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I read the OP before I read any of the replies.

Good choice, Joe!

I hope I didn't insult you. I'm sure you you make "the rough places plain".

Bill,

As always, Thank you for the information. I can get more out a few paragraphs from you than I can from some entire books written by some others.

I have to see if the piano will let me use a pure 4:2 octave. The following is a post I made on the Verituner Forum (since it's m y work, I don't think anyone can complain if I cross-post here)(Note the green font. It is St. Patrick's Weekend Day weekend )

Today I had some problems with a Wurlitzer spinet. After trying all the Built-in styles, I could not get a good match for the A3-A4 octave. There didn't seem to be any difference when changing stretch numbers. I tried various custom stretches suggested on this forum and I still could not find a good match.

Normally, this would not be a problem; I'd just set the temperament by ear.

But, I was using a UT... 1/10 CM...so I needed the VT to set the temperament.

I created several "custom" styles using:

A3-A4 6:3 100%

A3-A4 4:2 100%

A3-A4 2:1 100%

I kept the set points provided by the VT... 4:1 C8 and 8:4 A0. Since the VT blends from section to section, it seemed best to keep the other set points as far away from the temperament octave as possible.

I tuned A3-A4 by ear to where it was cleanest. Surprisingly (to me), there was an exact match using the pure 6:3 octave. Oddly as well, the other octaves in the immediate area would not tune clean using 6:3 by VT.

So, the temperament was set by VT and the piano was tuned by ear.

If someone does UT work, it might be a good idea to create some styles specifically for the VT's temperament octave without worrying about the rest of the piano, if one is willing to tune the rest of the instrument by ear.

If the piano will not allow me to use a pure 4:2 octave for whatever reason, then I guess that means that ET via Marpurg was not meant for this particular piano.

But, thank you for the suggestion and the offsets I am entering them into my VT for future use

Edit: Btw, it sounds like ET via Marpurg could be considered a Modern Quasi-Equal Temperament.

OperaTenor and Isaac,

Thank you for your views. I can see that if I do use a UT, I need to choose one that is extremely mild... at least at first until I see what the reaction is.

Btw, I've noticed that some singers prefer my aural tuning in ET to the Vt's ET tuning. I think I'm unusual in this, but my aural tunings tend to be more conservative in terms of octave stretch in the outer regions than the Vt's built-in stretch. It would seem that RT via Marpurg would tend to give a very conservative octave stretch as well.

Thanks,
-Joe

Joe,

A Wurlitzer spinet is admittedly a challenging piano to tune. Is a voice teacher using one of those? While I like to encourage piano technicians to take proper care of such instruments because they deserve proper tuning, regulation and voicing the same as any other piano does, we all know they have severe limitations.

I just don't like to see technicians writing in a public forum who say they would accept a tuning fee but would purposefully neglect the instrument otherwise. Using a Well Temperament is actually what can make one of these instruments sound much sweeter because the people who own them usually play only in the simple keys.

If there is really a voice teacher using a Wurlitzer spinet to give voice lessons, I would simply tune it in the EBVT III and would not worry about it at all. Of course, I would also remove the action and tighten the flanges if they were rattling and I would adjust the lost motion and let off so that the keys all played properly and evenly.

While vocalizing for warm ups would often progress chromatically, the material actually studied is most often in the sweeter keys. I would not worry for a nano second that somebody might want to transpose a piece from D Major to G-flat, for example.

When you asked the question, I assumed you were talking about a high quality grand that gets tuned very often and the pianist is very sensitive to the slightest of subtleties. Only a very few pianists in my experience are sensitive to the harshness of the bottom of the cycle of 5ths in Well or Meantone temperaments. For them, I have the solution and it is the ET via Marpurg with the octaves tuned as I described in the previous post. It is a tuning that cannot be disputed for smoothness and agreement of every interval equally with another.

In the case of the recording studio with a Yamaha S6 where the octaves were so wide that they beat and the thirds were so wide that they all sounded harsh and no instrument could manage to intone with the piano, it was the solution. For the opera rehearsals with a fine Mason & Hamlin A, a very sensitive pianist and two dozen or more very highly skilled vocalists, it is again an offer they can't refuse.

One reason I like the SAT is that any interval can be tuned precisely as desired, regardless of poor or irregular scaling. If A4 as read on the 2nd partial (with a probable reading of about 1.0 at standard pitch) all one has to do is tune A3 as read on the 4th partial to the same figure as A4. The result will be a perfect 4:2 octave.

I can use the FAC program to calculate the temperament if I wish and adjust the Double Octave Beat (DOB) eliminator function to adjust the width of the octave slightly narrower than the usual amount which is a compromise between a 4:2 and 6:3 octave. The usual -0.2 seems to work in nearly every case. It causes the A3-A4 to be a perfect 4:2 type.

The F3-F4 may not fall exactly at 4:2 but it should be within 0.5 cents of that and the result should be perfect 4:5 Contiguous Major Thirds between F3 and A4. If you still want to tune the Wurlitzer spinet that way and you can tune by ear, if you have that much right, I would not worry about the rest.

4:2 octaves can also be easily verified using the same tone cluster technique. Play the note which is a M3 below the bottom note of the octave and the octave. Example for A3-A4, play F3-A3-A4 all together and hold. You should hear no slow beat. For F3-F4, play C#3-F3-F4 and hold. Again, you should hear no slow beat, only the rapid beat which will be oddly quieter than if either the M3 or the M10 is played alone. This is evidence of the beat canceling effect.

(Still thinking about tuning the Wurlitzer spinet), tune the F3-F4 octave to the program. You should then hear what sounds like ET. All 4ths & 5ths will sound even. All M3's will progress evenly. If there are any irregularities, you could correct them by ear. Then, simply tune out the octaves as I described in the previous post. You will find it easy to find the spot for each new note being tuned makes the octave, 4th & 5th all agree. I wouldn't even bother checking the RBI's.

Hi Bill,

I agree 100%; we should not be dismissive of any piano, because that is likely the only piano that the owner has access to.

As for this thread, it will have relevance for me far beyond this specific teacher. I tune for a number of voice teachers who use everything from the old Acrosonics to first tier large grands.

This is the very first time I have considered using a UT for a voice teacher because of the success I have had using them in other situations.

This particular piano is a Winter console. This teacher does have a rather distinguished pedigree, even though she is "only" using a Winter. And, there is no reason to believe she won't upgrade to a higher quality instrument(s) in the future as she becomes better established locally.

This is a new client to me. Every client is important because almost every client I have was referred by someone else. The dominoes can fall one way; the dominoes can fall the opposite way. It is also ethical and polite to treat everyone well.

Thank you for the hand-holding and advice. It is not going to waste

Thanks,
-Joe

I only tune aurally, and I've noticed my stretch has gotten smaller over time, and my customers have been happier as a result. Aside from the Shout House, the vast majority of my customers are professional musicians; my peers. Every single one of them seems to prefer a more sterile octave these days. One of my customers is the Theodore Geisel Director of Outreach at the San Diego Opera. One day, when I showed up to tune, he came out the front door, threw his arms around me, and thanked me for making him fall in love with playing the piano again (he has the Baldwin SF-10 that was repeatedly breaking the highest wound string), and he's had the best in the area take of his piano before I came along. A lot of my fellow singers I tune for teach, and maybe that's why they prefer the more technically accurate tunings. :shrug:

This is very interesting. Perhaps room size may have affect the acceptability of wider octaves. I think a "stage tuning" will want wider octaves than a "room tuning."
Edit: Maybe some ETD's are more biased towards doing stage tunings.

The time is now ripe to discuss this.

When I first started work for a manufacturer of fine pianos as a concert tuner, I was given two basic house style instructions. They were to add half a beat to each treble octave and to tune the bass sharp. He had been taught that 50 years before. A fine piano with depth of tone will accept this. A cheap or worn out piano with thin tone sounds sharp in the bass already and so I can see where this stretching in both directions came from. That, plus excessive dependence on theory over practice.

I also knew at the time, about another fine company who also narrowed the two octave bearings area. This came in useful for Wurlitzer spinets ( I worked later for a dealer who had a two hundred of these constantly coming in and out as rentals) I found that slowing down all the major thirds more than normal in and around the scale area made things work out better in the whole piano. I wouldn't dream of tuning the lower half of one of these spinets electronically.

I'm only talking of 2:1 octaves.

The drunken warble in the 10ths and 17ths between the bass and tenor in an overly stretched piano is unacceptable to musicians who have to adjust their own tuning to one note or the other in any size room. 10ths in the middle register that are stretched too much just sound downright comical.

In a song cycle like Wintereisse where there are contexts where any unnecessary movement in the piano chords would disturb the stillness. The way of minimising movement in any key is to very judiciously narrow the tenor and bass octaves in ET even more than I usually do. The pianos I tune most are chosen and tone regulated for exceptional depth of tone and are 9' so they allow me to do this as long as I keep an ear on the 5ths and their compounds. Looking through the score, the chords at those moments are voiced (in the sense that a pianist or composer gives voice to a chord) to let this work.

Anybody wishing to follow up on Bill's statements about transposition would be enlightened to search: Gerald Moore unashamed accompanist side two, on uTube. He gives several examples from the piano accompaniments of how transposition can kill the music.

String players are aware that the interval from the viola C string to the violin E string is intolerable. Of course, they avoid open strings but one famous cellist showed me how "sharp" he tuned his low C for quartet work. It worked nicely with the 9' piano that I had just tuned.

RXD,

I have worked with a cellist who would retune between pieces so that the C string, if played for long stretches with the piano C2, would be in tune. Then she would shift back to a pure fifth tuning for the next work where there were few or no simultaneous unisons. Made for a wonderful sound.

Not at all, and thanks for the compliment!

I think this boils down to whether the piano is being used as a solo performance instrument, or as an ensemble or teaching tool. A different approach is required for each, i.e., prominence vs. blend.

OperaTenor,

Talking UTs, QETs, and ETs sure rouses the Hoi Polloi. (I use that term in the most strict sense.)

That is to say, each one thinks they have the e pluribus unum.

If you were using the term in the strictest sense, either "the" or "Hoi" is redundant.

More likely, when people around here start talking temperaments, sense goes out the window.

You are quite correct. The "the" is redundant. I suppose I am e pluribus anus.

RXD that was very interesting to listen.

here is the link :
[video:youtube]BkEgl0i0cfw[/video]

DO some of you notice how the CG 5th is large ?. i listened again and find that the F4 G4 tone seem enlarged (out of the G4 being a little more bright than other notes)

Also noticeable at 5:50 and after, with G2 A3 (small)

That sound typical to me, G and C being the last notes tuned when a A fork is used, that is where I find most compromising done; at the same time the old method using a C fork may leave the tuner with a tendency to allow a cleaner 5th ther, the same as the A-E when a A fork is used (often find that A-E 5th left a tad cleaner)

When the first octave is short, I noticed it is difficult to avoid some 5th sounding a bit sour, not impossible, just difficult)

At some point the enlarging of the octave is a facility, giving larger 5ths at the expense of faster 3ds, allowing the FBI to be easier to be progressive (I suspect that the more you keep the first octave compact, the more you will have differences in 3ds progression if the 5ths are homogeneous, and the more you will have 5 th size differences if the 3ds are kept progressive - and that is only because the iH is not as progressive as we expect.

The 5ths motion is more noticeable so the tuners may have a tendency to forget a little about perfect progression of M3 in the temperament, knowing all that could be re conciliated when tuning higher.

I suggest also that enlarged 5 th sound more similar one another in the ear of the listener, hence the success of those enlarged first octave.

It may also allow the resonance to jump more easily at the 2 nd octave level, and enlight then that region, ,by evidence an effect that may please the piano tuner, and the pianist if he plays alone.

Just to say I agree with RXD, octaves are 2:1 in my ear, even if that mean that no partial is being heard more tan another, they have to help the 2:1 relation in any case.

Re: Electronic tuning device octave size(s)

Just a reminder, we're all expected to be in control of the machine... Except for OnlyPure and Dirk's, all platforms allow for user control of the central octave and stretch. Some are easier than others...

I do know that Verituner programmer has told me that he hears back from most purchasers that they just put it in "Average" and are happy with the results.

No traditional aural skills are really required, just take charge of all of the A's from bottom to top and adjust the machine to place them in an "ear pleasing" position - just as an instrumentalist or singer would do. This first step makes a big difference in how the piano will sound. Go ahead and start them where the machine places them, then subtly adjust to see if you can make a better single, double or triple octave...

<off my soapbox>

Ron Koval

Well, this is a thread about a teaching instrument which, ideally, should be as close as possible to a typical accompanying performance instrument. While we might not be able to run to a 7' or 9' grand, at least we can get a typical tuning right. I hope it goes without saying that an unequal temperament is not typical.

A solo performance pIano is, by it's very nature prominent, it's the only instrument up there!!! Perhaps you are thinking concerto, in which case the piano has to, in turn, blend and also be prominent at different tImes. How do you reconcile that from a tuning point of view?

I believe (?) that this ETD focus for octaves, doubles triples, etc is what makes the primary modification of priorities and make the tuner miss the point a little

Probably the logical underlying the precedent generation of ETD put too much weight on octaves, while not saying so.

It is also fairly possible that the compromising created by the iH curve upper and lower the temp octave is modifying the progressiveness of M3ds too much (the speed raise too fast within the octave, in my ear, often.

It is not surprising that the "listening" done by the ETD is not the same than the one of the human, in the end.

So the model proposed could be possibly ameliorated, based on a different theory, it would be nice if the VT100 have progressed, as it was promising, with real time partial analysis, but it seem to stay fixed with the original functions.

I am unsure that tuning all A's by ear would allow to compute a better tuning, the notes take their "meaning" or "color" when there are enough other notes yet tuned.