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Greetings all,

Last week, as many of you here on PW may know, Bill Bremmer flew out to my home and tuned my piano in his "EBVT III" Temperament. During the day on Saturday, Bill tuned the piano, and that evening I had a small group of frends over to hear the results and enjoy an evening of piano music. I also met Randy Potter who made the drive down from Bend, Oregon, and joined us for the afternoon and evening. We all had a great time. After Bill finished tuning, Randy Potter sat down at the piano, played it a bit, looked up at Bill and said "I want to tune my piano this way".

Earlier in the week, my piano rebuilder, Randy Cox, flew up from LA to install a new backaction kit from Wessell Nickel&Gross. (Thanks to Gene Nelson here on PW for posting back in Sept about this kit, and to WNickel&Gross for an excellent product) While it took a bit of work to get it in there, the resulting playback of both the Ampico and the LX is now in a class by itself. Both mechanisms play the piano now with such preciseness and finesse, it's beyond my expectations. Here is a picture of the damper tray during the installation.



The carbon-fibre is so much lighter and quicker than the wood, so as a result, the Ampico and the LX have less resistance lifting the dampers which equals more precise playback. Each note has 3 adjustments and operate differently than the the old tray, which had no adjustments. The resulting playback is so crisp and clean, it's like a new piano! The rail itself is made out of aluminum...overall, it's a great product!

I wanted to record Bill's tuning right after he finished, but because we had guests coming, I did not have the time to record. I did record 2 days later, after Randy Cox was finished adjusting the Ampico and LX. As a result, the tuning is not quite like Bill left it...some unisons are out, and the piano fell a bit flat in spots. Another factor is that we pounded the upper 2 treble sections pins down the night before Bill arrived, that, and the fact that both player systems really play the piano hard, more so than a real artist, so the tuning is not as pristine as when Bill left it, but you can get a very good idea of the EBVT sound. As Bill said, "I believe there are two factors here. One is that in spite of the extraordinary time taken to tune the piano, especially the unisons, the player system drives the piano as hard or harder than the most exuberant artist. It would be expected that the day after, a broadcast quality tuning would need to be freshened up.

Secondly, the fact that the piano generally went flat to some degree points to heat generated from the player systems. The latter is perhaps more significant than the former."

Bill brought his Sanderson ETD and recorded every note for me. I now have this tuning record installed in my ETD's and I will be able to replicate Bill's tuning in the future.

I have never heard my piano sound this good. There is something "right" about this EBVT III. Every piece I played sounds great.

For those of you who are not familiar with my piano, it is a 1925 Mason & Hamlin 7ft RBB. The entire rebuilt piano, including the installation of both mechanisms, was done by Randy Cox of Anaheim Hills. It has Ari Isaac's Cadenza "S" hammers and his bass strings. It also has the Wapin bridge conversion done by Roy Peters, who posts here on PW. http://www.wix.com/petersrpt/peters-piano It also has both a rebuilt Ampico Piano Roll reproducing system from the 1920's and the LX playback system from www.live-performance.com

Here are a few Ampico and LX selections in this EBVT III. Enjoy, and there will be more coming in the future.

A big thank you to Bill Bremmer for taking the time come out to my home and do his magic. It was also a pleasure to meet Randy Potter. We all had a great time! GP

1. Ampico Piano Roll: "Reflets dans L'eau" by Debussy played by Leo Ornstein played on the Ampico http://www.box.net/shared/4i7phr8ezs

2. Earl Wild plays Chopin on the LX http://www.box.net/shared/t0kgk4oqfu

3. Ampico Piano Roll: "The Torrent" composed and played by Leslie Loth on the Ampico http://www.box.net/shared/axl7oyhuad

4. Ampico Piano Roll: "Etude Tableux" composed and played by Sergei Rachmaninoff on the Ampico http://www.box.net/shared/4k7r0qaybf

5. Gershwin's "Our Love is Here to Stay" on the LX
http://www.box.net/shared/0i7ajimsmx

6. Gershwin plays Gershwin "Rhapsody in Blue" on the LX taken from the Duo-Art Piano Roll http://www.box.net/shared/mf14vmvryl

7. Gerold Robbins plays Scarlatti on the LX (from the Bosendorfer SE recordings) converted to the LX format by Wayne Stahnke.

Scarlatti Four Sonatas
1. Sonata in C minor, K.11
2. Sonata in G. K.14
3. Sonata in E, K.531
4. Sonata in A, K.533

http://www.box.net/shared/e6oakti0yd

Congrats! Sounds like a wonderful experience. Since I know you are a "tuning experimenter", let me suggest something for further investigation. Compare your new saved tuning with other tuning(s) that you have liked. jJust compare the A's to try and see how the stretch compares. I believe that there is a lot of unexplored effects based just on altering the stretch. (ie. "Grand Obsession")

You may find it interesting to try ET as well as other temperaments using the stretch that you liked so much with this recent tuning. This also points out a problem for ETD users trying to emulate Bill's tuning without customizing the stretch parameters of the machine. You can also double check the EBVT III offsets after matching the stretch to see if you can re-create the tuning via machine calculation. (does the calculated tuning match the saved aural tuning?)

I can't hear the recordings here, but will check them out tonite!

thanks!

Ron Koval
chicagoland

Hi Grandpianoman:

Still keeping Randy busy, I see. The piano is sounding great. I have been working with the EBVT some, and do like it. Have you voiced the Isaacs hammers at all? I'm glad you went to those. They aren't compacting like the others did.

Bill is right that the pounding by the player systems and the heat both make tuning stability difficult. One thing I would point out in regards to heat is that the LX power supply is different from the other systems on the market. Wayne said he has three patents on the power supply alone. On most power supplies, there is a voltage regulator. That is what gets hot. So there are fans installed to cool them. They blow heated air under the soundboard of the piano. The LX doesn't have that, but controls the voltage on the circuit driver boards. This takes away a major heat component. I don't know how it works. The power supply also is built to turn on and off when you turn off the CD player. So, there is no electronic vampire to suck energy while the thing is turned off. These are two points which don't affect playback, but which I like about the system.

GPM:

Thanks for spending all this time and effort!

I only listened to “Our Love is here to Stay”. It took half an hour to download… I liked the amount of stretch very much. It was better than the RCT stretch that you posted a while ago. And the stability was pretty darn good too, much better than the piano Garrick Ohlsson played for Chopin’s 200th birthday. I am very glad you like EBVT III, but whatever part of my mind is musical just does not understand it. I hear that some chords are more dissident than others, but it does not make sense to me that they should be. It sounds wrong, not right, to me.

I sent you a PM in regards to the “further investigation” that Ron mentioned.

Grandpianoman, thanks. I haven't heard everything yet but I loved the Debussy. The title means "Reflections upon the water" and you really get that idea from the music.

Jeff, it would not make sense to me that all chords would be equally dissonant. The relative consonance/dissonance of well tempered tuning is always according to the key signature. There was always a reason to choose a key signature for its expected color. There was always a reason to modulate: a place to go from where one is and a place to return. So, when you hear more dissonance at any particular time, it is a way of building tension which will be followed by release. The whole musical experience is far more satisfying and the way it was actually intended to sound.

The Debussy would be well worth your time to download, it would probably take about 45 minutes. You can hear many sustained chords and modulations. You will clearly hear the tension and release I referred to. the return to the home key is so much more satisfying after an adventure away from it than it ever could be in ET where all harmonies bear equal amounts of mild dissonance an no consonance.

By the way, you don't have to download these selections, you can just click "play" but perhaps if you don't have a high speed connection, that won't work, I'm not sure.

Ron, the amount of stretch there is in each octave is different from one to the next. What there is in this tuning on this piano is unique to this piano and this temperament and cannot be applied to any other temperament or any other piano.

I'll bet that Grandpianoman won't be very interested in returning to ET. If anything, he'll want to try the original EBVT and then 1/7 Comma Meantone.

"Ron, the amount of stretch there is in each octave is different from one to the next. What there is in this tuning on this piano is unique to this piano and this temperament and cannot be applied to any other temperament or any other piano."

Yup, got that - my interest has always been to look at how the inharmonicity drives the stretch. You may remember me writing years ago that I wondered if what you do is more a "style" than a temperament in the respect of being able to "get there" from an ET tuning via machine. While EBVT III offset numbers have been published, I've never seen anything in print to indicate that someone has replicated an aural tuning done by you with those numbers. I believe that GP has the gear available to test this...

My last class talked about the difference that both stretches and temperaments can make to customize the tuning to the client.

Ron Koval
chicagoland

Glad this WNG kit worked out for you.
Actually, the carbon fiber is more dense than the wood.
It may appear lighter to the player mechanism because damper return
springs are not really necessary - I would be curious if Randy chose to
use return springs. Also a tray return spring is
not necessary. A tray spring is probably what helped warp your
original.

Thanks for the explanation, Bill. I have read this before, understand it, and actually heard what you are talking about. It was a piece on Performance Today on NPR. I do not remember what the piece was. It must have been classical. It did not modulate much like a romantic piece would. What I first noticed was how pure the chords close to Tonic were. Then I noticed that the chords further from Tonic were not, and this made me nervous. I knew instinctively that if the piece modulated a little bit more that it would go beyond my “dissonance threshold.” It never did modulate that far, but I did not enjoy listening to it because of my dread. I suppose if I had listened to the piece a number of times, I could have gotten used to it and maybe liked the temperament. But what was going on made sense to me. What I hear in EBVT III does not. My musical sense may not be as refined as others.

I particularly like the Debussy and Scarlatti pieces.

Bill & GP,

The piano does sound very nice! Very musical!

Thanks for all your comments....will talk more about that later....Here is an Ampico roll I forgot to put in my original post.

"The Ice Skaters Waltz" by Waldtaufel Played by Leslie Loth, EBVT III Tuning

http://www.box.net/shared/k58tkbj5zn

There are more to come as I transfer these from my digital recorder.

For those interested in my sound recording equipment. I have upgraded the recorder and the mics. The digital recorder is a Korg MR-1000 1-Bit Pro Mobile Recorder...a breeze to use and it's portable. The 1-bit recording is fantastic. I just wish when reducing to mp3's, the sound was better, but that's not the fault of the Korg. The mics are great....Avenson Audio STO-2 Matched Omni-Electret Condenser Mics. These sound so natural on piano and guitar...one of the reasons I bought them.

Enjoy, and more to come! GP

Next batch.....the Die Meistersinger (The Master Singer) from Richard Wagner and the Concert Study by Ernst von Dohnanyi are 2 of my favorite Ampico rolls to show the immense power of the Ampico and the M&H bass sound. Also, Bill's EBVT III really shines as well. Enjoy, with more to come as I transfer these. GP


1. Die Meistersinger p/b Rybner http://www.box.net/shared/nj3u8dq19m Bill Bremmer's EBVT III Tuning

2. Concert Study composed and played by Ernst Von Dohnanyi http://www.box.net/shared/l0crbc2zsc Bill Bremmer's EBVT III Tuning

Those are some very nice recordings and Bill's tuning sounds very good.

It sounds like your player systems can really pound those strings!

It would be interesting if you tell us later how close you are to replicate Bill's tuning by yourself. Did you also have a tuning master class? Did you just watch him?

Don't hesitate to post more recordings

Hello, GrandPianoMan thanks so much for sending those very enjoyable recordings. I like the tone of those pianos, the quality of the recordings is also amazing (as the players actions, your efforts to have nice pianos seem to pay !).

I find that the tunings have a nice resonance, and open tone, and I understand how enjoyable the pianos may be to play, nevertheless, some harmony with different rendering have not much musical sense, as the flat(no beat) interval, I or the G5 that I find a little high. This induce to me a little sensation of less listening comfort. or does not have, justification in music (I am twisted by Jeff's comment, but I may say I agree).

That said, The resonance part seem to be something similar to the Chas resonance, with a concentration of the relation around the double octave, with the second inversion of the minor chord at the bottom.

I dont see how this can be coherent if the temperament is uneven, but the reconciliation of double octave and 12th provide a coherence of the spectra that play a role not only at the top note, and to me that is some sort of "self locking" to the good equilibrium between frequencies (part of the Chas effect is that)

This may be what Bill call the "mindless octave", as long as the lower part is coherently sounding the evenness of beating of the 12th and double octave induce an evenness at the M3 and M6th level, that will borrow the same beat difference with the bottom note. Then I've find that the hot spot for the double octave relation is a real emphasis of the sound.

I dont grasp the logic on how that may be working if the temperament is uneven, but as only 4 notes are involved each time if the relation between M3 and M6 is coherent within the tuning, that should work.
In any case iH give us ample room to conform to resonance .

I had little time to really enjoy recording all the music. I will listen more during the week end.

In the meantime, I am experimenting with that Major triad second inversion as used to expand the double octave (and octave) in the tuning, as this seem to me an interesting thing.

Sorry to be out of topic, I am not totally anyway .

Can someone tell me, when the 12th and 15th are beating the same speed, what doe sit mean in regard of the 4Tth created with the bottom note ?.

PS European grand pianos never have damper springs, on damper levers, even the tray is free most of the time (the pedal mechanism have a return spring)

Best regards.

To summarize, I propose the theory that the good resonant tone is due to the expanding of the tuning (!)

Best regards; Thank you again

Well, euh, I am truly sorry, but I am listening to Rhapsody in blue, sound false to my ears since the beginning.

Not adding anything to music...

The resonance is not even that large. something is non natural.... (apart from the roll) like somebody that work with aleg shorter than the other.

And I feel that the tuning pins and upper wire segment is not tense to the top, that can be hears in the somewhat mufled tone of the treble (lack of air.)

I am really apologizing, I had wished that the tuning would tone better.

Something remains : to me, for the pianist, playing a piano that surprise the ear because of unexpected harmonies may be fun, more than for the listener.


I also have the impression that my theory is correct, and the that justness progressively re conciliate in the treble (and bass ?) with the "mindless octaves", the tuning get closer to the natural harmony, that make the tuning acceptable. I just wonder what it would gibe if octaves doubles and triples should follow the same pattern all along.

Because of that "natural resonance" concept, I believe that the pitch of notes can naturally settle to a resonant spot that allow the tuning to sound nicely when larger span is used.

That said. The listening comfort is good as long as I dont think "justness"

Just wish I could have been more positive, sorry Bill. (the unisons are too close to me, also)

What is funny is that some chords/tonalities have the resonance of the piano that have not been tuned for years, while others sound "no beat" (dry). That makes to me a mix that goes against the coherence of the tone , generally speaking.

In the midele some tonalities are good, that is just a question of luck.

I am still listening, no piece sound perfect to me, alqyas something make my teeth... bad idea, from the start.

sorry again,

Sad as it may be time consuming to come to that solution.

I feel bad ..

GrandPianoMan can you post recordings done with another tuning so we can compare ?

Thanks so much to allow us to benefit from those experiment, I highly appreciate that.

Kamin:

You posted, ”Can someone tell me, when the 12th and 15th are beating the same speed, what doe sit mean in regard of the 4Tth created with the bottom note ?”

In the case of equal beating 12ths and 15th with the common note on top and an implied fourth on the bottom, the beat speed of the 12th and 15th will be exactly half the beat speed of the fourth. And by combining the M3-M6 test for the fourth, the M3-M17 test for the 15th and the M17-M6 for the 12th, a series of progressive RBIs are available as a test.

Example with an arbitrary P4 beat speed:

P4 G3-C4 beats 1 bps wide. M3 D#3-G3 beats 1 bps slower than M6 D#3-C4

P15 G3-G5 will beat ½ bps wide. M3 D#3-G3 beats ½ bps slower than M17 D#3-G5.

P12 C4-G5 will beat ½ bps narrow. M17 D#3-G5 beats ½ bps slower than M6 D#3-C4.

So we have a progression of three RBIs from slowest to fastest of M3 D#3-G3, M17 D#3-G5, and M6 D#3-C4.

…..

Since these are tests, not just checks, inharmonicity will not affect the results. And if for some reason the 4th is narrow, the justness of the other intervals and the RBI progression is opposite.

I hope this is what you were looking for, and I hope one cup of coffee is enough to say it correctly!

Kamin and Jeff, Grandpianoman and I expected you to say what you did. If every pianist for the last 20 years for whom I have tuned this way perceived what I do the way you do, don't you think I would have heard some comment about that by now? Could it not be that your own perception is wrapped up and locked up in the total devotion to temperament equality and it has robbed you of all ability to enjoy music for the way it was intended and expected to sound?

Grandpianoman is a professional musician of the very highest caliber who studied music at the university and earns his living solely as a musician (but is not a pianist). He has a fine home and his very expensive piano is only one of the many fine possessions that he has. Don't you think it is somewhat condescending of you to tell him what is wrong? Should you not allow him to have his own opinion about what kind of sound he prefers? Are you really right and everyone at his home that evening, a group which included other fine and professional musicians are all wrong? Is the entire history of tuning before the 20th Century all wrong? Is only mathematical theory right?

Your opinions, as I said, were anticipated but they will not influence or change anything whatsoever about the way I tune. They will not cancel the session with Randy Potter in June that there will be for me to teach him to tune as I do. They will not prevent this preeminent instructor of tuning and piano technology who has students all over the world and teaches at virtually every PTG seminar and institute from broadening his knowledge and skills and adding what he learns to his curriculum. Do you presume to call him a fool and to tell him not to try to tune this way as you have told me repeatedly and also warned Patrick from Finland of the dire consequences of daring to do anything but what you say is correct?

Is it possible that more and more people, technicians and musicians alike will find these concepts to be musically appealing and leave only you to express your dislike of them? Was Peter Serkin wrong when he wrote his long letter that was published in the PTG Journal? Is PTG also wrong to present that idea for tuning, far more unequal than mine with far more dissonance versus consonance than mine at the next PTG convention? Is everybody who likes these ideas, finds them appealing, wants their pianos tuned this way wrong and only you are right?

It would be condescending if that is what I did. That is not what I did. However, it is what you are doing, Bill. Rather than saying what you or others simply prefer, as I did, you are saying that my preference is wrong. You are being hypocritical, Bill.