'm not entirely sure what you're expecting to hear - for example if you hold down CEG below middle C and then give a good thump to the CDEFG beneath, you should hear the triad.

QUOTE

I'm not entirely sure what you're expecting to hear - for example if you hold down CEG below middle C and then give a good thump to the CDEFG beneath, you should hear the triad.

As far as I can tell in science the theory of sympathetic vibration is that on a piano if you silently press and hold down say C above middle C and while holding it down strike middle C you should hear the upper C sounding even though you didn't play that note.

There is no suggestion from the theory that it could work on chords or any form of harmony, I can't even get it to work with just C. I'm no expert but in my opinion if you where to play a triad each note would oscillate at different rates and wouldn't make any other notes your silently holding down ring.

As to my other question you answered

Dam........... I didn't think about gravity

Reason I suggest the triad is because it's from a Grade 1 piece from about 1763 (well, back when I did it )

What you do is silently depress CDEFG below middle C with your left hand.
Then, thump CDEFG below those with your right, then BCDEF, then CDEFG
Now, lift fingers 2 and 4 in your left hand (which should've been on d and f) - magically, you'll hear the triad. It's not any special theory - just that because you've played the range of notes below there's a range of harmonics you'll excite.
Anyway, thought you'd like an example that's actually part of a piece!

Gravity huh? What did it ever do for us...

Sympathetic Vibration..

Is this the same concept of whistling and humming using the vocal chords at the same time? Is this how some players are able to play two melodies on one instrument at the same time? I ever saw a clarinetist perform that. Very interesting.

So if it was in a piece, how is silently pressing notes actually notated??

imagine a minim that's a diamond rather than an oval - though of course there was a footnote at the bottom of the page to tell you that a bunch of hollow diamonds means "depress silently and hold".

Ah, I see

QUOTE (kishgia @ Apr 21 2005, 12:59 PM)

Sympathetic Vibration.. Is this the same concept of whistling and humming using the vocal chords at the same time? Is this how some players are able to play two melodies on one instrument at the same time? I ever saw a clarinetist perform that. Very interesting.

No, those are independent operations, in both cases. The main difference between these two is that if you sing through a brass instrument at the same time as you play it normally, and get the two frequencies just right, you are supposed to be able to get the sum and difference tones too, and produce a four part chord. This is exploited by expert horn players as a means of playing the chords in Weber's "Concertino", though it is not certain that that is what Weber meant.

I have never achieved this sort of expertise. I have to wait until my wife is out of earshot before I practise chords.

QUOTE (Fen @ Apr 20 2005, 04:37 PM)

On an upright you could put some cloth onto the strings so that the hammers hit the cloth rather than the strings directly - you may already have a "middle" pedal which does this.

That's what my left pedal does

OR at least it used to, it doesn't work any more

QUOTE (johnny1 @ Apr 19 2005, 03:17 PM)

Hi I was reading about a thing called Sympathetic Vibration, has any one heard of this ? The idea is that on a piano if you press and hold down a key without it sounding and while holding it down strike the same key an octave below it with a really hard staccato strike the full soundboard will resonate and produce a new sound which is a mixture of both notes and the harmonics from the soundboard. I have tried it but can't get it to work, I have a straight strung upright piano, I'm not shure if it only works on over-strung or grands. I would love to know if this works because I'm shure it could be used to great affect in playing some tunes. If anyone has tried this and can get it to work can you tell me how to do it?

On a well-tuned piano...

Silently depress the C above middle C (I will call it C2) and strike middle C. When you let go of Middle C, it will be as if you softly played the C2 that you depressed silently!

I will try to explain. Do we all know that a gap of an octave between two notes means that the upper string(s) are half the length of the lower string(s)? One of the harmonics on the lower string is one octave above - which arises from the component of string vibration that is about its central node.

The other way round now - hold the Middle C down silently and strike C2. Middle C will produce the sound of the higher C - because you have just induced it to vibrate with a node at the centre. i.e. You have two half-strings vibrating the way the note an octave higher did when you struck it.

You can go further. Hold Middle C down silently - now play C2, then a G (up a 5th) the next C, then the next E G and B flat. The low C will now ring richly with the harmonics it has picked up from the other notes.

The reason for this is that when you play the G in the above series, Middle C strings vibrate in one-third string lengths - the same length as the G strings. The strings for the C two octaves above Middle C is obviously one quarter of the length of Middle C.

The above should work on any reasonably tuned piano - in fact experimenting in this way can assist you in determining how good the tuning of a piano is.

The best way to visually appreciate the above is to get alongside a guitarist, or a violinist. They can show you how by lightly depressing a string at spots such as half string, one-third, one-quarter etc, a string can be induced to vibrate and produce harmonic effects. Use of these effects is quite common in music for string instruments.

On the piano, we use the damper pedal to allow ALL strings to vibrate with whatever harmonics they can inherit. As another subscriber has pointed out, this is really the most significant artistic aspect of the pedal.