The sound of the Stuart is bigger, as the instrument is longer and wider than the Steinway. The softs and louds of this section are more expansive in the Stuart sound than the Steinway. On the few occasions that the Stuart is played at a fortissimo, a ‘brightness’ of tone is present.

Conclusion – interpretations of ‘Brighter.’

The extent of the influence the pianists’ interpretation of the music and their manipulations of the piano sounds has on the overall tonal colour of the sound that radiates to the audience is revealed in the audio extracts of Commodo, Deep River and Little Rootie Tootie. The audience interpretations of the attributes ‘bright and mellow, round & smooth’ are also particular to their individual experience. Generally the audio extracts reveal that in the performances of Deep River and Little Rootie Tootie, the Steinway sound was ‘brighter’ than the Stuart, agreeing with the 100% perception of the written comments of concert No 5, and the minority perceptions of 31% of responses to qu. 4&5. In Deep River the pianist played the Stuart at a softer dynamic than the Steinway, emphasizing a more ‘colourful’ interpretation, and more use was made of the treble and bass registers than in the Steinway performance. The Steinway is played in a more conventional, gospel piano style, using a narrower range of dynamics with the ‘fuller’ sound of the middle registers. In Little Rootie Tootie the pianist played the Stuart with a slightly louder, heavier style than the Steinway, again producing a sound that was not as ‘bright’ sounding as the Steinway. The known ‘brightness’ of the Stuart tone may not have been exploited to its capacity by a different pianistic weighting of the fortissimo chords.

Conclusion: perception responses, questions 4 & 5.

In answers to the survey questions 4 & 5, ‘bright’ was identified as the perceptual characteristic to describe the Stuart sound when compared to Steinway, and the Steinway sound was clearly perceived as sounding more ‘mellow, smooth and deep’, than the Stuart sound. The comment-responses however presented a less clear overall perception, with the Stuart sound being described as both ‘bright, mellow, smooth, deep and round’, by a majority of participants. The audio extracts from Concert No 5, concur with the 100% written responses that the Steinway sounded ‘brighter’ than the Stuart.

Qu. 6&7 ‘clearer more defined’

Is the sound of the Stuart/Steinway Piano?

The multiple-choice option, ‘clearer more defined than the Stuart/Steinway’ Qu.6 & Qu.7, attracted an overall perceptual response across the 6 concerts of 60% participants saying the Stuart sound was ‘clearer more defined’ than the Steinway sound. The use of the attributes, ‘clarity’, ‘resonant’ and ‘defined’ in comments were compiled as responses about a more defined sound definition. The clarity, resonance and definition of sound is described below by Wayne Stuart as a consequence in the Stuart sound of the vertical coupling implemented by the Stuart bridge agraffe, which couples the strings vertically onto the bridge and soundboard, as compared to the two pinned horizontal coupling of the Steinway and most other modern pianos’ strings.