Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum 2:1 Octaves in the high treble

Thanks for remembering my seminar, Ryan. I sometimes wonder if my points actually connect, but in this case I stirred some thought and got you trying something different - that makes me feel good!

I'm not a believer that there is any one "best" way to tune. I sometimes tune the treble artificially sharp if I feel the added "energy" in the sound might be beneficial. My theory is that the very fast beats in the 2:1 partial match add a fast vibrato (usually inaudible as beats, though) to the tone that some people like, and I do think there can be a perception of more power in the concert hall from that. But really, the duplex scale already tends to give quite a bit of that "noise" to the treble, so stretching the octaves so wide is not something I do often.

As you said, I prefer the highest treble octave just sharp of 2:1, so that there is a swell to the octave. In order to hear that clearly, I mute the aliquot scale and the open notes just above the damper section so that there isn't any extraneous ringing, tune a little sharp, then bring it down until the 2:1 beat turns into a slow swell. You can also just leave the note one octave below unmuted and play only the upper note and listen for the swell. Alternately muting the octave below then unmuting it while playing the higher note allows you to hear the swell, and also to separate out any falseness in the strings from the real beat.

The swell should not be a repeating beat - it should just grow and then fade.

If you listen to any of Joe Bongiorno's recent recordings you can hear this some on his Shigeru. He likes the sound from the singing treble octaves so much he had me create a tuning file in Reyburn CyberTuner and give it to his local tuner to use. Here is a link to his web page:

http://joebongiorno.com/albums/flight-of-a-dream

Don Mannino RPT

Those are beautiful recordings. I would suggest any aspiring tuner buy his album and just listen to the sound of the treble and how it sings over the mid section. (Heck, I might do the same thing!) I love that sound. What recordings on his home page did you tune for Don?

I especially love section 2:37 to 3:00 on this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmuudGbXELo#t=216

With few exceptions I put a healthy stretch on the top octave or so, lest it sound flat. Gradated tonally, not with beats. Especially the case with concert tuning. There is a tradeoff, but the perception of flat is worse in my view. (Exceptions: e.g. pianos used in liturgical music and choral, PSOs, and the unstable.)

......lest it sound flat to whom?

Good afternoon, rxd. I can only speak to how I hear it and proceed accordingly. How others hear it could be from one end of the spectrum to the other. My primary concern is the pianist. If he or she is happy with the tuning then so am I.

Just a few thoughts in general.

As tuners, we are servants of the community of musicians. There have been official meetings between tuners and musicians performing at the highest level to establish practical matters such as pitch parameters and temperament issues. One of the reasons for the establishment of ET is the tuning of those mammoth Victorian concert hall organs. According to my friends who maintain these huge instruments, ET is the only practical solution for keeping them in tune. We are not the independent agents that many tuners seem to think we are.

Most tuners have contracts with schools. Don't they have a responsibility to presenting pianos that will be used with school orchestras and other ensembles in some sort of standard that students can expect in the real world?

By long standing agreement, we are allowed, in major concert halls and most studios to float the pitch between 440-441. This is for very practical reasons that are connected to the behaviour of pianos when surrounded by thousands of people all at 98.4. It affects other musical instruments, too so there is ready agreement.

With a specified amount of sharpness allowed, why add to it on an instrument that tuned sharper than all other instruments all by itself in the treble. To add to that allowance takes wind instruments beyond the limits of their tuning variability capacity. And why? Because of a tuners (and pianists) addiction to sharpness in the treble. It is a rare pianist or tuner who has the hearing acuity of a wind or string player at the top of their profession.

I don't understand representatives of manufacturers advocating being fast and loose with international standards when they are trying to get their instruments accepted by the profession at large. All major studios have to tolerate slave being taken up by pianos on product placement inadequately tuned by that manufacturers representation. How they are tuned is a large part of how they are accepted. I see brand new 9' pianos on product placement shoved into studio corners every day. Manufacturers who want their product to be used and accepted must also time them properly and daily if they are to even begin to compete with the incumbent.

Other competing pianos may have trebles that are perceived as flat. I wouldn't know, I never heard one tuned properly.

Sharp trebles is, as somebody already said, an addiction. Just as it takes more and more booze to maintain drunkenness, so it takes more and more sharpness in tuners as they age. I am of the age that is expected to tune sharper but I don't because I don't have, nor am I affected by an addictive personality, I don't do that. I didn't ever begin.

Does anybody realise that in a contextual situation, a sharp seventh octave makes the fifth and sixth octaves sound flat? This is another reason for the tail chasing habits of some dog tuners.

How many tuners listen to the results of their work as played at an advanced level?

As a new tuner with a tuning department forty years ago I was told to add half a beat to each octave in the trevli but not stretch the bass. Even this minimal artificial stretch is too much. This was with a manufacturer whose trebles were perceived to be flatter than those of other manufacturers. It is too much because, while it dies no seeking harm to the octaves, it expands all the RBI's to beyond their musical sounding limit. If a wind or brass ensemble played the intervals that we get away with in equal temperament, they would quickly be deemed out of tune. why push the limits.

Because I tune the same make and size of pianos mostly, I am aware of how pianos behave. The notes around g5 and those an octave higher have a tendency to go sharp anyway in the course of a concert. This is common to all pianos under these circumstances. This is unavoidable but why leave them sharp in the first place. I tune pianos at 6.30 before the concert. I often see the same piano at seven o'clock the next morning. I and my team get a sense of what's happening in minuscule detail. Same with the movement of the long steels.

None of the top flight musicians we work with ever complain that we tune flat trebles. We wouldn't keep the contracts for long at the priceds we charge if we did. why aren't the sharp treble brigade doing all the work? Isn't it time they faced up to their responsibilities to the musicians and budding musicians they serve??
??

I could go on........

On RXD's comments:

I thought a fair number or orchestras were pushing their pitch beyond 441?

Why are a number of manufacturers voicing at 442-443 if they expect the piano to be used at 440? Some pianos don't seem to tolerate excursions from their voicing point very well without touch up revoicing, especially at the break.

At least in the organ world, a highly resonant, hard-walled space needs a lot more treble (mixtures) to sound balanced compared to a dry room. Even though the large Victorian organs may be tuned in equal temperament, the mixtures are still tuned pure.

The pure tuned mixtures give a bit more dissonance and cut to the sound. This is particularly noticeable in the tierce sounding mixtures meant to support the reed chorus.

In the past, choral tuning may have been at 415, but the organ in the same church may be as high as 452. The higher organ pitch is often due to over aggressive cone tuning which cannot be corrected unless the church had enough money for new sliders to be added to the pipes. I can't imagine how the choral director handled that situation.

What impact does the hall and the piano have? Based on the organ example, the only way a piano gets more treble is by hardening the hammers and/or tuning it a bit sharper. If I'm understanding everyones comments correctly, the piano is likely sharp by about 20-30(?) cents, depending on the instrument, without sharper tuning. Neither technique is optimal.

Apparently, some pianist seem to like the entire piano a bit sharp compared to the orchestra or band so that it stands out better from the orchestra. (I'm not sure I could stand it).

>Because of a tuners (and pianists) addiction to sharpness in the treble. It is a rare pianist or tuner who>has the hearing acuity of a wind or string player at the top of their profession.

One of my customers (summer resident) is an oboist for a big city orchestra and teacher for a well known school. At his request, I tune the treble sharp on his B. In fact, stretched more than my most stretched, I have a dedicated stretch in my VT for his piano (Wider). See my post in the 'floating pitch' thread.

I have had other pianists request more stretch. So much so, that I've done away with a 2:1 octave in the treble altogether. Since I didn't much like to retune the treble a little sharper, I tune all pianos that way and no one asks for a less stretched treble.

Some people may find my video on tuning pure 19ths interesting. All this talk of adding a half beat here and stretching more than usual there, leaves my engineering mind and teacher mind all a-flurry. The pure 19th, in my mind, allows for a precise and consistent amount of stretch that is aurally measurable. And it seems to my ear to be the most stretch a piano can have; the sound of the tuning on the video seems to be pushing the limits of consonance.

One note; this piano does have serious string matching problems in the bass. Look at all the felt pieces I had to add between bass notes.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AEkzZ27ztJ8

P.S. Tuning other pure or tempered compound SBI using beat speeds can produce less stretch but still precise and aurally measurable.

Using the pipe organ to buttress an argument for either ET or for sharp octaves is not valid. The pipe organ has, essentially, no inharmonicity. Therefore, the partials are harmonics and the the mixtures are tuned to match the harmonics. This has nothing to do with piano tuning. Organs never have stretched tuning, and most modern pipe organs are tuned in Unequal Temperaments. (I spent 50 years as an organist.)

ProUT

Please, you organists, read exactly what I wrote.

I am well aware of all the points you are attempting to make. the mammoth Victorian organs here, have been in ET and kept that way since the decision was made to use ET when they were built. They still are in ET through all the rebuilds. Have either of you played the RAH instrument or the St. Paul's cathedral or Liverpool cathedral? The tech. Curator is a good friend of mine.

My argument is against sharpening for distance which has nothing to do with temperament or iH. Did rather of you play for the works that have off stage trumpets? Did you have the trumpets sharpen for distance?? That used to be the tradition. Is it still valid???
Fascinating stuf, please read accurately.

I didn't mean to argue against your point of view. The large victorian organs ubiquitous to English town halls were designed to play arranged symphonic repertoire in the absence of an orchestra. It was, and still is, necessary that they be tuned in ET, given the use of remote keys and modulation.

Large English cathedral organs were designed for service music, much of it composed in the 20th century, and sung and played in remote keys, hence the need for ET.

Modern European and North American organs being installed in symphony halls are designed mostly for recital work and can and are well used in a Well Temperament.

I agree with your argument against 'sharpening for distance'. There is no physical change in apparent pitch with distance, except if you are moving, or if the conductive medium changes density.

(I was very fortunate in 1975 to spend a summer, on scholarship, doing short residences with the directors of music at a number of cathedrals and chapels in England - Peterborough, Windsor Castle (I lived in the castle horseshoe cloisters for 2 weeks.), St. Paul's, Chichester, Canterbury. Wonderful organs and acoustics.)

Edit reason. Clarity.

I stand corrected. There ARE some modern organs being built in ET.





31ET that is.

Cheers,

Prout

The enharmonic organ... About as practical as a piano with a 102 note compass.

Only organs intended with a nod to historic intentions are tuned in unequal temperaments. The vast majority of organs are ET.

Thanks, rxd. I have no answer for the difference in what you and I have experienced. All things considered, it is still mystifying.

For those of us who do acoustics work in concert halls, it rings very true.

There are two phenomenon at work:
1) The sound absorption of the air volume contained in the space increases with increasing frequency. At above 2000Hz, (C7 and up) it becomes significant. The larger the volume of air inside the the space, (read: greater distances between source and receiver), the more noticeable it's going to be. Therefore at the more distant listening locations, the effect will be more pronounced because the sound has traveled a longer path through the air volume.

2) A psychoacoutic effect that happens in our brains tends to make frequencies above 2000Hz flatten in pitch as they decay from loud to soft. The converse effect happens with frequencies lower than 2000Hz - they sound as if they're going sharp. (PH Parkin 1974).
It's very noticeable in large-volume venues with organs and a long reverberation time. When an organist plays a loud chord and allows it to come to a sudden stop, it's really noticeable to me anyway. One can hear it in indoor sport arenas when the buzzer goes off signaling the end of play.
Some of the new concert halls with large reverberation chambers also display this effect with orchestra - KKL in Luzern, Harpa in Reykyavik, The Esplanade in Singapore, Segerstrom Hall in Orange County, etc.

The question of whether you want to tune your upper octaves to try and counteract these effects I guess is up to you. Just remember that when you're done putting stretch into your octaves for this reason they're still going to sound like they're going flat in the ears of the listeners in remote seats in the hall.

Gotta love science!

Hope I've helped,

Thanks Chris. It matters not where the piano happens to be, the top octave or so will always sound flat to me unless I stretch it. However, your thoughts raise an interesting hypothetical with respect to the concert hall tuning:

If, as you say, it is true "that when you're done putting stretch into your octaves for this reason they're still going to sound like they're going flat in the ears of the listeners in remote seats in the hall," is it not also true, then, that if the tuner does not put stretch into the octaves for this reason they're going to sound even more flat in the ears of the listeners in remote seats in the hall?

Or am I missing something?

That being the case, listeners to all instruments, in the case of piano concerto, will experience the same phenomenon.

The violin should flatten at roughly the same rate as the piano, oboe, trumpet, whatever, for a given fundamental pitch.

Therefore, it would seem that the piano should be tuned so that instruments closest to the piano, violins and cellos for example, do not have to play incredibly sharp and incredibly flat, respectively, just to match the piano.

And, what about solo piano recitals? Does the tuner set the stretch so that the listener at the average distance from the stage is the only one who hears the piano 'in tune'? I doubt it, since the tuner would need a headset and microphone placed at the listener's position.

I am not denying your premise, just the fallout from such a premise.

Cheers,

Prout

Reminds me of one occasion, as a young trumpet student being told to always sharpen for distance when playing off stage trumpet parts.

I played many Verdi requiems and the like but one was at the old Kings Hall, Bellevue, Manchester, a hall used as a circus show in the winter seating 7.000 souls.

Being"in the round", with audience mebers between the offstage trumpets and the orchestra plus just as many audience members beyond the orchestra, the dilemma was whether or not to sharpen. It was my decision not to, but, at the rehearsal, posted reliable ears around this mammoth auditorium to ascertain whether we sounded flat or not. There were no adverse reports so we played the concert without the traditional sharpening. Everything was fine. Still no adverse reports. Of course, the trumpet parts didn't go anywhere near 2,000hz. So why was the tradition so prevalent in this situation?

With every concert being recorded these days, with close mikes and ambient mikes, Some at the back of our biggest halls,, what now?

As a concert tuner, working in largest halls in many parts of the world, I have never been instructed to tune sharp trebles. this is just part of the lore dating back perhaps to wooden frame pianos??? When a safety margin was probably essential to stop the piano physically going flat. Experienced piano tuners know that with iron frames, this is not an issue. Quite the opposite.

Good morning, rxd. Is this not really argumentum e silentio and supposition?