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It's not as bad as B3E4. Yikes!

Kees,

For me it is the SBI that create the most musical quality of a piano's tone. RBI are out of tune by definition. That's debatable only because the piano has forced us to hear beating intervals for so long, now we need them. I can't stand the sound of a pure M3 on a piano; makes me cringe. But I will never play a beating M3 in an orchestra.

For me progressive RBI are only a means to an end. The end being uniformly beating P4's. These P4 "windows" allow me to set pitches within those windows, pitches that produce the most harmonious SBI possible for that piano.

For example, with P4 windows I can tune a note in the treble that produces a pure 4:2, a pure 11th, a pure 12th, and a pure 22nd (triple octave), all at the same time. (The double octave is a little wide and the double octave plus fifth, a little narrow. That's the compromise) Imagine what that sounds like in a slow piece that uses a lot of consonant open intervals and chords.

You are treading on thin ice Mr. Olek. Those are fighting words: "whining" and "moaning". Don't say I didn't warn you.

In all seriousness, the most beautiful unisons I ever heard had a consistent roll to them. The unisons "grew" out from the piano and filled the entire hall. I was not trying for that on my temperament. I'm not that good (yet?). But thankfully I'm still better than most of the people that come to me for coaching. (Whew!) ;-)

Mark,

I don't know your sequence. But being an aural one as it is claimed to be, and without making any measurement, what I hear in the filtered recording, is that A#3D4 is too fast compared to B3D#4. It is something I would try to fix if I got that in any of my tunings.

To my judgement F3A3 is too slow also, though I never try to set a specific speed for it but try to have an even progression in the CM3s F3A3C#4F4A4.

Being an aural sequence, for me what matters is what I hear. And thus, if I were tuning this piano, I would accept that as a first approach, but definitely I would try to correct it in a second pass.

Don't be fooled by what your ears hear. Just because you are an aural tuner doesn't mean you have perfect ears. I have measured these beat rates as I hear them and they are progressive where I hear them. My mistake was giving you too much of the sustain to hear. I just recorded a temperament today where I only played about 0.5 second of each note.

Have you ever recorded your own temperament and analyzed the beat rates? If you have, you probably wouldn't be so bold as to criticize this one. Even Kees understands the inherent errors accompanying this reporting method.

Also, if you think your ears are perfect, listen to equal beating intervals and try to "imagine" that they are not equal beating. Try to tell your brain that one is faster than the other. Then try to hear it the other way around. It's weird. There is definately a wobble to what we think we hear.

I learned this when I started recording my own temperaments.

One thing. If you are going to analysis beat rates, I suggest the record, filter, measure method. This produces clearly observable beat patterns that are easy to see. Also, do not record too long a sustain.

I find it odd that nobody has commented that this was done in one pass only, with no refining.

I admire your development, providing such tool did probably take you much time. I understand it may be also some form of advertising, but if I was learning to tune, I would thank you for that.


Then, when I listen to the beat speed acceleration in filtered mode, I hear a large acceleration at a-c# the 2 first M3 almost similar, so I question the accuracy or the validity of such measure.

As I recall Raphael provided a progressive temperament sequence tested by kees at some point.

They do not whine the same. Unison should be build with a similar construction.
Here I suspect you listened to the fundamental shape, and filtered out the partials doing so.

(don't ask me)!

Yes. There needs to be criteria. That's why I like your "tune the attack" approach.

I get it. You need clean unisons to see the benefit of the approach. Students do not supply trichords.

Provide me with the post where Raphael's and the Stopper temperament are listed. I gaurantee I can measure them nonprogressive.

It was a standard temperament, not a STopper one, was measured as progressive by kees, if I recall corretclly.

You can attain the attack tuning beginning with the partials, as a base, or be used to recognize the rise in energy and the enveloppe that goes together with a good tuned attack.

Both ways work, in my experience.

A very good exercice is to listen to the partials one by one in the mediums for instance, where you can hear much of them, and work on reinforcing them one then the next etc.

It makes as a tone rainbow when you begin to hear how the volume of the partial raise when they couple optimally.

(not easy at first indeed)

Then you may notice that the fundamental is thick while not as pure as it could be, but this is not perceived as a moan as long some attention is given to the attack, or may be more corretcly to the moment wher ethe noise turns to sound.

Most whining comes from the second partial so if I need to be attentive to some that will be that one first.

You may also notice that the work at the partial level is done with the torque of the tuning pin, if the pin is too free, the partials are more free also; it seem to "rule" them, allowing to have them ordered.

one can envisage to leave the pin a little less stressed just to have a little more wild tone, probably. (it may help some instruments that are not very rich in partials, Yamaha for instance)

When I tune unison, I visualyse a "bowl" of tone generatd by the attack and that energise the soundboard, I really can feel it going along the wire, that may be one of the reason why the analogy between railroad and strings is used to describe unison tuning; the 2 strings do not really mix, they stay at the same distance one another.

Mixing being not truly possible a compromise is necessary.

(hence the term "enlarging the tone

It is very easy to be cheated by our ears, by focusiong only partially on the tone, probably a defect that we work when learning to disciminate beats.


some pianist like a "singing " tone, but I have seen reclamations with the minimal whining (Jazz pianist)

Also it is not up to us to color the tone, we mostly need to provide a good solid tone with a good dynamic range.

"coloration " can be done with some specific occasion, but one may agree then with a reduced dynamics, as the tone is stronger to begin with;


[video:youtube]pwCMvPxYNiA[/video]

Regards

Humbly, I beg to differ. Perhaps our soundcards differ, or something, but of all the intervals on your page, I found G#3-D#3 to be the most objectionable, and by a far margin.

(But like I said, perhaps it's something in my soundcard, or whatever.)

Anything but clean, solid unisons make the piano sound very dirty to me. If you want to change the tone of the piano, you do that with voicing, not detuning unisons.

Call.
https://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubb...uld_There_Be_A_Standard.html#Post2209854

Kees

Did you think the Kawai in Denver sounded dirty?

I don't know, I wasn't there.

o yo
you detune unison to make honky tonk piano tuning

but a correctly voiced piano can be tuned with unison more or less percussive

how do you build your unison, Lucas ?

where you curious of plucking the strings of your tuned unison ? we dont do that usually but it may surprise you, coupling between 3 strings is not really possible, so they adopt a shape where they feel stable, the energy flmows well between them

It may take as little time as 30 seconds, from the tightest unison we can tune, but there is a process at work

hopefully we have 3 strings on pianos, the tone would be dull and initeresting if not, it also allow to lenghten, or thicken the tone, out of the voicing question.

A beat is a beat, no matter how slow it is. Unisons aren't supposed to have beats in them, period.

what does mean a beat ?
it is a fluctuation of volume. I never have heard unison without some.

now working on these while tuning is just normal, that is why those diatribes sort of escape me and I find explanations as too'tight' voicing, tuning the fundamental mostly, and the like, but those are just suppositions.

even the most close and tight unison need to be 'build' (energy wise) at last for all the tones to behave the same underthe pianist fingers.

What?

If I might be a complete fool and pile in here.

For a long time now I have used the term 'apparently' beat free unison (and octave). Just as intervals are only apparently progressive as we seem to have established, the next step is to realise unisons are only apparently beatless.

I don't think it is mysterious to say that an unison can beat after it is no longer audible. Does a tuner sense this impending beat? It seems some do, some don't.

Personal anecdotes can be meaningless and prove nothing but sometImes it's all we have but whenever I asked clients why they employed me over other tuners I respect, the answer was most often "each individual note". Not stretch or temperament. Some, like me, simply couldn't think of a reason. I only say this because for a long time I didn't know what I was aiming for that was so different than what I perceived as a "simple beat free unison".

To try to explain this phenomenon in detail is like explaining how a dog senses an impending epileptic fit long before the epileptic does. We finish up with dense mysterious and unintelligible paragraphs.

All I know is that I listen to unisons, usually, for their duration or at least long enough to be sure that the unison doesn't "swallow itself". I hear it beginning to swallow itself long before it does. More simply put, make sure it sustains. All this while still within the apparently beat free zone. I don't necessarily want it to grow. I don't want to make the pianist wait for the tone to develop or bloom or dwell. A competent pianist can control this for themselves with deft use of the Pedals and fingerlings as I pointed out In my latest post elsewhere.
That's as simply as I can put it. So simple that the next question is, doesn't everybody do that??? Welllll,,,, apparently not.

I am not making any judgement calls here, but just observations. If there's something more subtle that I'm doing, I don't think I'm aware of it, maybe perhaps letting the pins spring back up to pitch, possibly with a little help, but that depends on the piano. . It's the same when I ask fine pianists how they create the the tone colours they do, many don't seem to be aware that they're even doing it.

On that subject, it would have been enlightening for many if the Kawai concert instrument at the convention that is being held up as an example had been played by half a dozen different players in the same concert in order to demonstrate how flexible their instrument is when each pianist can make that same piano sound so different. Aren't we aiming to present a piano that gives this ultimate flexibility to the player?? Isn't that our goal? I do know that an extremely pretty sounding piano often has that one sound locked in making it less flexible for the pianist. That may have been the problem with some of the great pianos of yore.

I like to think that I am giving the pianist the most sustain and flexible attack that I can for them to to do with as they will. I hear these variations most when listening to my own tunings but, because most of the concerts that I am paid to attend are my tunings, I can't be objective.

That I'm now only doing less that 25% of the tunings than I did has definitely changed my tuning style. Yesterday I had to tune as many pianos as possible in a given time frame with some pitch raises. It only happens once a year now. This year I've been given a suite of rooms that give a comprehensive view over this entire twelfth century campus. Not bad for just being the piano tuner. More stairs to climb so I can't figure out whether they want me to keep coming back every year or kill me. (or keep me fit).
I later heard one my quick scruffy tunings being played. It sounded better than I thought if had any right to. I kinda hope against hope that, towards the end of my tuning career I'm not about to find out something that would have made my whole life easier!! Who knows? It might give me the impetus to tune a lot more in the future but still, I kinda hope not.

Even more simply put, we all hear differently, even within the apparently beat free zone and "Vive la difference"

Hi Amanda,
Thanks for the simple post and facts.
What seem to confuse the "sustain" issue is that actually some ordering of partials seem to add sustain at the individual note level in the same way you probably do above temperament but eventually on the whole scale.

That mean the usual temperament is laid aside somehow, so I am not convinced by the musical advantage, but that low entropy computation seem to be a brilliant proof of what mean "tuning the piano with itself"


Regards

In january 2010 I've made a video of an Equal Temperament tuned by me on a vertical Petrof P117.

It is a tuning of the midrange from C3 to G5. It was made to show the stretch obtained with "mindless" octaves a la Bill Bremmer and not intended to test progressive intervals, but anyway it is supposed to be ET.

I do not remember how I tuned it, but it was surely using Bill Bremmer's ET Via Marpurg sequence.

As I remember it was not measured by Kees.

Maybe you can measure it now, Kees?