A Piano of This Time.

Stuart & Sons pianos are instruments of this time. Each piano Wayne Stuart makes is a progressive step in implementing fundamental changes to the traditional piano design that enable its more comprehensive interaction with modern music practices. Changes in compositional style and in the way music is produced and listened to in today’s electronic age created the impetus for Stuart to produce his acoustic soundscape. Wayne Stuart listens to how the players of modern music produce sounds on his instruments. After listening to Zubin Kanga’s playing of Diabolic Machines by composer Anthony Moles³⁶³ and Kanga’s most recent CD release, Wayne comments-

This is an important and incredible modern sound scape. It highlights the validity of the Stuart piano as a new sound aesthetic and the modern context of the repertoire elevates its importance to a new performance paradigm. These works would sound nothing like this if a [traditional modern piano] were used! .³⁶⁴

As a consequence of listening to the Stuart soundscape over many hours I now listen differently to piano sound. I interact differently with piano sound in a more comprehensive way. I can perceive now if a pianist is working well with the sound of the piano or not, in other words if the pianist is listening to the sound.

There are significant challenges in changing traditional musical instruments because the ear is the organ of fear…and any difference in a previously learned preconditioning of that organ will be met with suspicion, and the only way to overcome differences is through education, familiarization, and a gradual re-programing of how the mind relates to and interprets the new sound experience. It could be said that new acoustic experiences are initially, simply not recognised beyond the obvious difference.³⁶⁵

My perceptions of the stable tonal balance in the Stuart sound could well be influenced by my past musical experiences as a player and composer of electronic jazz music. Composing electronic music requires close listening to the inner balance of partial frequencies that make up the sound quality. Tone colour is created in electronic music by manipulating the attack, sustain, decay transients of sine and saw tooth waves generated by synthesizers and computers. Soundscapes or sound envelopes are created in electronic music to emulate the sounds of other instruments and to create new sounds. These modifications of sound quality are evaluated by how they transmit from the electronically controlled hi- fi speakers from which the sound is amplified. Instead of a soundboard, there is a speaker cone. Since the second half of the 20th century a large proportion of music listening happens through electronically enhanced devices, either through radio speakers, hi fi speakers or headphone speakers.

³⁶³Anthony Moles, Diabolic Machineshttps://soundcloud.com/zubin-kanga/diabolic-machines-by-anthony ,accessed 8th Nov. 2015.
³⁶⁴ Wayne Stuart email interview with author, 8th November, 2015.
^{365     11} Wayne Stuart speaks in “Innovations In The Piano,” (edited by W. Stuart, 1/2/2016).