SteveImprovises.com

Why I love My Upright Piano - Yamaha P116

I recently watched a great video by Nahre Sol about how she likes a particular upright piano and playing with the felt mute rail/practice pedal on. The thumbnail shows the piano and the word Imperfection. Also she plays it with the silly top lid open that faces off to the side.  Check out my previous blog where I talk about why I don't use my piano's top lid. 

I'll probably make a YouTube video on this subject but for now I'm doing a blog post on my website just to get these ideas out there.  

I agree with Nahre Sol that playing a quirky piano is fun, but I love my upright for other reasons. It is my favorite piano and one that is an essential part of my life. And it's not about the imperfections with this piano, it's about the special tonality and the expressiveness it provides. 

Regarding quirky pianos: I have played many pianos in practice rooms, churches, and homes and I enjoy finding the oddities of a particular instrument and molding my playing around those weirdnesses.  

Even while recording my premiere album "43" I found a quirk on the studio's phenomenal Bösendorfer 200. The A note just below middle C had a kind of twang when you played it repeatedly.  I guess I liked that quirk as I did a lot of repeated A's in the piece called Sohbet, which is movement 4 of Steps to Masada. 

Somewhere in my archive I have a series of improvisations on several pianos at a conservatory that each had some strange feature. So I agree that quirks can be wonderful.  

And yes the felt rail or "practice pedal", what I used to call while growing up, does produce a nice timbre when you're not trying to play classical pieces. It's not a great practice tool but I suppose it was made for parents more than for the player. 

Incidentally if you want a felted piano sound in your productions, check out the Pianobook project online, there are several free piano sample libraries, several of which with the mute rail.  Also sound designer Christian Henson from Spitfire has created the Soft Piano as part of the Spitfire Labs instrument. There are some great YouTube videos about the production of these sample sets. 

But on to my upright. My upright piano is special, wonderful even. It's as expressive as a grand piano and I prefer it to many grands, especially almost all 5 foot and under baby grands. 

I have quite an intimate relationship with my upright piano. It's the piano I've had since I was about 6 years old. My grandmother bought it for me, and I still remember going to the piano store and trying it out and hearing the salesman talk about how this was a new style without the legs under the keyboard.  

This particular model P116 was made in Japan and is far better than the current models that bear this name and are made in Yamaha's other factories in Indonesia.  At the time this was a higher end studio upright, comparable to the U1 that is available today.  

I love the sound of this piano, especially now that I play it with the lower curtain removed and with it no longer against a wall. (see my previous blog post).  The action is especially impressive, comparable more to a C series from Yamaha in its range of expression.  Whenever I have played any size of Yamaha's more affordable G range of grand pianos I've been left feeling like those are inferior to my upright. 

Comment below if you found the part in Blizzard From Within where I pluck a C#.  

The keys have a deep travel that I really enjoy. Honestly I like it better than many Steinways.. those are very expressive but the key travel is shorter and it takes some adjustment to the way you approach the piano.  I love how balanced these keys are. The only thing is they don't recoil as fast as on a grand so sometimes repeated notes don't come out quite right. And there are a few notes with issues I'd like to sort out at some point. 

I also love the breadth of the sound and how much sustain this piano has. The soundboard resonates beautifully and the sympathetic resonance of the strings works so well. Sometimes it has a little too much sustain even. 

I even love the bad tuning of this piano. I am currently writing a separate blog and making a YouTube video about why I play an out of tune piano. But the short story is that the sound of this piano fits well into my style and I'm not worried about it not sounding pristine.

I adore the polished ebony look of this piano. I have spent countless hours looking at myself in this weird dark mirror, it gives me the feeling of looking deep inside my soul and the nature of my being. But sometimes seeing that darkened version of myself there is too deep and actually makes me close my eyes more often while I play. 

And now that I'm into video production, my next piano will not be a polished model. It's tougher than you think to put quality lighting in opportune places when there is a super reflective instrument in the shot.  The piano's surfaces can often cause massive glare in some camera angles.

My latest discovery with this piano has been muting the strings with my left foot. This gives it a whole new timbre; one I've only otherwise done on grand pianos where I mute the string with a finger. It's actually better than a grand piano in this way because I can still play two handed while manipulating the strings.  Unlike the felt rail, this is a true mute of the key string and also allows me to access certain overtones on each note.  

Stay tuned to my site for a more in-depth post about my foot muted playing.  I have a few upcoming pieces that will be out in March that feature this technique.  I also have a piece coming out from my album 43, entitled Cub Creek ⅓ Mile, that begins with mutes and plucks.  

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