Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum Field test: ET and EBVTIII for two pianos four-hand

Hi all,

I just tuned a Steinway V for a jury exam on friday. I did this with the help of RCT, to get a somewhat similar stretch in comparison to the other piano, a Steinway B, that is the main piano of the concert.

The V will be used for piano concerto accompaniment, the orchestral reduction is played on that piano.

I look forward to hearing them played together. When Bill, GPM and myself did a similar "live" test last summer, it did work beautifully - both instruments had their personalities, and at no point did they sound out of tune any more than any other two instruments playing together.

The listening, and the discussion we had about what we heard, lead me to think that maybe the instruments don't have to be cloned pitch-vise for these situations.

So, I try it this time and get back with the results

An interesting side-note: If i use RCT's standard stretch (#4) I land very close to where I land tuning aurally, looking at the stretch as a whole. This I noticed today when I compared the stretch on the ETD-tuned V and the aurally tuned B. Have to investigate that further to see if there are any good lessons - or even hybrid tuning hints - to learn.

Patrick,

You don't say which temperament you use on which instrument. The same for both or a different one on each? If I were tuning a grand, any grand for the soloist and a vertical, any vertical for the accompaniment, the only two notes I would be sure are the same is A4. Otherwise, I would tune each instrument optimally to itself. I would use the same temperament but if somebody asked me to tune a piano to another one that had been tuned by someone else, I would not try to copy the temperament or any other feature of the tuning such as stretch. Again. I would only match the A4. The same goes for organs, vibraphones, marimbas, accordions, whatever.

Bill,

the main concert piano - the Steinway B - is in EBVT III. I tuned it for another concert a couple of weeks ago, and it was very stable when I checked it yesterday. I only touched up a few unisons and left it such.

The Steinway V had not been used for some time, so I had to raise the pitch from 439 to 442. I did that with RCT smart tune. My original plan was to do a fine tuning in EBVT III on that instrument, too, but then I thought I'd try how they sound together with these two different temperaments, and went for an ET fine tuning instead.

If this causes problems, I have time to adjust the V between rehearsal on thursday and concert on friday. I think it will work fine, though!

Please let us know. I bet it will be just fine.

Just came home from the concert - it worked very well indeed

The piece that was played on two pianos was Faure´s Ballade for piano and orchestra, op 19. The piano reduction of the orchestral score was played on the Steinway V in ET, the piano part was played on the main instrument of the evening, a Steinway B tuned in EBVT III.

On tuning for earlier two-piano performances, I've tried to more or less copy the stretch and temperament of the main piano onto the supporting instrument. I'm happy to learn first-hand that the main goal seem to be to get the instruments to resonate within themselves. The small differences in stretch and temperament today didn't take anything away: on the contrary, both instruments sounded personal, carrying their own character into the music.

Then on to a question... the Steinway B is a newly restored piano from the 60's. It had been heavily used for concerts for some 30 years, and it had also fallen victim of the seasonal changes we struggle with - there were two 2 ft cracks in the soundboard.

The soundboard was glued nicely, and worn mechanical parts replaced. The hammers must have been changed not too long ago, because the tech who did the restoration just filed them, and the grooves can't have been that bad - there is still plenty of felt on the hammers. The sound is kind of mellow, though, and especially in the high treble (the upper two octaves).

There is a cultural difference in the profession between the U.S. and my country. Here, techs seem skeptical towards using hardeners. Most do the filing, then hand the piano over with a comment that it will need some time to be "played in".

This piano, however, is used rarely... maybe 5-10 concerts a year, and it is not played between the concerts. At that pace, it feels like it will take a long time before the hammers get harder.

The hall where it resides is kind of dull in the upper range, and this pronounces the problem even more. After listening tonight, I suggested that the hammers could be hardened using plastic dissolved in acetone.

That was a long intro... My question would be if it is custom for you to harden just the upper range? I've only used plastic/acetone on pianos of lesser quality that due to acoustical matters have needed brightening over the whole set of hammers. This I've carried on with good results.

But here I'd just go for the two highest octaves. [@Bill: this is what you did on GPM's M&H in July, right?]
Common sense tells me that I can "bridge over" to that part of the piano by applying the hardener little by little, using sound judgment, listening to the tone color.

Thank you for the report, Patrick. It was just as I expected. The tempering of each piano amounts to an internal difference for the instrument itself. Each has its own character but is in now way incompatible with the other.

Yes, the answer is as to voicing. The very safest way to obtain the tone you need now is as I had described before and I think you saw me do at Grandpianoman's house. Very light concentration, added mostly to the striking surface; repeated as necessary. The very top hammers can have more. If the hardener does not go beyond a limited area, it is naturally worn through as time goes on and the rest of the hammer felt is unchanged. Any hammer that is a bit too bright as a result can be remedied similarly with a single needle in the groove that does not penetrate very far.

This is, of course a completely different idea and approach from soaking and saturating hammer felt with lacquer. You may encounter people who fear any chemical treatment of hammers because that would be their idea of what you would do. The fear is not unlike that which people have for UN-equal temperaments. They think you are going to make the piano sound weird with crazy sounds if you even say that. CA glue treatment has the same reputation because they have all heard of the obsolete methods used by charlatans in the past. They didn't work or if they did at all, it was only temporary and possibly destructive, if not just sloppy and messy.

There is a right and wrong way to perform all of these techniques. Often, the clue to success is how delicately and judiciously they are done.

Apparently in the days of 1/4' meantone the lutes were tuned in ET and the keyboards in meantone.
Somehow they managed to play together anyways.

Kees

Yes, what Bill said about it Patrick. He described it pretty well. There is no reason why you cannot treat only a few hammers, if that is required but, sometimes, filing the hammers themselves, eliminating the grooves in them, spacing them, traveling them and seating the strings can also increase the tone sometimes considerably so, I would try that first and see what it does.

Jer is right about that. New hammers out of the box are often too fat in the high treble. Filing them to a bullet type shape will help. If that works but not quite enough, a little juice will help too.

Excellent point, Kees.

@Bill, Jerry: The hammers where filed and traveled already. I will check the seating, but as the dullness is uniform throughout the treble (the last two octaves or so), I think a hardener would bring that section of the piano out. Thanks for your feedback!

@Kees: absolutely... chamber music (as in 1+ instrument) never, as far as I've experienced, tune to anything but the set pitch (A4) of the piano. My experience of this test proved it to work just as well if the contributing part is another piano. The concert was broadcast on a local TV station, I'll check with them if the audio would be good enough to post here as an example of this successful blend.

In that case, I would lacquer them up a little bit. Remember, a little bit goes a long way... You can always bring them up more...later...

Two, three, four or more very light applications is always better than one heavy one. Just remember that.

As my posts have been censored here, i want to say to those who it may concern:

This thread is about using two different temperaments together and my statement was illustrating that this is not very different from using two different temperaments on one instrument.

If somebody takes offense by this truth, so bet it. But in no case should it be a reason for a censorship.

Bernhard -

If your post was a serious post then I apologize. However, it was reported to the moderators as instigating trouble on the topic.

To make a long story short, once I made a moderator comment there was much discussion on the moderating. I took that discussion to a private message and removed all the controversy from this topic so the original discussion could continue.

Again, I apologize for any misunderstanding.

Bernhard,

If you really and truly meant your two posts as a serious contribution to the discussion, then I too apologize. The problem is, as I just mentioned in my last post in the "color" thread, that you seem to have a lack of foundation for what you write when it concerns non-equal temperaments.

Frankly, the ideas you proposed were so absurd and implausible that I took them to be some kind of sarcasm and so did others. There has indeed been a problem with these kinds of posts. One person taking a jab, another taking a jab in retaliation until the whole thing escalates into a squabble that ruins the whole point of the discussion.

What I honestly saw was not a participatory comment but a veiled attempt at ridicule and mockery which has been a pattern of behavior in this forum. I can certainly mock and ridicule with the best. I think I can actually do that better than anyone else here can but obviously, that is not the purpose of this forum. Therefore, I ignored your first comment. When I saw what appeared to me from my knowledge and experience to be yet another joke in very poor taste, I quietly reported it as being sarcasm used in an attempt to start an off topic argument and the hijacking of a topic. It certainly has been done before and if I responded in kind, that is what was often reported, not what instigated it.

So, again, I apologize for the misunderstanding.

Sure it is - unless you happen to believe that "two pianos four-hand" is the same as two pianos playing exactly the same music - that is, the same music duplicated, or carbon-copied, onto the other piano.

Why this would be the case is beyond me. So I, too, read sarcasm into your first post. Your second post - making fun of different mixtures of ET and several HT's - strengthened that impression.

If I was overly suspicious and you indeed are as ignorant as you claim afterwards, then I apologize. Otherwise, please stop now.

Pat:

If you look hard enough for offence, you will find it everywhere.

Using different temperaments in one instrument? That is non sense.

So in the trichords you can tune up to three different temperaments? This will sound as out of tune unisons. The instrument won't be in tune with itself.


In my opinion Her Stopper's posts were mockery and ridicule.

This is not the same as tuning one piano with a temeperament and the other to a different temperament. Each piano is in tune with itself. They have both good unisons. They can play both good music. And this will enrich the music, mostly if they play different parts of the music, like in a chorus with different voices. I am not sure the result would be agreeable if they play exactly the same music.

It is like playing a piano with another keyboard instrument, an organ for example. They would sound fine as long as each instrument is in tune with itself and they are tuned at the same pitch. Even if individual notes differe a little from one instrument to the other.

And for me it is interesting to read a report from who has the oportunity to try and test this medley of sonorities.

I notice that those that prefer UTs tend to be very, very sensitive to any mention that UTs can create problems.