The pianist and injury, part i- do common precautions do more harm than good?

(This first part will focus mostly on general pianists' attitudes to physical activity with the hands- exposing how a distorted myth regarding Robert Schumann has created completely unjustified paranoia that urgently needs to be countered. In a second part I'll also go on to explore why I believe the relaxation school may have actively contributed to making injuries increasingly common place- with proof of how the extensor muscles are generally worked considerably harder when trying to channel arm energy through a passive hand)

Introduction 

Firstly, I'll provide a couple of scenarios outside of piano playing, to set the scene.

Picture a tennis player who does no physical exercise apart from playing tennis. He aims to play to a high level and thus must often push his physical capability close to its limits, when holding a racquet in hand. However, don't fear. He won't be at risk of injuring himself. After all, he never goes to the gym, he consciously avoids all forms of stretching and flexibility based work, and he never warms up physically other than by actually playing games of tennis.


WHAT???!!! Let's rewind for a moment, for that's clearly the most deranged logic conceivable. This is not why he would be safe, rather it's why he is going to be actively prone to injury! To play top tennis, you must clearly CONDITION your body for the demands of the real life game, not exclude it from doing everything other than tennis. You don't get to have an incredible serve through avoiding all else!

If you're already complaining that music is an art and not a sport, I'm afraid I saw you coming.

In my second analogy, we have a ballet dancer. She never does any form of physical activity other than rehearsing the ballet routines that she is working at. After all, she must protect her physical apparatus from injury. She never works at flexibility prior to dancing nor does any form of non-artistic exercise to get started. Better to avoid such risks. This is exactly why it's safe for her launch into the splits at a moment's notice (as long as it has artistic context in a genuine routine), without any physical warm up.

WHAT???!!! Let's rewind again. This time you don't get to frown on a sport for being "different" to art, yet it's still abundantly clear that the whole premise is absurd to the very core. Anything that helps the body develop comfortable flexibility is clearly part of performing effectively and with safety. Alongside ballet practise itself, it's common for top dancers to do all manner of body conditioning- including flexibility and possibly even some degree of strength based work (especially for male dancers who may have to carry a partner's full weight). They don't serve their art by turning their noses up at anything that doesn't have artistic context. They work to keep their bodies limber and flexible specifically because it prepares them for the physical demands that they must meet during their art.

Finally, we have a pianist who is building up towards music college auditions. He never does any technique exercises beyond the odd scale, because he is too pure an artist to dirty himself with such matters (and he once heard a famous teacher say all drills are dangerous and should thus be avoided). He deliberately avoids all forms of "unnatural" hand exercise away from the keyboard. After all, everyone knows that Schumann damaged his hand beyond repair with some weird contraption. Other than practising his programme of difficult music, he keeps his hands fresh by resting them and avoiding activity. He has minimal risk of injury, because his hands do little other than musically artistic piano playing.

Now, this is the one where a great many pianists would nod in agreement, rather than shout "WHAT???!!!!". If so, why? If you do go on to continue thinking that's a good attitude, after having read this post, then very well. However, I have to insist that you at least stop to ask some serious questions. Now, there are also radically opposite stances- including pianists who obsess over an idea of extreme finger "strength" and genuinely overdo work on forceful exercises towards that end. I have no wish to promote that branch of extremism. However, the stance outlined above seems to have become widely accepted as if it were basic common sense, rather than the opposite pole of equally extremist madness. Did you notice how consistent it was with the previous examples? Somehow, something I'll call "pianist's logic" seems to have allowed this to be taken seriously within our field. Oh, and in the end, ironically enough that pianist does get injured by a "contraption"- an especially hazardous one, that subjects his poor hands to outlandish demands found nowhere in the natural world. It's called a "piano".

The Schumann myth

Before proceeding, yes I was indeed being facetious for the sake of a cheap gag. It was, however, also for the sake of making an incredibly serious point. This is where "pianist's logic" has come to differ from the default stance of virtually any ordinary human on this planet. Show us a little rubber band and suggest stretching it back and forth for thirty seconds (for the sake of building flexibility) and most of us will run for the hills, while screaming something incomprehensible about Robert Schumann's injury.

"Contemplate the possibility of facing such a wild risk as moving our fingers against incredibly mild resistance? No, thank you. Do you realise that I'm a pianist?".

But what if you ask us to engage them against the larger mechanical resistance of piano keys, for the continuous 30 mins+ it takes to play a Rachmaninoff concerto (featuring incredibly rapid runs, as well as vast physical stretches that must be taken with commanding ease while the hand bears the mass of the moving arm)?

"Sure, no worries mate."

 Contrast against any "ordinary" person and they're usually of sound enough mind to stretch that elastic band without fear, while quite probably expressing far more doubt about playing the piano like the clappers.

Who is right here? Well, how many people have you heard of whose career ended due to an injury associated with using an "unnatural" device (other than the piano itself)? If this were the gameshow "Pointless" and you knew of any tale other than that of Robert Schumann, you'd certainly be on to a winner. Compare to cases of pianists who were injured merely by playing their instrument and we have undeniable reams of evidence. Leon Fleisher and Gary Graffman are two famous examples among a huge number of piano based injuries. Glenn Gould too had a period of being severely afflicted. It's time to seriously reevaluate why the piano gets the "get out of jail free" card, while we are quick to call danger on all external exercises- which no ordinary person nor qualified physiotherapist would be faintly concerned by. Of course, I'm not saying we should ban piano playing based on the possibility of injury. The point is that it's completely irrational for us to issue blanket bans on almost anything else that involves significant hand activity and then happily spend hours at the "unnatural contraption" which has definitively been at the heart of many injuries.

Anyway, here's evidence of the fact that the old Schumann tale is almost certainly nothing more than a wildly distorted myth:

http://www.pianisttopianist.com/?p=10

http://focaldystonia.co.uk/#/robert-schumann/4563923100

Schumann may not have been wise to use the machine exactly as he did, but the severity of his problems already existed. Don't misunderstand, I'm not specifically saying we should all run to get a device like Schumann's, and then pull the crap out of our fingers, with expectation of becoming virtuosi. However, we should stop to ask questions before tarring all hand exercises in general! Where is the meaningful evidence for the crippling long-term injuries that can supposedly afflict those who dare to exercise their hands away from a piano? If there is any substance, I extend an invitation to anyone to point me to it. As far as I can see, it seems that we've been duped en masse, by scaremongering. Evidence suggests that the true worry is injury from playing wrongly, not from any complementary exercises. The pianist's paranoia about everything under the sun (except for pianism itself) does not seem to have any footing in reason at all. It lives in a legend, that somehow evolved into being taken as gospel.

Back in reality, it's widely accepted in science that engagement of muscles against comfortable levels of resistance is actively conducive to flexibility and general health- far more so than abstinence from activity. The only meaningful questions should be about what is a reasonable range to work within. In cases of significant existing injury, complete rest may sometimes be wise. However, even then a physiotherapist may well prescribe gentle work against low resistance- thus encouraging blood flow to assist healing. It's a remarkable situation, really. The very same exercises which are safe enough to be given by medical professionals to the significantly injured (to help restore function via gentle rehabilitation) are being denounced by a horde of medically unqualified pianists as too "dangerous"for the healthy. The idea that hands which perform extreme gymnastic activities at a piano must be protected from such simple exercises exists in the world of "pianist's logic" and nowhere else. Look around and you'll certainly see plenty of evidence of injury through repetitive activities like piano playing, typing and the like. But the Schumann legend seem to be both the beginning and end of the "evidence" behind this overblown hysteria about any kind of alternative hand exercises.

The evil of Stretching?

For some reason, Chopin has been pretty universally portrayed as the antithesis to Schumann- a pianist who respected the hand in its natural form and would never have considered trying to alter its natural state. Well, I'm going to have to shatter this myth too. Did you know that Chopin developed flexibility between his fingers by sleeping at night with wine corks wedged in between them? So much for the poster boy for leaving physical development to piano playing and nature alone...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122670581542929769.html

Now, it may be that Chopin changed his mind on this type of thing, but it's impossible to say with certainty that it had no effect on him. I'm not going to recommend going to such extreme lengths, but I'm certainly not going to rule out more gentle stretching exercises. When it comes to small handed pianists, people regularly cite Alicia de Larrocha as proof that they can flourish like any other. While this is spot on, what seems to be forgotten is the fact that she was obsessive about stretching her hands and actually managed to develop enough flexibility to strike a tenth. Weirdly enough, I've literally heard the same people who put her forward as an example to those with small hands, going on to argue that you should never stretch at all. Sometimes they even argue against basic legato. If someone wanted to construct a conspiracy by which to prevent those with small hands from ever transcending their slight disadvantage, they could scarcely do much better. Yes, there will be things which just aren't possible and which cannot be usefully forced. A whole lot of stuff can be coaxed, however. It's incredibly unlikely that de Larrocha would have reached the level she did, had she just decided that there was nothing she could do to improve on what nature gave her. People who treat their small hands as innately incapable (and a thing to be carefully protected from all challenges) are not going to come close to what she achieved. Also, even large hands need training. A large hand is not automatically flexible or limber, in much the same way that a tall person isn't automatically a professional level basketball player. There are good ways to train and bad ways. But it's a gross oversimplification to decide that piano playing counts as good, while everything else must be assumed bad.

Skepticism vs cynicism/"Hmm"vs "NO!"

The origins of this article were triggered by a post in a Facebook group for piano teachers- regarding *brace yourself* finger weights. Given the extreme nature of the responses that post received (displaying "pianist's logic" in full force), I will clarify at the outset that the only thing I wish to promote is the value of an open mind- that neither fully excludes nor fully accepts anything without reasonable cause. Skepticism is healthy. That's where we ask questions and seek further information, rather than accept any claim at face value. Uncertainty is healthy- where we recognise that we have inadequate information to give a final judgement. Cynicism, however, is not healthy. That's where we make a snap dismissal of anything that differs from the limits of our experience/assumptions- thus shutting ourselves in a cage and removing all possibility of someday being pleasantly surprised by a new discovery.

Anyhow, these finger weights were met with a torrent of casual dismissals (some arguably libellous in nature). I won't name or quote anyone, but I will summarise the prevailing nature of the responses. Other than myself, nobody had even cared to enquire about the size of the weight involved, before being ready to pass judgement. Needless to say, the Schumann references came thick and fast- only a couple of which tried to debunk the myth rather than spread it. Yes, one man got injured almost two centuries ago (in a tale of very dubious details) so from there onwards every conceivable mechanical device (except the piano) is to be assumed cripplingly unsafe for a human hand. Among a very large number of responses, I saw very few people who were raising questions or seeking to understand more deeply. Anyway, in the end one of few curious posters looked up the actual weight. It starts at...

10 GRAMS!!!!

As a skeptic rather than a cynic, I find it astonishing that the default assumption would be that putting 10g (!) on a finger will probably cause injury. Pop a pound coin (you'll have to Google your own closest equivalent if you're not in the UK) on the back of a finger and that's the corresponding level of mass and indeed danger that would be involved. I won't even tell you to do so "at your own risk". If you want to take me to court under the grounds that you injured yourself with that coin, all I can say is that you're welcome to try (although you'll need a bloody good lawyer). Remarkable claims demand remarkable evidence. The idea that a finger cannot handle 10g (one hundredth of a kilogramme!!!!) without probable injury is a truly remarkable belief indeed. Particularly given that the very same people who call danger are typically happy to preach the joys of setting the whole arm's weight upon the hand!

Most remarkable of all, the discovery that that merely 10g of mass are involved changed nothing in the tide of opinions! I was assured that the difference is that the arm's more substantial weight is "natural" and thus can't cause injury- in spite of applying radically greater forces. Conversely, I'm led to believe that as 10g is "unnatural", it will therefore become injurious. If you're happy with that as an explanation, then we certainly do live in a world in which facts no longer matter. In my second part of this post I'll go into detail as to how arm weight schools really can cause significant strain, when excess weight bears down on an underperforming hand. I can assure that 10g won't, however.

Anyway, it's not that I even recommend these weights. Rather, I was struck by what the response says about attitudes in general. As one poster mentioned, Liberace's rings were probably heavier than 10g.  You don't become an accomplished pianist by having the biggest and most rock solid finger muscles, but neither do you become one by wrapping yourself in cotton wool and 
living in fear of anything untried. Here's Tzimon Barto:

As a devoted bodybuilder, it's said that after a concert he could easily bench-press the piano for an encore. I think that's only a joke but, regardless, do you imagine that if you asked him to bear the weight of a coin on his finger, he'd back off in case his hands were crippled beyond repair? Or that he'd accept, only to be forced to cancel all concerts for the rest of the season (as a payback for such naïvely reckless bravado)? Other concert level pianists who are also into olympic style weight lifting include Leon Bates and Gen Hirano. I must stress, my point is not that you should lift colossal weights. But this gives some perspective on how utterly pathetic it is for a grown pianist to fear either a rubber band or the mass of a coin upon a finger.

Come back to our ballerina, or gymnast now. Sure, they might not be looking to benchpress double their body weight. However, why would they be scared to lift even small dumbells, when they have to execute chains of backflips? Likewise, why should a hand that is getting around virtuoso octaves be troubled by supporting 10g? I might not expect miracles, but injury via 10g is the very last thing that would be on my mind. No hand is going to shatter into a thousand pieces. The fact that fear of 10g reads like more like comedic parody, than observed reality, speaks volumes of how warped our culture has become. Pianists are being encouraged to cower in response to nothing- despite constantly facing serious gymnastic demands at a piano. And then they wonder why those precious little hands end up injured? You don't necessarily need to have remarkably strong hands, but if you want to tackle serious repertoire then you sure as hell need to have them agile and conditioned for activity!

Weights and Hanon exercises

One of the most useful exercises I've done is to practise occasionally with a 1kg wrist weight. I came upon the idea in a book by the pianist Seymour Bernstein. I'm not going to specifically recommend to anyone else, on an unsupervised basis. However, I will describe some of the details.When I play with a small weight on my wrist, it makes any flawed alignments extremely obvious. Holding the wrist either notably high or low would get tiring very quickly, if sustained. Without the wrist weight it can be like boiling a frog. If you don't know the expression, it refers to the fact that frogs can only detect abrupt changes of temperature- which means that you could theoretically boil one alive without them knowing they are in trouble. In much the same fashion, if I were to play a Chopin study with a slightly crooked wrist position, I'd probably both get away with it for a while and not realise that anything is amiss. Lots of slight imprecision of movement (none of which stands out on its own) slowly adds up though. All of a sudden, I'd eventually realise that I'm starting to miss plenty of notes and feeling everything seizing up.

I just about got away with much that kind of thing, in this rather old video of the black key Etude by Chopin.

The dressing gown slightly hides my long-term habit of holding the right wrist upwards, although you will visibly see a few rather jerky "hopping" movements of the arm, where the legato is poor and the arm is not properly supported by clear connection of the fingers. As I remember, although the accuracy didn't go horribly wrong, my forearm was rather tight by the end.
If I had tried the same with the wrist weights on, I'd know about the slight problems almost immediately, through a somewhat amplified sense of instability. I don't actually do it to make my hand work harder during a whole run-through though. Rather than struggle on while tiredness builds, I use the feedback to stop and adjust into easier coordination- where my wrist is properly suspended at length between a stable finger and the shoulder. The idea is to suspend that extra kilogramme without bearing the whole force down directly on the finger. I literally do it to AVOID weighing down hard on the hand, not to encourage it! When you get things wrong, there is indeed a significant sense of the hand being burdened by extra mass- which is why I don't try to plough through whole performances at speed. Instead, I explore sections (both at very slow tempos and fast burst of small units), looking for comfort and stability at all times. As soon as I detect any moment of awkwardness, I stop and fix it. Nowadays I play the same Etude with far less downward arm pressure and far greater ease of movement.

Also, this brings me back to technical exercises. I've heard many of people say that playing Hanon causes injury. If it can possibly do so, it's because your technique is wrong. Anyone with truly good technique should have no problem playing any of them safely. Avoiding Hanon because its dangerous is simply fleeing from your problems without actually solving them. It's far better to intentionally expose the problems (via only brief bursts) and then make corrections. There are few better places to both uncover and fix fundamental movement problems quickly. When I do the occasional Hanon exercise (with weights on or off) what I again almost never do is is run from start to finish. I'm not looking to build strength with endless repetition, but looking from immediate refinements of coordination. Instead I tend to do small bursts quickly (usually a bar plus one note) and then stop to assess how precise and easy the movement was. If I wasn't happy I'll then do it very slowly, checking for smooth sideways arm movement, while the fingers keep a clear legato connection (to stop the weight collapsing downward). If that works I'll probably do a little bit fast again. Eventually I may play through the whole exercise fast, but never to "feel the burn". If it's not effortless and precise I stop and build precision and clarity again. With this kind of focused approach (based on finding and solving slight problems in the movement, rather than drilling mindlessly) you can find the issues which get in the way of free and easy movement and then change things at once. If I find and correct any points of heaviness, with the wrist weights on, I know that I'll still be significantly clearer and lighter in my movements when I take them off again.

I'd have been far worse off had I simply shouted "Schumann!" (like some mindless parrot) when I first read about wrist weights.

A pianist's innate tone quality- an embarrassing myth of the past, or the innocent victim of bad science? Part i

Before going any further,  I'm going to lay my position on the table. Whether a pianist can vary tone (independently of volume) is a subject that generates such extremist fervour that if some people get any sense that I won't be stating exactly what they want to hear, they'll be off at once. If you're the sort of person who is only interested in hearing validations for your existing belief system, then by all means go elsewhere to cherry pick whatever you can find to agree with you. However, I'm actually here to disagree with any definitive position about a still uncertain issue. When someone is overly certain (either for or against absolute tone) then you should probably be suspicious. There's simply not enough evidence either way for a truly informed final stance yet.

What the science does show is that innate tone is definitely not as big an issue as some might believe (with the majority best explained by illusions of contrast). However, it also shows that it may be audible in particular conditions. It's certainly not a proven impossibility (either in theory or practice) and not enough conditions have been properly tested. After all, the fact that no search operation succeeded in finding flight MH 370 didn't prove that the plane doesn't exist. It showed that they didn't look in the right place yet. Experiments have been adequate to say that if tone exists it's not anywhere near as substantial or prevalent a factor as some have imagined. What they haven't done is provide a basis to dismiss it. In a future post I'll likely go into more detail about why the common theory (of only a single hammer speed being relevant) is unfit as a model for analysis. Recorded data has definitively proven that there's more going on. Accurate theory involves issues of flexion and vibration (which are variable based on how smoothly the hammer gets accelerated). For now, however, I'm going to concentrate on some of the problems with previous investigations and also show where I believe any future research should be directed, for the best chance of getting more meaningful data.

Relative effects proven

Firstly, lets start with what relationships can offer us. There are three main variables here- timing of key depression/release, intensity of each note and pedalling. I doubt whether anyone would wish to dispute that these are an issue. Many deny absolute tone outright, but I've never seen anyone who denies the fact that you could generate plenty via those elements alone. Today, proof of how much is possible without absolute tone is simple enough. Record yourself on a decent digital piano (which merely monitors the energy in the key strikes) and listen back. You can do a pretty good job of a great many things. If I try to play with what I consider "coarse" movements, to some degree I will hear that reflected in the sound of a digital. Styles of movement can still have corresponding effects on perceived tone, through intensities alone. However, I don't consider that quite everything is there. I feel both that awkward movements are punished far less than on a real piano, and that the most expressive playing comes to life far less than on an acoustic. See the following video:

https://youtu.be/Hway_tTFOzc?t=58

Hearing a pianist of Katsaris' calibre has a somewhat perverse effect. In a sense he is able to show off how much is possible from the instrument. In another sense, however, such a fine artist emphasises all the more how much is missing, compared to his sound on an acoustic. That film is now rather old, but I still find even the latest digitals suffer from a constant degree of neutrality. Absolute tone could indeed be the missing factor here, but that belief is not adequate to draw a scientifically worthy conclusion. Technology is advancing, but there are still plenty of other issues that could explain what is missing from the current level of simulation. We can only use it as clear evidence that a good deal of illusion is possible without innate tone quality.

The search for absolute effects

In this previous example, it was incredibly easy to isolate those variables from a possibility for absolute tone. Here, we have much a bigger problem- to isolate potential changes in tone quality from all other variables. The moment anything else is included, you risk making illusions via relationships, therefore no definitive conclusions can be drawn. In testing for tone, scientists have always reduced to a single note at a time (looking to pair notes at similar volume and see if people can h ear any other differences). The problem here is that some things will register clearly only via a build up, rather than in small quantities  Imagine a situation where someone shows you a single piano key. Let's say that key has a single mm shaved off its width. On its own you may have no idea at all that anything is amiss. However, build a whole keyboard out of the similar keys and now you have a piano keyboard that is missing 5.2 cm of width (if you're wondering- it's not 8.8 cm as I first thought, because only the number of white keys affects the total width). Still too small to notice? You could say the same about ingesting a trace quantity of poison, vs a number of trace quantities in close succession. 200 or so apple pips contain enough cyanide to kill a person (check it out, it's honestly not a myth!). A single pip wouldn't even cause a headache, however. It's another situation where effects can only be readily distinguished through accumulation.

In cases like this, the result does not even need to be more than the sum of its parts. The sum of its parts alone may register clearly where a single part does not. Just because scientific protocol can only draw conclusions from isolated notes, it does not automatically follow that isolated notes will therefore be adequate to judge an effect from. This is especially true when testing whether humans can hear a difference. Even when analysing sound waves with computers, no two strikes will ever be literally identical to start with. There's no definitive way to determine what traces of difference are meaningful on paper and which are not. If a scientist looks at a number of sound waves and says they show no evidence of tone, that does not mean they are the same waves, but merely ones that have been deemed close enough. This is an especially big concern when it comes to older research, such as Otto Ortmann's from the 1930s. With the extraordinarily primitive audio technology of the day, how could they possibly determine with any confidence what constitutes "close enough" for such narrow conclusions?

When many notes are played loudly into an open pedal, there is every reason to suspect that (should absolute tone quality be possible) the cumulative effect would be many times more distinct. That fact that we cannot segregate variables in any alternative way does not mean that failure to detect major differences provides a conclusive dismissal of tone in general. By extension, neither can we reasonably assume that when many notes are being struck, the relationships between those notes fully accounts for perceived tone quality. All we can say is that both variables could be in play and we have no meaningful way to isolate them (during a genuine musical performance) in order to assess whether there is a cumulative effect. This is not on a par with some "psychic" claiming that their powers would be stifled by testing under laboratory conditions, because the spirits of the ether would not approve. There's a vast and genuinely problematic discrepancy between those circumstances that are convenient to test and those circumstances that occur during real life music making.

Noise effects and the pedal as amplifier

In spite of this problem, I believe that current testing trends have missed a trick that could easily be added without compromising the standard of scientific controls. I have a proposal that I would encourage anyone involved in future empirical testing to pursue. Basically, I believe that the primary issue in perception of bad tone is the thud of the key into the keybed. I have heard for myself how loud this can be, after breaking a bass string on a few different pianos. Play the key with blunt force and you'll hear both the noise of the piano action (sending the hammer into space left by the missing string) and the noise of the key thudding into the keybed. The action noise was relatively superficial, creating more of a clattery sound. However, the key bed thud was deep and far from minor. In fact, on digital pianos there will tend to be a whole lot of noise. The pianist Frederic Chiu told me that when he was practising with headphones, not only could his wife hear the thuds from another room but she could feel the floor shaking in response. I've heard a lot of similar stories about people in apartment blocks unwittingly sending these substantial thuds into neighbouring properties during late night "silent" practise.

On a digital, the thud can occur simultaneously with the sound of the playing and thus compete against it. However, it cannot directly alter the musical sound at source. Back on the acoustic, there is a notable difference. However, it's specific to when having the sustain pedal depressed. When I did so, not only did the key itself thud but it also passed notable overtones into the other undamped strings. Play multiple notes in succession and you will cause a series of similar noises to start building up. To get some idea of this effect for yourself, try pressing very quickly and suddenly on the sustain pedal. It tends to cause something relatively similar. Alternatively, hold the pedal down and "knock" on the piano or even shout into it (open the lid first). You'll get an idea of how freely the undamped strings can be excited- not merely by other musical sounds but also by general noise effects.

Now, at this point I will add that I've seen many scientific papers that both referenced noise effects within sound waves and also tried to casually dismiss them on the grounds that they are not part of tone anyway. Even if we were to assume that outside noises could not interact directly with the sound coming from the piano's strings (in spite of having now proven that they both can and do), this would still be a completely inappropriate technicality upon which to exclude the relevance of this data. What human ear can knowingly distinguish between musical sounds and noises and then segregate them out into isolated components, in order to judge the music independently from the noises? Remember that it's specifically because the human ear cannot be trusted to separate out variables, that scientific protocol will only accept data based on the artificial limitation of an isolated note at a time. Yet we are going to casually assume it can make such impossible distinctions here?!!! Let's be blunt- that double standard is simply terrible scientific practise.

If you were to hear a recording of a pianist in which the start of every note triggered the corresponding sound of somebody breaking wind (with real vigour), do you imagine that you'd be able to easily separate out their musical performance in order to get a good measure of their perceived quality of sound? Yes, it's a ludicrous piece of hyperbole, but it shows that we can't simply decide that something is functionally irrelevant for the sake of convenience alone. It's for good reason that concert-goers are not encouraged to have a chat throughout a piano recital. Try telling security that it won't affect anybody's impression of the pianist's tone anyway... However, the things that we can't even consciously pick out might be more meaningful to perception than those which we know aren't part of the musical performance- and especially when those noise effects are also causing sympathetic reverberations directly within the piano itself. That cannot be considered "separate" from tone on any objectively valid level.

Searching in the right place

So, building on that premise, the most meaningful place to look for tonal variation (both via analysis of the sound waves and blind testing on humans ears) is when the pedal remains open and when notes are played loudly. While I can't say with certainty that nobody has ever tried to test under these conditions, I've never seen the pedal directly mentioned in any scientific paper. Why not? I'm scratching my head here, because nothing would make the role of that thud clearer or more detectable. Now, I already described pedal as a variable, but it can also be used as a tightly controlled constant. If you were to play two successive notes into the same open pedal, they would merge together and ruin the control. But there's no need to do that. Every time the pedal needs to start by being depressed. There then needs to be some delay, to allow any potential noise caused by the dampers to fully decay. If each note is played into these same conditions (always with a full reset to silence, before each recorded note) no controls are compromised whatsoever. All it means is that you have the ripest possible conditions in which to try to determine whether the effect of the keybed thud can be varied independently of the level of volume produced by the musical sound. To exclude the pedal from all testing is irrational.  It's the most probable means of literally amplifying a variable which both creates its own sound and has the ability to exert at least some effect on the musical sound.

Theory certainly suggests that you should be able to vary the volume with some degree of independence from the thud. In this post I have given explanations for how you can affect how you can pass acceleration to the key in ways that either increase or decrease the levels of mass and momentum which is sent into the keybed collision. Look at the diagrams early on, which show a finger either lengthening or being squashed while moving a key. When it's crushed inward, the arm will land with more energy. When it lengthens there will be a sense of  instead bouncing the mass up and out of the point of contact (with the greatest acceleration focused into the finger tip and key). A pianist also has different contact options, from a very pointed finger to a very flat finger (with larger surface area) that should logically affect the noise effect to at least some degree. One study even claimed hitting the key with an umbrella makes no difference. It makes the methods look extraordinarily dubious, if their recordings were unable to capture any difference between the noise effect of a skilled hand and that of an umbrella. A literal absence of difference does not even seem plausible within appropriately sensitive methods for capture of data.

Let's say two pianists are both playing at a similarly extreme volume, but one manages to reduce the severity of keybed noise by some 10% or so, compared to the other player. While I'd expect the difference to be most audible in thick chords, it's feasible that such a relatively moderate difference could affect the sense of sound even on an isolated note, when the pedal is used to boost overtone relationships. Experiments have traditionally either checked notes struck from above/direct contact, or compared strikes made with a "stiff" or "relaxed" arm. Technique is a whole lot broader though. Most relevant to the severity of thud would be whether the hand and arm stop abruptly into impact (thus dissipating the bulk of the energy directly into the instant of collision), or continue out from the point of contact to send momentum away. The difference is basically similar to that between stamping into the ground with a stop, vs pushing out of the ground while walking/running. Identical sounds would certainly not be expected from the different styles of contact.

Those who rule out tone generally say that "ugly" sound is just the result of playing louder than an instrument's limit. I don't find that credible. I once heard a concert where a rather slender pianist seemed to hit the piano with all her might (sending a lot of arm energy into hard impacts) without getting a notably large volume of sound out. However, the noise effect of the keys was so strong that I believe I could literally distinguish it from the direct musical sounds. The next pianist to play the piano had what seemed to be a much "purer" loud sound, without that same percussive thud. For the reasons mentioned earlier, I cannot prove that my hearing was accurate. However, alongside all of the additional variables, it's still perfectly logical to ask whether the superior sounding pianist might genuinely have achieved a better ratio of direct sound to noise effect. Have a listen to Cziffra here.

https://youtu.be/3zGx98fuR4I?t=33

Most of this is owed to contrasts within the most widely accepted variables, but I do not believe that it's an adequate explanation for that something extra which distinguishes his spiky sound from other players. If you listen carefully, there's a particularly audible thud at 36 seconds in. I suspect this may be caused by a slight stamp on the pedal. However, with all the variation in Cziffra's sound, I believe he also exploited noise effects when moving the keys. Much of the effect is down to wild dynamic contrasts, as well as variety between longer sounds and explosively short ones. But I think it's a hell of a stretch to argue that noise effects are not actively contributing to the perceived sound. I believe he contrasts technique that results in "purer" sound with less noise effect, against deliberately sharper attacks, that excite more chaotic frequencies responses into the open pedal. "Ugly" tone is applied to selective moments, but to great effect. When I listen to other performers play the same arrangement, they do not get that same "bite" to their sound. I can't say for sure whether the sound is more about key bed thuds or attacking the key from a height. Coming from above has been proven here to have an audible effect, that actually precedes the musical tone (note that this study didn't try to downplay the noise as irrelevant to perception of tone, like many other had). However, I'm convinced that the most probable explanation is some kind of noise effect that is both heard directly and through sympathetic vibrations within open strings (nb. even his short explosive sounds often involve a very brief pedal during the attack, which is instantly released after the explosion of overtones).

Coming back to an optimal experiment, notes must also be tested in many different registers of the piano and at many different levels and articulations. While I think it's probable that loud playing produces the most audible thuds, it could also be possible that loud playing might serve to conceal them more beneath the intensity of string vibrations. All angles must be pursued. It's also feasible that different registers of the piano would vary in how likely it is for the thudding sound to show up clearly. Very high notes would both carry a lower energy of their own (due to the lighter hammer and shorter strings) and also be expected to offer less direct competition between their high frequencies and the lower pitched thud of the key. There is every reason to think this would be a good place to test, but there's also plenty of reason to look at extreme bass registers. The point is that even when working on an individual note, we need to look at extremes of dynamic, extremes of register and also (above all for me) use the pedal for the purpose it was actually designed for. It's also logical to try a range of different pianos in case some offer more scope for exaggeration/reduction of thuds than others. I tend to feel that older pianos offer more scope for the kinds of edgy sounds we heard from Cziffra, so they would be a good place to test various attacks into the pedal.

Any test which failed to detect differences in tone (without having checked these kinds of options) has not only failed to disprove tone. It has also failed to contribute anything worthwhile to the pursuit of either science or music. Narrow testing no more "disproves" the possibility of tone than the timing of a school sport's day 100 m parents' race "disproves" Usain Bolt's official world record time. Not having observed a given result is not sufficient to declare it impossible. If you get a negative in narrow conditions, you need to ask what alternative conditions might show a clear result- not go out and tell the world you just proved tone to be scientifically "impossible" under all circumstances.

Evidence for tone in existing research and why belief in at least some possibility matters

I already linked the paper which showed that a preliminary noise effect was sufficient to allow many listeners to distinguish struck vs pressed notes by ear. This study has also given an indication that some listeners could distinguish differences on some notes and also shown differences in the resulting tonal balance, even without pedal. It's not a body of evidence that is adequate to start proclaiming that absolute tone is now proven to be a huge issue. They state in the study itself that it wasn't as much as the pianist expected. 

However, there is a world of difference between recognising some possibility (with more research required) and asserting a conclusive possibility of absolute zero. Moving away from the scientific stance and towards an artistic one now- even if it were truly impossible to exert any influence over absolute tone whatsoever under any circumstances, it would still be a bad idea to work based on cold pragmatism first and artistic ideals last. At face value, the piano should be most deadpan and least expressive instrument imaginable. However, when it really does sound that way then nobody is to blame other than the pianist- for playing it so poorly. Deciding that you should think merely of pressing keys faster or slower, in order to make notes merely louder or quieter, is no way to succeed in producing sophisticated illusions of something greater. In the earlier days of the study of tone, people had grown up in a culture founded upon phrasing and musical ideals. The idea that notes can only be louder or quieter was nothing but an intellectual novelty for those artists who were swayed by the research. They might have believed it away from the instrument, but you don't literally see them treating piano playing as founded upon nothing more than attempting to find the right speed to move each key at. The playing was not defined by a strict belief in tonal limitations but by artistic goals. 

Today there are some pianists who are so obsessed with working from (what they believe is) pragmatism, that they have neither learned to control absolute tone nor even to produce any worthy level of illusion. They are so caught up in a premise that is probably not even entirely true, that they have forgotten to be an artist first and a thinker second. If you want to make even an illusion, you're going to need to do a lot more than think of pecking at piano keys at different speeds, in the hope of getting a worthy phrase. I recently saw a post by a pianist who was trying to ridicule his teachers for telling him to think about his tone quality. The joke was on him, however. Whatever else you might believe, tone quality does exist. We can debate whether it can exist independently from volume, but it certainly varies in proportion with volume. If you punch into every note needlessly loud then you will indeed have an uglier sound than a pianist who shapes phrases according to musical principles. Sure enough, this pianist's sound was noisy and brutal- filled with percussion and lacking in close control. Ruling out the very important advice of a teacher (based on dubious science) had done him no favours. He was too busy calling tone impossible to realise how poorly he was controlling even relative dynamics. If you want to make a musical phrase, then you can forget ramming the arm on to every note (and then validating a bad approach by saying science has proved that the piano doesn't care how you move the keys). A musician needs to learn how to move the arm smoothly from side to side- helping to organise the movement of the fingers in better relationships, while also helping to avoid the volume of excessive downward pressures.  I don't think anyone has ever been worse off for striving for tone quality at the piano. However, at least some of those who insist that tone is impossible will be putting themselves at a genuine artistic disadvantage. 

There's something incredibly absurd about the fact that many people are willing to believe that basic musical techniques for expression are on a par with occultism, while basing their view on a religious style faith in what is very low quality and poorly tested science. At the science end, it's about time that archaic assertions were tested with better quality methods- to help prevent this movement of elevating flawed science ahead of artistic goals. Most importantly though, is how to look at things from an artistic point of view. You must at least believe that musical illusions exist- and that you can't hit the piano keys any old way if you want to make them. Especially not with an umbrella.