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Joined: Oct 2007
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OP
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Good morning. I posted this on the piano forum and was advised to post to this board as well.
Full admission, I am just an episodic lurker, although everyone was super helpful when I bought my piano about 6 years ago, a 1976 Bluthner model 4. I initially was working with an excellent technician, but due to a scheduling conflict switched to a different also excellent technician a couple of years ago. Technician number 2 was unavailable most recently, but had arranged for a trusted colleague to do the work this time. So now I have had 3 excellent, but very different technicians, service my piano.
I noticed that the voice of the instrument has been very different with the 3 people. Person number 1 had a balanced sound that was very appealing. Person number 2 had a sweeter (I want to say a "more cheerful" sound, with almost a sparkle to it) that I loved, but the piano seemed to go out of tune much quicker after those visits. The person who just tuned my piano has introduced an amazing round rich tone that still has a clarity like number 2 but also a more profound foundation. All 3 technicians use aural tuning.
Here are my 2 questions: 1. Are these all nuances that are all in my head, or can a technician fundamentally affect the voice of the piano? 2. Do you think that the way the piano was tuned by person #2 led to it going out of tune more readily than was true for person #1 or (so far) person #3? Or is this usually just a matter of one's vigilance with humidity, etc?
Thank you in advance.
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Joined: Mar 2011
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1) A technician can and does fundamentally affect the touch and tone of an instrument. What makes great pianos great, is in large part the more knowledgeable tone regulators at the end of the assembly line. Different tunings each have their own fingerprint and no two tunings are exactly the same (from different technicians).
2) It sounds like in this case, yes, if conditions remained the same. However, a technician can be better or poorer at creating stability, but expecting a piano to stay in tune without humidity control is like building a house on sand and expecting the foundation not to crack and shift.
There's always caveats, but a good technician should be able to achieve stability in a good piano within 2-3 tunings; meaning, it will hold well for at least a year. A decently stable environment is needed for this and the block friction / bearing friction can't be too low.
Every time you change technicians, it will destabilize the piano slightly because of the different tuning style. There are so many ways to tune equal temperament, not to mention unequal temperaments. All of them will sound 'in-tune', but have very different sound qualities.
Others will certainly disagree with me, but within certain constraints, there are tunings which are superior to others based on total frequency alignment. It sounds like technician #3 may have been the most knowledgeable in his creation of a 'foundation'. This is created through fine bass tuning.
All speculation of course, without seeing and hearing the piano.
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I noticed that the voice of the instrument has been very different with the 3 people. Person number 1 had a balanced sound that was very appealing. Person number 2 had a sweeter (I want to say a "more cheerful" sound, with almost a sparkle to it) that I loved, but the piano seemed to go out of tune much quicker after those visits. The person who just tuned my piano has introduced an amazing round rich tone that still has a clarity like number 2 but also a more profound foundation. All 3 technicians use aural tuning.
Here are my 2 questions: 1. Are these all nuances that are all in my head, or can a technician fundamentally affect the voice of the piano? 2. Do you think that the way the piano was tuned by person #2 led to it going out of tune more readily than was true for person #1 or (so far) person #3? Or is this usually just a matter of one's vigilance with humidity, etc?
Thank you in advance.
Greetings, There are a number of factors involved in the perception of "tuneness". Octave width (stretch) can certainly make a piano seem dull and flat, clear and sparkly, or harsh and tense. A sharp bass under compressed treble octaves, (what we use in recording studios here) has a particular sound. To my ear, it is dead and empty, but to the producer that wants to add a synth and a Rhodes to the rhythm track of piano and bass, it is clear and perfect. A flatter bass and normally stretched treble will create a more integrated, solid sound due to now higher overtones of the bass being congruent with the fundamentals two or three octaves above. A stretched out bass and a stretched out treble does well for concerto work because the bass is slightly lower than most other instruments, hence avoiding becoming muddy, while the "hot" treble causes listeners to more easily hear the notes against the background, thus making the piano stand out in front of an orchestra. We have no way of knowing which of these effects may be in play regarding your impressions. A larger difference may be found in the nature of the unisons. Dead-nut pure ones though out the piano create a distinctly different sound than unisons that have been individually tuned for maximum evenness and sustain by sub-cent deviations. There there is the (choral-effect) tuning with evenly tuned unisons that have a slight roll in them. Then, going on to the extreme, the honky-tonk tuning that has openly beating unisons scattered throughout a stack of irregular octaves. Without hearing, we don't know what your three tuners did, and without knowing you, we don't know how you perceive sound. So…. I am going to take a guess:Tuner #1 left clean unisons, tuner # 2 tuned unisons with the maximum amount of deviation that would fly under the perception of "out of tune". It takes less time for this tuning to migrate into the choral-effect realm because it is closer to it to begin with. Tuner # , ? I don't know, and would be interested in what others might guess. It is difficult to compare the qualities you use, i.e. "balanced", "Cheerful", and "Round rich". I really can't find a way to compare these qualities because they seem to all approach the same piano from different perspectives. Regards,
Last edited by Ed Foote; 03/11/15 12:56 PM.
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I have found I can produce a large variation in "tone" by how much I stretch the treble. I use a system of interval checks to get precise stretch while targeting specific pure intervals. For example, a tuning that favours 4:2 octaves in the midrange and tranisitions to 2:1 octaves when the higher partials are not as audible, will have nice sounding octaves but when playing the larger compound octaves and fifths, these intervals will sound dull and the treble will sound flat. Checking for pure 12ths can help bring up the treble, produce more płeasing larger intervals, and still have decent octaves. Tuning for pure 22nds (triple octaves) is more stretch. Tuning for pure 19ths is the most stretch possible. The octaves will be obviousły wide. The fourths may even be beating, but the large intervals played when the hands are far apart will have a locked in sound. The amount of wideness and beating in the smaller intervals like P8 and P4 will be less on larger instruments; the pure 19ths sound good on concert grands. See https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AEkzZ27ztJ8I imagine each technician may have their own way of stretching. I don't know how many have techniques to choose the amount of stretch they want, Mr. Foote excepted. And even though I have a precision technique to choose the amount of stretch, I do not have any customers who request one type; I will use a different stretch at my own discretion.
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Joined: Oct 2007
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OP
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Posts: 69 |
Thank you, each of you have helped me to understand how I could how individual approaches to stretching could produce related, but very different sounds. Plus, as you say, each of us has some kind of innate preference for one type of sound over another. This is a terrific community, and I appreciate your expertise.
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Carpe, The stretch is only one part of what creates different tuning qualities. The string rendering around the front termination also has major effect on tuning and tone quality.
Enjoy
"Imagine it in all its primatic colorings, its counterpart in our souls - our souls that are great pianos whose strings, of honey and of steel, the divisions of the rainbow set twanging, loosing on the air great novels of adventure!" - William Carlos Williams
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Joined: Jan 2010
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Dave, Could you explain that more, with examples.
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I have found I can produce a large variation in "tone" by how much I stretch the treble. I use a system of interval checks to get precise stretch while targeting specific pure intervals. For example, a tuning that favours 4:2 octaves in the midrange and tranisitions to 2:1 octaves when the higher partials are not as audible, will have nice sounding octaves but when playing the larger compound octaves and fifths, these intervals will sound dull and the treble will sound flat. Checking for pure 12ths can help bring up the treble, produce more płeasing larger intervals, and still have decent octaves. Tuning for pure 22nds (triple octaves) is more stretch. Tuning for pure 19ths is the most stretch possible. The octaves will be obviousły wide. The fourths may even be beating, but the large intervals played when the hands are far apart will have a locked in sound. The amount of wideness and beating in the smaller intervals like P8 and P4 will be less on larger instruments; the pure 19ths sound good on concert grands. See https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AEkzZ27ztJ8I imagine each technician may have their own way of stretching. I don't know how many have techniques to choose the amount of stretch they want, Mr. Foote excepted. And even though I have a precision technique to choose the amount of stretch, I do not have any customers who request one type; I will use a different stretch at my own discretion. +1
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Piano
by Gino2 - 04/17/24 02:34 PM
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Piano
by Gino2 - 04/17/24 02:23 PM
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