{"id":439,"date":"2011-05-09T05:21:53","date_gmt":"2011-05-09T05:21:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp\/2011\/05\/piano_vocal\/"},"modified":"2020-07-19T16:51:31","modified_gmt":"2020-07-19T20:51:31","slug":"piano_vocal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/2011\/05\/piano_vocal.html","title":{"rendered":"Piano Vocal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Preparing the month of shows I&#8217;m hosting on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wqxr.org\/programs\/hammered\/\">Q2<\/a> &#8212; sent me into a studio for several hours of recording voice tracks, my commentary. I was wearing headphones so the microphone-heard sound of my own talking was in my ear.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"mt-image-right\" style=\"float: right;margin: 6px 0 10px 40px\" src=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/MichaelFeinstein.jpg\" alt=\"MichaelFeinstein.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"256\">It made me wonder all over again: Do the sounds a pianist makes from the piano have any relation to that person&#8217;s physical voice?<\/p>\n<p>For me it&#8217;s concerning if a musician has a particularly harsh or unmodulated speaking voice. One New York pianist comes to mind &#8230; And, to me, Vladimir Horowitz&#8217; low, low speaking voice (in English) was disturbing.<\/p>\n<p>You manage your voice. It may not seem that you choose its qualities. But don&#8217;t you?<\/p>\n<p>Fashions in speaking-voice sounds change. Just listen to old movies. Smoking changes the tonality or even register of a voice. So does a lot of yelling. In music and in speaking, some harsh sounds may be useful and expressive.<\/p>\n<p>Some pianists actually vocalize, moaning or humming as they play. That vocalizing may be part of the tone of long notes! It is usually a sign that true listening &#8212; to the physical sounds in the room &#8212; is not happening.<\/p>\n<p>The impact of our spoken voice on piano playing is not only a matter of &#8220;sound.&#8221; Particular ways of speaking, and the rhythms, emphasis, and inflection of a mother tongue surely influence the way we make music.<\/p>\n<p>And all of this changes. The North American accents of today&#8217;s spoken English are not what was heard at the Continental Congress. And I doubt Mozart spoke as a Salzburger living in Vienna might now &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Preparing the month of shows I&#8217;m hosting on Q2 &#8212; sent me into a studio for several hours of recording voice tracks, my commentary. I was wearing headphones so the microphone-heard sound of my own talking was in my ear. It made me wonder all over again: Do the sounds a pianist makes from the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1095,"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":[172,659,380,657,658,173,661,660],"class_list":{"0":"post-439","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-horowitz","9":"tag-q2","10":"tag-singing","11":"tag-speaking","12":"tag-speaking-voice","13":"tag-vladimir","14":"tag-wnyc","15":"tag-wqxr","16":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439","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=439"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5321,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439\/revisions\/5321"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}