Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum Aural versus electronic tuning

Brendan,
As others have said, tunelab, as any other ETD, is a starting point. I have used tunelab in my work here at WCC, but rarely use the automatic setting. To me, octaves are often too narrow. I'll take IH measurements, then using the manual adjustments tune some octaves until I get what I like. After using the program a while you'll learn how much adjustment you'll need, so you can usually do this quickly. It is a great program, but you need to set it up so that you will be happy with the results.

When tuning for a Liszt programme -

1. Tune the piano, banging in every unison - use a key banger

2. Let the artist practice his concert

3. Re tune everything that slipped 1 hour prior to the concert - bang it all in.

The piano will be stable for the concert, and usually for a time afterwards, unless the humidity changes.

I thank each and all that have posted here.
The assumptions have been spot on with regard to my confidence.
Got kinda shattered...
BUT... Knowing that there are people that can relate and give sound advice is incredibly reassuring.
I like TuneLab. Don't understand much yet, but from what I gather from you guys is that it will certainly take time to get to grips with it.
Being able to manipulate the tunings per individual piano with the aid of this software AND my aural training is really exciting.
Your words of encouragement are most appreciated.
UnrightTooner, you have made my life a little easier, knowing what you do with the way you go about your tuning.
I noticed after tuning a piano with TuneLab, that the treble sounded a little flat...according to my ear. I found it difficult to leave just by the settings on TuneLab and spent another 30mins tidying up from the treble break to the top.
At the end of it, it made me wonder about this electronic stuff....
BUT now I have come to learn that it can only enhance what I hear by customizing. I'll adopt the adjusting of the treble and see how it works for me.
I know I know.... Should've seen that one coming!
Confidence is a friend and an almighty foe when she feels inclined either way.
Very happily onward from here.
Thanks again.

Before you resort to semi-manual adjustments try the easier method - just select an interval for the treble that produces more stretch naturally. For example, if you are using 4:1 now, switch to 4:2. Do this before taking inharmoniticy measurements so the new interval will take effect.

Can't wait to try all these suggestions. Got a day of tunings planned. I'm so glad I don't have a mundane job.
Thank you all again and again.

I note your desire to hear notes sharper in pitch. It is a common tendency to tune trebles much sharper than necessary.

I have always been connected to a piano store or two and I have heard many tuners who come looking for work and I find over stretching very common. If we are busy, I can give them work doing pitch raises. You can always take a fault and turn it to advantage.

Many self taught tuners have a playing style that it just single note melody with simple accompaniment. This can allow an outrageous amount of stretching and can sound great to the casual listener. It can make a tuner very popular among beginning level musicians.

The piano music of Franz Liszt has a lot of huge chords that span much of the keyboard. Excessive stretch will make this style of playing expose any mistuning. Your octaves, double octaves and triple octaves have to appear absolutely clean and so the amount of stretch has to be rigorously controlled.

I use M3rds, 10ths & 17ths as checks to keep me honest in this respect. (you'll find these checks very useful also when tuning in noisy environments).

Relying on pure melodic sense in tuning can vary from day to day or even time of day so if the treble sounds flat to you and all the tests work out, it is a problem of perception. If you took a break and came back an hour, or even a few minutes later, it would seem different again.

Listen of good recordings of classical piano music, not the vanity recordings made by many pianists but recordings from well known labels. They are tuned using minimal stretch under strictly controled circumstances. Do you hear those trebles as being flat?

I should have posted a link when it happened. There were some recordings on public radio from the last Cliburn competition. One piece had a slow melody in the high treble. It sounded so flat I wanted to scream.

Jeff. I didn't hear that particular performance but I have observed this;

Sometimes the orchestra goes sharp and can make the piano, particularly single note treble tunes sound flat. Octaves and fuller handfuls of notes, being stronger, can cover this situation and the piano regains the ascendancy over pitch perceptions. Remember that, in some halls, the musicians cannot hear the piano. That's just one reason why a prudent concert tuner will keep the whole piano sharp. Sharpness of the piano is not noticed as much as flatness. A prudent oboist knows this, too when giving an A. Professional orchestral Harpists always tune to 441 or more.

There is one pianist, I believe, who is doing the rounds with his own piano and tuner. Anybody confirm this?.

Listen carefully next time you hear an orchestra tune up. There is an A for the winds and a slightly different A for the strings. I have been in halls during rebearsals and ffrom the back of the orchestra, the winds can seem sharp and ahead of the beat, but from the front, everything is as it should be.

Legend has it that Sir Henry Wood had the strings tune to 440, the winds to 441 and the piano at 442. That was 100 years ago on hot, rainy summer evening 'promenade' concerts.

How did the treble sound during piano solo sections?

Joel and Priscilla used to do that job years ago and the piano was tuned right up to the performance. They knew the score. Speaking of which, which concerto was it?

If I am on a recording session and the orchestra goes sharp on the piano, I, as the hired ears, am perfectly free to point this out. That's one reason the tuner is always in attendance on important recordings. The phenomenon doesn't happen much in studios where every musician can usually hear everything else. Live broadcasts can be a nightmare. The tuner would most likely have been on hand at the Van Cliburn broadcasts but what could be done at that point?

Opera house orchestras have been clocked doing 446 on a hot summers evening before air conditioning was usual.

rXd:

It was a solo selection. I really should have brought it up at the time.

The older vinyl recordings I hear seem to have a flatter treble than modern recordings. There is quit a bit of variation in the treble stretch. Pure twelfths really do work for me...

...Before you resort to semi-manual adjustments try the easier method - just select an interval for the treble that produces more stretch naturally. For example, if you are using 4:1 now, switch to 4:2. Do this before taking inharmoniticy measurements so the new interval will take effect.
_________________________
Robert Scott
Hopkins, Minnesota
http://www.tunelab-world.com

I tuned today and incorporated the ideas above. Set from 4:1 to 4:2. Then took inharmonicity measurements. Maybe a little enthusiastic on a piano that WAS 70c flat.
Decided to not use over pull and rather raise as I would have aurally. I set TuneLab to 443hz and raised the middle using my temperament and TuneLab. Set the octaves up to and down to the breaks, pulled in the respective unisons, replaced my temperament strip and started on the temperament again. The raise had fallen maybe to 442hz after the mid raise.
Pulled it to 443hz again and got to the tenor break. Used TuneLab to raise the tenor string by string to the bass, pulling in the unisons as I went still to 443hz. After setting the bass initially to 443hz, the second pass I set to the falling mid, which stood at 442...something hz(I didn't make a note of this).Going to the treble
break, I decided to listen to how much I would usually stretch my octaves when I raise and found it to be around 15c sharp.
When I raise my trebles, I use 3 pabs wedges for the respective octaves(starting at the treble break) and tune octaves, eg. F#5, 6 and 7, then G5, 6, 7 , pulling in the unisons etc. I expand each octave a bit more as I've found that it drops
considerably here.
This time, however, I just set TuneLab to +15 and started note by note to TopC.
When I checked the relationship between the mid and treble, the treble was very flat and understandably so.
So I checked what pitch of the mid was and adjusted TuneLab accordingly and tuned the treble again. Relying on TuneLab heavily.
When I returned to check my mid and set the unisons, I was happy to see that my pitch was sitting at 441hz, treble nicely related to the middle, with only a few notes towards the treble break from the mid that needed a slight tweak...like 3cents up again...
Unisons throughout the piano i thought were relatively clean, considering it was a
raise and bass, mid and treb related. And it was above the 440hz mark.
All this in just on an hour.
I'm definitely seeing the advantages of this marvelous software.

You should download Dirk's Piano Tuning software. The trial version allows you to play every single note on the piano and it finds out what stretch is optimal and plots what the piano is tuned to, against where the partials dictate you have to be. Very helpful and free. Then for not much (I guess for a professional tuner, but too much for me and my piano) you can purchase the software for all of the features.

Tunelab - I haven't figured out how to get the stretch programmed in yet.

Jeff, I'm still learning about tests, so just for clarity:

Should that not read, "F2-D3 beat the same as F2-A4"?

Hi. Jeff.
My first call today was a concert grand that was tuned twice yesterday by a colleague of mine for a major artist, concerto with orchestra It was perfect. An exemplary tuning. Sitting nicely at 440.65. I had absolutely nothing to do, as often happens so I exhibited a modicum of tuning-like behaviour to fulfil the contract. All the M10ths and 17ths were exactly the same beat rate as the M3rds they were derived from so, remembering this thread, I aurally checked the 12ths in the treble. No audible beating there. I was about to get out my electronic box and really nitpick but thought better of it, rattled off a text to thank my colleague for once again making me a gentleman of leisure, thanked the stage crew for their forbearance (always do that) and took my leave. I've just finished a deliciously thick Arbroath smokie with a poached egg on top. A chef once taught me to stick a fork inside a half lemon while squeezing it and the juice just floods out. Life doesn't get much better.

I used to use 12th a lot myself and still do on the last few covered strings on a bright, noisy smaller piano, but only as a quick check. I used 12ths a lot on the5-6 foot models when I worked for a well known manufacturer. They had magnicifent bass and tenor regions for their size. I only used the 12th on these to be sure that I hadn't compromised it too much. The scale was such that to make the 12ths too pure across the break would be fatal to the tuning. I wouldn't fault the scale because of what it produced in quality of sound but it did take an awful lot of care in tuning across the break. I used to tune 5-6 of them a day when I was in my 20's.

I have described what I would call minimum stretch and, on an Hamboyg Steinway 9' treble, at least, it seems to amount to enough of the same thing as using 12ths. Of course, it is possible to stretch more than that but with 70-100 seasoned professional musicians listening intently and judging their own pitch from what the tuner has specified, why play fast and loose with this when other musicians are also staking their reputations on what the piano is telling them.

None of this explains what you heard on a broadcast of the Van Cliburn. Does anyone have a copy of this recording? We must all trust our perceptions, to do otherwise is crazy making. I know that I have cringed when I hear a radio on low volume and too many of the necessary harmonics are missing from what I hear to distort my perception of what I know to be perfectly good tuning because I have turned up the sound to be sure of what I was hearing. Television speakers are terrible for this, especially when I am nodding off.

Thanks for catching my error, ah, I mean my test. I wanted to see who was paying attention.

I was just reminded, listening to someone practicing some Liszt just now. Let's not forget that there are pianists out there doing the circuit that just simply produce an ugly sound at any dynamic. Some of them winning piano competitions. I have heard it said that you would have to break a string to win a piano competition in Italy. There are some whose tone quality can make an in tune piano sound out of tune.

I have every reason to believe that FLiszt himself produced an ugly sound, blasphemer that I am. He is famous for pushing pianos beyond their limits, much to the delight of the impressionable. This is not to detract from his compositional skills.

Those tuning machines lack soul, and tend to push you to compress your tuning, as they just don't "HEAR" the amount of openess that a given octave is providing AND the amount of acoustical return that the concert hall is allowing.

While they can show you the tinests changes due to temperature or bridge settling ON ONE STRING , they are totally unable to check a piano tuned with unisons, and that is what is heard in the end.

So if Brendan have problems with the ETD and he prefer having a tuning with more freeness, and that musicians find it more enjoyeable, I would suggest that the ETD can be used as sort of "safe guard" just to limit the extra stretch the aural tuner tend to use, to a more quiet quantity (it can help on bad days for sure)

Any tuning have to be done in overpull mode, particularely when the stretch is moderate.

I actually consider tuning as simply being VERY quiet (not easy in concert venues I admit) , and let the piano own resonance drive the interval's stretch. (on the second pass that begin to be really perceived in the 5th octave, and then no real question arise in regard of the stretch, the problem may more be to allow enough than the opposite)

Have confidence in the pin setting method (my "student" I showed how to set the pin firmly had only 1 unison mistake when he passed his exam, and the examiner banged on heck because he was expecting more notes to move)
The pin setting is so simple and so "clearly read" once you have some experience, it should not cause any problem (the main problem is due to a bad apprehension of what happens within the instrument)

Then we get used to the different problems and we learn to detect the soon :

The plate brace flex more than wanted or plate is not screwed tight
The bridge/soundboard moves more than expected (and the 5th octave fall more than wanted when the treble is tuned)
The pins are touching the plate (difficult to set)
The strings are yet new (4-5 years should be largely enough on a concert piano but the newer strings does not accept a brutal playing).

You are tuning too differently from the usual tuner, the piano need a second tuning then the second day.

When different tuners are working on the same instrument, the tuning is advantageously kept within a moderate standard, meaning, progression of 10th 17th and the like can be kept from a tuning to the next.

No doubt that ETD can help to attain that "perfection" but to have at the same time a piano in tune with itself enough is a different matter.

The "opening" of the unison is what allow the little refinements when it comes to the real final pitch perceived for each note.

The ETD tend to consider that each note is fixed in pitch, and that is not the case, the pitch impression varies depending of the unison style, in time , between the initial attack, dwell and extinction curve you have well enough pitch variations to loose even an evolved ETD

What I did not like with them is that they oblige me to wait for the pitch stabilization, while my ear have yet detected the pitch in regard of the relative note, the ETD need to hear only one tone and one string.

How can you keep your mind focused on the tuning "at large" while being obliged to play only one note a time ?

the thing that stressed me the most with the ETD is that they seemed to empeach me to use checks, jumping to an unattended note while I checked.

The huge congruence that can be felt with the best ETD tunings is finally sounding a little not natural to the music, in the end (even if of course the pianists like to have no surprise and a well evened progression)

The best tunings have a technical/theoretical part, but I believe there is a direct transmission from the musical ear of the tuner to the sound environment he is prepariring. That, when pushed to the limits, provide a really "singing" tuning (most of the trick there being based on the unisons, for what I have seen)

I am not sure what you mean exactly by this "opening" of the unison since I have heard many different explanations of it from various tuners.

I find that there is a threshold which relates to coupling with unisons and one must exceed this threshold to open the unison up. I personally don't do this and opt for clean unisons myself for several reasons. First of all, if you are trying to gain some energy from the overall tone...leave this to the pianist, they are the ones who decide how loud the note will be played.

Secondly, I have been together in groups of really good tuners and if any of them tune a unison, there seems to be a unanomous consensus that no improvement can be made on it once all the strings jump within that threshold of coupling.

Lastly, the unisons are the first thing I see go out of tune on a freshly tuned piano. this indicates that the threshold for coupling is likely very small, maybe on the order of less than a tenth of a cent (I'm guessing here). If one deliberately tunes outside this threshold to get some wanted effect, it stands to reason that the piano will sound out of tune much quicker than if the unisons are locked in tight and allowed to drift to the same effect over time.

hi Emmery, unisons are tuned for coupling energy in a stable position. if that imply that a string is slightly in unbalance, when seen with an ETD let's be it, but I prefer to tune them in the best tone I hear immediately, not wait for the pianist to do my job.

Time wise it is better, in my opinion, when I check a piano that have not been tuned for long, the still clean unisons are in that shape, so I suggest they fall there naturally (with a bit of luck)

But in the end that is way more a voicing question than a tuning one, most probably (again my humble opinion)

To provide enough dynamics to the pianist one may find a use for most of the energy provided at the impact. The part of tone that thickens and tone stronger is not the attack, but a tiny part of tone that can be perceived at pppp and that inflates and get stronger when more energy is trowed in.

The number of partials perceived at any range have no much to do with that, it is just an energy use question.

difficult to explain...

The threshold you talk of is larger than you believe, probably, while just the coupling of 2 strings is yet producing some kind of very very slow "beat" due to the extinction curve all kind of effects can be superposed within that space.

A very crisp and immediate tone can be useful, but provide less nuances, as a too soft tone tuned too late with mostly the tail clean.

The tuners have the problem that the initial impact on the strings is noise, mostly, so at that moment our ear is closed and in defensive mode, opening more or less soon after.

The quietness we need allows to accept the tone in a larger way and begin to tune sooner is something we work thru a quieter touch, or focusing on the sensations under the fingers, or focusing on the tuning pin, our normal reflex is to avoid listening to the attack, then it is not managed .

Ok... Having read all you fellows say, let me ask...
If I'm to understand correctly...
Opening up a unison is to be adjusting the individual pitch of each string, much like some tune a 12 string guitar(please bear with me...) a little sharp or flat from its partner in order to give it a more full sound? This is something that the ETD won't allow due to its perfect programming I assume?
If that be the case...
As an aural tuner, I've always tried to tune the unisons pure myself, having the opinion that that is what is required. I've not tried to expand these unisons in order to produce "colour" or get something out of it. I agree that that may(or may now not ...) be the artists prerogative. Having said this, I've not been tuning at Concert level for very long... If one could even think I do... But do have a few recording studios and competent musicians that I do exclusive work for and they have never mentioned anything but good with regards my servicing and tunings of their respective pianos. ( Steinways, Yamaha C7's and various conservatory grands etc.) I don't know if this is due to South Africa's culture or lack thereof with regard to talent or international exposure.... Never the less... It intrigues me to learn more.
This week of intense "TuneLab" tunings has brought one thing to the fore for me though, the world of partials, inharmonicity and things that I, me personally, have skipped by not being introduced to.
Guys writing about partials connected to this harmonic and the thigh bone connected to the chicken wing... Sorry!!!...
This is new to me.
Please excuse my ignorance... (And I CLAIM to be a piano tuner...BAH!)
That what you obviously understand and have studied, I have taken much for granted and just tune as I was taught and go with what my "gut"(?) feels.
Pianos to me do sound different, from make to model, from day to day, from climate to climate and I adjust them with few things in mind...
1. If the piano is below pitch... Raise it!
2. If the client wants the pitch to be at a certain herz rate... Accommodate!
3. Do your utmost to have clean unisons, octaves, double octaves, tripple octaves.
4. Make sure your temperament and intervals within this temperament... Be that whatever temperament you are using... Historical or not... Be as close to proper as is instrumentally possible(taking into account all thing within the pianos limitations, strings, regulation, soundboard, voicing etc. and deciphering them if at all possible)
I'm sure there are more things that I just can't think about at this moment that influence my methodology behind what I HAD considered my way at tuning....

Then comes the TuneLab....
WOW....
Not to be completely ignorant and a complete boor at considering myself a tuner, but I had heard about partials and inharmonicity and stretch and intervals and relationships and the likes, but never considered or even dreamed about actually being able not only to SEE them on a PHASE display or the SPECTRUM display, but to one day when I'm big, to even "Partially" understand them.
My hats off to you fellows for making this a study. I only hope that one day I'll be able to " open unisons" as I like or find the " heart" of a piano...
This I only hope for.
Again, my 15 or so years of diligently plodding away at what now seems a semi- fruitless endeavor in tuning is again as new to me as when I apprenticed and learned how to clean pedal systems or packed my artisans bag in awe of what he may be heading off to...
A long winded admission of how much I know...
Thinking now, not many of my clients(maybe 350 in total...) some being the recipients of scholarships to study music by winning competitions like the Unisa Piano competitions and Hennie Joubert international Piano Competition, have complained or looked down at my competence level at all. Thankfully...!

I would dearly love to know more and use it to my advantage personally.
There must be material that I can find or could be led to?
Or is this just something that gets practiced and deliberated over, over time?

Isaac, I understand what your saying but I tend to concentrate my efforts with unisons more along the lines of long term usefulness/stability. To this end, I come to the conclusion that unless one is doing a concert tuning (perfection within a short time frame) it is best to get unisons as clean as possible and time will allow them to drift away slightly to get the same effect that you are looking for initially. Kind of like launching a rocket to the moon. Your best off aiming its trajectory to the exact center of it, so that if it wanders during its flight it still ends up nearby.