A thing about piano playing is that, much like the Earth and everything on it, the sound is constantly dying. When you hear a piano player, you're riding the Relativity Express, and they are running it.
This manifested itself to me as a dissatisfaction with the tone, that I couldn't keep things smooth enough, and it developed over the source of many thought balloons that if you want to stay the same volume on a piano, you can play each note at the same volume as the previous one started, or you can play each new note at the same volume that the previous one had attained when the next one was played. A sliding scale.
The first of these does seem to keep your melodic line prominent (usually emphasizing the top line), as each new note is a tiny tad more loud than the preceding. This can give an impression of increasing volume. It can bother my ear some, it turns out.
The other solution has me playing a little softer as I go through a phrase (provided I'm not directed to get louder on it), with what seems like a more coherent stream of sound. It's like ending a piece with some repeated chords: If it's not saying to get louder on them, I like to strike each a tiny bit softer, so as not to be louder than the existing envelope of sound that it's being opened in.
A net effect is that phrases go softer in the absence of any other written directions, This leads to a more ongoing ebb and flow of dynamics, instead of "just playing." Other dynamics still apply, just as a driver continues to pay attention to his location within a lane, even as the road twists.
Well, it makes sense to me, because I'm a sensitive creative artist, or something. I'll try and post more of this sort of thing, including art and productivity tips, under the "Technique" umbrella.
surprisingly, this was not originally a Twitter tweet stream.
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