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That one makes me laugh as wall !!

Koval variable , Ron, did you finally learn to tune by ear ?

Let me OUT of here !

Bye

VERY good job Glen, and thanks.
You will be a first class tuner , I bet.

Still I generally prefer the ET versions even if you can certainly perfect them.

In EDBVT the piano tone more as a toy piano I find.

Your unisons are quite nicely open (may be in basses could be a little more "bodied" they are way better than Bill unisons, to my ear.

Good job.

And sorry Bill I am not trying to put oil on fire but may be someday you will understand what I state about unisons.

As everyone seem to be appreciating what you do I feel I can just put my pinch of salt just to let know I hear things differently.


Best regards to all !

Oh, Isaac.

Glen, I think the toy piano sound that Isaac is referring to has to do with microphone placement, not EBVT III. You are catching some kind of slapback reverb, maybe from the lid, maybe from the wall, but it is definitely affecting the sound. If you could move the mics back some it would help. I think I can hear the individual fibers of hammer felt and damper felt caressing the strings as they move by. I am not finished studying your selections, yet, but wanted to chime in in your defense after Isaac's comment. BTW, both versions of the G min improv were very nice music! The ET version was more pleasant to listen to, but only because of the microphone placement, I think.

Bill, About the jazz recordings--I feel like I'm listening to a really high-quality bootleg! There is some really fine jazz playing by the pianist and the solo sax. I can imagine what a nicely mixed and balanced recording would sound like. To respond to Isaac's comments here, the musicians definitely are not together until well into the piece. Another problem is that the bass player is not listening to what he is doing. He is all over the road with his pitches and he is always well behind the beat, especially through the solo piano in Joyful Noise. There is one brief section from 9:48 to about 10:00 where he gets on board and you can hear a beautiful resonance with the piano serveral times. (This was the kind of resonance I heard at the Michael Kaeshammer concert I told you all about (p.13 in this thread), where the bassist and the pianist created warmth through the whole piece.) But it only lasts for about 15 seconds, and then he's off in his own private Idaho, again. In the Gospel piece, the pianist simply loses his line of thought. He was trying to develop something dark and chordal, couldn't quite get there, and moved on to something else. If he "wondered what happened," Isaac, it was with his own thinking, not the tuning. What I hear in these recordings is a very nicely tuned piano with lots of energy, holding its own with the saxes. I agree with JByron, that the piano seems to ride on top of the mix while blending well with it--that's a really apt description! Thanks for sharing these, Bill. BTW, what was the bass player playing on?

GP, Once again, the fox-trots made me giggle with delight! I wonder if you can tell us what key they are in? (Actually, I kind of wonder if we can all tell each other the keys of our selections whenever possible and practical, since a big part of the discussion seems to be about tonalities/emotions/tension/release as it relates to specific settings... just a thought.) Both "When I Was A Dandy" and "Me and the Boyfriend" seemed "high and tight," a little bit tense, more toward "crisp" than "tense," perhaps, and, yes, definitely "Vervy!" "The Night Love Was Born" was much more relaxed. Were the first two in the same key? It sounds like it. BTW, now that I know a little more about fox-trots, they strike me as being "Rhapsodic Rags."

The Kabalevsky was in C maj.

Best wishes, everyone.

--Andy

Andy,

Glad you liked my Fourier transform post. It's out there I will admit.

I've been spending a little time looking at stretches and offsets and how to fit the 12 tones into an octave and have the octaves beatless. It's pretty much impossible to do unless we come up with a new scale with more notes in an octave. The Pythagorean comma is about 23.4 cents or close to a quarter of a semitone which is very close to the syntonic comma which is 21.5 cents. I do not see anyone working on a new scale to replace our current scale, so the task is still up to the tuners to find the best compromise. Apparently physics, just like politics, is all about compromise.

For all you calculus buffs out there, differentiation and integration is nothing more than a very close approximation to the truth. Basically our entire knowledge universe is nothing more than an approximation of the truth, just like equal temperament. If we had more than 12 notes we could get closer.

Andy, glad you enjoyed them. These fox trots are certainly a fun look-back into the popular music of the 20's and 30's.

Depending on how well the Ampico was rebuilt, it effects how the music is presented. Also, the pianist and the arrangement have a big influence on the end result.

GP, Do you think I was hearing something in the fox-trots that has to do with the mechanicals? I thought I was hearing something that had to do with the key signatures. The first two were really vervy, in that the "tenseness" or "taughtness" of the sound fit the piece well. I felt like it was in G or something. The ending of "Me and the Boyfriend" is especially cute! It's all very bright and tight. Whereas, "The Night Love Was Born," should be more relaxed, as befits the subject, and it is. It sounds like it's set in a couple of flats. Just curious, for the sake of discussion!

--Andy

If you want out, why do you keep coming back? Don't you have plenty of subjects on which you agree and are comfortable to comment? Why does someone else who said he would not comment and then commented as to why he would not comment, keep commenting?

Isaac,

Yes I know what you mean. I knew what you mean 27 years ago when I passed my tuning exam with a score of 100 in the unisons. I knew what you mean each time I took the exam since then with the same results. I have known what you mean each time I have examined a tuner for the tuning exam during the past 19 years and given a score for them.

I also know what you mean every time you come on here and make any comments about the EBVT. I knew what you mean before you said it, I knew what you would mean and what you would say before you said it and I know what you mean and what you will say in the future and will always say about it. You mean that it sounds wrong to you and that you don't like it. So, believe me, I know what you mean.

Now, let's imagine a scenario in reverse of that Jazz event in 2002. You are in Madison (and the following could easily occur if you really were here). You are called to tune a Yamaha C7 for an event that evening in a night club. You have a specific time appointment and you arrive for it but are told to wait. You wait. Then, when you are called to the stage, they tell you that you only have an hour. They also say that the dealer said the piano would only need a touch up, so they don't expect you to take an hour but you do and even go over that hour by a small amount.

Before you arrived, the dealer called you and forbade you to tune the piano in ET saying, "I don't want my pianos tuned that way!" "We will charge you if we have to tune the piano BACK to the historical temperament that we normally have on it!" But the promoter, who hired you told you, "I want you to tune the piano the way you usually do. That is what I want and that is why I hired you".

So, you go to the stage, there are noises around, people interrupt you from time to time asking you how long will it take and if the piano is badly out of tune. You see people watching you impatiently. They want you out of the way so they can finish their technical work.

What would you have done? Would you have refused to work? Would you have insisted that the job will take much longer than they allow? Could you have tuned the piano in that amount of time entirely to your satisfaction including each and every unison? Would the piano have held perfectly when so little time had been allowed?

I didn't refuse anything except to acquiesce to the demands of the dealer. I wanted the money for that job and I wanted the money for all of the jobs in the future where I could be and have been depended upon to get the job done on time and under the pressure of time constraints and distractions.

I did such a job today, in fact, on Sunday when I usually don't work except for public performances. It was a 7 foot Shigeru Kawai in a small auditorium for the local piano teacher's association student recitals. I had exactly one hour to work, from 12 PM to 1 PM. The piano was off pitch and flat. I did a two pass tuning but really, it should have been three but there was no time for that. At exactly 1 PM, I finished and played the pipe organ effect.

A skeptical piano teacher who believes only in ET had been watching me, glaring at me and tried to interrupt me (but I did not allow her to). People were coming in early of when they were supposed to be allowed, talking and creating other distractions. She came right to me and said, Well, that sounded fine" and then asked me the same thing BDB did, "But how does the same thing sound in C-sharp? Would you care to play that too?" I replied, "Certainly". I played the C-sharp arpeggio and the teacher extended her hand to me and said, "Nice job!".

I sat with her for a while as we listed to various students try the piano a bit to warm up before the recital at 1:30. Even though she is known to be one of those teachers who only wants ET and makes public comments about it being the only correct way to tune the piano, she made several remarks to me about how good I had made the piano sound in such a short time under so much pressure. (I had worked up a sweat during the one hour, aerobic style concert tuning that I am often called upon to perform).

Now, of one thing I am quite sure. If there had been a recording of that recital and I posted it on here, You, Isaac, would be making the same remarks you always have. The intervals are unbalanced. The distortions in harmony are inappropriate to the music. There would also be comments about the unisons. They could never come close to your approval. I would know what you mean. I won't know it some day, I already know what you mean and I always have.

But ask yourself this again: What would you have done under that circumstance today? Would you have refused the job because you could not take all of the time in the world to tune the piano the only way it will satisfy you?

I wouldn't have and I didn't. The only way I can ever get a piano to sound completely satisfactory to me is if I spend at least half the day tuning it. Isn't that essentially what you have said too? Unfortunately, I don't have at my disposal any 9 foot concert grands with a fine artist playing an array of classical music and a professional recording engineer. I don't live in NYC, LA or Nashville, so I don't really expect my tunings to ever make it to any such commercially available recordings any time soon but who knows? I may well get such an invitation.

So, you have the right to say whatever you will but I already know what you will say, so why bother? Why not spend your time being a source of constructive knowledge rather than irritating remarks?

Ahh...I see your point Andy...yes, the key signature definitely has something to do with the effect of these pieces, along with the arrangement and the pianist. EBVT III certainly brings it out.

Just a general comment about this post..... if there was so much dislike in here about EBVT III, the sound, the effect it has in general, why, are there to date, 28,430 views? People certainly do not keep coming back here to listen to out-of-tune pianos tuned by "hacks" and "amateurs" as was eluded to earlier.


EBVT III is striking a chord with people. It's something 'new' and different, and positive, to add to the tuning world. I for one will keep tuning this way, and I look forward to exploring it in more detail when Bill is here in July, and, in learning how to tune my piano better.

Are you currently in KS?

Ron, I think the stretching is important, but more as an extension of the temperament. I've tried both ET and EBVT III with similar and slightly different stretches.

I think Bill might have come up with the most musical solution I've seen this far.

There is something about that particular temperament (EBVT III) and his stretch that makes it highly musical, and higly human (as in not mathematically perfect, but still/thus beautiful).

Actually i'm tuning 50/50 ET/EBVT III by now. Besides that I like Bill's temperament, my ET is getting better. My stretch is developing, too.

I've never understood the downside in achieving a common goal (as in a tuned piano) in different ways. Neither do I have a problem with colleagues disliking EBVT III. I do not tune for tuners, but for musicians.

To put it simply: when I play the piano, I really like the sound of EBVT III. Grandpianoman, too, loves that sound. As do quite a lot of musicians I've introduced EBVT III-tuned instruments to.

Now, I - as a piano player, shutting out all the maths - couldn't care less if it doesn't add up the way it should. I want to tune for music. Bill's temperament is a very musical way of tuning the piano, and that is why I want to get better at tuning that way.

JByron, "We're not in Kansas anymore"....lol...no, I am not in KS. Does that clarify who I am 'not'?

Patrick, well said! EBVT III is very musical, and as I mentioned earlier, very "earthy".

Hey, wait a minute. If you're 'not', then how did you know where the person that I am trying to clarify that you are is?

Seems a little fishy to me.

Andy, first of all, I loved your languid rendition of the Kabalevsky. I felt you were listening more to the music and expressing it the way it was written as opposed to just playing the notes.

As to your perception of the Jazz, I am repeatedly amazed at how keen your perception is! It is indeed a recording of the nature you described it which I will not repeat in writing (I take the 5th) [the right under our constitution to not be obliged to admit to have committed a crime for all non-USA people on here]. The recording was made and given to me by the promoter and was not copyrighted.

The Bass in the recording is what seems to lie "on top" to me. It is louder than anything else and I agree with you that his pitch at times seems very erratic. The sound from the pick up gives it a hard, metallic attack. For these reasons alone, the whole recording is somewhat ruined. If the Bass had been properly mixed with the appropriate equalization, there would not be as much of a problem. The Bassist was a renowned figure in Jazz and is on the UW faculty as an instructor in Jazz Bass playing.

Many people dislike this kind of Jazz but obviously, the audience loved it. It is a matter of taste. I used to enjoy such live performances in my teen and young adult years. Today, I find almost all of those recordings unbearable for listening enjoyment because virtually all of the pianos are out of tune far beyond the tolerance I have for that now. It has nothing to do with ET versus non-ET, it has to do with substandard tuning, plain and simple.

The sounds that the saxophonists make also push the pitch envelope frequently. They also make sounds which some people find vulgar but which I enjoy.

It is interesting to note that the pianist and bassist are mature Black men who had made Jazz performance a career. The saxophonists were 30 something Black men from NYC who regularly perform in Jazz night clubs there.

The drummer on the other hand was a young, fair skinned, blue eyed and dark blond Italian American from Brooklyn, New York, only 19 years old. I found his playing remarkably supportive and contributory, especially considering the age and cultural differences from the other musicians. He kept the pace of the rhythm unwaveringly, in spite of the often dragging bass. At the private reception following the event, he had an entourage of other boys his own age whom the other musicians called his "groupies". The pianist alludes to this in how he pronounces his name in this next offering from that same event. There is some nice solo work by the drummer in this track.

This is an example of the "Be-Bop" style or something close to it. The Bass seems a bit more tolerable. After two saxophone solos, the piano can be well heard. There is then a trade off of solos and the crowd roars before the Be-Bop style theme is repeated.

http://www.box.net/shared/5os5mfz1n5

I challenge anyone to post a recording of this kind of music, a live Jazz performance in a nightclub where the piano actually sounds more in tune and where the unisons are better.

JByron, huh??? I am not following you.......I think.

Oh and btw, I don't like fish!

Byron, you will never guess where GP is performing and recording right now and we aim to keep it that way.

Bill, very enjoyable and very natural sounding. It sounds to me like it's all blending quite well, especially when the piano soars in the treble above the ensemble.

One thing for sure who GP is not is the Wizard of Oz. You can rule that out. I might actually be a little closer to that if I said all you need to tune the EBVT III is a brain, a heart and some courage.