Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!yale!cmcl2!esquire!rreid
From: rreid@esquire.UUCP ( r l reid )
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Re: piano vibrato
Message-ID: <1676@esquire.UUCP>
Date: 12 Dec 89 18:07:56 GMT
References: <1432@skye.ed.ac.uk> <6912@merlin.usc.edu> <2746@optilink.UUCP> <49451@bbn.COM>
Reply-To: rreid@esquire.UUCP ( r l reid )
Organization: ? !
Lines: 28

In article <49451@bbn.COM> harlan@labs-n.bbn.com (Harlan Feinstein) writes:
>
>What I'm seeking is not an answer to how to get a piano vibrato _sound_,
>but rather a sincere answer to how to do this without electronics.  Someone
>told me that it was possible.  Some of the replies were amusing,
>but unfortunately I got no serious answer.

You get no serious answers because there is no serious answer.
I assume you mean "an unmodified, unprocessed piano". The strings are fixed.
You can damp them, you can change your touch, you can prevent them
being damped after being played.  There's no way to either
stretch the string or move the end points of the vibrating part.

A completely impractical answer would be to open the lid, put a tuning
wrench on every peg, and have a group of people grab all the right
wrenches at the right moments, apply miniscule and coordinated tweeks,
and then return the string to proper pitch.

Beyond that, you're talking about one hell of a long whammy bar
and major modification.  It could be an interesting modification,
but I suspect you'd ruin a lot of frames on your way to the
first working model.
-- 

	       Ro
   rreid@esquire.dpw.com
   {phri|cucard}!hombre!cmcl2!esquire!rreid
   rlr@woof.columbia.edu