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Welcome back - hope you all had success with tuning that first octave. (If you had problems, contact me off list- there are other things to try than what I'm planning on outlining here.)

Daniel, I've never studied the WHY of it, just noticed that different pianos behave differently.

Anyway, back to the piano. Once you've got that A3 "happy" with A4, you may do a little testing with your machine. Any of the machines allow you to control which partial it is listening to - try it to see how the 2nd, 4th, and 6th partial compare with the matches at A4...(that would force a focus on the 2:1 or 4:2 or 6:3 octave) To do that, set the machine to listen to the specific partial, lock the note switcher so it stays on A3 and then play A4. What you will most likely find in the middle of the piano is that "Yup, they all agree" -until you get really picky and notice that they all have a little drift sharp or flat. What does that mean? The "better" placement for A3 isn't an exact match with any of the partial matches with A4.

Hmmm... Tunelab folks, this just gave you a big insight into manipulating the graph. If where you want to end up isn't an exact match with any of the specific 4:2 or 6:3, or 4:1 matches, you can switch back and forth between different views to "preview" how to place the tuning between the different matches.

Verituner folks, there is an interesting thing that your machine can do that hasn't been discussed much.(I don't think...) With the note locked on A3, switch to fine mode. Realize that the machine is now "listening" to partials 1-8 to drive the motion of the spinner and needle. You should be able to see the numbers along the left side, as well as the little triangles that represent "hearing" those partials. Play A3 and you should see those triangles appear for the strongest sounding partials. Now, play A4....

Those tuning targets will now drive the spinner, based on how all of the partial matches of sounding A4 match with the partials of A3. You may even be able to see the spinner start in one direction and then switch directions with the ebb and flow of the sounding partials of A4. Cool!?

Back to a piano!

Next, repeat the tuning process with A5. Now, adding to the excitement, A5 and A4 should be "better", BUT you also want to check A3 with A5 to make sure they are also a "good" match. You will be listening for apparent "stillness". (I'm not gonna use beat-less) Here's where the wiggle room comes in - A4 is locked in stone at 440hz, but BOTH A3 and A5 can be moved/nudged/wiggled to find the "best" singles and double octave possible. The goal is to make the machine match those three notes.


Time for an aside: This goes waaaay faster than writing about it or trying it the first time! You can see that the goal is to set up a framework for the machine to then slice and dice the octave up into the appropriate atonal or tonal temperament based on your choice and input. That way, the machine has a fighting chance in coming up with an appropriate stretch for the piano. (Later on, I'll talk about over-riding the machine above the break if needed) The temptation is to only do this for the "best" instruments, but I find the biggest payoff in enjoyment and musicality comes from doing this on the smaller instruments. I still get in and out in about an hour. As you learn more about both your machine and how specific pianos react, the process becomes quicker. If you save and re-use tuning files, this only needs to be done at the first tuning.

Ron Koval

Ron:

I, and maybe others, might follow what you are driving at if you could outline the things that you think ETDs do better than ears and visa versa. This is tough reading for me.

My own solution to the "octave window" is to just use other intervals to tune with.

Ron, thanks for your input on this subject. I totally understand what you are doing here and have used a very similar process for several years now when doing hybrid tunings. When doing aural tests on intervals and octaves I often find that the best settling point "range" corresponds to the relative amplitude of the specific partial you end up trying to clean up...its amplitude in comparison to other possible target partials that are beating. It is only natural that when aurally tuning we often hear a predominant partial that is louder than the others and try to get this to sound the best. Although there is a mathamatical relationship that dictates a smaller string segment (higher partial)will produce lower amplitude, spectrum analysis/Pianalyzer will often show anomalies in this being a straight vector line, especially in the lower tenor/bass.

In the more complex mode of partial target choice in RCT one can easily pick better target partials on the expanded tuning based on this amplitude comparison and use the EQ sliders to to blend the shift. It more closely aproximates what we do aurally then any other method I know of.

When using RCT in the initial sampling mode I also take the precaution to pretune the sampled A's to a known template that aproximates the size or type of piano. (If the piano is off by more than 10-20 cents this is recommended anyways). I will then clean up the sample note unisons by ear and determine which string(s) will be excluded/muted for the best sample to take place. No sense in spending time analyzing octave relationshps ect..if the string you target is the oddball one that exhibits less than ideal readings. Even aural tuners run the risk that a strip muted piano of lesser quality forces you to assume the center/L/R string is the ideal choice for tempering or basing a tuning foundation for the rest of the piano to follow. When cleaning up the unisons you can run the risk with trichords that your initial note will be trumped by a 2:1 ratio of better matched strings. If the differences are small, coupling will mask it. On some lesser quality pianos the differences can often not be this small.

Jeff - It's not so much "ears vs. machine", though we can go there with another thread if you like...

What we'll often discover in the next few steps - Pre-tuning A1,A2,A6 and A7 is that the common heard complaint of having to let the octaves beat to make the doubles and triples sound clean can be corrected by setting the overall structure correctly FIRST before dealing with any temperament octave issues.

Ron Koval

Ugh! I would think the idea of a hybrid anything is to try to get the best of two different things. Perhaps I should just forget this Topic.

Wait! It IS what each does best/easiest... let the calculator calculate and let the ear give the calculator endpoints from which to divide...

Ron Koval

Ok, now you know where I'm going....

Go ahead and see if you can make a ladder of A's from A1(iffy on small instruments) all the way up to A7. The target is to have all of the intervals "happy". There should be a nice "ring" when you play from bottom to top. Even A1 and A7 together should sound "still".

Remember, no cheating - consider this a piano with only A's on it, no other notes....

While you go do that, I'll just ramble on here a bit.

I live in the world of the unison. While other tuners may call machine tuning so boring, I find that there is a world to be controlled trying to just listen for "stillness" and tone. Notice what we're trying to do here - tune and manipulate using intervals that are "still" or have a very slow beat. All of those "vibrato" intervals are going to be handled by our machines - they add expression to the music, but only after the overall stretch allows the instrument to "ring". In an atonal tuning, the vibrato rates range from really slow to really fast, but are stacked in a chromatic order. In tonal tunings, the vibrato rates range from really slow to really fast, but are stacked based on the tonality of Western music. Sometimes the vibrato rates of multiple intervals are exactly the same in tonal tunings...

Are you back already? Assuming you have a nice ladder of A's, figure out how to make the calculation match those A's... It's different for every platform, and sometimes, depending on the instrument you might need to be creative to force the calculation around. (Changing the iH numbers in Tunelab, for example allows for a narrower central octave...)

Go ahead and tune the whole piano and let me know if you hear a musical difference when you play. Is it huge? Probably not, but for me it makes a world of difference!

Next - no, I didn't forget about the break! Bringing in other intervals...

Ron Koval

Hmmm, I realize you are writing for 8th graders, but if you mess with the IH constants in the tunelab file all the nice interval beat/deviation monitoring that tunelab provides you with as tools to design your tuning curve will be unusable. I also doubt an 8th grader will be able to effectively edit the IH constants in the file to achieve some goal. I don't think this the way to go.

If you really need more than the 4 parameters that tunelab offers to tweak the tuning curve you should instead use custom offsets.

Kees

Basically: measure the frequencies of specific partials.

They are also good at figuring out how to use this information, but probably not good as a top notch human (yet).

Kees

Well, as far as I know. tuning wise, I could very well be an eighth grader.

I learnt tuning aurally, obviously not understanding what I was doing.

ETDs came along and helped me better understand what I was doing.

So, if I understand the point of this thread, it is basically about "teaching" your ETD to do a better job.

I am very much still interested, but do agree that tunelab calculates a nice tuning all by itself. Without needing my help.

I have been experimenting with Mr. Koval's suggestions, have now fallen back in love with aural tuning and have now started to agree with other posters that tuning aurally is faster and more efficient.

BUT, I still want to know how to teach my machine.

It is a very valuable tool, for pitch, pitch raises, noisy environments etc...

Please go on for this eight grader Mr. Koval!!!

Thanks

Kees - thanks, I probably shouldn't have suggested that - I've run into a few problem instruments that "wanted" a narrower temperament than the program offered... That pushes the user requirements into advanced levels - sorry!

"Thanks Ron, the tunings are sounding better than ever, is that all there is to it?!?"
(fictional response)


Well, there's still lots of places where things can go wrong...

If you've followed the directions, the tunings will now be matching the random selections of pianos you service better than ever before. Don't get me wrong, most people are happy with the tunings right out of the box. Bunches dabble with the custom setting to get a little better match using something like what I've written so far, or just add a "fudge factor" offset through certain areas to come up with a better match. We're slowly advancing to the top levels of tuning - just using the "musician's ear" that most of us already have developed before ever taking a tuning wrench to a piano.

What are some of those problems I alluded to above?

The machine has only a limited number of samples from the piano and has to make educated guesses about the other strings.

The samples represent one string at a particular volume level and voicing that may or may not represent the behavior of the entire unison.

The random nature of the partials in wound bass strings makes tuning any way a fun and exciting challenge...

Sometimes we run into problems that there just isn't a great solution waiting to be applied. (think about tuning down into the bass on a lot of tiny pianos.)

**********************
Remember the temperament problem I mentioned above? Sometimes the temperament (A3-A4 for most machines) falls right into a difficult portion of the scale... Why is the temperament located there? Because that is a portion of the piano where we can hear and manipulate the beat speeds easiest when constructing an aural temperament, and we like to make sure that A is exactly at 440hz. But wait, aren't we letting the machine deal with those rapidly beating intervals?

Aha! How about if we move the temperament up? The machine doesn't care how fast the beat speeds get, it can still calculate progressing intervals AND above A4, the inharmonicity of the strings "behaves" much more reasonably! (It is more likely to be predictable, even on small instruments.)

We can just assume we might have to help the machine through the break and set our temperament from A4-A5 (or C4-C5, or anything else that contains A4 so that it maintains A=440hz) We can help the machine using "still" intervals like our single and double octaves that we've already shown can work. I add the octave +5th and octave+4th to the single and double octave - this is an outgrowth from Bill Bremmer's "mindless octaves" approach. (thanks Bill!)

Sidebar: Ok, what's going to happen to those "vibrato" intervals if we alter the tuning from the machine calculation? After thinking long and hard on this subject, I've decided that in addition to partnering with my machine, I'm also partnering with the scale designer... The temperament is influenced by what the piano brings to me at that moment. Since I don't often tune a strict atonal equal temperament, I don't have a problem with the "vibrato" intervals speeds not being progressive in a chromatic fashion down through the break. The hope is to make small changes, maybe a cent or two at the most to find the "stillness". Then we have to be prepared for those changes to transfer down to the lower octaves as well.

Phew! more later...

Ron Koval

Amazing!

I can't wait to read more on this!

Don't be sorry, it indicates a potential problem with tunelab, in having just two "setpoints" (for example 6:3 in he bass, 4:1 in the treble). I understand other ETD's allow you to put setpoints at multiple locations (say 8:4 at A0,
6:3 at A2, 4:2 at F4, 3:1 at C8) and then interpolate accordingly.

On the other hand if you increase the number of choices the software becomes harder to use. What I love about tunelab is that I can write my own program to design the tuning curve and then use tunelab to implements it accurately. But I'm probably the only one.

Kees

Ok - I'm back for a quick moment.

We've got our ladder of A's. Let's review Bill Bremmer's "mindless octaves" We're gonna use this method to fine tune our A's.

Lets look at a two octave ladder from A3 - A5. An octave and a fifth up from A3 is E5. Tune that to your machine. (I told you to grab a bunch of mutes...) An octave and a fifth down from A5 is D4. Tune that to your machine.

If all is placed well, the very slight beat between A3 and A5 should match the very slight beat between A3 and E5. Similarly, A5-A3 should match A5-D4.

We're going to use this a slightly different way. Now play together A3, D4, A4, E5 and A5. Get that in your ear. It should sound still, like a block of sound. There might be a little waver at the beginning but settle into a blend. Hmmm... Now tune E4 and D5 to the machine.

To test if A5 (tuning upward) is a match, play A3, D4, E4 and A4 together. Now play them again - adding A5. It should just "hide" in the cluster. Going down? Similar. Play A5, E5, D5 and A4 together. Next add A3 to the mix. If there is a different quality to the cluster, slightly shift A3 - usually a little flatter than the machine wants.

See if you can get it sounding "still".

That's the method we're going to employ to get through the break.

Go find back to the piano and see what YOUR ear thinks about this. I'll be back tomorrow...

Ron Koval

We're nearing the end... REALLY! (that is, if anyone out there is still reading :-) )

I've been trying to give you the "why" as much as the "how". Now I'm going to back-track before the fine tuning.

You're at the piano. You take some measurement for your machine and then set some A's.

I generally find that if I get A3, A4 and A5 properly placed, the styles I have for the Verituner finish the job just fine. You may find that with the way I propose to do the fine tuning down into the bass, you will just do it more by ear than machine. The choice is up to you and your comfort level and confidence. With your machine you may need to set more A's by ear to help your machine find the best calculation. Try different things, I know we all have to balance out the time spent vs. the result.

From setting those A's, we've gotten some valuable information back from our machine. Where did those notes start out in pitch? If it looks like they were all sharp, or all flat by more than 5 or 10 cents, it is a good idea to do an overpull pass. That means starting at A0 and tuning right up to the top, using the pitch raise function built into your machine. When you get your machine, your tuning style and the type of piano to work together it is possible to approach the level of a fine tuning after this single tuning pass.

You can still do better...

Next - fine tuning down from A4 through the break.

Ron Koval

Welcome back!

You measured for the machine to calculate a tuning.

You either set some A's by ear and forced the machine to match, or started where the machine put them and then tuned octaves like unisons to see if you could find a "better" location - then made the machine comply with your wishes.

You put your earplugs in (didn't you?!?) and pitch-adjusted the piano from A0-C8 using a single mute and tuning unisons as you went. You've been living in the world of the unison, because trying to compare notes while pitch raising really isn't too productive. Tuning left to right, left string, middle to left and then right to both sounding strings of the unison.

At this point I like to work backwards... I start at C6 - just because? Well I want to make a two octave machine generated section to then use that to verify going down into the break. C4 is usually safely above the break... Working from the right to left going down gives me another listen at the strings in a different order.

Ok, It's "magic" time!! If you've done your pitch raise sequence, setting the pins as you went, you might be rewarded with some - hopefully a lot of "freebies" - strings that are dead-on pitch. Tune down to C4. If you check now, C6-C5-C4 should sound still. Furthermore, C4, C5, F5, G5 and C6 should sound still. (I play C4 and C5 with my left, and the rest with the right - I always want to maintain "cleanish" octaves, so I can easily play those two notes together while tuning if so desired.)

This is where you start getting that cluster in your ear. Hopefully, you shouldn't need to make any adjustments for another half-octave or so... You should develop the feel for this pretty quickly. Tune the next not to the machine, play the octave as you move your right hand down to the keys to then play the cluster together - go? or no go? If you feel motion, play the notes of the cluster without the lowest note - sound still? Add the lowest note. Motion? Now the nudging begins. I find that with the tuning stretch I've set up, these notes may need to nudge down a half of a cent or cent... Nudge, retest, move on!

An aside about the octave... You may have noticed earlier while setting the octave ladder up that if you just play the A3-A4 that the machine suggests, you might think it isn't still enough. After playing with the tuning, you might end up in the "best" or "least bad" location of A3 only to discover that your placement agrees with the machine! What?!? This illustrates how we can't tell if an octave is in the best matching location by listening only, we've got to move it to see if there is something better. The machine serves as a bookmark to let us know where we've been and if we've changed anything.

Back.... As you approach the break, check the stability of the notes above if you feel that you need to move the lower note by a couple of cents or more. Sometimes those upper notes didn't stay quite where we left them. (or you could cheat, using this technique to tune down matching whatever is above! You might make a very interesting change in temperament!)

Do NOT play any rapidly beating intervals... Treat this like wine tasting, don't try and taste whites, then reds and then be able to tell the delicate difference of the whites after tasting the reds... Your ears should have adapted to living in the unison and only hearing the slow or non-beating clusters. Work that all the way to the bottom. You can expand the clusters out to the double octave fourth or fifth if you find it helps. On some pianos it really gets to be tough down in the bass. Do your best - always making sure the octave doesn't get too ugly.

Finish by tuning from C6-C8, using the same technique. Honestly, most machines should do just fine going up to the top...

Play some music - those tiny differences in the tuning should really add a different dimension to the overall "sheen" of the piano.

Enjoy!

Ron Koval

Ron:

It would be easy to read all this and sum things up as: "An ETD is really only useful to tune from C4 to C6 after you have told it what C4 and C6 should be. Other than that it is best to use your ears."

I could see how you might interpret it that way...

;-)


I wrote this in general form for pretty much any machine. Even the template ones like the Korg master tune and the Petersen can be used this way. The two uprights I just tuned with the Verituner needed zero aural adjustments in the final downward pass...

Ron Koval

I'm not sure. Ron, could your post an "executive summary" of your post sequence? I find it also hard to read past all the kiddie talk. No doubt a great tutorial, don't get me wrong. You should get it out in a more permanent form somewhere.

Kees