Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum Does a "Let the piano tell you" ET 5ths/4ths sequence exist?

Excellent tone, Inlanding, I like it !

Hi,
I use both methods interchangeably when the situation calls for it. M3s definately offer a higher level of precision than 4ths/5ths and that's why they are favoured by many aural tuners. Having said that, tuning using only 4ths/5ths uses M3s and M6s when using check notes, so it is hard to find a technique that is purely 4ths/5ths.
I imagine some technicians preference to using 4ths/5ths may be due to the challenge of being able to hear the coincidental partial (CP) beating clearly. I give courses to students and technicians learning to tune and repair pianos or improve their skills and this is the approach I use to help them hear thirds (and their CPs) better

1. Ghost the coincidental partial. (play interval with no sound. Strike C.P. loudly and listen) Only works if CP is close to freq. of harmonics of each interval note.

2. Turn and move head slowly, all around. This changes the filtering characteristics of the ear canal and filters different frequencies depending on angle. Also, frequencies are more alive at different spots in the room. This technique actually can filter out completely the CP you are trying to hear or actenuate it depending on head angle and position. Just think of Rockwell's painting of The Tuner.

3. Focus the ear like a radio. Gently play the CP a number of times and listen carefully to its frequency. Think of attenuating your ear to that frequency. Then play the interval mf and see if it helps. Use the techniques in #2 to help as well.

Having said that, tuning using only 4ths/5ths does in fact let the piano tell you if, after tuning the whole temperament, you "temper" all the intervals to give the same quality of rolling 5ths and noisy 4ths. It should only fit for that piano if the sizes are those that fit with that piano. But good precision is harder to get than with 3rds in my opinion. Some people say there is no such thing as ET anyway; there is always a variation, perfectly even 3rds are impossible to attain. But we can get very close. Others say perfect ET is over-rated anyway; many professional concert pianists are not able to tell if the thirds are not increasing evenly throughout the temperament. It can become quite the philosophical question.

Mark Cerisano, RPT, Mech.Eng.
Mr. Tuner Piano Service and Techncian's School
mark@mrtuner.com
http://mrtuner.com
514-771-8666
1-866-MR-TUNER(678-8637)

Thanks, Rafael. Thanks to Bill, Issac, and Kent, I am slowly, but surely getting the hang of it, working on consistency, with proper unisons the key. The piano is a remarkably fine condition 1917 Steinway O, the NY Steinway hammers are about 20 years old, unplayed until the last year, the treble strings are original, only the wound strings have been replaced (6 months ago).

As for recording, it is a borrowed Olympus digital recorder. Placement is key - I think I finally found a good placement for it. I am looking at which recorder to purchase for my own.




Thanks, Issac. Improvements are being made, time and practice are the key elements. Thanks for all your help!



Enjoy the weekend, gentlemen.

Glen

Mark:

Welcome Aboard!

All:

I made a large error in this earlier post:



Actually the major third in the (concert) C major chord of a Bb trumpet, in the power range, would be 16 cents wider than ET.

Today, while tuning the Bemetzrieder Temperament I wonder how difficult it was to the tuners of 19th Century to tune a piano.

They didn't know anything about iH. So I see them trying to tune a pure octave, a pure fifth and finding that the resulting fourth was not so pure! Why? because of iH, we now know that but at the time they didn't.

For them tuning was an art. For us it is only knowledge and technique.

There is nothing in the way that I tune that could not have been done by a 19th century tuner.

So you make 19th century tunings? (just kidding)

At that time they didn't know how to tune true ET! The best they could do was Quasi Equal Temperaments.

It was until 20th Century that Braid White wrote his method of tuning ET.

In 19th century tuners did not tuned fast beating intervals, i.e. thirds, sixths, tenths, 17ths. Nor they heared at them. At least not as we now do it estimating beat rates, they only judged their "color".

How do I know what they did? Because of Owen H. Jorgensen's big red book:


Tuning
The Perfection of 18th Century Temperament
The Lost Art of 19th Century Temperament
And
The Science of Equal Temperament

Nonsense! Nobody knows for certain what was done, but they could have tuned equal temperament at any time.

In the year 1911 Joseph C. Miller published the frequencies of all the notes in ET as well as the beating frequencies of all the testing intervals. In Miller’s tables, one can observe the truths of the nearly equal-beating pairs of intervals that are used by the finest aural tuners.

Braid-White republished the same tables for his book in 1917.

Owen Jorgensen /Oct.2009

I hear the difference in both of the Bach preludes but I am new and confused but I don't know about what I like the one that inlanding did better than the reverse well temperment.Would reverse mean expanded 5ths and contracted fourths. I am up to 60 pianos tuned each one sounds better to me but my mentor is 4 hours away and haven't found another one closer. so i rely on me to hear. I practice every day on my piano at school.

And throughout the 20th Century and now 10 years into the 21st Century, none of these beat frequencies ever helped the people who still tune in reverse well. The ET via Marpurg sequence permits a tuner who does not have the skills or perception to manage the myriad of RBI checks that it takes to tune a true ET. While the strategy was meant for novices, I have already received a report from an RPT who now uses it and is tuning a better sounding temperament than he ever could before using only the skills that a 17th through 19th Century tuner would have known.

There has been other documentation of other 19th Century schemes that could possibly, just possibly have resulted in what we would accept as ET today. Just because someone wrote a book or other kind of publication, it does not mean that all people who tuned pianos or other kinds of keyboards read that publication, much less were able to put successfully the principles into practice.

Therefore, yes, there could have been a few people, here or there at almost any time who may have been able to tune a true ET. There are a few people today who studied the Braide-White book, tune from either an A or a C fork and really do tune quite a fine sounding ET. But what about all the others?

If anyone rejects the label, "reverse well" (which I did NOT make up), then what label would you put on a temperament where C Major, G Major and F Major are always the worst sounding keys and F# Major, A-flat Major, B Major and D-flat Major always sound the sweetest?

Of course, the imperfect results of using a 4ths & 5ths temperament do not have to be reverse well, they could be a crude form of a well temperament or they could also be a kind of disorganized imperfect form of ET which is what is known as a Quasi ET and that is what most 19th Century tuners did according to Owen Jorgensen.

I might add that when Owen Jorgensen analyzed the EBVT III, he found that it was virtually the same as one of Neidhardt's (17th Century, I think, without looking it up) attempts at tuning ET. The mistake that these early tuners always made was to create equal beating intervals which cannot exist in a true ET.

"Equal" does not mean "equal" so to speak. Also, it was difficult then and still is today for tuners today to temper a 4th or 5th just a "little". Inevitably, the error is made toward the just 5th as John Travis pointed out. These little mistakes result in some kind of arrangement that in the past as well as today cannot be considered a true ET.

1911 is the 20th Century, as is 1917.

Mathematically, ET was known centuries before 20th. But ET was only tuned in freted instruments, like a guitar, where calculated distances between frets could be fixed in the instrument.

That was not possible in a piano. So it was until 20th century that tuners developped the aural techniques to tune true ET, that is : uniform geometrical progression of beat rates in fast beating intervals. Before that, there were no means to aurally tune the frequencies that were mathematically calculated centuries ago.


For example ET was tuned in pipe organs long before 20th century, because they have the means to calculate exact lengths for the pipes.

All:

As far as I am concerned the whole unequal temperament argument is like the Emperor’s New Clothes. And I am not afraid to say that they sound out of tune.

And it always occurs that when UTs rear their ugly head around here there is sure to be a bout of Braid Bashing.

You folks enjoy the rest of this Topic which I have been always convinced had the ultimate purpose of Braid Bashing. Just because some folks have difficulty with 4th and 5th tuning does not mean others do. And trying to malign a perfectly good sequence shows the desperate measures that some will go to, to disguise their own perceived inabilities. I am out of here.

I have never stated that I accept Raphael’s video of ET as acceptable. I don’t see where anyone else has either.

The only way this kind of a comparison can be achieved is by a “double blind study”. As we are all members of this forum, the temperaments and the videos of them would have to be done by an independent, impartial third party who does not have a vested interest in the final outcome.

I do not see any of us here who suffer from that type of unbiased impartiality.

As a matter of fact I would venture further to state that most technicians will have a preference to tuning one way or the other. So to find someone to complete these temperaments and videos for tests in a fair and independent manner would be difficult indeed.

This is not to question anyone’s integrity here but this is how scientific studies are completed.

My comments were directed to the fact that Braid White re-printed those tables for his book. He was not the one who wrote them as per Raphael’s claim.

Guitars have never been equal temperament, unless your tolerances for tuning are extremely lax.

Helmholtz published the same information sometime in the middle of the 19th Century. In 1875, Alexander Ellis translated the book into English but according to Owen Jorgensen in his book, Tuning, page 493, "No one read this book except for a few acousticians, music theorists and university music students".

All one has to do is read the first two chapters in Jorgensen's book, Tuning to understand why, although it was remotely possible, ET was not practiced in the 19th Century. The required information simply was not known. Jorgensen felt that this was important enough information to reveal that he put it right up front on pages 1-7 of a book that would continue for 798 pages. In other words, "Heads up, world, it never happened!"

Now, Braide-White and others did publish information that would have made it possible to tune a true ET but I have long maintained that just because he wrote that book, it does not mean that everyone who read it absorbed and practiced the knowledge completely and perfectly.

The tuning manual from the certain correspondence course reverts to essentially what was known in the 19th Century. Following those instructions to the letter, it is virtually impossible to tune ET! While it may seem offensive to the very few people I have known and witnessed who can use BW's methods successfully to say that most technicians cannot, no offense to them was ever intended. If those people can use the method successfully, there is no reason for them to try to use any other.

Having said that, it does not make a lot of sense to try to teach everyone a method which apparently a large majority fail to learn adequately enough to tune ET. Moreover, why teach a method that for most, does not result in ET but leaves the person believing in something that isn't true? That has and only would lead to more technicians incapable of becoming RPTs and passing off reverse well as ET as I have witnessed now for some 25 years that so many technicians do.

Bill, not every tuner learns in the same way. My experience with those tuners who sought out the best teachers to teach them (in person) got the necessary feedback needed to progress and succeed. I must add, they did so with a high success rate from what I seen. Also, not all excellent tuners make good teachers either.

You probably see a bunch of wanna be tuners get tested that learned the trade reading about it on the john...one of the problems of having an open door policy for testing (as long as you pay the membership and testing fees) without an extensive, stringent screening process that should preceed it.

Once again, I only see ridicule and mockery of a process which from your very words, you obviously know NOTHING about. It is quite surprising to me how willing you are to broadcast your complete ignorance at maximum bandwidth.