Study confirms that pianists can shape piano timbre through touch
neurosciencenews.com
neurosciencenews.com
I'm a trained pianist myself and I have a PhD in science. The "timbre" is relative to the speed a key is pressed and the position of three pedals of a grand piano. But this insight is trivial and doesn't require a "scientific study".
The fundamental understanding of piano mechanics is well-known: once the hammer escapes from the action mechanism (just before striking the string), the final hammer velocity is the only physical parameter that determines the string vibration and resulting tone. This is known as the "single variable hypothesis" and has been supported by acoustic physics research. The final hammer velocity is thus the only physical parameter controlling the intensity and the sound of an isolated piano tone, independent of the intrinsic acceleration pattern of the key.
The study's claim about "acceleration at escapement" is particularly problematic from a physics standpoint, since escapement is precisely the moment when the hammer detaches from the key mechanism and begins free flight to the string. What matters after escapement is the hammer's velocity during that free flight, not how it got there. The study does not clearly explain the acoustic mechanism by which different key accelerations would produce different string vibrations if final hammer velocity is controlled.
That's not to say us pianists have other tricks up our sleeves though. Staccato, slightly delayed playing, damper pedal (which is not just binary but continuous), slower release of key (because you can slowly apply the damper giving it a slight ringing effect), tempo changes, and other techniques get you quite a broad range of feeling. It doesn't however mean that timbre is orthogonal to volume--they are coupled by velocity.
Also, this post doesn't go into methods, so I worry about lack of ABX testing, whether it's a single note or a piece, whether they could see the pianist, etc. Perhaps they addressed that in the paper that they'll publish...
Edit: another thought: why is this even using subjective listeners? You can just measure velocity and run an FFT to see whether they can make a timbre separate from volume and velocity.
isn't this the case for many studies in the past decade? just confirming what we've known all along
This can be said about a lot of individual studies, but it leads to missing the wood for the trees. We need seemingly trivial studies because they accumulate towards a greater understanding of our world and ourselves.
Also you can’t have the big interesting surprise results unless you are testing something where the answer seems obvious. This study seems fine.
1. Subtle movements of the damper, which is linearly linked to the key. You can hear this interference with the string if you get the string loudly and don't completely release the key/pedal.
2. Some second-order effects that alter the post-escapement flight of the hammer. There is still some friction in there, and most piano actions have a lot of wood parts that can flex a little.
I sort of doubt #2 there, honestly.
Another thing you learn as a pianist is that literally nothing matters for the sound except what happens at the point of contact between the hammer (and the damper) and the string. If you want to unravel piano timbre, you should worry about that.
Heh, my piano teacher was pretty convinced that you could control timbre independent of amplitude.
It might just be a translation issue, but the paper gives me the strong impression that the authors do not actually understand timbre.
In my opinion, the insight is this:
> express in piano playing were perceived as intended by both pianists and musically untrained individuals
Obviously pianists have known this for more than a century. But do average listeners hear the same "thing"? It's a question worth asking.
I also don't understand what the breakthrough in this paper is supposed to be. I pointed out to the lead author that velocity-switched multisampling libraries have been available commercially for decades, but didn't receive any response. Seems like a vanity/prestige publication to me, perhaps a way for Sony to advertise the high-speed capabilities of its cameras.
Which is trivial, as you say. (The examples of bright/dark aren't encouragingly subtle.)
The article is very poorly worded and ambiguous.
It's not even clear if they were measuring acceleration at escapement directly at the hammer, or somehow inferring it from the key velocity.
https://soranews24.com/2025/10/04/research-in-japan-proves-t...
What makes this study flawed is that they had pianists performing actual pieces of music. Pianists will change their attack to express different tone qualities, sure. But this has more to do with your muscles being imprecise and not the physics of the hammer itself. You have to use a variety of arm, wrist, and hand movements to get the exact subtleties of volume and note spacing correct.
So the mystery is the opposite: given that a mechanical understanding of the piano suggests that the pianist has no control of note timbre, why does it appear that they are able to adjust note timbre? I have my own speculations about this question, but it is not taken up by the article [1] which in fact only speaks of 'perceived timbre.'
In my own opinion, for the reason already given, there is no magic by which timbre is controlled through pressing the key daintily or pressing it with gusto, given that identical volume is achieved in each case. However the sonic environment is very complex and the pianist has considerable control over it through the dampers' connection to the keyboard, independent from the pedals. The process of listening is also very complex. The sense experience of hearing a staccato note is not the same as the sense experience of hearing the first 0.05 seconds of a note that later turns out to be sustained, so even if in fact the state of the piano is identical between the two cases within those 0.05 seconds I may perceive the timbres as different as my brain integrates the whole staccato note into 'one sound' while the sustained note is received as a continuous tone diminishing in intensity.
Ultimately I find the argument that they do not control timbre convincing, and that the piano (sans pedals) allows for as much control over timbre as the harpsichord does over dynamic. But as it is a very expressive instrument there is an illusion that is present for performance that cannot be reproduced through isolated notes. It's not a bassoon.
In that case, we can say that timbre of a piano can definitely be controlled separately from volume—as in, one can play a note with the same volume (to some precision), but different timbre—if nothing else then because a piano note does not really exist standalone, and the perceived character of a sound from a given key will always depend on what keys were played before and after, how they were played, etc., adding innumerable complex interplays between all the factors involved, even possibly including the movement of the pianist.
Describing this difference as an illusion may be meaningful in some contexts, I suppose, but they would be pretty narrow and it is not too different from classifying consciousness as illusion: perhaps it cannot be quantifiable in certain ways, yet in other (very concrete and important) ways it is more consequential than many things we can quantify.
In other words, so if you compare A then B then C vs. Z then Y then C (where B and Y could even be the same note, just played differently), you can have “the same” C as measured in separation from the rest[0], but which crucially would nevertheless have a different character in listener’s mind—which may well be subjective, but also practically most relevant, and evidently reproducible.
[0] If that is even possible, considering the tails of preceding notes would be audible.
There probably will be. We're used to thinking of key velocity as a constant, but the escapement mechanism is quite complex and isn't truly instantaneous. There's almost certainly some room for dynamic velocity variation in touch as the key goes down.
Likewise with short vs long notes. I suspect there's some unconscious variation in key release dynamics, which will have a subtle effect.
What you're talking about is the more complex musical effect of many keys at once, with complex variations in timing (intentional and unintentional slurring of chords), dynamics (intentionally highlighting some chord notes over others), and all of the resonant interactions between open strings, dampers, and the frame.
That would be much harder to analyse.
Absolutely. Most of my comment is arguing how it would be not really useful, though, because perceived timbre (a.k.a. the kind that matters) is by definition wholly subjective, influenced by surrounding notes, etc.
Leszek Możdżer - Piano ( - Exploris, .. ) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOicB0vcbf8&list=PLMigLc8yVp...
- moreover, he may indeed be touching strings occasionally - with or without using the hammers :)
@4d4m: Yes. - and more.. to have such freedom of expression (and some fun, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRj9I5qiiI4 ).
People knew that you would die if you were kept from breathing, but they didn't really know why that was, nor did they know the exact action by which breathing even occurred postulating that it air entered the body through the skin, or perhaps air somehow was necessary to cool the heart which at the time was theorized to be where all thought occurred.
Study as follows: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25532022/
If all they are saying is that there is a change in timbre tout-court, then it’s trivial. If they’re saying one can change the timbre while keeping the intensity constant, then I have issues.