Manta

[Tony Hardie-Bick]

On 09/12/10 00:50, Andrew Tarpinian wrote:
> Yea as soon as you touch it with a good quality instrument behind it it's
> impressive. You want to relate it to playing a keyboard but I really think
> that's not the best way to go. My logic says it's not so different from keys,
> but feeling says it is. It's almost more guitar/stick?! like in a way. This
> thought has more to do with inspiration than necessarily technical result.

I still think the guitar (and in some ways the stick), has an edge over keyboard 
- even over a really good acoustic grand piano - there's something you can do 
with the notes after they have been played, that, even though the note is 
decaying, gives the resulting music such character, such communication, that 
it's completely different.

The beauty of piano-like keyboards is in that austerity, which contrasts with 
the expression that the music can contain, and I think that this austerity 
carries through, because of the way we think about notes and how they're played, 
even if there are countless technical ways of applying changes.

Actually, I think I have it! It's because there's no key travel. That's why this 
thing is a stroke of genius.

When you make a coarse movement like the downward stroke of a key, then suddenly 
switching to the minute movements necessary for aftertouch is counter-intuitive 
- the body has to switch between two fundamentally different modes of effort, 
and this switching can never be instantaneous enough not to interfere with 
musical expression. Get rid of the key travel and the problem vanishes.

Tony (HB)