Unit 13 – Research

How pianos work

Pianos are instruments that produce an amazing sound and take a lot of time and dedication to master. I have previously played piano and been rather passionate about it however I have only ever learned how to play songs on them and I’ve never put time into seeing how they work, and after learning how they work I admire pianos even more.

The way a grand piano works is slightly different to an upright piano however they follow a very similar design. The key of the piano is pressed which then tilts a kind of see saw mechanism this then creates a domino effect with all the components ending up with the hammer being pushed upwards hitting the strings of the piano therefore, creating the sound. At the end of the see saw mechanism there is a wooden block which gets pushed up at the same time as the hammer, this block lifts up a dampener that is sitting on top of the strings allowing the sound to be heard. This is why when someone presses a note it sounds rather short because the dampener is lifting off the strings allowing them to vibrate then coming back down stopping them, when you hold a key down it holds the dampener above the strings making the sound fade out slowly as the vibrations slowly decay. You can also lift the dampeners using the damper pedal but that tends to be used when multiple keys need to be held out longer. Pianos have 3 pedals, the left one is known as the ‘soft pedal’ this shifts the action slightly to the right so that the hammers only strike 2 of the strings rather than all 3; this is used when the pianist wants a softer sound from that note. The middle pedal known as the ‘sostenuto pedal’ is used for sustaining notes, this pedal would be used if a pianist wanted to keep those notes going whilst playing other notes. The right pedal known as the ‘damper pedal’ lifts up the dampeners to allow the strings to continue to vibrate.

How pianos are made

Pianos are made over a large amount of time by some extremely skilled individuals. The process of creating a piano is very time consuming and requires a lot of patience and skill, each step of creating a piano has its own intricacies and requires someone who truly knows what they’re doing. Most pianos are very similar when it comes to making them however some manufacturers do things differently.

Steinway is one of, if not the most popular and best piano manufacturer. It takes up to a year for a Steinway piano to be made, and 2 years before that for the wood to prepped and ready for use. Steinway begin their process of creating pianos by getting shipped lumber which is then checked carefully to make sure that all of the wood is top quality wood. The lumber is then stored and air dried for 1 year, and then kiln dried for 1 year to remove any tendencies for warping and cracking. After the wood has been through this process the pianos construction begins. It starts off with the process of getting the shape of the rim. The sheets of wood are laminated and glued together in flat grained sets; gluing them together this way gives a supposed 47% increase to the vibrations characteristics. After the sets have been glued together they are moved to a press and are moulded into shape. Steinway use a certain type of maple wood and bend the shape of the rim in one big process. Usually the rim of a piano is crafter from two separate rims, an inner rim and an outer rim however, Steinway merge the two together and only bend one, by combining both of the rims together Steinway believe that doing so ensures that the rim will be very durable and acoustically superior. After 24 hours each rim is then moved from their presses into a conditioning room where it is stored for months. Next comes the soundboard. When creating a soundboard someone is given the job of hand picking from top tier spruce wood, which pieces they think are best to use. This spruce wood is really good for using as a soundboard as the wood has very close grains which allow energy to travel much more efficiently down the soundboard overall, producing a much greater sound. Steinway use a unique design when it comes to their soundboards and is something they call the ‘Diaphragmatic design’. This unique shape they give to their soundboard consists of the middle of the soundboard being the thickest point at around 8-9mm and going out from the middle it just gets thinner until it reaches the edge at around 5-6mm. This reduces the amount of energy needed for the soundboard to vibrate. The bridge is glued to the top of the soundboard; the bridge is made similarly to the rim and transmits the vibrations from the strings to soundboard. The iron plate then comes into play; the soundboard and iron plate are now assembled inside of the belly of the piano by the ‘bellyman’. The bellymans job is to make sure that soundboard is correctly positioned and the bridge is placed at the correct height so that the strings will have the correct downward pressure on the bridge. Stringing is the next step which is mainly done by hand but with a bit of help from technology it makes the process a bit faster. Strings for each key are attached to the tuning pins on the bridge and the pin block, each of the strings are stopped by the duplex at the same point to make sure that each string is equal in tone and gives off that unique sound of Steinway. The action is mounted onto a tubular metallic action frame which is another exclusive Steinway feature; it’s used for quick and easy installation of the action into the keybed. The felt hammers and the keyframes are all carefully put together and fitted into the action, this process is vital and the key hammers must be placed in their correct position so that they can properly strike the strings. The keys depths are then tested, this is how far a key is pressed down before the strings are hit, a little foam piece is put under each key to cushion the impact of pressing a key. Underneath the middle point of the seesaw mechanism soft foam-like bearings are put onto each pin, they are shaped so that when a key is depressed, It quickly moves back to its playing position, this is another distinct Steinway feature known as the ‘Steinway accelerated action’. After the action is complete and fitted properly the piano is moved into a sound proof room and is tested a large amount of times by a rubber fingered machine to ‘break in’ the now completed keyboard. Nearing the end of a pianos construction comes a crucial step known as voicing. Each hammer is pierced by a three needle device aimed to adjust their resiliency; each hammer is then put back and is tested again and again until all of the keys are of the correct tone. Painting the piano is the final step in the process, after the piano is painted it is left to dry and then prepped ready to be sold. This shows why pianos are very expensive, because so much time and effort goes into making these amazing instruments.

Daniel Oliver

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Unit 13 – Research

Famous Pianists

Chopin

Frederic Chopin was born in Poland in 1810. Chopin’s mother introduced him to music and by the age of six he was already playing piano at a high level. Realising his talent his parents decided to get a professional musician to give him lessons in which he soon surpassed his teacher’s level in both skill and imagination. By 1818 at the age of 8 he was already writing and performing his own compositions, by the time of 1826 he had already composed several piano pieces in different styles. Chopin’s parents who sensed that he needed a broader array of music experience decided to send him to Vienna where he would lead on to make his debut as a great musician. After his debut Chopin began touring in many different countries spreading his talent all across the globe inspiring many until finally settling down in Paris in 1832. Whilst in Paris he had made quite a few connections especially with other famous musicians such as Franz Liszt but he struggled to perform in Paris as his style didn’t always please the audience, this was most likely because the audience had already had heard performances of Beethoven and preferred his kind of style rather than Chopin’s. After settling down in 1839 with his love George Sand, began the most productive years of his life, he began to take more time into creating his music which lead to him creating some very successful masterpieces that increased his income by a hefty amount allowing him to live a wealthy lifestyle. Sadly his health and relationship started deteriorating and by 1848, Sand had split off with him as he began his last tour. Whilst touring he struggled to do performances from all the stress going on with his life and the tours exhausting schedule wasn’t helping. Upon returning home to Paris in 1849 he died at the age of 39, most likely from his tuberculosis.

My favourite pieces that Chopin created would be Ballade No.1 Op 23, Etude Op 25 No 5 and Etude Op 25 No 11.

Beethoven

Ludwig Van Beethoven was born in Germany in 1770. In Beethoven’s early years he took an interest in music, his father Johann van Beethoven who was already a fairly talented musician decided to take up the role of being his first tutor in hopes of creating a new Mozart. Johann however was not the best of tutors to his son as he was rather violent, whenever Ludwig would mess up or play poorly Johann would say that he is a disgrace and an embarrassment to his family; this was mainly due to that fact that Johann was an alcoholic and this made things even worse when Ludwig’s mother died. Johann drunk more and got lazy, meaning that Ludwig from a young age had to support his family money-wise. As Ludwig’s career blew up he started going from country to country taking different music courses and meeting crowds of new people. Beethoven had a very vast social life, knowing many musicians and having many friends. After Beethoven created a few symphonies in 1801 he told his friends in a letter that he was slowly going deaf and expressed his disgust for how unfair life can be but, this did not stop Beethoven as he continued to strive on creating piece after piece of fantastic music. In 1826 whilst returning from a trip from his brothers place he caught a cold which sadly clashed with all of his other health problems ultimately leading to his death. He passed away in 1827 surrounded by his friends. His funeral truly shows how much of an impact he had on the music industry as an estimated 30,000 people attended his funeral, many of them were musicians.

Personally my favourite pieces that Beethoven ever composed are Kreutzer, Moonlight sonata or Fur Elise.

Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in the year 1756 in Austria, and he is probably one of the most iconic and best composers of all time. From a young age Mozart’s father Leopold a somewhat successful composer and violinist taught him and his sister Nannerl how to play piano and educated them about music. This training from early on allowed Mozart to get a strong grasp and understanding on things like chords, tonality and tempo. Along with Mozart his older sister was also very talented. By the age of 6 Mozart was already capable of playing multiple instruments, from the knowledge he had gathered over the years made it easier for him to learn a multitude of instruments. Leopold was proud of the both of them and wanted to take them around the place showing off their talent and try to get their name known, so he took Mozart now aged 6 and Nannerl now aged 11 to Munich to begin a tour where they would go from country to country, London to Paris, all over the place as these new child prodigies. Whilst touring was where Mozart grew a name for himself and this was also where he met many other famous musicians, including the son of Johann Sebastian Bach. In later years around 1781 after all of his education and training he moved to Vienna where he worked, writing music and playing concerts, this was where he found his wife Constanze. He took a few years off of performing whilst concentrating on his married life but returned quickly to resume his continued growth to fame. Over the years his name grew more and more well known as he created fantastic pieces and explains why he was known as one of the best composers of all time. After his death he left behind a set of great music and also inspired many musicians, including the well known Beethoven. Mozart died in 1791 at the early age of 35 from an unknown cause.

Some of my favourite compositions from Mozart would be Requiem, Allegro and Andante.

Daniel Oliver

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Unit 13 – Research

Sheet music

Sheet music to anyone who doesnt know how to read it is much like a different language, it is just a bunch of weird symbols however, I personally think sheet music is much harder to learn than another language.

Sheet music is made up of a vast amount of symbols each with their own different meaning. Starting off with the basics, the five lines that run horizontally are known as the staff, each of these lines represent a note but not only do the lines represent different notes, the gaps in between the lines also represent notes, so in total the staff represents nine different notes.

Clefs are the large symbols that are at the start of the line and take over most if not all of the lines. Depending on the clef that is shown is dependent on which notes the lines and spaces represent. The treble clef as seen in figure 24 is the large symbol that looks fancy. When a treble clef is used at the beginning of the staff it means that the notes that are going to follow should be played on higher notes. The bass clef as shown in figure 24 being the backwards curl shape with two dots indicate that the notes should be played on the lower notes. This applies if you’re playing a keyboard, and throughout a song the clef can change multiple times. For a treble clef going from the bottom line to the top the notes go, E/G/B/D/F and the gaps in between go F/A/C/E, the rhyme or phrase that they try to get you to remember is “Every Good Boy Does Fine” and “FACE”. For a bass clef going from bottom line to the top the notes go, G/B/D/F/A and for the gaps A/C/E/G, a common phrase for this is “Good Boys Do Fine Always” which is similar to the trebles phrase and then for the gaps it’s “All Cows Eat Grass”.

Notes are usually broken down into three different parts, the head of the note, the stem and the flag. Depending on the position of the notes head is dependent on which note you should play, it will either rest on a line or within the space in between two lines. On the odd occasion you may get notes that are not on the staff and are floating either above or below the staff, when this happens you should either go up the notes if the notes are above the staff or down the notes if it is below. To clarify which notes these ‘floaters’ are a line is sometimes drawn through them, this is to help see which note should be played. The head of the notes are also used to show how long the note should be played for; the way this is usually shown is through three different note heads. Four notes in a row with filled heads indicate four quarter notes for four beats, two notes with heads that aren’t filled indicate two half notes for four beats and one empty note with no stem indicates 1 whole note for four beats. On a keyboard there are white keys and black keys, taking a C/D/E section of the keyboard, C and D are separated by a black key and D and E are separated by a black key. Taking the D key for example, the black key to the left of it shared with C is a D flat and the key to the right shared with the E is a D sharp. This goes for each and every key, the flats being the black key below it and the sharps being the black key above it, flats are indicated by a lowercase looking b, and sharps are shown with a hashtag as shown in figure 26.

The stem is the simple part of the note, the stem is a short line that either goes up or down from the note, the direction doesn’t indicate in any way for you to play the notes differently as it’s there to try and make notes clearer on the staff, this helps the pianist read the notes easier. However there is one rule to which way the lines go, any notes from the middle line upwards must have a downward stem whereas any notes below must have an upward stem, this makes things look a lot neater as the stem doesn’t end up sticking out and goes cleanly through the staff.

The flags tell you how long you should hold down the note for. Flags are used to show how short a note should be, each flag added to a stem indicates half of that notes value, so if I had four quarter notes and added one flag to each of them you would now be playing two notes per beat, and then if I were to add two flags to them then you’d play three notes per beat and so on. You may also do the same thing with beams; these are lines that connect at the tip of the stems and work just like flags, if there is a single beam across four quarter notes you play two notes per beat and if there are two beams across them then you play three per beat and so on. Dots and ties are also things that exist; dots are not as common in lower level sheet music however ties do pop up every now and then as they make things a lot easier to read. If a dot is put after a note then it means that you should play a quarter note after playing the note before it. A tie is used to show how long you should hold the note for, a tie will always branch off of one note and land on another, this means that you hold that note until the note at the end of the tie.

When it comes to reading the music, you need to know the speed at which the song is played at, if you don’t and end up rushing through a rather slow song it isn’t going to sound very good. It is usually indicated at the top of the music sheets in written form. Depending on the tempo of a song is dependent on what song it would be classed as, if it’s a slow song with 50 beats per minute (BPM) then it would be called a Largo, for 70 BMP an Adagio, for 110BPM a Moderato, for 120-160BPM an Allegro and for 180BPM a Presto.

Daniel Oliver

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Unit 13 – Research

Music Eras

Medieval ages 500 to 1400

The music we know and love today around this time was almost unheard of and music was not common at all. Music within the medieval era was mainly church music; it was always vocal and ranged between a certain level of high notes. Music at the time was not transcribed because it isn’t easy to describe music, at the time there was no music language so actually writing down pieces was basically impossible. Songs at the time were called Plainsongs and were simply just different vocal variations for different durations and there were no intricacies, meaning that each song didn’t have its individuality and was rather simple and similar to all the other songs. Most composers around this time were monks and didn’t have their names written down however the two names that have lived to tell their tale are Francesco Landini, Guillame de Machaut.

Renaissance 1400 to 1600

As time went on into the renaissance era music began to have more variation with its high parts and low parts and people began to emphasise certain parts of songs adding a level of power and gave songs a degree of uniqueness. People began to get a grasp of music and started to steer away from the normal type of vocal music that was around, and began to experiment with different kinds of harmonies and levels of scales centring around different levels of tonal values. As it got close to the end of the renaissance era we began to see a beginning of some form of sheet music and also the introduction of instruments. Two composers who would give an idea of what music came from this time would be William Byrd and Josquin des Prez.

Baroque 1600 to 1750

Now reaching a new era of music churches began to lose influence on music and people began to compose music more freely. This was the era where most instruments came into play being in almost all songs and it was the era which set the basis for orchestras, violins, cellos and the harpsichord came around within this era creating a whole new range of sounds for music. Music also began to become a lot more widespread and classical music started to dominate rather than the more traditional types of harmonic music. Along with its increase in popularity it also started to work its way into society and people would start buying instruments and hiring musicians to play for them at parties or at their houses. Two great composers from this era would be Johann Sebastian Bach and Johann Pachelbel.

Classical 1750 to 1820

After the baroque era we began to see an introduction to new genres and types of music, things began to become more diverse and many types of music came from this, concertos, sonatas, symphonies and quartets all came to light each with their own individual structures and way of playing. The seeds or foundations for music were now beginning to be set. Instruments began to be used more and more and instrumental music worked its way to becoming more common than vocal music but music seemingly lost its individuality, there was variation between each piece however they were named rather plainly and not given a name or story, they would be given names like ‘Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major’ or something very straight to the point and not very memorable. Two of the solid foundation composers from this era would be Mozart and Beethoven.

Romantic 1820 to 1900

By this era musicians had become more independent and rather than working for people they began to perform composing their own pieces at certain halls and places as a way of earning money. Many composers at this time were of celebrity status and would perform concerts and tour across Europe in hope of creating a name for themselves and earning a lot of money. This era brought a lot of creativity to music and made music more expressive, having people create music that would tell a story. Even though playing instruments and composing required a lot of skill it wasn’t limited to just a few people and it became quite normal for people to know how to play an instrument, many smaller ordinary people would play their own compositions at their own venues or local bars earning a living that way. A lot of competitiveness came from this era and people seemingly began to compete to see who could create the best and most difficult piece of music, which brought across a lot of emotion in music as performers focused on playing songs with ease and letting their body language show their passion and skill. Two composers from this era who I admire are Frederic Chopin and Franz Liszt.

Modern 1900 to 2000

As time progressed people who embraced previous eras of music started to re-create certain pieces and please those who were still interested in that type of music however, people continued to find new ways of creating music. New genres of music were made, some were awful some were amazing and it started to divide groups down into different likings and tastes. People began to get creative and started to use instruments differently, the structure of music was constantly changing with each genre and overall everything was changing as music grew massive. With the creation of TV and radio the demand for music got higher, with the increase in the wide spread of music everyday more and more people were discovering new types of music and creating new types of music, newer instruments were made and different genres were born. Two genres that were quite popular in this era were rock and jazz.

20 th century

Nower days music is completely part of our society, it is loved by many and there are so many different types of music each catering to different likings and tastes, music has come a long way and I would say has reached its peak. Most music nower days is going electronic which I personally don’t like, it takes away the emotion within songs and certain songs are dependent on their lyrics or video to evoke emotion and create story. With the introduction of YouTube in our modern era music videos are very common and most songs do have one, this does add to the entertainment value sometimes as you can add a narrative or story to a song easier but I feel that certain bands and musicians rely on the music video to much.

Daniel Oliver

Unit 13 – Research

Matching sound to video

Sound Euphonium is an anime that is praised for its performance scenes. Sound Euphonium is an anime about a group of high schoolers in a brass band, in the second season they progress into performing concerts and this is where you can see a lot of time and care has been put into the accuracy in these scenes.

When it comes to syncing up audio to video it proves quite difficult to do, with live action films it is probably a lot easier to do as you don’t have to consider frame rates as much as you do with hand drawn animation. Some companies may do it differently but Kyoto Animation split the production of these scenes into two lines, the Audio line and the Visual line.

The visual line starts with creating the script, this is where the teams get together and have a few meetings to turn the basic idea into a fully fledged script. After the script is completed it immediately splits off into the two production lines, it splits off to the audio line where they now begin to select a song. In the completed script they would have a selection of songs that they think are possible, which then after being forwarded to the audio team, the audio team will then go through each song looking at each song from different points of views considering aspects like, atmosphere and the impact it has on the audience, they do this until they have the final song they want. After they’ve decided on a song the audio line moves onto a step called ordering, this is where they make notes for everything important about the production of this song, this would include things like information on the song, and the band and how they would want the scene to be portrayed. After this is completed they move on to the performance recording stage which they usually go to a university and get students to perform the song for them, they would then set up cameras recording the different hand movements on each instrument, studying each movement to perfection. Once they have gathered all of the movement information they need they move onto Video/Sound Materials stage which is the period of time where they get delivered the audio recordings and videos along with it, these are then sorted through to try and make sure they have the best ones and to make sure that they haven’t missed out any recordings. A reference Time sheet is then created which is a sheet that displays each second of video as 24 frames which is the standard frame rate for anime, this is where basic level sketches and notes are done for timing on the performance pieces, once this process is done the production finally returns to the video line where they now begin to properly storyboard the performance scenes. After the proper storyboards have been complete they return to the audio line for one last time where they now put together a collection of the scenes that they are shown on the storyboard, so if the storyboard shows a close up of the hands on a trumpet for four seconds and then a reaction shot of a character for two then they will put together the exact performance pieces they want from the recordings they’ve collected from the universities. Finally after they’ve completed the reference video, it is then given to the layout directors and key animators where they will begin their job. The layouts job is to get a more accurate drawing of each movement; the key animator’s jobs are to match the drawing to the sound. In some anime musical instruments and sometimes characters are 3d modelled for performance scenes but, for Sound Euphonium Kyoto Animation don’t use 3d modelling at all and both their characters and instruments are both hand drawn. The video production line is now set on action to completion, the audio line have done and would move onto their next project or scene. Backgrounds are done next, using some reference images and a few art boards surrounding the anime the background team will draw the backgrounds for each scene, whilst the backgrounds are getting drawn the job of inbetweening begins. The in-betweens jobs are to clean up lines from the key animators and add drawings in the gaps between key animator’s frames; because of the amount of accuracy in Sound Euphonium this process takes a lot longer than usual. Painting then begins where each frame is scanned and coloured in using digital software. Once the frames have been coloured everything is combined together so that the composition team can focus on using filters to create effects to increase the visuals just that extra bit more. The scene after this process is then completed and added into the episode.

Even if you were to add the same song to the scene over the top it would ideally have to be completely re-drawn from scratch, as the timing of each key press may be slightly different and that slight difference truly throws off the effect the scene has, it’s like lip syncing on live performance, you can tell when artists are doing it and it looks very strange and forces you to pick up on it. To truly understand and feel the impact just this scene alone has, people should watch it themselves. The time and dedication that is put into things like this truly make me admire the whole side of hand drawn animation and the passion that certain people have for getting that perfection.

Daniel Oliver

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Unit 13 – Research

Other peoples work

Material wise figure 36 has some good materials, most of the materials are fairly simple as they seem to just be a colour with a bit of reflection on them and it also seems to be that every material is of the same level of shininess but, they seem to do a good enough job at making the piano look quite realistic. The piano doesn’t look like it’s been UV mapped and it looks like the materials have just been slapped on, I will take more time when it comes to my materials and will test them out with lighting. The materials that have been used on figure 37 are basically photo realistic, the model itself has been UV mapped and just from looking at some of the renders of it you can see that a lot of time and care has been put into making the materials look right.

Figure 36 has very clean geometry except for one thing which seems to be quite common among animators, from what I’ve seen it is very common to see 3D modellers doing the ‘if you can’t see it, it doesn’t matter rule’ which Is where they phase their objects through each other and as soon as you can’t see that part of the model they just leave it as it is. I can say that I personally don’t do that and whilst I’ve be practicing creating test pianos I can say that I kind of do the opposite of this, in which I try to create things as logically as possible, this isn’t necessarily the best way of doing things as it causes a few problems and overall just takes longer, I find that it could be good practice for the future as maybe one day I might work in car manufacturing and have to create models of car parts to a mathematical scale and having this habit of not just phasing object would help out. Figure 37 from the looks of things was done by someone who knows what they’re doing, you can see from certain parts of this piano that this person has considered their poly count much like myself in practice, looking at the rim of this piano compared to my practice pianos they have quite similar geometry, this persons edges are a bit more defined than my edges but seeing the similarity shows that I am on the right path.

The accuracy of figure 36 is actually not that good especially with the strings. The keys for this model are quite the odd shape as they are rather flat and quite spaced apart; also something I noticed about them is that they don’t actually lay in a keybed, so animating the piano playing would be terrible because the keys would be just phase through woodwork. The lyre is what confused me quite a bit as it is left hovering in the air because; lyres should be ground level and near where the feet of a pianist would be not up by their shins. The piano doesn’t have an underside at all and is just one big sheet of wood and the strings are all singular, this shows that the person who made this was not aiming for accuracy and was mainly aiming for just a simple model. When it comes to the accuracy of figure 37 it couldn’t be any more spot on, each key has its allocated amount of strings, the strings are held down by the bridge accordingly and each string ties to a pin, from the interior alone its accuracy is amazing. The exterior of the piano is also good with quite a lot of attention to detail, especially on the lid of the piano. Instead of just being a boring prop holding up the lid and a boring piece of wood, the lid and prop stick look interesting, they have little bits of detail to them with variations in shape in certain areas along with latches that properly connect them to the main body of the piano.

In comparison to a few of my practice models I feel that I am on par if not better than figure 36 but nowhere near the level of figure 37. Creating figure 37 looks like it would’ve been a very time consuming process and I’m currently on a tight schedule. From seeing the difference between the lid of my piano and the lid of figure 36 I will most likely go back and re-make the lid or just add more detail to one of the lids I’ve got at the moment, just to make it look more interesting. Keys wise I find that I’ll stick to what I’ve done as the black keys on figure 36 seem rather flat and wide and not the kind of keys that I want. The iron casting has a little bit more detail than the ones I made so I will most likely add some more detail if not completely re-do the iron casting just to overall make things look a little better. From looking at these models I now have a few ideas for little details that I could add to my work and I’ve also realised something, I have completely missed out one part of the piano, the sheet holder. I have completely forgotten about the piece of wood that lays on the top of the front where you put your sheet music before playing, obviously it wouldn’t have been catastrophic if I did forget it as some pianos don’t have a sheet holder but, I will most likely end up doing one as it adds more detail to the piano and I feel like the front looks bland without one now.

Daniel Oliver

Figure 36

Figure 37

Unit 13 – Research

Concert halls

Theatres and concert halls back in previous centuries were mainly tended to by the rich, they would go to one to watch some sort of play or listen to a musical performance, back then this kind of thing would seem like a rarity but nower days it’s much more common, it’s not something you would do every day but it’s something that you could easily treat yourself to at the end of a week.

There are many different theories and reasons as to why concert halls make music sound so good and it’s because they’re built by people who know how to make music sound good however, it is still unknown by many as to what the perfect size and shape is for a concert hall. When it comes down to making the concert halls there are so many variables to consider it is almost impossible to pin point exactly how you would create the perfect hall, some factors that affect the sound of music made inside these halls could be things like the thickness of the wallpaper, the fluffiness of the carpet and even the amount of people in the room at the time. If you take this into account then ideally it would be fairly easy to then figure out how to make the hall sound great for an empty hall but that defeats the purpose and that is why there is a profession for researching architectural acoustics in hope that one day we will be able to figure out how to build the perfect hall.

Most concert halls from the 18th century and even some modern day concert halls have a wide fan-like shape to them, to many this is apparently the best shape for concert halls however there have been many studies showing that this is not the correct shape and that a shoebox-like shape is better. The science behind this argument is that when sound waves travel from the stage to the walls of a fan shaped room, they bounce at quite a wide angle and seemingly avoid bouncing back to the middle of the room meaning, the music being played is quieter to those seated in the central area compared to those sitting along the wings. The shoebox shape fixes this issue because having flat walls means that when the sound bounces off of these walls it bounces back at a much better angle so that the sound waves are then sent equally to those seated in the middle of the room and to those seated along the edges.

Near the end of the 19th century a composer by the name of Wallace Sabine took on the problem in hope of figuring out the perfect concert hall. Sabine went through countless methods and variables all through the process of trial and error. He spent several years studying acoustics and the difference between different concert halls, he really wanted to find a specific formula which made these concert halls sound great, he mainly focused on reverberation. Reverberation is the word for the prolongation or extension of a sound. He once discovered this when in a lecture once. When Sabine was in education his professor was talking to the whole class but those seated higher up in the lecture hall began to struggle hearing everything he said, if he said too many syllables in one sentence the sound waves bounced off of the walls and ended up clashing with each other, causing some of the students to struggle hearing what he said. Sabine took on this problem head on and decided to do something about it. Sabine came into the next lecture with some wall panels, these panels he brought in are known as diffuse panels which are used to spread sound waves out evenly over a wide area, after he replaced some of the wall panels with these panels he and his other colleagues were then able to hear the professor a lot clearer because the panels cleared up the clashing sound waves and stopped the prolonging effect.

When it comes to creating the concert hall for my piece I will most like use the Royal Albert Hall or maybe the Barbican Concert hall as reference as I think that these concert halls look the best.

Daniel Oliver

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Figure 34