Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum 4ths and 5ths, I love 'em

C'mon BDB,

if i don't remember wrong, this was you commenting on Nick's tuning, captured Lo-Fi with his cam.

Wouldn't make a fuss about that - to me that was a spontaneous reaction of yours, that I (if I remember correctly) thought was rather funny

I didn't see this as an attack on neither the temperament nor the tuner. If you felt it sounded horrible, you are indeed most entitled to say so. God forbid that we go over-diplomatic for the sake of diplomacy alone.

BDB, you're entitled to your opinion. The first reactions there were to the Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue were over the top bad but I knew where they were coming from: somebody who criticizes everything just as you have. Nobody tunes up to his expectations. He's the only one in the world who can tune a piano, one would think from what he says. Needless to say, those comments did not dissuade me from pursuing my goals.

While I respect your opinions, I read nearly every I see and often find them interesting and amusing, at the same time, their brevity and bluntness quite often have an air of condescension to them.

Now, you state in a recent post with some gratuitous vulgarity that you quit commenting or listening or whatever, once again denigrating all technicians who would engage in tuning pianos any differently from whatever it is that you hold out as the one and only way that you consider to be correct.

You offer no advice, share no techniques, share no current examples of your own efforts, mostly just blunt, often rude, sometimes vulgar and condescending remarks.

If, what we are talking about was the one example by Nick M., he is quite far from what I would call a technician "who can't tune worth a darn". I am not sure it was that post; it could have been one of mine but if it was Nick's, your single, short dismissal of what he had to offer quickly put an end to all that we could have heard from him.

The Chopin piece often referred to as the "Funeral March" was the subject of discussion. It had been used at the 1998 event where an earlier form of the EBVT had been tuned and it was noted that the difference in temperament greatly enhanced the intended mood of the piece. That discussion caught Nick's interest because he happened to know it.

While Nick does not claim to be an outstanding pianist, I first met him when he was still a teenager and was quite impressed with his skills even at that time. He has since become an outstanding concert technician and successful piano dealer, offering the finest quality pianos.

The topic of non-equal temperaments was something new to him and of which he had the typical notion; that any such endeavor would be a folly. However, he read and followed aural tuning instructions. Being an intelligent and skilled technician, he could follow them without a problem. Rather than scoffing at the idea without any experience in it, he actually gave it a try. He was, as would be expected, quite impressed by and amazed by the results.

We were all looking forward to hearing some recordings from his corner of the country to be posted on the "My Piano in the EBVT III" thread. Instead, one uncalled for insult seems to have put an end to that. I would suggest that you put a little more time and thought into your posts and that you offer some actual knowledge that people could make use of rather than constant and continual demonstrations of your superiority over everyone.

On the subject of a "scientific" or double blind study, however it may be thought of, I have said before that in the end, it is impossible and I will list the reasons that come to mind as to why. Owen Jorgensen contemplated the idea and once wrote about it. I still remember basically what he said.

If two pianos were used, side by side, no matter how similar the pianos could be, each piano is inevitably different from the other. That alone negates a principal premise of a scientific study. One piano may be in an acoustically favorable position. A pianist will naturally react differently to not only the way a piano is tuned but to an inherent difference in touch and voicing.

If a player piano is used, the original recording was made on another instrument with its own characteristics which would include tuning (which include temperament and stretch), touch, voicing and room acoustics. If the original piano were tuned in ET, as it would be presumed to be, the pianist would play the music according to the feedback from the piano at that time. Technically, one could expect an inappropriate or exaggerated interpretation from the ET recording played in non-equal temperament. That would be a natural bias against the latter.

A pianist unfamiliar with a non-equal temperament may be distracted in some way by the new sound. There may be other factors which did not come to mind. Can anyone think of any others that would prevent any such study from being completely neutral? Even one factor is enough but obviously, there can be a long list of them.

Nevertheless, we will always find comparisons to be interesting. I have immensely enjoyed GP's recordings, most of which have been done with the player mechanism. His very first offerings were done in ET but using different ETD's. He asked at that time for comments and there were no shortage of people finding positive and negative things to say merely about the amount of stretch in each.

Our economy has always been driven by the availability of choice. I recall one writer saying, "If you ask for a cup of coffee, you expect one thing". This implied, of course that if a customer asks for a tuning, they expect one and only one result. We all know, however that from one aural tuner to the next, the result will be different, even if they all intend to tune ET. Among ETD users, which one may use a default stretch and which one may use the Stopper device and which one may use aural verification and which one may know how to customize the stretch for a particular desired effect? They will all be different, even if they all are tuning ET.

So, let us all have our opinions and let us all do what we think is best and works for us the best to please our customers.

Starbucks created a revolution in the Coffee making industry by offering choices. New companies opened up, one after the other, each offering their own choices. McDonald's, at first, the epitome of consistency, tried new ideas. Some of them worked, some did not. On the coffee idea alone, it found that what it used to serve as "coffee" was passed over for more exotic brews at a higher price. McDonald's no longer serves what it used to serve as coffee. If you order coffee there, you get anything but that.

Another great example that comes to mind for me was what I recall when I was in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1995. If you like Mexican style food, it is "hog heaven" for that! I noticed that every restaurant offered "Huevos Rancheros" for breakfast. That would translate to Ranch Style Eggs. Now what would that mean? Two eggs, re-fried beans, rice and tortillas? Well, yes but every restaurant in Albuquerque offered their own version of that and each one tried to outdo the other in how elaborate they could get. Each one had their own spices, sauces, other additions and their own way of preparing each and their own presentation.

Long ago, I was told that there could be very little room for variance in what a correct piano tuning could be. I knew that was not true then and since then, I have found out just how much variation there can be, even with everyone having the same goal.

Bill: Those are indeed obstacles for a scientific study. The best I can think of is using a player piano with the roll played in using ET. As you observe, this will introduce a possible bias for ET. If however the results indicate a listener preference for UT, despite this bias, we have established something objective.

On the other hand I agree that if say 90% of the audience preferred 1/3' meantone (just to give an extreme example) I would not change my mind that I don't like that temperament for Bach and later.

Nevertheless such a study would still be useful in my opinion. Say if it turns out that 50% of the subjects prefer a slightly unequal temperament, one could argue that in order to qualify as RPT one should be able to tune at least one UT.

Kees

There are plenty of arguments going on now that would certainly take precedence over that one. I don't see RPT qualifications and artistic pursuits or advanced tuning concepts as even being in the same book. RPT is about minimum professional standards not whatever may be out there.

That being said, if you want to get a job doing any of the tunings for a local dealer here in hot button Madison, Wisconsin, you surely need to be able to do at least three or four and be an RPT and show your exam scores as being superior or forget it.

RPT is more like, "Can you say, in-ter-val?" OK, very good! Now, tell us what that means. Oh, you don't really know what 3rds, 4ths and 5ths are or how they relate to each other, you don't know what inharmonicity is or how it affects tuning, you don't know why octaves have to be stretched or what that means, you can't hear beats but you do know how to turn on an ETD and you think you should be an RPT because you know how to do that? That is about where we are with any number of people, so don't get your hopes up.

I did not take part in GPM's “taste test” because I do not like to listen to EBVTIII.

But what I would be interested in knowing is not which is generally more popular or how many can tell the difference between ET and UT, but which kinds of tuners can tell and what their preference is. Would more tuners that learned aurally be able to tell? Do those that set the temperament with 4ths and 5ths prefer ET? I think it is interesting and significant that Jerry could tell. I did not notice if he expressed a preference. I only skimmed through the posts since this went OT.

Interesting for this forum, surely, but bottom line is of course what musician like. From the responses to the test I put on the EBVT thread recently it seems nobody including Bill could tell the difference between EBVT3 and ET on a MIDI synth piano. So now we know the effect is subtle enough that such a crude test does not suffice. Also interesting is that almost everyone could tell the difference between ET/EBVT3 and a stronger UT in this setting.

I don't think we're off-topic as 4ths and 5ths are the key ingredients of any temperament, equal or not.

With ET we have all these nice checks on progressive beat rates and you can really check your ET temperament to any accuracy desired with all these objective criteria. With UT's it's harder to expand the temperament consistently as you don't have all these checks. If you then propose to expand the temperament inconsistently as Bill does guided by musical considerations, everything becomes even less objective.

Too bad for the tuners, but what sounds best should be the goal.

Kees

Doel:

I do understand your point, but this is not a one size fits all world. Remember when Coca-Cola changed their recipe because tests on the new one showed more people preferred it? Well I for one am glad they switched back! Just because a majority, and in the case of UT over ET I understand it is small, has a preference does not mean that there is not a place for ET tuners.

And let’s consider the tuners themselves. I really would not like tuning anything but ET. So I will stop tuning ET when you pry the C-fork from my cold, dead fingers! (Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, Bill.)

But my real point about tuner preferences was not that their opinions matter more, but that they may give insight into what tuners really hear when they tune, why they prefer one type of tuning over another, and if this is related to the tuning scheme that is chosen.

And now they replaced sugar with corn syrup to make a few more bucks. Except in Europe where regulations don't allow American corporations to poison their population for profit.

So can you tell the difference and if so what do you hear? Can you isolate the 4ths and 5ths when someone is playing music and hear they are off? It is indeed interesting how tuners can tell.

Kees

Doel:

Well, to get away from pianos for a moment, I cringe when I hear string chamber music with pure fifths. Reminds me of nails on a chalkboard.

With pianos, it is usually when the fourths or fifths (I can't say I always recognize which it is) are too tempered that bothers me. Although, yes, I can hear ones that are too pure. But this is only when there is a fresh tuning. When the unisons start to go that camouflages everything else.

Funny though, when I hear a pipe organ the out-of-tuness does not bother me much. I think it is because there is nothing I could do about it, so I accept it.

Just wanted to add a small comment here... Someone might jump to the conclusion that EBVT III stays UT just inside the midrange (approx. C3-C5) then via uneven stretch becomes ET-like outside that.

This is not what I encounter if I check beat rates. The difference between ET and EBVT III might diminish towards the outer ranges of the piano, and the lowest and highest octave are going to be more a matter of taste anyways, but if I check C2-C3 and C5-C6, they still carry the EBVT characteristics.

My calculations confirm that. The is a tasteful adjustment of the worst fifth (GD) above the temperament octave, and the temperament becomes milder there, but by no means equal.
Just subtly different.

Kees

What I love about ET is that it allows for the fifths to be very close to pure if you give the temperament octave a healthy stretch. The more pure the fifths are the more balance there is in the chords because the beat rates will blend better.

For example in triads if the 5th is pure the major third and minor third will beat at the same speed which gives the chords a crispness that you lose when the 5th is to heavily tempered.

This whole business of ET having "no color" is a joke. When executed well, with proper stretch it creates a vibrantly colorful, balanced, geometrically beautiful tuning that has satisfied the vast majority of the best pianists that the world has ever seen.

Also the argument that nobody was tuning ET in the 1800's and early 1900's is also extremely suspect. I really appreciated Fred Sturm's article in the last PTG Journal where he effectively destroys Owen Jorgensen's flimsy arguments about 19th century tuning. Yet Owen Jorgensen's ideas have become the modern standard for HT tuning.

That being said, I think that HT is still valuable from an educational standpoint and anything that inspires pianists to listen more carefully to their pianos, and excites them about their music making is indeed a wonderful thing.

This is only ture if it is a minor triad and the 5th is a pure 6:4 interval.

@Kees: good to hear that the numbers add up

@Ryan: I think this is semantics. Different colors of ET? Sure. Different key colors? Nope.

And then... the crispness you speak about satisfies some, but not all. The crispier it gets (ie stretched), the less punch in the mid-range. This more from a non-tech view, the way I differed tunings long before I took tuning up myself. Sometimes I have to tell myself to go by that pianistic feel, because I easily get lost in beat rates

If I tune for jazz or for close-mic recordings, I keep narrow in the mid-range, then I stretch and the outer ends as much as I can bear - this to get C1 and C8 sounding vaguely related For concert tunings - big instruments, big halls - I use a "looser" (= wider) mid-range and a more uniform stretch.
The above is true whether I tune ET or EBVT III. That said, I haven't tuned ET for a classical concert in almost a year, and I'm still getting the important calls.

Pat, just out of curiosity: do those callers know that you haven't been tuning ET?

Mark,

no they don't (except for a few regulars that know that I tune "non-standard" and explicitly ask for it).

I really bit my nails the first times - sitting in the audience, listening.

But I've gotten nothing but good feedback. None of the pianists talked about temperament, they just said that they really liked the way the piano sounded. This includes some of the best classical piano players we have over here.

And this is also why I don't consider EBVT III to be a historical temperament, as in "while getting to the ultimate tuning, ET". Two weeks ago I tuned for a performance of one of Poulenc's sonatas for wind instruments and piano. Composed in the mid 30's, I'd think. Polytonal stuff, and it sounded good. Would you believe that one of the wind players commented on this piano (a Steinway B) as being easily intonated to?

So, you mean the chords all sound the same then, so that is why you like it?



This can only occur in a Pythagorean Tuning or the so-called "ET with pure 5ths" where all of the thirds beat so fast that close harmony sounds strained. You simply cannot have 12 pure 5ths unless you have an excessively wide octave. Certainly, not everyone will like a piano that sounds like that.

People have often commented and indeed there is a current thread where a pianist has said just that. What is gained in what you are calling crispness is lost in warmth. You can't get something for nothing. Whatever improvement you make in any interval results in a loss of desirable quality in another.

There is no music where only 5ths are played. There is no music that requires or even desires all major triads to sound exactly alike and all have the same quality.



Effectively, you just finished saying that you liked ET because there is no distinction at all in harmony but now you say that it is fully of "color". Certainly, this is not true with respect to the definition of "color" as it is applied to all cycle of 5ths based temperaments. Again, you cannot have it both ways. If you have all major and minor triads sounding identically, then there is no "color".



I won't be throwing away the big Red Book anytime soon but I will be throwing away those Journals that have that series in them. It is interesting that the author waited until Jorgensen could no longer respond to what was written in the Journal. I am quite sure that if he were still living, Jorgensen would quite effectively destroy what has recently been written in the Journal and his book would live on with the respect it deserves.

I give far more weight to the man who literally spent is life in such research, certainly over someone who has dug up another reason to say that maybe, just maybe, everybody has always been tuning ET.

Oh boy, here we go again...

I agree that article series was quite dreadful. What I found most annoying is that (sometimes ill-informed) opinions of the author are presented as facts.

Kees