Voicing Harpsichords

Voicing Harpsichords
http://www.instrumentmaking.keithhillharpsichords.com/gpag...
On Voicing and Regulating Harpsichords

By Keith Hill
2008 Manchester, MI
Though I have covered many points of quilling, both practical and philosophical, in my article Plastic versus Organic, which you can read at http://www.instrumentmaking.keithhillharpsichords.com/quilling.html, I did not touch on the subject of voicing and regulation. This article is intended to amplify my above article in order to help harpsichordists and other harpsichord enthusiasts better set up their instruments and render them more playable. Too often, in music school, harpsichordists are expected to push the keys on the harpsichord and taught how they ought to play music but are never taught how to tune, voice and regulate their instruments. I consider this to be reprehensible behavior on the part of every professor and instructor of harpsichord who neglects this aspect of the craft of being a harpsichordist. By their neglect, they demonstrate how little they care that their students are fully qualified to tune, voice, regulate, and maintain their harpsichord when they graduate and become professional harpsichordists themselves. To qualify someone who is professionally crippled is unconscionable. The result is that too many harpsichordists are grossly unprepared to deal with maintaining and tuning their harpsichords, when they finally have to break down and buy one, and are forced to play catch up at a time when their career should be focusing on music making. Oboe players are all expected to learn how to make their own reeds. Often, the quality of their playing and hence their career hangs on how well they can master that aspect of the craft of oboe playing. It was the very first thing I was taught when I studied oboe playing in college. String players are shown how to change strings and tune their instruments, rosin their bows and to see to the correct position of the bridge on their instrument, and those who can't do those simple basic chores have no careers. What are they going to do when a string breaks in concertcall in a violin repair person? Harp players, too, are instructed in the care and maintenance of their instruments. But not harpsichordists, yet harpsichords are notorious for the amount of tuning, voicing, and maintenance they require merely to be moderately serviceable, despite every attempt in the past to make them tuning and maintenance free-attempts which only resulted in abysmal sounding harpsichords. CPE Bach wrote of his father, The exact tuning of his instrument as well as of the whole orchestra had his greatest attention. No one could tune and quill his instruments to please him. He did everything himself. (from the Bach Reader, p. 276) Negligence in this area of harpsichord playing instruction needs to be rectified. Quills break in the middle of a concert and it is the hapless harpsichordist who is faced with the matter of correcting the problem then and there. To not be able to do so is to be viewed by everyone looking on as gross incompetence. Hopefully, this article will help players understand something about how to get a harpsichord both to play reliably and to feel comfortable to the hand so that every concert goes well because the focus is on the music and not on how bad the condition of the harpsichord is. Years ago, I was asked by a harpsichord maker colleague why it was so hard for players to keep harpsichords in perfect working order. My response was that it is never an effort to keep a wonderful sounding musical instrument in good working order. My thinking was that the better the instrument is, the more it inspires the player to keep it functioning in first rate condition. Human perception tends to balance perceived effort with perceived reward. When effort reaps too little perceived reward, the effort is always viewed as excessive. When effort reaps much perceived reward, the effort is always viewed as manageable. And, when very little effort reaps huge rewards, the effort is always viewed as well worth the doing. During that same conversation, I also offered that the single determining factor for why
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harpsichords fare so poorly in the hands of those who use them is Fear. Fear of imagined complexity. Fear of imagined difficulty. Fear of imagined personal incompetence in dealing with things mechanical. All of which lead to hopelessness. But most of that fear is unwarranted. And here is why. Point One: The most important point in learning to set up a harpsichord is to understand that no single action in maintaining a harpsichord is any more difficult than tying shoe laces or buttoning up a shirt. Both these require finger dexterity, good eye hand coordination, and patienceHmmm!?! the same kinds of requirements as learning to play a keyboard instrument!!! Point Two: Learning to handle a voicing knife is not much different than learning how to handle an ink pen. In the old days every person who could write was expected to be able to make his or her own pens. Just because that aspect of the writing craft has passed by the wayside, doesn't mean that every human being is incapable of learning how to do it. Who ever could write back then knew how to handle a pen knife, and this means that whoever could write was also able to voice and regulate a harpsichord. We are not dealing with Rocket Science here!! Point Three: Do not use the excuse: I am just not mechanically inclined enough to do this Frankly, I am not mentally inclined to write, but I learned, and that is much harder to learn than how to hold a cutting tool, insert a quill, cut the end of jack, or glue a piece of paperthings which most of us learn in kindergarten. People learn what they have to learn, and unless they failed kindergarten, there is nothing particularly difficult in doing the job of setting up a harpsichord action. If learning is easy it usually means instruction was good or that you have a knack for learning whatever it is that you are learning in spite of good instruction. If learning is hard, it usually means that the instruction was bad or that you have little knack for learning easily what is being badly taught. And talent is merely the ability to learn in spite of what is either not taught or taught badly. Hard or easy, good or bad, learning is something the human brain is designed to do, yet resists doing, curiously, by any means possible. Learning is painfulget used to it. For those who manage to get used to it, to quote Bach, All things must be possible. Now that you have it clearly in mind how you need to hold your mind and attention, you can learn how to regulate a harpsichord.
Setting up a harpsichord action Step One: Set the distance from the underside of the L/M 8' strings to the topside of the L/M
8' quills to exactly 1.5mm or 1/16th inch. Rule #1: Always analyze the state of the action in front of you before you do anything. The biggest mistake which people make when working on mechanisms, when they don't understand what they are doing, is to assume that the first thing which they see is the real problem. Usually, it is not the real problem, it is only a symptom. To cure the patient, you need to figure out exactly what is wrong or you may end up doing more harm than good. (But that is not a good enough reason to avoid learning to tune, voice, and regulate your instrument, whether you are a pianist, harpsichordist, organist, or clavichordist. If you insist on avoiding this work, then perhaps you should better stick to playing electronic keyboards, where all you are required to do is plug it in and punch keys.) I can't impress upon you enough the importance of always spending the time to determine exactly what is wrong with the action in front of you before you proceed to do something wrong that will cost a lot of money to fix later. In no way should this prevent you from actually doing the work yourself. Too often, the fear of doing something wrong is assumed as being worthy of a death sentence. Its not. Remember! A harpsichord is only a piece of fancy furniture that has a mechanism which does something. Your task is to figure out what it is doing and make it do what you want it to donot what it comes to you aswhich is, more likely than not, wrong to begin with, unless the person making the instrument is expert in setting up harpsichord actions for master players. My task here is to help you understand enough to avoid doing anything glaringly wrong. The following are questions that you need to answer before beginning the work. 1. How much airspace is there between the top of the quills on the lower manual jacks to the underside of the strings which they pluck? This question is important because the Lower Manual (L/M) 8' is the foundation of the harpsichord. For those jacks to work properly, the quills have to be set, by whatever means necessary, so they set exactly 1.5mm (1/16th inch) under the string. If the lower manual jacks are set so that their quills or plectra are too close to the strings, they tend not to repeat
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reliably. If they are too far from the string, the key action needs to be deeper to accommodate both the Upper Manual (U/M) and the L/M 8' plucks otherwise the feeling you will experience will be spongytough and soggyat the bottom of the keydip. 2. Are there screws under the keyboards, which are accessible from the bottom of the instrument which can be used to raise and lower the rear of the keyboards? If the instrument has been made to allow for easy regulation to control the distance between the L/M 8' quills and the strings, you should find a screw visible on the bottom of the instrument which, if you turn it, will cause the rear of the L/M keyboard frame to raise and lower. If you see one there, turn it to see if you can notice the L/M 8' jacks going up and down as you turn it in or out. If you don't find one, then do whatever it takes to set the L/M 8' quills so they set exactly 1.5mm (1/16th inch) under the string. Whatever it takes means WHATEVER IT TAKES. The usual alternative solutions are: (in order of finality from most easily changeable to most final) 1. If the airspace between the Lower Manual 8' quills is larger than 1.5mm (1/16th inch), glue cardboard under the key frame to raise up the L/M keyboard until the airspace is about right or a little too close, which would make the quills be to close to the string, then cut those jacks down that are too tall. 2. Add a strip of cloth under the L/M keys to raise up the keysthis solution will require a total reregulation of the coupling mechanism if you do this, so do it only if there is a great deal of lost motion between the L/M coupler dogs and the underside of the U/M keyends. (I will discuss this later as well). If doing this requires you to cut down the coupler dogs, then remember that this is an extremely final action and you don't want to do it unless there is no other way that you can make the action function properly and bring it into the correct standard. 3. Glue paper, cardboard, or hard leather to the ends of the jacks to raise them up. 4. Cut with a knife or a chisel the ends of the jacks to lower them. Again, this is an extremely final action and you can't undo it except by using solution #3. However, if the distance between the tops of the quills and the underside of the L/M 8' strings is too close, and you have no way to lower the key frame of the L/M, then that is the best possible decision. 3. How even are the distances between the tops of the quills and the undersides of the L/M 8' strings? If what you observe is that the quills are totally uneven, so that the distances from the string to the quill for the jack on the bass-most key up to the jack on the treble-most key are all different, then you need to raise the jacks which set the lowest and shorten the jacks which set the highest until all the quills of the L/M 8' jacks set exactly 1/16th inch below the underside of the strings. Once you have set up the action so that the quills of the L/M 8' jacks are all sitting 1.5mm or 1/16th inch below the underside of the strings, you can turn your attention to the voicing of those quills. Until then concentrate on achieving that standard until you have done everything in your power to achieve it. You can eliminate wood from the end of the jacks by cutting with a knife or a chisel, or by filing with a file or a fine rasp, or by sanding or planning off the end of the jack. The method is not as important as the result.
Step Two: Set the distance from the underside of the L/M 4' strings to the topside of the L/M
4' quills to exactly 1.0mm or 3/64ths inch. When you have done whatever is required to get the 8' jacks set up so that the topside of the 8' quills are exactly 1.5mm or 1/16th of an inch from the underside of the 8' strings, and you have done whatever is required to get the 4' jacks set up so that the topside of the 4' quills are exactly 1.0mm or 3/64ths of an inch from the underside of the 4' strings, the next step is:
Step Three: Cut the 8' quills to length so that they extend beyond the strings about
0.5mm or 1/32nd of and inch in the treble and about 0.75mm or just over 1/32nd of an inch in the bass. Rule# 2: In analyzing harpsichord actions, remember that bass strings are under significantly less tension than treble strings and that they have significantly large axis of vibration than treble strings. If the quills are too long and extend too far under the strings, the touch will feel spongy and thick. If the quills are too short and barely extend beyond the string at all, the touch will feel chunky and brittle. If the quills are voiced to be really loud, then they need to extend less under the string or the touch will feel like trudging waist deep in muck. If the quills are voiced extremely softly, then you will want them to extend further beyond the strings or the touch will feel imprecise and feather-triggered.
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By holding to the above standard, you will have, at very least, a more reliable and easy to play action. Rule #3: Every instrument is unique and needs to be adjusted on its own terms. A harpsichord which is not very good sounding also tends to be really difficult to get it to play well and feel good to play. The better sounding an instrument is the easier it is to get it to play and feel good. Your harpsichord, however good or bad it is, wants to feel good for youhow it feels to others to play is irrelevant. However, when you are using someone else's harpsichord for a concert, and you find that their solutions for getting their instrument to work for them are not at all how you would like the instrument to work for you, resist the temptation to work too much on the instrument with out asking the owner for permission to change the set up, assuming you want to do all that work for free, because everyone's idea of what feels good is different. Harpsichordists who fail to consult with the owner of the harpsichord and change the feel of the action without permission risk the possibility of never again being allowed to use that instrument for any future concert because changing the voicing, especially making the volume softer than what the owner likes, risks voicing the life out of the sound. It always leaves a bad taste in the mouth of the one who must live with what they may view as an insipid or grating voicing. If you need the instrument to play more easily than it currently plays, change the register screws in order to back the whole set of jacks away from the strings and then deal with the few that don't fire reliably. That is vastly easier to undo than replacing a whole harpsichord's worth of quills. Whatever you do on someone else's harpsichord, do it with their permission and consentit is basic courtesy.
About Lost Motion

Piano technicians are the folks from whom I first heard about lost motion. This term is an oxymoron. It means exactly the opposite of what it purports to describe. It actually means too much motion resulting in reduced efficiency. When you correct lost motion in an action it means you get rid of every bit of motion that doesn't do anything in terms of making the action work. A harpsichord action in which the jacks are suspended from their dampers when the jack is at rest will have lost efficiency due to excess movement of the keys, which is any motion of the key that happens until the keys actually push up on the bottom of the jacks. If the jacks are at rest on the keys when the keys are at rest, there is no lost motion between the keys and the jackssomething which should only apply regarding the L/M 8' and the 4' jacks. Most antique harpsichords were set up so that the jacks were at rest on the keys when the keys were not being played. This translates into a feeling of instantaneous response for the player. However, if you make the mistake of having the upper manual 8' jacks standing, at rest, on the ends of the upper manual keys, the sensations will be one of thickness because the fingers can feel the excess movement of the jacks through their contact with the register holes. Upper manual jacks want to hang from their dampers for yet another reason. That is, when the keyboards are coupled so that the upper keys rise the moment the lower manual keys are touched and no sooner, the touch feels more transparent if the upper manual jacks are not sitting on the upper manual keys when those keys are at rest. When the keyboards are coupled, there should be no motion at all of the upper manual keys while the manuals are being coupled. If you notice the upper manual keys moving however slightly, it is important to regulate the coupler by whatever means necessary to correct that problem. On the other hand, if you touch the lower manual keys, once the keyboards have been coupled, and notice that the upper manual keys are not instantly moving the moment the lower manual keys have been touched, then you will need to do what ever is required to fill up the space between the underside of the upper manual keys and the top of the coupler dogs (the projecting pieces on the lower manual keys which contact the rear underside of the upper manual keys). If you fail to set up the coupling mechanism properly, as I have described it, the action will feel sloppy and any regulating work you do will have to be corrected or redone (which can be very expensive because it involves a lot of time). The time to correct the excess motion in the coupling mechanism is any time before you begin work on voicing and regulating the upper manual 8' quills.
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The brings me to the question of the ideal key depth. Some players like the least amount of key motion possible. What this means is that the harpsichord must be voiced to have no audible volume, nor any appreciable amount of quill contacting the string. As long as you don't play concerts for listeners, you can do whatever you like with your harpsichord. However, as soon as you take other people's time or money and play music which you expect them the listen to, it is a good idea to make the sound of the instrument loud enough that they don't leave the concert feeling like it was a waste because they couldn't hear anything coming out of the harpsichordone of the most common complaints from listeners about attending harpsichord concerts. I am not saying these things at all tongue in cheek. This is a serious complaint and one with which I overwhelmingly sympathize. If I can't hear the instrument in a concert, I just get up and leave, instead of politely sitting there and pretending that what is happening is somehow worth watching. Music is meant to be listened to and you can't listen if you can't hear. Some players even force people to listen by making the sound so soft that you have to strain to hear the sound-they are a musical menace because those who take the trouble to attend a concert ought not be abused by being forced to exert their powers of attention just to hear the soundthe straining to hear becomes the focus of the concert not the music. And the notion that, Well, the ear quickly becomes accustomed to the lower sound level! does not justify abusing listeners that way. The fact is that the ear does not quickly become accustomed to the reduced sound level, it merely feels deprived and dismisses what is happening as irrelevant. When that happens, the listener determines to never again waste their time and money going to harpsichord concerts. So think carefully about the consequences of whatever choice of key depth you establish for the set up of your harpsichordit can make or break a career. It is the players who choose to play loud harpsichords who, at very minimum, make the listeners feel like they aren't losing their hearing. Before bringing lost motion and ideal key depth together conceptually, let me address one more matter relating to motion that doesn't do anything. Once the quill has released the string any amount of motion in the key is clearly not doing anything-so why not remove all that extra motion. Here is where the harpsichord is radically different than other keyboard instruments such as the piano, organ, and clavichord. On the piano, all the key dip, as it is called, is what is required to get the hammer up to the string, to strike the string and to then come to a complete stop the moment that all happens. Ditto for the organ and the clavichord. On a harpsichord, if you make the mistake of having the key stop the moment the quills release the strings, the touch feels like trying to breathe with someone standing on your chest and abdomen. Yes, you can still breathe but it is really hard work and gets tedious very quickly. The truth is that any motion in the key which occurs after the quills release the strings by plucking them translates directly into a feeling of freedom of breath. That is why I call this type of motion Air Space. No matter how forcefully or lightly you voice your harpsichord, anything less than 3mm of air space happening after the last quill has plucked its string in the overall descent of the key feels insufficient to allow for the fingers to breathe. Generally speaking, the more loudly your voicing is the more air space after the last pluck you need to have to create that effect of the hand or fingers breathing. Too little and the fingers feel like they are gasping for more air. Too much air space and the fingers feel like they are wasting their time or the touch is viewed as chunky. If you aim for a minimum/maximum of 3mm of air space after the last pluck, the touch on your harpsichord should make the fingers feel at ease with the business of engaging the plucks in a harpsichord touch. So Air Space is actually doing something extremely important. It is creating the feeling of breathing in the hand and fingers. Lost motion, by comparison, merely feels sloppy and incompetent. Once you have established the correct length of the quills and the correct amount of quill extending beyond the strings for both the L/M 8' and 4' jacks, proceed to voice the harpsichord according to your taste.
Step Four: Voicing a harpsichord to your taste means cutting or scraping at the
underside of the quills until you establish for yourself the kind of volume, resistance, and playability you require and prefer. Rule #4: There are wrong ways to hold the knife used in voicing and there are right ways to do it. Learn the right way and you will never cut yourself while voicing and regulating your harpsichord.
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The tools you will need for voicing are: one very high quality flush cutting knipper, one jewelers screwdriver, one very fine pointed needle nose pliers, one voicing knife of some kind, and one wood voicing block. I prefer the following tools for voicing: the FLUSH CUTTING knippers are a Lindstrom (Swedish) product with the yellow grips which you can purchase from outfits on line that sell tools for making jewelry and tying flies for fishing. The jewelers screwdriver, that is use to push quills that are trimmed at the back to increase the length at the front, should be about 1.5mm - 2mm wide at the blade. The needle nose pliers are used to insert quills (see photo) as well as grabbing the ends of the boar's bristles to crimp and insert them into the notch made to install and secure them in place.
They are also used to install plectra into the empty quill holes in the tongues, so I prefer these pliers to NOT have any teeth or serrations on the inside surfaces that could create a roughness to the surface of a plectra when it is being firmly gripped in the jaws of the pliers, which you must do when inserting the plectra into the quill hole in the tongue. The voicing knife I prefer is a Stanley Slimknife (0-10-590) and the blades suitable for voicing are 11-113. The voicing block is made of ebony, hard maple, oak, boxwood, granadilla, snakewood, ironwood, or some other extremely dense and hard wood is the best for the voicing block, which should be kept smooth, flat and clean to make cutting on it as easy and rapid as possible.
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The photos show you exactly how to hold the knife and how to brace the hand which holds the knife so it never slips inadvertently and affords the greatest control over how the material is being removed from the quills. Those to whom I have taught this method of holding the knife and bracing the hand and voicing never cut themselves while voicing. It is fear of cutting oneself just before a concert that terrifies most players. So pay close attention to the exact manner in which the hands are held and learn that method and you will never need fear cutting yourself. I have supplied another photo showing what it should look like if you are left handed.
Notice that the knife is held by three fingers. The middle finger is used to support the knife and keep it from falling to the ground and to draw the knife from the root of the quill to the tip. The index finger is used to press the blade to the knife and to control the relationship between the cutting edge of the knife blade and the surface of the voicing block and how parallel the edge is to the surface of the quill. While the thumb is used to create a counterforce to prevent the knife from being drawn away from the root of the quill. The thumb is also responsible for changing the angle of the edge of the knife as to how much material is to be removed. This is because the thumb acts as a point for the knife to pivot upon.
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Finally, the fourth and fifth fingers need to be extended down and are used as a stop to prevent the other fingers and the whole hand from lurching forward during a difficult cutand event that can result in the tip of the blade going into and cutting the fingers of the hand which is holding the jack during the voicing process.
The jack is held against the voicing block as shown in this photo. When you hold your thumb against the voicing block as I have shown in the photo picturing the two hands in the correct position, you can not inadvertently run the tip of the voicing knife into your thumbit is not possible unless you fail to brace the hand holding the knife using the fourth and fifth fingers extended in the proper position. That is the key to fearless management of the knife during the voicing procedure. I have supplied left handers with the photo (go back two photos) of what the same position looks like for them. The positional principles of how to hold the knife and how to brace that hand using the fourth and fifth fingers extended, and making sure that the thumb of the hand which holds the voicing block and jack is placed correctly may take about 30 minutes to get used to. But thereafter, once you experience how effortless it is to hold the knife, the jack and voicing block, and how controllable it makes the business of moving and manipulating the knife, you will appreciate having taken the trouble to learn the
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correct position of everything.
This photo shows how the knife is used to taper the quill lengthwise. Narrower at the tip and wider at the root.
This photo shows how the knife is positioned on the quill to shave from the underside of the quill. When shaving or scraping or slicing the quill on the underside, remember that the tip of the quill needs to be thinner than the root of the quill. The degree of evenness of the taper, governs to a great extent how pure the sound will be. Aim for a taper both in thickness and in width that is as mathematically as perfect as possible. Once you have that shape firmly in your imagination, then do whatever you like.
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This photo shows how the knife is positioned on the quill to cut it to length at the tip. The correct attitude for learning delicate work is to plan to throw away your first 5 attempts to voice and regulate your harpsichord yourself. If you insist on making your first attempts as perfect as possible, your self consciousness will be the main quality expressed in the sound you are trying to learn to create. Don't insist on perfection first time out. Rather insist on learning to feel comfortable, relaxed, and alert while managing all the variableslike juggling. Your aim should be for getting the feel of how to do the work. In time, as your standards rise with your competence level, the work will eventually be perfect the first time every time and, more importantly, you would have done it easily and fast.
Step Five: Voicing

Voicing is the act of making each note sound as wonderful as possible for that note. I will interject here a note of caution. Voicing is wrongly yet most often viewed as the practice of making every note sound as uniform in timbre and volume, and as similar in touch as possible. This standard is too often the cause of why so many keyboard instruments sound boring. Whatever is uniform is noticed by the human brain as the same and therefore not worth paying attention to. For the brain to notice two similar things is enough for it to guess that a third thing will be the same. As soon as that prediction comes true, the brain recognizes that it has no need to pay attention to those things, and it looks elsewhere for stimulation. Our brains do this without our consent and without our knowledge. You have to pay very close attention to such an event whenever it happens in order to realize how subtle the impulse is. If you choose to establish the pseudo-aesthetic of uniformity to the way you voice your instruments, be prepared to deal with the boredom it engenders. Nature is always different and unique. Even twins have distinctly different personalities. If you have not noticed how distinct from each other even two similar things are, in nature, it would be worth your while to study this phenomenon. Then learn the lesson which nature teaches and voice your instrument so that you create as interesting and resonant a sound as possible on each and every note. If you do so, your harpsichord will sound more like the antique harpsichords, which is a good thing. What I consider wonderful in a sound is a balance between purity and interest. Purity is never interesting, but it is superficially satisfying. Interest is never pure, but it is endlessly intriguing. What I believe is the most powerful aesthetically is when you can create a purity that is endlessly intriguing. If you make the mistake of aiming only for purity you will only
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achieve a saccharine boredom. If you aim only for interest you will only achieve an unsupported visceral curiosity. Purity supports the mind while interest holds it in place. That is why I aim for a balance between purity and interest. However, it is important that you do what pleases you most because you will be the one to live with what you do. The act of making each note sound as wonderful to you as possible is what voicing is all about, in my estimation. The following instructions are more cautionary warnings about how to avoid doing things which will actually sound and feel bad. Point one, Avoid cutting the plectra in ways which are irregular, crooked, or clumsy looking, both from a top view and from a side view. An irregular shape from either axis creates a sound that is coarse. A crooked shape, creates a sound that is weak. And something clumsy looking, curiously, feels clumsy to play. This is because these shapes of plectra contact the string in ways that are out of kilter and release the string in ways that set up a pattern of vibration that is impure (which sounds coarse and crude) Point two, Avoid making the tip of the plectra too thick and the root of the plectra too thin. This results in a sound that is loud and light to touch but has no core and be more prone to breaking at the root. Point three, Avoid making the tip of the plectra too thin. It is easy to make this mistake in an effort to quickly get a plectrum to sound the right volume, but the touch feels chunky. Furthermore, as such a plectrum is played over some weeks, it begins to curl downward at the tip, which can result in hangers (I will discuss hangers in greater detail later) Point four, Avoid making the plectra too wide at the tip. A clean sound can not be achieved when the plectra are too wide at the tip. This is because the plectra actually damp the string even at the moment of plucking it, and the wider the plectra more of the string gets damped. The acoustical result is similar to trying to speak with a swollen tongue, everything sounds thick and garbled. If the harpsichord you are working on has a particularly thin unresonant sound, then you can thicken the sound substantially by leaving the plectra as wide as possible at the tips. Be aware, though, that this will also create a sensation of thickness in the touch. So if the keys already have a kind of thick turgid sensation when played without the plectra plucking the strings, you may wish to avoid emphasizing that effect or the touch will end up feeling like trudging up to your hips in a mucky swamp. This particular caution applies only to delrin or celcon, not to real quill, which needs to be as wide always at the tip as at the root. If you make the mistake of pointing plectra made of real quill, the result will be split plectra. That is, the quills will split longitudinally along the edges causing the sound to become very quiet and insubstantial. This phenomena is caused by the fact that real quill has a longitudinal structure of rods running through the cuticle (the smooth hard surface used to pluck the strings) and this structure accounts for most of the strength of the quill. Point five, Avoid making the plectra too narrow at the root, unless the plectra are for the 4' register. If you are using delrin, it is useful to know that one of its mechanical properties is that it behaves exponentially. That is, if you have a plectrum that is one millimeter wide from the root to the tip, it will have a volume and resistance that we can call x. If you have a plectrum that is two millimeters wide from the root to the tip, and which has exactly the same thickness, it will have a volume and resistance in touch that is not 2x but 4x, or four times the volume and resistance. Similarly, if you have a plectrum which is 2 millimeters wide from the root to the tip, and which is a uniform one half a millimeter thick, you will realize a volume and resistance we can call x. Double that thickness and you will quadruple the volume and resistance. Knowing that this is the behavior that you can expect, you can learn to avoid over thinning plectra, and avoid leaving them too thick. And you can learn that removing a really tiny amount of material can radically alter the volume and the touch. Point six, Delrin, as it ages and is played becomes harder and stiffer. This effect is called work hardening. Also, like metals in which the structure can disintegrate, called fatigue, and break, plastics invariably will also disintegrate and break. This means that if you voice your harpsichord today, by a year from now, you will likely need to reduce the thickness somewhat to account for the increased volume and resistance in the touch caused by work hardening. This is a normal phenomenon with plastics. Also as Delrin is used repeatedly, the crispness of the tip of the plectra get worn down and rounded causing the sound be much more fundamental and dark. Oxidation also takes a toll on the durability of plastics, which embrittle because of it. Point seven, The ideal shape of a plectrum is one which results in the maximum amount of volume, with the minimum amount of plectra noise, having the sweetest, least coarse timbre, and the lightest touch possible. This generally happens when the plectra are narrow at the
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tip, wide at the root, thinner at the tip getting thicker at the root, and which are perfectly graduated between narrow and wide and thin and thick. Point eight, The touch resistance depends on the thickness of the plectra at the root and the amount of plectra which extends beyond the string at the tip. The thicker the plectra are at the root, the tougher the touch will feel to be. The further the tip of the plectra extend beyond the string, the longer the plectra will remain in contact with the string and the thicker and more lugubrious the touch will feel. If you aim for a touch that is crisp and light, that is considered by most experienced harpsichordists to be the ideal. However, some players like to have a feeling of resistance in the plectra which requires them to bang on the keys, because they consider sheer volume of sound to be more important for playing concerts than the test of purity and sweetness. Too often, they make recordings with instrument voiced in this manner and the sound is oppressively coarse and caustic. Oppositely, other players like to have the least resistance possible and eschew every other consideration in order to have that result. In concerts, one can hardly hear such players because their instruments whisper, which causes listeners to fatigue from working too hard to hear the sound and to lose interest in what is happening musically. These are the two extremes. By voicing your instrument for the sound and touch that strike the happy balance between touch and volume, timber and resonance, interest and purity, you can create the best effect for whatever instrument you are playing. Point nine, Some makers and technicians have a habit of cutting their plectra by beveling the undersides along the edges. The aim, I suppose, is to reduce the stiffness without also reducing the volume. Obviously, you can do anything you like when voicing your own harpsichord. There are no laws to violate and no penalties to pay other than musical ones should you choose to focus on minor issues such as stiffness and volumethe main error in what to consider in voicing.
Qualities to consider in voicing

I try to avoid thinking in uni-dimensional ways and consider voicing to control stiffness and volume as uni-dimensional. Why? Because the relationship between the fingers and the vibrating string is actually extremely complex. Voicing to control stiffness and volume only is like baking a cake and considering height of rise and degree of sponginess exclusively. A high rising cake that is moist and spongy but tastes flat and floury isn't worth eating. Likewise, a harpsichord that has a light touch and a loud sound, though better than one which has a heavy touch and a soft sound, can still have a flat development to the sound and be lacking in transparency, color, focus, vocality, robustness, delicacy, intensity, dynamic and depth (matters that can be influenced by expert voicing). I aim for transparency of touch, for a solidity of sensation of connection between the finger and the string through the plectrum, for the degree to which the touch encourages a relaxed hand, for the degree to which the plectra reflect the intention of the mind of the player in the manner in which they release the string, for the amount of focused attention the plectra generate, for how interesting the moment of release of the string from the plectrum on each note is, and for the maximum possible feeling of security when playing. I expect each of these to be actually more important than volume or lightness of touch. Here is why. If a harpsichord has no bloom, it is like listening to someone talking who uses no inflection in their speech. This is what computer generated speech sounds like. It is intensely boring to listen to. If a harpsichord has even the slightest trace of blooming behavior, that needs to be emphasized to the maximum degree. Failure to honor the bloom will have the effect of encouraging player and listener alike to stop listeningmusic doesn't happen when listening isn't taking place. If a harpsichord does not have a vocal or human quality to the way the sound occurs, it might just as well be an electronic keyboard. Ditto for a piano, an organ, or a clavichord. It is not obliged to be a beautiful vocal quality to satisfy this requirementafter all, many human beings do not have beautiful sounding voices. But the most beautiful voice speaking in a manner designed to imitate computer generated speech loses all its allure. And some of the finest singers over the past 100 years have had voices that are downright uglyWillie Nelson and Louis Armstrong. The problem with keyboard instruments is that they sound as mechanical as they are. Getting them to sound organic is the trick to making them sound interesting. Harpsichords are notoriously thin sounding. Loud and thin is still thin. Therefore, getting them to sound robust and full, broad and deep should be your aim. At the same time, delicacy of sound should not be neglected. Delicacy of sound is like delicacy of mind. No matter the subject being exposed in a piece of music, the instrument wants to sound like someone who has given a great deal of thought to whatever it is that they are saying. If you voice in a manner that is designed to just get the thing working, no matter what, then what you have is what I would call a prevoicing. Prevoicing only tells you what the potential of the instrument
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is. Voicing is designed to maximize the potential qualities of each instrument. What carries, over long distances, in the sound of a musical instrument is intensity. Without intensity there is no vividness. You can have intensity of timbre, intensity of fundamental, intensity of brilliance, intensity of bloom, intensity of resonance, intensity of tone, intensity of focus, intensity of volume, etc. Voicing rightly aims at maximizing as much of the intensity available in an instrument as possible. The alternative is vapidity and insipidity, two decidedly uninviting traits. (Such a sound is good only for throwing on the ground and being trod under foot.) What engages an artist player most in a sound is the degree to which that sound is perceived to be capable of being altered while playing. An instrument which does only one thing, no matter how good it is has little to recommend it. It is better to have an instrument that has no perceived good qualities but which takes on whatever quality is in the imagination of a great player, than to have one which has a superficially great sound but which does nothing once you activate it. These are all the qualities which, if you have them in mind when you are voicing, you can respond to, enhancing them the moment you recognize them in the sound. It is these qualities that make a sound fascinating. The more fascinating a sound is the longer you want to play or listen to it. You can't ask for more if you can learn to voice your harpsichord to be endlessly interesting to play and practice on. Point Ten: Setting up the stagger. One of the curious problems in harpsichords is that the strings are plucked. This means you have always to consider how hard or tough you want the plucking to be and how much or little pluck resistance you are prepared to live with. This is further complicated when you have more than one set of jacks plucking more than one set of strings. If you have either a 4' jack and an 8' jack plucking simultaneously, the sensation is one of brittle chunkiness no matter how softly the plucks are. However, as soon as you stagger the plucking events so that one happens sooner and the other happens later, the result will be a much more smooth, less chunky touch. How close or separated the plucks occur is a matter of choice and preference. Just because these are a matter of choice or preference doesn't mean that there isn't a right or best solution. The right or best solution is one that is the most natural. Finding that one right best solution is what you should be aiming for in the setup of the stagger. For me, that one right best solution is the perfect balance between volume and stiffness which includes all of the characteristics that I'm looking for. Depending on the harpsichord and its natural volume and string resistance. I stagger the plucks to create the sound: pa-di-da, as spoken rapidly but not super fast. This sound indicates the timing between the 4 foot pluck and the two eight-foot plucks. If you say pa-di-da too fast, and the staggering will be too close. If you say pa-di-da too slowly, then the staggering will be too far apart. The key is to say it in a rapid but natural manner. And then imitate the timing in the spacing of the plucks. Naturally, there is a right way to play the key in order to create the sound pa-di-da. This involves learning to press the notes slowly enough yet smoothly enough and in a very controlled way to produce the sound. The key has to be pressed slowly enough to allow each one of the plucks to sound individually. Usually, when the plucks happened to close together, it is very difficult to isolate the plucks. This means that they're much too close. If it is too easy to isolate the plucks, it means that they're too far apart. What you must learn is how they must sound in sequence to produce that pa-di-da sound when the key is played smoothly and naturally yet at a reasonable speed.
About Hangers
Point 11: Hangers are without doubt the most vexing problem facing a harpsichordist. The reason for this is that often it is extremely difficult to figure out exactly what is causing a jack to hang. So here, I must refer you to rule one, that is, take the time to analyze exactly what is happening before you do anything. Remember too, the real reasons for the cause of hangers is often extremely difficult to observe. What follows is a list of the causes that I find most often result in hangers. 1. The quills are too long. 2. The tip of the quill has some kind of nit, pit, or obstruction that prevents the jack from returning underneath the string. 3. the springs or bristles are too stiff. 4. The damper is set too low. 5. The underside of the quill is too rough. 6. The jacks set too high, which puts the quills too close to the undersides of the string, so the jack and the quill cannot return under the string reliably enough. 7. The posts on either side of the tongue bend inwards causing the tongue to be pinched. 8. The axle hole in the tongue was drilled in a manner allowing too little tolerance such that when the humidity rises the wood swells binding on the axle pin. 9. Crumbs of some kind have fallen into the action causing the action to freeze. 10. Crumbs of some kind have fallen onto the registers and lodged themselves between the
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jacks and the holes. 11. Rust on the strings cause the quills to drag on the string preventing them from returning. 12. Jacks swell in the register holes due to excessive humidity. 13. The key under the offending note is not returning properly or completely. 14. The quills or plectra are angled downwards. These 14 causes each individually can result in hangers. You can sometimes find these cuases happening in multiples or clusters. What follows is a short explanation of each cause and how it's causing the jack to hang, followed by the appropriate solution to solve the problem. 1. The quills are too long. Quills that are too long invariably have trouble passing around the string as the jack descends. Quills that are too short and sometimes misfire by not plucking the string at all. You need to find the balance point between the quill that is short but not too short and long enough but not too long. When the quill is too long, cut the tip to shorten the quill. This may sometimes necessitate scraping or slicing away a little bit more from the underside of the quill to make it less loud, because anytime you shorten the quill you make it stiffer and stiffer translates into louder. 2. The tip of the quill has some kind of nit, pit, or obstruction that prevents the jack from returning underneath the string. Any underquill obstructions will result in hangers. The solution is to remove the obstruction by whatever means necessary. 3. The springs or bristles are too stiff. This can be a very tricky problem to solve. Take springs or bristles that are too stiff and reduce some of that stiffness by shortening the length of the bristle or the spring from the top at the rear of the tongues. This changes the point of bearing of the spring or bristle against the back of the jack by lowering it. It also assumes that the rear of the tongue has a channel carved into it for the springs which are curved in a manner such that the springs or bristles lean out towards the rear of the tongue. A spring or bristle which is flat bearing against the back of the tongue, as one sometimes sees in antique Italian harpsichord jacks, will not be changed substantially by lowering it. If you attempt to reduce the tension of the spring or bristle by pulling it backwards away from the back of the tongue, you will likely over bend the spring or bristle thus ruining it. If cutting down the spring or bristle does not solve the problem, then it is better to replace the spring or bristle with one that is thinner and has less springiness to it. 4. The damper is set too low. The solution is raise the damper until it allows the jack and quill to slip past the string, but still damps the string after that action has occurred. 5. The underside of the quill is too rough. Scraping the underside of a Delrin plectrum will result in a rough surface. Therefore, make sure to remove any roughness from the underside of the quill by slicing it with a sharp knife to ensure that the underside of the quill is not too rough. 6. The jacks are set too high. Reduce the setting of the jacks, first by seeing if there is a regulation screw under the keyboard on the underside of the instrument, and only then, assuming there are no keyboard regulation screws, cut down the jacks. Remember, soundboards swell in the summer because of humidity and shrink in the winter due to lack of humidity. Anytime you cut down the jacks during the winter you risk having the jacks be too far from the strings in the summer. This is not a problem if you have regulating screws under the keyboards. But it can be a serious problem if you do not have them. Any time you cut the jacks, you must treat it like a final solution because it's very expensive to undo. If you have a harpsichord that was set up in the summer, and there are no keyboard regulating screws, and in the winter the soundboard shrinks and the strings are lowered as a result, you will be obliged to cut down the jacks to make them shorter. The business of cutting the jacks should be done by somebody who feels comfortable handling an extremely sharp chisel. Avoid removing more than 0.5mm at a time, repeatedly checking to see if the work is correct or not. This work can also be done by sanding which takes a long time, or filing which takes less time but still takes much more time than it would if the ends of the jacks were cut with a sharp chisel. 7. The posts on either side of the tongue bend inwards causing the tongue to be pinched. When the tongue is pinched between the posts the best remedy is to insert a narrow knife blade between each post and the tongue. This usually produces enough space between the posts and the tongue to allow the tongue to again move freely. 8. The axle hole in the tongue was drilled in a manner allowing too little tolerance such that when the humidity rises the wood of the tongue swells up, causing it to bind on the axle pin. Sometimes you can ease the axle hole in the tongue by grabbing the tongue firmly between your thumb and index finger on one hand, grabbing the jack in the other, and rotate to a very slight degree the tongue on the axle. Be careful not to be too extreme as you rotate the tongue or you could break it. If you have too many tongues that are binding, you will need to
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call a technician to come in and remove all of the tongues from the jacks, redrill the axle holes to a larger dimension, and replace the tongues into the jacks. 9. Crumbs of some kind have fallen into the action causing the action to freeze. Correcting this requires that you remove all the jacks and the keyboards and get rid of all the crumbs inside the instrument. This is usually a problem of new harpsichords that have not been properly cleaned prior to being shipped or released from the workshop. It can also happen to older harpsichords that have not been properly cleaned as part of routine maintenance. The solution is to clean the harpsichord completely, check every jack to make sure it has no crumbs between the jack body and the tongue, and make sure that there are no crumbs lodged in the registers. 10. Crumbs of some kind have fallen onto the registers and have lodged themselves between the jacks and the register holes. If you've properly cleaned the harpsichord as suggested above, then you should have nothing to worry about in this regard. 11. Rust on the strings cause the quill to drag on the string preventing it from returning. The solution here is to clean the string. If not the whole string, then at the very least the area around the quill and a damper. This can be effectively done using an ink eraser on the end of an ball point pen. 12. Jacks swell in the register holes due to excessive humidity. If this is a problem, there are two ways to correct this. One way is to sand the jack down until it's thin enough to no longer bind in the register hole. The other way is to file the register hole open ever so slightly. Be careful when doing this last, because you can easily make the hole too large causing the jack to be sloppy in the hole. 13. The key under the offending note is not returning properly or completely. There are only two reasons why a key will not return properly or completely. Reason one, is that there are crumbs between the keys or under the keys or under the cloth under the keys. Reason two, is that the wood somewhere has swollen to the point where the freedom of motion of the keys has been partially or completely restricted. The solution is to carefully file opened those points of bearing that have become swollen shut. The usual point of bearing that swells shut is the balance hole. When filing the balance (mortise) hole to be more open, do not file the hole from the top of the hole but rather from the bottom of the hole upwards. In other words, don't file the top of the whole open any further than you must to get the key to work. Usually, the problem needing filing is further down inside the hole. Therefore, work in that general area before opening the top of the whole anymore than it already is. You can also spread graphite, using a soft pencil, as far into the balance hole as you can reach. Be sure to do this on both sides of the hole. Another point of binding may sometimes be where the keyboard guide pins are binding in the back rack, or if the keys are guided at the fronts those holes need to be eased and/or graphited. 14. The quills or plectra are angled downwards. There is only a temporary solution to this problem. That is, bend the Quills upwards if they are plastic. With Delrin or Celcon plectra, the bulk material will often have a grain and manufacturing curve or ribboning effect which gives the plectra a distinct curvature. Make sure that that curvature is tending upwards. The best long-term solution is to replace all the tongues. Harpsichord makers who make instruments with this defect need to assume responsibility for replacing the tongues or the jacks whichever is most expedient. Downward angling plectra in a harpsichord is a harpsichord full of hangers waiting to happen. If anything, makers should be making jacks in which the upward angle of the plectra is greater than 5 but not more than 9 degrees. Makers who supply jacks in their instruments in which the plectra have no angle are basically supplying instruments in which the quills will all eventually be pointing downwards. This is because constant plucking causes the plastic of the quills to assume over time and playing a downward angle. Finally, I can't emphasize enough the importance of seeking out and discovering the true cause for why hangers happen. You can make error after error in hunting down the real cause before you actually stumble on it. Use the list of possible causes which I have provided you with and look for each cause on every hanger before applying the right remedy.
Conclusion
I know of no set up for a harpsichord that will ever compensate for a bad touch. In my view, there is only one right way to touch the harpsichord when playing it. That one right way imitates as closely as possible the manner in which a bird flaps its wings. For this reason it is imperative for every person playing harpsichord to study in slow motion if possible the nature of that action. What does a bird flapping its wings have to do with a fine touch on the harpsichord? Well,
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harpsichords were originally all quilled in bird feathers. What I have found over the years is that when players play on harpsichords quilled in bird feathers and they don't play in a manner that imitates how a bird flaps its wings the quills don't last very long. I have also found that when players play on harpsichords quilled in bird feathers and they do imitate how a bird flaps its wings when they're performing or playing on the keys the quills tend to last a long time. It is interesting to note that the descriptions of the manner in which Bach played on the keys accords perfectly with the description that I have provided below of playing the keys in the manner of how a bird flaps its wings. The descriptions provided by both Couperin and Rameau for how to touch the keys of the harpsichord also accord with this manner of playing that I have described. A bad touch on the harpsichord is any way in which the key is depressed by the finger that does not accord with how a bird flaps its wings. Too often, what one hears in harpsichord playing is not only a bad touch but a miserable touch. This indicates that the player is not really listening to the sound of the harpsichord at all. For if the player were listening, he or she would hear how bad the sound is. Playing a harpsichord in a manner that accords with how a bird flaps its wings will always produce the best sound possible, no matter the quality of the harpsichord. When playing the harpsichord in a wrong way, there is usually too much airspace between the underside of the fingers and the tops of the keys. And, the motion of the fingers is non-accelerating, being instead instantly in motion, hitting the top of the key with an impacting touch. This kind of motion throws the quill against the string causing the string to sound abrupt and coarse. The more coarse the sound produced, the more miserable the touch of the player is. To play in a manner that accords with how a bird flaps its wings means: 1.) keeping the hand in constant contact with the keyboard, meaning no airspace at all between the bottoms of the fingers and the tops of the keys. 2.) Never raising of the fingers higher than the tops of the keys at rest. 3.) Never lifting the arm and the hand to bring it down forcefully on the tops of the keys when playing. 4.) Holding the hand in the shape of a ball when playing and drawing the tips of the fingers in an arc towards the center of the palm. 5.) Keeping the hand, the arm, the shoulder, and the fingers in as relaxed and poised a condition or state as possible in order to preserve flexibility and agility. 6.) The fingers should be moved in a manner which accelerates from its point of rest to the moment that the quill plucks the string after which the finger gradually decelerates to complete the arc. 7.) All these actions should happen in a smooth continuous flowing manner. Players who adhere to this method of touching the keys of the harpsichord will always produce the best sound possible.
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Voicing Harpsichords

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Voicing Harpsichords

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Voicing Harpsichords

On Voicing and Regulating Harpsichords

About Lost Motion

correct position of everything.

Step Five: Voicing

Qualities to consider in voicing

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