(Crossposted in Pianist Corner--Member Recordings)

As a Christmas gift, my-dear-wife-who-knows-nothing-about-music bought me a grab bag of sheet music and solo piano books from someone on e-bay. While reading through some of them, I discovered this one by Edward MacDowell, which is, as far as I know, my first encounter with this composer. I have no idea what she paid for the lot, but however much it was, it was worth it for this little gem.

It's in A major. On the Lester spinet:

Edward MacDowell--"To A Wild Rose," from "Woodland Sketches," Op. 51

Hope you like it.

--Andy

Lovely! You know despite their propensity for broken plastic elbows, I find that many of the Lester's I've worked on always seem to have nice tone to them.

Thanks, Ryan! Good fortune brought me a Lester with wooden elbows!

Here's another newly recorded piece for interested listeners:

Hart/Rogers (George Shearing, arr., John Lane, ed.) -- "Blue Moon"

--Andy

Ok. One more.

Veil Dance (1925) by N. Louise Wright



--Andy

I love the sheet music to play along to in the youtube videos! Your piano sounds like it needs tuning again though

Paul

Yes, the tuning is not as pristine as it has been in other recordings. It's mellowed a bit in the two months since Bill was last here. Do you think it is too out of tune to make and share recordings? If I am misjudging it's out-of-tuneness, I really want to know. Personally, I like the character of it. I especially like the way the high chord rings out at the end of the last run, and the way the low Ab floats into the scene in the final chord.

Thanks for listening, Paul. The piano itself is a work in progress, and while it plays more predictably now than ever, it still has... issues.

--Andy

Hey, Andy~
I just loved To A Wild Rose, and Veil Dance as well, as both seem ripe for what what could very easily be an accompaniment for a silent movie! As usual, your sensitivity and expression is spectacular.

Glen

To my ears, it's really quite out of tune and it makes it difficult to appreciate the EBVT III - it's starting to sound more like a pub piano - gives it a sort of drunken sound - reminds me of an old pub I used to visit in the UK where the pianist would make the best of what he had to work with - still enjoyable to listen to, but definitely not as impressive as your recordings were when it was freshly tuned. Your excellent playing does compensate though!

Paul.

@ pyropaul: Yes! I hear it, now! I think my enthusiasm for these new pieces of music over-rode my assessment of the tuning! I just listenened to Veil Dance, again, and I hear a very bad G4 in particular (and a few other noteable questionables), and when I heard that, I said to myself, "ew. I get it. Fingernails on slate to trained ears!" Please forgive me!

@ Inlanding: Thank you so much for your kind words! I have one more in the hopper, "Ah, 'Tis A Dream," a 1915 piece by Eduard Lassen, adapted by Leopold Godowski. I will probably record it, soon, but share it in a place where the magnifying glass is not focused on the tuning.

My mistake! Sorry people!

--Andy

Even being a little out of tune, I will take the EBVT 3 any day over ET. I use EBVT 3 on every piano I tune. To me ET is just too sterile and every key sounds like every other key. EBVT just brings the piano to life.

If EBVT 3 brings it to life and every key does not sound like every other key (like in ET)....from a puritan point of veiw, what price is paid for this? Nothing good comes without a price.

What you claim is a "sterile" sound in ET, to most other people is an acceptable by product which one not only comes to accept....but rather expects after being familiar with it for many decades. This residual that is left from ET is the price we pay for having the feedom to play music in any key without the issues associated with anything less than ET, or as close of a facsimile to it that one can tune.

If you are implying that EBVT3 or its near equivalant variants do not have their own less than perfect residuals left, you would be hard pressed to prove it in theory or on paper...as for general public consensus, it still remains obscure somewhere in the shadows of accepted ET.

Emmery,

The general "consensus" is not always correct. Remember when the general "consensus" was that the world was flat? Then someone didn't accept the status quo and proved otherwise. You can play in ANY key in the EVBT3. You are correct the EVBT 3 is not perfect and that's exactly why my customers like it. I encourage you to read the book "How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (and Why You Should Care) by Ross W. Duffin. I think you will find it fascinating. From my reading, I've come to the conclusion that the EVBT3 is very similar to how J.S. Bach tuned his clavier in his Well-Tempered Clavier. The book describes it as being very close to ET but the keys are slightly "shaded" thus giving different keys different personalities. It's a free country if you want to tune in ET, that's fine. I"m not going to put you down or criticize you. I however will tune the EBVT 3. To each his own.

Ryan, it wasn't meant as a put down. I'm not responsible for the entire consensus, even if I am a participant. BTW not every consensus is an invitation to a communal kool aid drink either...those tend to lie outside of the consensus in the fringes, more often than not.... not as you would like me to beleive.

I have read Ross's work and I've read S. Spielburgs' stuff too. I just don't beleive everything I read these days...you know, Greshams' Law applies to information and opinions also.

So I'm stuck with my own ear and it likes ET. Would you consider that maybe there's a reason for that and not just that I'm following like a sheep? I have preferences for certain songs in certain keys with ET. At a base level you would have me feel that I am making only a pitch differentiation. Well there is more to it than that and I can't explain why my feelings are what they are so we could be dealing with musical forces that are unknown.

I don't care for the taste of brussel sprouts and you may not like the color green, but its a wide stretch for you to assume that I don't like the taste of brussel sprouts because to you, they are green.

We are at a base level dealing with varying tastes and opinions. People can quibble for eons about what truth lies in either of them ...

"Truth is one forever absolute, but opinion is truth filtered through the moods, the blood, the disposition of the spectator" Wendell Philips

Hi Emmery,

I didn't take it as a put down, nor did I intend to put your opinion down either. It's always hard to understand the person's intended tone in a forum like this. (I think that is sometimes why there are so many arguments in this forum) :-) I have played piano for many years that were tuned in ET. For the longest time I thought that was the only option until I read about Bill's EVBT. I decided to try it one day on my own piano and loved the way it made it sound!! I tuned a few friends piano in EVBT3 and they too loved it! You're right, ET sounds like it would make more sense (at least mathematically). I have tuned the piano of the president of the Missouri Music Educators Association (an association to which most all of the music teachers in the state of Missouri belong), a Steinway Grand on which the pianist for the St. Louis Symphony played, several local choir directors pianos, churches, schools and businesses. 100% of my customers love the way the EVBT3 makes their pianos sound. After I tune someones piano for the first time, many often say, "My piano has not sounded this good for years!" I only tune part-time, I am a choir teacher in a public school as well as the worship leader at my church, but have become in such high demand for piano tuning, that I have considered doing it full-time...I probably will not due to the fact that the Missouri teacher retirement is such a good deal. So I must be doing something right. Have you ever tuned a piano with the EBVT3 before? If not, I would recommend doing so. So many people on here are so openly critical of the EBVT and have not even tried it.

Well Ryan, I experimented and tuned it quite a while back. Mind you I used offsets from an ETD, probably much as any tech would do these days experimenting with non-ETs. Nobody here in these parts tunes it, asks for it, or even heard of it, so the ETD steps in. It didn't sound too far off any samples I've listened to from here and elseware but I find MP3's, computer speakers ect don't do much anything justice as far as audiophile sound goes. Unfortuantely by the time I tuned it a few times, I was under the impression I was deliberately tuning pianos to a temperament I find them in, not where I'd like them to be when I leave. I'll expand on that because it is a hump that you can't avoid if you been doing this business for a long time...

My take on it is that it mimics an ET tuning that sat for a while and wandered off randomly in its temperament yet maintained some semblance of octaves and unisons being true. Considering how little some offsets are...this is not that far off if you think about it. .17 cents here, half a cent there ect... Half of EBVT III's offsets from ET average less than what tuners generally discern and set in a stable way(.39 cents). Total average of offsets is about 1.2 cents from ET settings.

Now I realize that these all interplay with each other for a total effect but these are such small numbers that as a tech I find it hard to beleive most anyone who is not trained in recognizing the beat patterns and structure of ET would really notice the difference in a way they can realistically describe or put their finger on..especially in the context of music, as opposed to comparing intervals or looking at specific patterns of beats and their rates.

This brings me to a another point. One thing I know for a fact is that if someone has a normally operating singulate cortex and a thalymus in their brain, they are not immune to the placebo effect of suggestion. This effect falls far outside the confines of pharmaceuticals.

Seriously, I'm speculating that what some folks find favourable in EBVT is mostly placebo effect (being suggested it sounds better than ET before you hear it). The power of suggestion is a well documented and proven fact and will create biases and reactions in people that cannot be accounted for with physical/factual support.

I can readily admit that possibly I am biased against EBVT III because I heard an extremely highly respected tuner comment negatively about it (they heard it first hand) before I even heard it for myself. Maybe they were biased already themself when they first heard it. It is reasonable to assume I will lose some respect for this person if I came to a different conclusion than they did.

So in a strange way these things boil down to allegances for many folks and not really an unbiased judgement call on what sounds good or not. Such is the world, and the workings of the human brain.

That's a good explanation, Emmery. I tune the EBVT3 using the off sets that come preset into Tunelab. I take samples from the piano as normal, let Tunelab determine the tuning curve and then layer the EVBT3 offsets on top. You are correct, some of the offsets are so small that it may seem like it really doesn't make that much of a difference. I have some customers, who are very good pianists, who cannot hear the difference and others that can. The biggest difference I hear is when one goes from playing in a key such as C with no sharps and flats to the key of C# with 7 sharps. The fewer the sharps or flats the more mellow the sound. As one progresses through the circle of 5ths adding either sharps or flats, each key gets progressively "crisper." Another feature is what is called the "pipe organ effect." If you pound out a loud chord from bottom to top and hold it, you can hear a rumble sound that sounds like a pipe organ. It gives the piano a larger fuller sound.

There is a difference in the numbers that Robert Scott has put into Tunelab as opposed to the ETD offsets that Bill has on his website. I spoke to Robert about this. He said that he has a temperament designer program that he programmed Bill's method for tuning the temperament and these are the numbers that come out. Robert's numbers are the ones I use.

We recently purchased a new Yamaha Grand piano at my church. It had been tuned in ET before being delivered. It took me a couple of weeks to get it tuned, so the congregation heard it for a couple of weeks in ET. After I tuned it several people commented how good the piano sounded. One person said it sounded as if the piano sound had been "opened up" and another made a comment about hearing more "overtones."

Bill Bremmer calls the EBVT3 the "mild" one. The EBVT1 he says is more "spicy." The difference between ET and the EBVT3 are very subtle but I really like the difference. I appreciate the fact that you actually tuned it. I guess it's not for everyone, but I love it and will continue to tune it.

I have been away for quite a while because the November and December rush periods had me tuning 30 pianos per week along with concerts to perform in (one of which had the piano tuned in the EBVT III, the other was orchestra with no piano). Also included were two trips to Los Angeles and tuning the EBVT III for a film producer out there who wants me to tune his piano whenever I am available.

There were trips to Milwaukee where there are plenty of technicians, dozens of them RPTs but only one who does any non-ET tunings but his work is exclusively at the university where all pianos get that treatment. Another trip to Eau Claire on Saturday for a Steinway customer. Thousands of miles put on my car during a two month period for people who know and ask for the EBVT III by name and occasionally another non-ET. That's not 100% however. Twice a year, this nervous, geeky, tight lipped guy who runs a piano teaching studio asks for ET. He says one of his students has perfect pitch, so it just couldn't work any other way.

Last Spring, I tuned Baldwin grand at a church for that teacher's recital in the EBVT III, not knowing beforehand whom it was for. I only found that out later. When I asked him how the piano sounded for his recital, the answer was, "Oh great! Somehow better than I expected". I let it go at that.

So, I am not influenced in any way by any other technicians negative remarks. I take the Steinway approach to that and say that I don't pay any attention to what other technicians say, I pay attention to what the artists say and my clients say. I work for them, not other piano technicians.

The more that some people who have little or no experience try to say something negative about the use of the EBVT III or any other non-ET in modern piano tuning, the more they expose themselves as not knowing what they are talking about at all. Johann Georg Neidhardt constructed an virtually identical model to the EBVT III in 1720. Others had near ET ideas too but each avoided the strict theoretical model.

Only when Helmholtz who was a scientist and mathematician came up with his "final solution" and Braide-White wrote a book about how to do it did everyone jump on that bandwagon. Braide-White deliberately gave the false impression that it was either Meantone or ET and nothing in between. John Travis wrote in his book a half century later that "Bach invented ET and tuned his own piano that way. He even wrote two books of music to show how great it was". [somewhat paraphrased but it is in there].

There will always be technicians who condemn the use of non-ET. Nearly every one of them I have known has offered Reverse Well as his own version of ET. Now, for sure, an ETD won't produce Reverse Well unless you program it to do so, but let nearly any one of them try to tune ET by ear and that is what you'll hear. It's a demonstration of pure and ignorant bigotry and I have long dismissed it as such.

Bill, I doubt there is any real accuracy in your observation about Reverse Well being as prevelant as you seem to think. It pops up on occaision (mostly youtube tooners) but not really to often with any well trained experienced tech that tunes by ear, and definatly not with ETD only tuners, nor with hybrid tuners...these latter two probably make up for 2/3 or more of the tuners out there in N.A.
As for aural only tuners producing WT, they would have to be pretty naive to wander down the slippery path of blindly following a series of 5ths or 4ths without checking other intervals or simply making sure they are not forced to overtemper the latter notes because the first ones were to pure. At our tuning school, it was one of the first things we were aquainted with and taught to avoid, I'm sure other respectable schools do the same; I also know that a Reverse Well Temperament cannot get a pass with the PTG exam FWIW.

As for the "bigotry" card you so often play against your non beleivers...tsk tsk, O.W. Holmes coined the quote "The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour upon it, the more it will contract." The dilemma thats left for me with EBVT is the same one that faces me when I scoop after my dog. I can circle it only so many times before I come to the conclusion neither end is cleaner than the other when it comes to picking it up. It doesn't give the beautiful sweet even clear sound I want to hear in music...at least not to me.

I know next to nothing about temperament, but I like the EBVT3 sound that Bill just installed better than the ET it had before. Seems overall more harmonious (less distempered?); in places it just sings.

Great to hear Gorm...that was my reaction among other positives, when I first heard it on my grand.

Thanks Gorm. I was pretty sure you would like the results. I can make any piano "sing" sweetly with a combination of temperament and octave manipulation. The result is a piano that is in tune with itself as opposed to one in conflict with itself.

Okay--The Lester is not pub tuned anymore! In fact, Bill was just here to put a fresh tuning on it. This time, it was riding ten cents below A440, and so he tuned it there. I must say, I really like it there, and I think the Lester does, too.

The boxnet version has the best sound quality, but the YouTube version is fun to watch. Pick yer poison.

Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me (boxnet mp3)

Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me (youtube-i-fied)

Bill always comments on how hard it is to tune the Lester, and I'm sure that's true, but my gosh it sounds exceptionally smooth this time!

--Andy

Very sweet, Andy! Yep, those unisons are extremely difficult!

Any now has my old Accu-Tuner III with a program for tuning that piano in its memory. So, hopefully he will be able to maintain the tuning from now on. If he can tune that piano, he can tune anything!

A customer from Northern Illinois called for me to go down there (a 2 hour drive) to work a full day on his fine Shimmel K-230 (7'5") grand. He specifically requested the EBVT III. I set up a custom tuning program for it, tightened flanges, did some minor regulation and selective "angel shot" voicing. I also cleaned the interior and keys.

I have finally come around to agreeing with those who say that the finest tuning (broadcast quality sound) can only really be done with a single wedge mute, one unison at a time. I still like strip mutes for pitch adjustment and on my final pass, I can pull the strip and assure that each unison is holding on the the pitch when all three strings are struck and there is not an apparent beat. When I want to do my highest level work, however, the single wedge trumps everything.

This was a very pleasant day on the job. It was a large, nice home in the remote Northwest suburbs of Chicago. In the room with the piano were two large harps which the husband and wife covered so they would not resonate while I tuned. There were also to other smaller harps. In the next room was a harpsichord. It was obvious that these people enjoyed fine music.

The piano was in very good condition. There was very little grooving in the hammers. They were all perfectly aligned. A fine, Northern IL technician had done the last regulation and it was all good except the hammer line needed to be evened out. I got a turn out of the first few flange screws I tried, so I tightened them all.

The piano was not markedly out of tune. Really just a few bad unisons. All the A's in the 2nd through 6th octave were right on pitch. Amazingly, the temperament was about as perfectly equal as I have ever heard one be on a piano that I have been asked to tune! I had been asked to introduce a new temperament to the piano, however and I customarily tune the 1st octave significantly lower and the 7th octave significantly higher than most technicians do. So, I still had quite a bit of work to do to tune the piano.

There is an ongoing thread about after touch and the people there have made very fine comments, so there was not much for me to add. However, I did see comments such as a .005" punching could make a significant difference to a sensitive pianist. That may well be but so will the two items I just mentioned. If the flanges are not as securely tight as possible, tightening them and the other screws that hold the action rails and the action stack feet will also make a noticeable difference.

Nothing affects after touch as profoundly as the capstan adjustment yet it seems to me to be about as long lasting as a tuning. Surely, on a performance piano or studio recording piano or for a discriminating client like this one who has a top of the line instrument, the technician should touch up the hammer line nearly every time the piano is tuned.

Even a long neglected action whether grand or vertical can often be markedly improved by those two items alone: tighten all screws and adjust the capstans.

Interior cleaning has also been a hot topic on here. It is my usual practice to clean every grand every time I tune it so as not to allow it to get to the point where cleaning is a major undertaking. This piano was not "dirty" by any standard, yet dust, lint, paper tatters and human hair are just what naturally fall into a piano with normal use.

Just as the process of going out of tune begins as soon as the technician walks out the door, the process of getting dirty begins as soon as the piano has been cleaned. I did not spend longer than 10 minutes cleaning it but it is perfectly clean now. That is the way any grand piano should be kept.

I re-pinned one hammer that had a slight click to it. Upon inspection, it swung just a couple of swings too many to be proper and the larger pin did the trick. I did some selective "angel shot" voicing here and there to hammers that were just a bit more prominent than others. The customer generally liked the moderately bright tone but did feel that it was somewhat uneven, so I addressed that.

The shift pedal made a little too much noise upon release, so I added some softer material to the trapwork.

I finished the piano about 4 PM and needed to be on my way with a 2 hour drive ahead of me and an approaching snow storm which I was able to stay ahead of by a small margin. One of the children did play, however and the piano sounded great to me. I had seen a book of Scriabin nearby and really wished I could hear that!

To my delight, the customer e-mailed me with these remarks and a home done recording of two Scriabin pieces and a well known piece by Brahms. The second Scriabin link appears to be broken but I will leave it there just in case the link gets fixed. [The second Scriabin link is now fixed].



He provided the following statement for me to use. This is generally the kind of reaction I get from my customers and the reason why I have continued to tune the EBVT as my usual temperament now for 20 years:



To me, the temperament adds that "nostalgic" sound, a word that many people have used independently of each other. The first Scriabin is in C Major as its home key but often modulates. There are these half step departures at times which are emotionally enhanced by the smallness of that interval. There is more of a feeling of "pain" when that occurs and more relief and consolation when the piece returns to its home key.

Give a listen and compare these pieces to any recording you may have of them in ET and see if you don't agree.

One of my favorite Brahms pieces...just beautiful...the harmonies in that piece are just stunning, and in EBVT III, even more so. The Scriabin, very enjoyable.

I hear it in this Schimmel, even with just the Zoom, and in my M&H...a depth of sound, rich, full. The bass seems to compliment the rest of the piano, giving it a broad, rich sound that is so appealing.

What can I say...EBVT III is great, have always said that, and continue to. What a lovely sounding Schimmel, and enjoyed the playing as well. Congrats Bill on a fine job!

What a beautiful-sounding piano! Resonance you can feel! Those selections were lovely!

I remember when I first played in EBVT III, some of the sounds kind of threw me, until I realized that the temperament was telling me things. Patrick Wingren and Adolfo Barabino have both also commented on the way that playing in a well temperament positively affects their artistry. In the 2nd Scriabin selection and in the Brahms, I think I sensed a few moments where your customer heard the temperament giving subtle suggestions for phrase shaping and timings, but that these "suggestions" were new to him. In other words, in playing pieces with which he is very familiar, he got a few surprises with things in there that he'd never heard before. I'd be very interested to know more about his reactions to playing in the temperament after he gets to run through more music over a period of a few days.

Thanks for posting these. They are very rich and pleasing listening. Please relay to your new customer my appreciation for that wonderful playing!

--Andy

Bill,

This is interesting. Though I certainly don't have your tuning experience, my "open string" tuning always sound better than my strip muted tunings.

I remember in a past post you mentioned that you felt those who tuned with the single wedge invariably end up with a flat high treble. Do you still feel that way, or has something about the process changed your mind?

Jim Ialeggio

Jim,

Thanks for the question. There are lots of ways to end up with a flat treble, to be sure, strip mute use included. As I see it, theoretically, the type of mute used should not matter yet virtually everyone who uses a sing mute (or perhaps two wedges) and tuning unisons as you go claims a superior tuning over the use of strip mutes.

Strip mute vs. unisons as you go is off topic for this discussion but I was the one who brought it up as a tangent. I recall a long discussion on the subject some months ago. There were defenders of both sides of the issue.

What I have often seen as the claim from unisons as you go people was something like, "If I use strip mutes, the unisons turn out bad (or the treble goes flat, etc., any remark about the tuning not coming out as well) but if I tune unisons as they go, they stay".

I have never believed that argument, at least in its simplicity. Most often, if any of us are asked to tune a piano, it will be a piano that is substantially out of tune and which needs at least some pitch correction.

If, for example, a technician, tuning by ear, starts in the middle of the piano and raises the pitch even by a few cents, tunes one string at a time, completes all of the unisons as one goes, tunes octaves to sound "pure" as one goes, the inevitable result will be that the high end of the piano will get flatter and flatter as one proceeds. The piano will be out of tune by the time it is finished, even if the unisons all sound good.

Now, with good ETD programs like the Reyburn "Smart" tuning, the program will provide enough "overpull" note by note that the end result will, in fact be quite a good tuning. If one uses that program as a first pass, then follows it with the fine tuning program and especially if there is any custom programming involved, no doubt the tuning will end up being a superior one.

For aural tuning to end up superior, one has to anticipate the amount of overpull needed. This surely can be done, as it was the way that the late Virgil Smith taught tuning. He always tuned by ear and his tunings were considered to be among the most superior of any.

One well remembers the "contests" between Virgil Smith and Jim Coleman, Sr., however. Jim used an ETD and strip mutes and Virgil Smith used a single wedge. In the end, the results were considered equally superior.

What I was talking about was the fact that I had created a custom program for the Shimmel K 230 Grand. In creating that program, I had strip mutes fully deployed from Bass to High Treble. This is how tuning exam "Master Tunings" are done. Since I have done that kind of work for 21 years now, I am used to that kind of methodology for determining the very best possible tuning for any given piano.

It makes sense to me (and therefore is a method that works for me and that is key; it works for me) to determine the correctness of any given interval by comparing one single string to another. Even with the purest of unisons, three open strings against a single string being tuned tends to "cloud" the preciseness of the string being tuned. At least it does for me. I do recall, however Ryan Sowers addressing that issue in the thread previously mentioned.

Strip mutes provide two advantages in my opinion. Speed (efficiency) and greatly reduced stress. As a technician who normally tunes four pianos a day and sometimes many more as I will have to do today and tomorrow, I need both. Other technicians may only work on high end instruments and routinely only service one or two pianos a day and work far longer on each instrument.

There is tuning and then there is concert tuning (or broadcast quality, etc.). While most of my work is on very ordinary pianos in homes, churches and schools, I also occasionally work on high end instruments whose requirements are on an entirely different level. I must have techniques that are appropriate for each kind of circumstance or I would fail at one or the other.

What I see as the ultimate shortcoming of strip mutes is the tendency to proceed too quickly. That is, not take enough time to carefully listen to each and every unison long enough to weed out the slowest of beats in them. Indeed, I have often said and often do tune a console or studio (also many small grands) twice over in about 45 minutes. The results are good, of course. My customers like my work, the fact that I can finish it quickly and perhaps provide other services within a 60-90 minute time frame and move on.

I recall one poster who found that to be incredible. If there are 230 strings in a piano and each is tuned twice (460 strings to be listened to and corrected), that leaves only 5.86 seconds per string. Of course, some strings will take more time than others. In the course of tuning that quickly, if a unison sounds still in a split second upon listening to it, it is passed over for one in which a beat can be heard.

In private conversations with you, we did discuss how on a first pitch correction pass, I would not dwell on making a unison as beatless as I could. Certainly, on the final pass I would. Many ordinary pianos are riddled with false beats. For such an instrument under ordinary circumstances, there is only so much time that I will spend trying to make each unison sound as good as I can.

In the circumstance of this Shimmel, however, I had already tuned it twice over completely using strip mutes. I had spent longer doing that than I usually do even though the piano was on pitch when I started. I then proceeded to other services (cleaning interior and keys, flange tightening, one hammer re-pin, capstan adjustment and selective voicing.)

After the other services, the piano was sounding quite good but I decided to give it one final pass with a single mute. Most strings that I tested needed no correction. However, as anyone knows, it is often difficult and can take a substantial amount of time to make very small changes. So, those very small changes and the weeding out of any remaining instability that occurred upon very firm test blows took me about another hour. That was an average of 15.65 seconds per string. That meant that I may have spent a full minute or two on many of the unisons.

There was no need to strip mute the piano for this final pass, so I didn't do that. So, in the end, I say that I agree with those who say that the ultimate in fine tuning can only be done tuning unison by unison with a single (or two) wedge mutes.

Thanks for the clarification Bill. This issue of pitch drift with tension changes across the keyboard, even for the fine tuning, is something I'm paying much more attention to in my tunings, and its starting to pay off.

I find it interesting, going back to the EVBTIII thread topic, how central the stretch is to this or any temperament on a piano, and putting that stretch where you actually want it, rather than where you think you put it, is a somewhat tricky (an understatement) undertaking.

Along those lines, I find when the EVBTIII on my piano ages a couple of weeks, the bass becomes quite sweet...even more comfortable and mellow. I'm trying to figure out if that mellowing is the bass drifting south just a bit, where it perhaps wanted to be at first, or a very slight relaxation of the unisons. Not sure, and not sure how I'll answer that question either.

Jim Ialeggio

Jim,

Please let me know what you find out about that! On the Lester, Bill and I discovered it sounds best when the bass is tuned flat and then knocked barely into tune.

All,

Here is a recording I did a few weeks ago of a composition by PW member Steve Chandler. As Steve and I talked about this piece, he said he attempted to take an un-extraordinary melody and turn it into something extraordinary by what he put around it. I think he succeeded. When I first heard his midi rendering, I was captivated in my imagination by how incredible the harmonies might sound on a real piano, and, of course in my mind's ear, I heard those harmonies accentuted by EBVT III! I was so pleased to receive the score from Steve and put this music into the air! Hope you like it:

Steve Chandler--"Melody"

--Andy