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Ok, here it is. One pass using the Beat Speed Window sequence and measuring iH aurally.

http://howtotunepianos.com/new-tool-for-learning-how-to-tune-a-better-temperament/

Let me know what you think.

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Mark,

When I click the button to play the recording of each one of the single temperament notes, what am I listening to? Is it a recording of a single string or is it a three string unison? The reason I ask is G3, A3, A# 3, C4, C#4, D#4, and E4 all have an audible roll to my ears. F#3 sounds the cleanest to me.

Then, when I click the button to play the recordings of the chromatic intervals, what am I listening to? A pair of strings or six strings?


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Each note is a trichord. E4 has the most roll to my ear but still less than 0.9 cents IMO.

The intervals are 6 strings.

The roll in the unisons do not affect the RBI. They are still very easy to hear as you can tell from the filtered recordings and I could easily see from the filtered waveforms when measuring.

However, you will hear B3E4 beating more than it should, but that is due to E4. That beat is still in the 1bps range so it doesn't destroy the P4 sound too much, IMO.


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Originally Posted by Mark Cerisano, RPT
Let me know what you think.

I think you should use recordings of single strings to build your audio demonstrations of pedagogical topics in piano technology.


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I tune double string unisons. I never listen to single strings so I never have them to record. Muting the piano after tuning could shift pitches up to 2 cents due to Weinreich.

I recorded this during an actual tuning, no fudging to make myself look better. I finished the temperament in one pass and thought, "Hmmm, sounds pretty good. Maybe I'll record it and measure it." I did this once before and it didn't come out as even, but I've been focusing on beat speed differences for a while now and believe my precision is improving. I got down to 1% on my beat speed difference test today.

However, for analysis, I require candidates to provide single string recordings.

Does the blooming impede your judgement of the progressions? And what about the presentation method? Do you think it would be useful as a tool for beginners or those wishing to improve their aural skills?

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That seems to be an admission that you cannot tune clean unisons.


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Originally Posted by BDB
That seems to be an admission that you cannot tune clean unisons.


+1


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Originally Posted by Mark Cerisano, RPT
Does the blooming impede your judgement of the progressions?


When viewing this as a pedagogical tool, presumably aimed at beginners (or at least beginners to aural tuning), then yes, the blooming unisons impede judgment. You want it to be as easy and clear as possible to isolate the beats, and even though its not how you tune in practice, isolating single strings makes it much easier for students to pick up on the theory. If you'd like to keep them as full 3-string unisons, then it would improve the effectiveness of your presentation, as well as the perception of your expertise, if the unisons were clean, clean, clean. smile

The presentation is fine, though I think you could probably skip the step of listening to each note on its own and just start with the progressions of M3, M6, etc.

Last edited by adamp88; 07/29/15 12:45 PM.

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Originally Posted by adamp88
Originally Posted by Mark Cerisano, RPT
Does the blooming impede your judgement of the progressions?

When viewing this as a pedagogical tool, presumably aimed at beginners (or at least beginners to aural tuning), then yes, the blooming unisons impede judgment. You want it to be as easy and clear as possible to isolate the beats, and even though its not how you tune in practice, isolating single strings makes it much easier for students to pick up on the theory. If you'd like to keep them as full 3-string unisons, then it would improve the effectiveness of your presentation, as well as the perception of your expertise, if the unisons were clean, clean, clean. smile

The presentation is fine, though I think you could probably skip the step of listening to each note on its own and just start with the progressions of M3, M6, etc.

So someone else gets it. I'm not crazy. Thank you Adam.

Mark, your unisons in the beginning of this demonstration are not good enough to make judgments about progressing intervals. I think the "blooming" is a horrible distraction, and I disagree with you that one can hear the "correct" beat speed through the six strings interacting. Certainly a beginner could not.

Mute them down to single strings, and I'd bet you'll find that the interval sequences are not as progressive as you think they are. They're not progressive even the way you've recorded them. The M3 and P5 progressions are obviously wrong. I'd say there are at least two pitches in your temperament that are need of correction before the sequences could be smoothed out to being nominally progressive.

The clickable buttons are nifty and all that, but the content is not of a quality that could make this useful as teaching tool. A beginner would get hopelessly lost in the tossed salad of beat speeds you're presenting there.

And as I recall, I had the same comment about assessing the quality of your octaves - that your less-than-optimal open unison makes an assessment of the partial matching impossible. Why do you insist on using open unisons to produce your audio demonstrations? That is not the way to be teaching beginners, in my opinion. It just adds an unnecessary level of complexity to pedagogical concepts that are already complicated enough to comprehend and achieve using single strings.

Last edited by Chris Storch; 07/29/15 01:24 PM. Reason: clarity

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I'm pretty much bewildered at the idea that someone who identifies himself as "RPT" is unsure of his unisons, an uncertainty with which others whom I respect agree. In my training, we had to tune rock-solid spot-on unisons before moving toward any sort of interval, including octaves. Learning to do this took most of us about a month. It was the foundation of listening and learning.


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Ouch. I sense a lot of hostility here. No wonder nobody posts their temperaments.

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Originally Posted by Mark Cerisano, RPT
Ok, here it is. One pass using the Beat Speed Window sequence and measuring iH aurally.

http://howtotunepianos.com/new-tool-for-learning-how-to-tune-a-better-temperament/

Let me know what you think.

I measured the M3 bps from the two recordings (unfiltered and filtered). How come the "unfiltered" recording sounds like it was made with an Edison phonograph? Anyways here is what I measured:
Code
M3   Unfiltered Filtered
FA   6.6        6.5
F#A# 6.6        6.5
GB   7.6        8.2
G#C  7.7        7.8
AC#  9.1        9.2
A#D  9.6        9.8
BD#  8.7        8.8
CE   10.1       10.1
C#F  10.1       10.2

GB is hard to nail down, it seems there are at least two beatspeeds mixed in, all the others I could clearly identify using a spectrogram.

Seems BD# is not progressive unfortunately. It would be good if someone else could find the time to measure the bps also.

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Originally Posted by Mark Cerisano, RPT
Ouch. I sense a lot of hostility here. No wonder nobody posts their temperaments.


I'm not sure why you keep posting audio of unisons that have audible rolls, though. If I was a customer and that's how you left my piano, I'd be thoroughly upset.

Also, who tunes only an F-F temperament? Since you earlier talked about matching the F-F and A-A octave sizes, why don't you post at least an F3-A4 temperament?

I know from experience as a teacher in my profession, you have to be a bit better than the students you're teaching. If you can't demonstrate clean unisons, then everything else is moot. Obsessing about beat speed progression is pointless if the individual notes don't sound pure (and all this hand wringing about "6 open strings" is too much. Olek regularly posts audio example of his work, as does Grandpianoman and both of them can clearly tune good unisons).

Paul.

Last edited by pyropaul; 07/29/15 03:35 PM. Reason: bad apostrophe
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Way too much hostility here. I think some of you need to reread the forum rules again.

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Originally Posted by Mark Cerisano, RPT
Way too much hostility here. I think some of you need to reread the forum rules again.


No-one is being hostile. You solicited feedback and were told that your unisons are not up to the task at hand. That's all.


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Originally Posted by Mark Cerisano, RPT
Way too much hostility here. I think some of you need to reread the forum rules again.


You are just experiencing a bit of tough love.


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I do not have the best equipment to listen, but my impression is that the fundamental are coupling, hence a moaning due to partials, that are often decoupled if the fundamental is the main focus.

that said I regularly leave unisons 'at the edge of a beat'

our ear is too selective it can be a trap when tuning, I find myself happy with unison since I realised I did 'forget 'to listen to the whole spectra , focusing on having much energy at the lowest pitch level)

if I want a warm a little dull tone , I now use an 'inverted smiley' the outer strings are a hair low contrarly to the usual way where we push the enveloppe toward high partials.





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I have never been able to tune a good temperament in one pass (without corrections and refinements).

After hearing at your recordings I am reassured that you are not able to do that neither.

And I am not being hostile but objective.

Your unisons are not clean. Your M3s are not progressive. (Best noticed in the filtered recording).

I thought one of the advantages of your DSU (double string unison) technique was that you were "forced" to tune clean unisons, and by using this technique your ear became more and more perceptive. wasn't it?

I agree with Paul: a teacher must be a bit better than the students he's teaching.

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I agree with you and that is why I am always striving to become better at tuning.

The quality of the unisons are easily heard when playing SBI. The RBI tests prove a certain relationship and when that doesn't happen in the SBI, it is usually the unisons. Listen to the wildness of B3E4. That is due to the excessive roll in E4.

RBI can easily be heard with rolling unisons. The filtered wave form clearly shows beat speeds that slowly die away and then come back, but are easily discernible.

The M3's are best noticed as progressive in the measuring. Can't you see the graphs? Those are specific measurements of specific portions of each interval. Your ear is playing tricks on you. We can trick our ear into hearing what we want it to within a small band. You want to hear my beats speeds as not progressive, so you do. I have found portions of those intervals that when measured, progress. If you try, you will hear them too.

Most of this stuff I have already said. It just convinces me that no matter what I do, some people are not interested in discovering new ways to tune.

"Sir Francis, I see you have cut open your cadaver, and I know you say there are more nerves coming from the brain than the heart, and I can clearly see that there are indeed more nerves coming from the brain than the heart, and if Aristotle hadn't written the contrary, I might actually believe it." Paraphrased quote of a colleague of Sir Francis Bacon, the father of the scientific method, at an exhibition to show the modern nervous system of the human body.

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Originally Posted by pyropaul
Originally Posted by Mark Cerisano, RPT
Way too much hostility here. I think some of you need to reread the forum rules again.


No-one is being hostile. You solicited feedback and were told that your unisons are not up to the task at hand. That's all.



I disagree and I've told you why. If you can counter my argument then do so. If you can't hear RBI from rolling unisons, you need to improve your ear because if you can't hear RBI beats from rolling unisons, you can't hear RBI beats. Maybe that's it. But you did listen to the filtered intervals, no? That sound, the sound of a clean beat, that's what I hear without the filtering. You see why I sense hostility? Maybe it's just frustration.

Last edited by Mark Cerisano, RPT; 07/29/15 11:55 PM. Reason: More modest.
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