This is a tentative attempt at using the Steinway EBVT III offsets, posted yesterday by Mr. Bremmer, with PianoTeq. I’ve used a midi file, here, and I understand the limitations. Chopin, Opus 27, no. 2:

http://www.forum-pianoteq.com/uploads.ph...20Op%2027_2.mp3

I’m a little worried about having correctly recreated the overall sound. I don’t hear as much change in the color of the sound as I expected. Perhaps this particular piece happens to be less affected?
Could someone point me to a midi file that would bring out some of the coloration more?

Notes:
--PianoTeq 3.5.3 Standalone version.
--C3 Close mic preset, which is partly based on a Steinway D. Lid was slightly lowered and the reverb was turned off. Other settings are the defaults.
--Rendered from the midi file to a wave file from within PianoTeq, and then converted into an mp3 with Audacity 1.3

Hello Jake, I dont know about the authenticity, but , justness wise, to me it tones nicely, with a slight "imbalance" that is fair to the music. no really unpleasing harmony, may be the low bass D witch may be a little objectionable, but it may be tone related.

That Pianoteq software is amazing for those kind of things !

Thanks for sharing. DId you use any stretch parameter or no ?

Kamin: I removed the stretch. If you set the temperament to Flat, the keyboard is pitched to theoretical ET. Any pitch changes you then make are offsets from that.

I think Chopin is one of the worst choices for an example piece for a well temperament. This is conjecture, but I think I'm right to say that he often chose the key of a piece not upon the colour of the key, but on the ease of play. This nocturne is in Db major which is quite a remote key to a well temperament, yet it is a very harmonious and peaceful piece that would certainly sound better with a more just tuning. The key of Db just makes the left hand arpeggios so much easier to play. Try playing it in D major and you'll see what I mean! A lot of his music seems to me to have been written in this way, to fit the way the hands sit on the keyboard.

This simulation doesn't quite sound right to me, I think it needs a bit more work before one can hear the temperament properly. The music sounds fine, but it doesn't sound like a piano

Jake, it is the key of D-flat which is supposed to not sound good but it sounds quite sweet. It is the way the music is intended to sound. Thank you!

It may be very easy to transpose in D ...

Would you make that, also, Jake ?

Jake, thanks for the information. I suppose that the IH is corrected despite the "flat temperament"

Monngoose, of course it have differences with a real piano, but it does very good on many aspects, apparently the most appreciated is the fact that each note is computed at the moment it is played, and that makes the software behave like a musical instrument, what say the users...

I'm not quibbling over the pianoteq sound, I love how the CHAS tuning sounded on it, but this one doesn't seem right. Maybe it's the octaves. I don't know.

Are the octave sizes in EBVT III variable Bill?

Could you use a different composer or piece to demonstrate the temperament, Jake? Beethoven would be far more suited to show off a WT than Chopin.

My impression is that the iH correction is turned off with a Flat setting: the exact pitches you enter are retained. I'll check, just to be sure.

there seem to be at last iH "correction" at 2:1 level.

To me the treble and the bass as open . It is a very different kind of tone when they are not (really false , in fact)

The tonality remark may well be true ...

Yeah, I'm noticing something in there, too. I asked for information. I'll have to wait. May be tomorrow before I hear anything.

Not a Mongoose, yes the octaves vary in size across the keyboard. You can see that in the data. I suggested that GP not make the data for his piano public because it is very specific for that piano. Someone may be tempted to use it in a way that it is not appropriate.

However, this particular Steinway, for some reason, serves me very well as a good "generic" tuning that I can use for many piano types to get them close first before I fine tune. I could use the SAT FAC program with the offsets but it doesn't do the octaves the way I want and I don't like the 4th partial reading it uses for the 4th and 5th octaves. It always seems "wobbly" and indistinct.

If what you hear is that some octaves sound cleaner than others and some have some audible width, that is the way they are tuned. It perhaps does not come off exactly the way it does on a real Steinway but it is deliberate.

A Beethoven selection would be fine. I love all of the Beethoven sonatas tuned in the EBVT III but they are actually better in the original EBVT or 1/7 Comma Meantone. My favorite is the Waldstein Sonata. The second movement in particular goes through an interesting set of key changes. It would be a good item to post for that reason. Do you like the changes in color or does the neutrality of ET appeal more to you? (would be the question).

Although there are some people who don't like any non-ET at all and people, of course play Bach's well tempered clavier music in ET all the time, there isn't as much argument about whether a well temperament would work for Beethoven or earlier music. What there is argument about is that many people seem to believe that 19th Century or later music can only be well served by ET and that is a reason to only use ET.

Anyone can and does play music tuned however the piano is tuned. So, it is not really an issue of whether it is possible or not. My entire purpose for the Reverse Well thread, as unappetizing as it may be, was to show that people can and do accept nearly anything and they always have. Chopin lived from 1810 to 1849. According to Owen Jorgensen's extensive documentation, this was well before ET as we know it had been perfected. The closest that tuners were coming to it was Quasi ET, some of which were rather neutral in harmony while others retained some WT characteristics.

I have read the hand position in the flat keys theory before and I think there could be some element of truth to it. However, what I really think was the strongest motivation for choosing the remote keys much of the time was in fact, the intensity of color that would have been found in the actual way Chopin's pianos were probably tuned. How would that have been? We cannot know for sure nor can we know if they were always tuned the same way.

I looked up Chopin on Wikipedia where there is an extensive and interesting article about him. I liked the quote by Robert Schumann: Robert Schumann, speaking of Chopin's Sonata in B-flat minor, wrote that "he alone begins and ends a work like this: with dissonances, through dissonances, and in dissonances," and in Chopin's music he discerned "cannon concealed amid blossoms."

There are some sound files on that web page. I found the one of Martha Goldstein playing the Revolutionary Etude on a 1851 Erard to be shockingly bad:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co...s_-_c_minor.ogg

Certainly, if Chopin could tolerate that, he could certainly have embraced the EBVT III!

Frankly, I enjoy hearing all the music that is supposedly only suited for ET in a non-ET. Certainly, Chopin's Fantasie Impromptu would sound comical in 1/4 Comma Meantone. Owen Jorgensen enjoyed showing his audiences that it does not work. He had me tune two pianos for him at the PTG Convention in Dearborne, MI (I forget what year that was). One was in Meantone and the other in the Thomas Young WT. He played first some very early music that he said was 300 years old that year in Meantone. Then he started playing the Fantasie-Impromptu on that same piano and drew audible displeasure from the audience. He knew that would happen, of course and stopped after only a few bars.

He went on to say how the key character that is lost in ET could be restored to music of the 18th and 19th Centuries by using a well temperament. He then played the Fantasie Impromptu in the Thomas Young temperament (which is far more unequal than the EBVT III). Owen never publicly advocated using well temperament for 20th Century music but I often discussed it with him privately, both in conversation and written letters. I have enough of his writing to fill a book, in fact.

He very much encouraged the idea and he agreed with me many times when I showed him examples of 20th Century music that had been written in a key signature and/or that modulated in a way that was appropriate for a Victorian style ell temperament. He helped me get both versions of the EBVT down in writing and calculated the electronic tuning data for it. He had the utmost praise and encouragement for it. He often expressed how pleased he was to know that in my town, we used non-ETs routinely and had long found acceptance for them.

The tuning here is better. EBVT III with consonant 12ths using PianoTeq's C3 piano, which was partly based on the sound of a Steinway D. Not, as you may notice, Chopin:

http://www.box.net/shared/ezhtshus3m

The mp3 sounds better if you download it. Playing it on boxnet, the amplitude seems reduced, so that the higher freqs stand out more

Boogie Woogie Blues! Another musical form thought to only work in ET! I love it! Actually to me, the small minor thirds in the EBVT III (or any mild WT or meantone) greatly enhance the music over the neutralized sound of ET. Thanks a lot for posting this!

Bill, you write:...”Actually to me, the small minor thirds in the EBVT III (or any mild WT or meantone) greatly enhance the music over the neutralized sound of ET.”...

“Neutralized sound of ET”? Gosh, here we are again, Bill Bremmer introducing one more insinuation on top of the many clichés he has decided to abuse.

But then I said to myself - why should Bill want to be so shabby and superficial...mmm...he didn't investigate Stopper's ET tuning, he hasn't heard Chas ET live yet, nor he wants to know about this latest ET model...how could Bill sponge the first ET together with modern ETs off at once, would he be so narrow-minded?...mmm...no, it can not be that, wait a minute...he may have meant something different - (?)

Then I was enlightened: yes Bill, you may have meant “New-tare-lized”! Oh, thank Goodness, you may then be realizing that Chas theory adopts a Delta-difference as a "tare", so that all partial-sounds can sing their infinite variety of . .. ... c o l o u r s.

Then you may realize that any slightest “s-variant” of Chas basic ET can make a pleasant Well Temperament. And in many cases, this is what the piano does on its own.

Soon you'd stop fighting for WT's supremacy and we all would enjoy different tuning styles, compare our tastes and keep separate theoretical evidences from personal wars.

Jake, many thanks for your links and for your approach.

Regards, a.c.

To me this piano have beeen stringed with Stainless steel wire... old wire on Erards have much more tone, the soundboard on that piano is also probably shot.

Here is one 1850 Erard with good wire, may be original, may be changed for Firmini wire later.

http://www.kewego.fr/video/iLyROoafvwv1.html

indeed the church helps with lot of reverb, but see the tone is very different, longer and luminous .