{"id":354,"date":"2009-06-01T07:08:49","date_gmt":"2009-06-01T07:08:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp\/2009\/06\/chiff\/"},"modified":"2012-01-18T15:34:09","modified_gmt":"2012-01-18T20:34:09","slug":"chiff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/2009\/06\/chiff.html","title":{"rendered":"Chiff"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\" style=\"display: inline;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Thumbnail image for organpipe.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/assets_c\/2009\/05\/organpipe-thumb-52x238-7039.jpg\" width=\"52\" height=\"238\" class=\"mt-image-right\" style=\"float: right; margin: 0 0 10px 20px;\" \/><\/span><br \/>\nThe onset, the leading edge, of a note played on the piano is sudden. All the intensity of the tone comes right at the start, and then is followed by rapid decay.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nClose-up in a small room or in some recordings, we may be very aware of this edge. The slightly percussive beginning of a tone played on the organ is called &#8220;chiff.&#8221; It can come from the physical opening of the valve which moves aside so air can flow through a pipe and make sound, or from the pipe itself. In some pop and classical recordings, the metallic twang of the metal wrapping on the piano&#8217;s bass strings can be audible &#8212; a kind of piano <em>verismo<\/em>. In big concert halls and rooms, the sharp edges of attacks get smoothed.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nThe loudness of sounds is relative and remarkably flexible. We hear a lot of decibels when we are hearing a modern piano in a small room. There, a <em>forte<\/em> chord is really loud! In contrast, dozens of musicians playing <em>forte<\/em> in an orchestra, in a big concert hall like Carnegie or the Musikverein, make a sound that, by the time it reaches your ear, if you&#8217;re sitting in the balcony, can easily be superseded by the quiet comment of the person in the neighboring seat who leans to whisper in your ear.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n<span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\" style=\"display: inline;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"carnegie.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/carnegie.jpg\" width=\"400\" height=\"184\" class=\"mt-image-left\" style=\"float: left; margin: 0 20px 20px 0;\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The onset, the leading edge, of a note played on the piano is sudden. All the intensity of the tone comes right at the start, and then is followed by rapid decay. Close-up in a small room or in some recordings, we may be very aware of this edge. The slightly percussive beginning of a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1554,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[289,472,476,475,477,478,474,479,473,480],"class_list":{"0":"post-354","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-carnegie-hall","9":"tag-chiff","10":"tag-close-up","11":"tag-envelope","12":"tag-loudness","13":"tag-musical-perception","14":"tag-piano-tone","15":"tag-psychoacoustics","16":"tag-tone","17":"tag-verismo","18":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}