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All:

This Topic is great! I like the term "Pipe Organ Effect" and it's definition.

I wonder how much the characteristics of the mike on an ETD will matter in a situation like this. Not only the frequency, but also the volume of the partials may be important.

Regards,

If it sounded like a pipe organ, it would not be decaying.

This typical of the nearly 8,000 posts by BDB: a one liner that dismisses the entire subject in a most condescending way. I notice that BDB joined nearly a year after I did and has made almost 8,000 posts but I have barely made 800. Ten times as many in a year's less time. How many out of these thousands upon thousands of posts have been helpful to anyone? How many were arrogant an patronizing quips with the sole intention of demonstrating how deep and profound his knowledge is and how the rest of us are mere idiots in comparison?

It's fairly typical of the kind of guy who calls himself a piano technician but is "too good" to join PTG much less take the RPT Exams. There is only one reason for it: he has nothing to gain and everything to lose. He would find out with blunt force trauma that he isn't as good and knowledgeable tech as he wants you to think he is. It matters little that the exam results and even if they were attempted is confidential. HE would know and that would be far too much to bear.

In other words, BDB, SHUT UP!

I made a simple statement about pipe organs merely to show that the language was being used incorrectly, and you get your panties all in a knot.

The fact remains: Pianos have attack, decay and release, with no sustain, while pipe organs have attack, sustain and release, with no decay (swell being a modification of the sustain). I was trying to understand what was meant by a pipe organ sound, and that explanation made no sense.

Perhaps it is time that other people learned a bit about acoustics and other physics. Maybe they should do the math.

Then perhaps they would learn the real problem with this discussion: If stretch is the amount of deviation due to inharmonicity, then it depends on the individual piano. If stretch is because the tuner likes wider than theoretic or acoustic intervals, then it depends on the tuner. Neither of these are things that should be programmed into a tuning device.

Possibly, I am not sure. I get the effect when I play a long, C, G, F, Bb, D, Eb, or A major sustained arpeggio across the entire keyboard. I have also heard the same effect when tuning in ET but it seems a bit less pronounced. I believe I only hear it in the milder keys of a Well Temperament and the effect is most pronounced in the mildest, C Major. In ET, every major key has the approximate tone color that a Well Temperament has in A Major. That is why I think I still can hear it in ET but it is less vividly displayed, as it is in A Major in the EBVT.

Gadzar, I believe you said before that I seemed to be confusing temperament with octave stretching and I can see why you may think that but I assure you that I do not. The way that I stretch the octaves is quite simple: I make an exact compromise between the double octave below the note to be tuned and the octave and the 5th (12th) below the octave to be tuned. This serves to utilize the piano's inharmonicity to minimize the effect of the Pythagorean comma.

I am not the only person to do this. It is done by many very fine aural tuners whom I know. If it is done when tuning ET, the curve of the stretched octaves will naturally be smooth. However, if the method is employed using an unequal temperament, the amount of stretch in the octaves will vary irregularly from one note to the next.

For example, if I tune C5 from C4 first as a reasonable sounding single octave, then I compare C5 to C3 and then to F3, the point where C5 will sound in tune with both C3 and F3 will amount to very little stretch between C4 to C5. That is because the F3-C4 5th is beatless (pure) in the EBVT.

On the other hand, when D5 is tuned to D4 first as a reasonable sounding octave, then D5 is compared to both D3 and G3, to have an equal beating compromise so that D3-D5 and G3-D5 have the same amount of tempering, the D4-D5 octave will be significantly wider than the C4-C5 octave.

In ET, the equal beating double octave and octave and 5th will be very close to each other and very consistent to the highest and lowest ends of the piano's scale.

The EBVT belongs to the category of well temperaments known as "irregular". This may seem to be an undesirable characteristic but in my experience, it is the irregular well temperaments which are the most interesting. The Thomas Young #1 well temperament has perfect symmetry and all of the tempered 5ths are tempered by the same amount (the definition of "regular") but to me, even though the idea sounds good theoretically and looks good on paper, it is the most bland and uninteresting sounding of all well-temperaments, so I have never used it for any of my clients.

So, in stretching the octaves in the way I have described, a graph would reveal a jagged line and not a smooth curve. Indeed, as I program the results into my SAT III, the figures from one note to the next go up and down, the higher in the scale I go, the more significantly different the figures from one note to the next become.

It doesn't appear to be logical and many other technicians have questioned it. They ask, "Doesn't that negate the temperament?", the answer is no, it does not, it enhances it. A calculated stretch curve can only increase the amount of stretch in an orderly progression. With temperament correction figures applied, the figures for all notes, including the highest ones do go up and down but only reflecting the the deviations supplied by the correction figures themselves.

So, as I had said in another post, when I use the correction figures for the EBVT with the SAT III's FAC program, I do get a good sounding tuning but it is never as good as when I manually compute the amount of stretch for each note individually. The latter is simply done.

I must first change the partial selection for Octave 5 to read on Octave 5 (not Octave 6 as it does by default). Then, I set the device on the note to be tuned and play the already tuned notes a double octave and then an octave and 5th below it. In the example of tuning C5, both notes from which C5 is tuned form a beatless 4th in the temperament octave, C3 and F3. The pattern will stop for both C3 and F3 when reading C5. In the example of tuning D5, the point is found where the pattern rolls sharp for D3 by the same amount as it rolls flat for G3 and D5 is tuned to that finding. This is virtually the same result as is obtained by tuning both of these intervals to beat exactly the same when tuning aurally.

The clarity and gentle phasing effect that is heard when playing a broad and sustained C Major arpeggio which sounds to me very much like that of a pipe organ, I believe is the result of the equal beating technique. As with other examples such as in the midrange where equal beating intervals create a canceling out effect and make C Major, for example, sound as if it is a much less tempered and has more pure interval construction than it really does, the canceling out effect of equal beating double octaves and 12ths has the same effect in the outer octaves. Much less "busy beating" is heard and seemingly only "pure", nearly beatless (only a gentle, slow phase)tones are heard which makes the sustained chord sound as pure and pristine as a pipe organ sound.

It is indeed ironic how many of my most musically sophisticated clients have voluntarily said virtually the same thing to me: the chords sound so smooth and even and the octaves sound so pure. This, in spite of the fact that the temperament is deliberately and intentionally uneven and the octaves are anything but pure and are also quite radically inconsistent. It amounts to an illusion which is analogous to what a magician creates by slight of hand deception. But it is not something false, it is a very real effect created by the phenomenon of what I consider to be the most valuable asset in tuning: EQUAL BEATING!

For anyone trying to use correction figures for a calculated tuning, please use the following figures which were painstakingly corrected recently by Owen Jorgensen. They are probably not what has been provided in either the Verituner or in Tunelab Temperament offset programs. Anyone interested should either create a new file or overwrite what is there.

C +3.8
C# -1.3
D +0.9
D# +1.6
E -0.6
F +1.8
F# -0.3
G +3.1
G# +0.7
A 0.0
A# +2.9
B 0.0

Note: there was a very minor discrepancy between what Jason Kanter figured for the note E which he calculated at -0.4 but Owen Jorgensen figured at -0.6. I prefer the figure by Owen Jorgensen but the difference is quite small and not very significant.

BDB, you go ahead and think what you think and tune the piano whatever way you think is right. Meanwhile, I'll do what I have been doing for a couple of decades now and which I learned from fellow PTG members. If you want to show everybody your way, teach math, physics and the difference between a pipe organ and a piano, contact the PTG Institute Committee and see if they will take you up on it for the next annual convention.

Bill,

I am affraid I've got surpassed by your knowledge. I don't understand what you say.

I have only tuned EBVT using Verituner. I don't know how to tune it aurally.

I don't understand why C4-C5 is less stretched than D4-D5, but don't worry it is not because of you, it is because of me. I have a lot of things to learn.

BTW, in my Verituner I have a temperament called: "Bremmer EBVT, 1992", in which the offsets are:

C 3.80
C# -0.77
D 0.86
D# 3.14
E -1.98
F 1.84
F# -2.72
G 3.11
G# 1.19
A 0.00
A# 2.36
B -0.03

Are you the author of this temperament?

As you can see the the numbers are quite different for D#, E, and F#.

Bill & BDB:

I value the contributions of each of you.

This is something I’ve wondered about. Since I don’t have access to an ETD, I can’t experiment and decide for myself. But it seems that if there is a typical stretch that the human ear wants to hear, a piano’s iH might be designed to match it. Then again, it might not be possible.

Also, it seems that if the iH of all the strings in a piano where the same, there would not be any discussion of octave types. If one octave type were tuned beatless, they would all be beatless. And theoretical beat rates would be very close to being correct. Since the iH in a piano’s strings do change from note to note, the desired amount of stretch (not just octaves, but all intervals) depends not only on the pianos iH and the listeners desire to hear a certain pitch, but also how complex the listener prefers the interaction of the partials to be.

This “Pipe Organ Sound” is something that I like, but I only hear it from old uprights. But when I do, it’s at the expense of the high treble not being at the pitch I want it to be. Bill’s technique of having equal beating partials that cancel each other out (that is my interpretation of what was posted) sounds great. But then how often would my customers play a big arpeggio and then listen to it? And back to BDB’s statement, would the pitch of the high treble be where a listener wants it to be?

Regards,

Gadzar, yes, I am the author of the EBVT but I have not been able to calculate the offsets for my aural description of it myself and have depended on others to do that. There have been two adjustments to the original version of the EBVT which effectively create three different versions of it. I changed the setting of the note E4 (in the aural version) first which created the EBVT II, then I changed the setting of F#3 which created the EBVT III.

The EBVT III is the version I now use, it is the mildest and most well balanced. However, I sometimes still use the original which has some other favorable characteristics.

I don't know where the figures supplied in the Verituner program come from. They are an interpretation of the aural instructions as are those supplied in the Tunelab program. Obviously, the goal of these figures it to produce the same results as one would get when tuning aurally.

Recently, I had Owen Jorgensen take another look at the whole idea according to the aural instrucions as they are now available on my website. The figures I wrote in a previous post are the best information I have to date. You can either make a new temperament page in your Verituner Temperaments Offsets program and label it EBVT III or simply overwrite the figures that are there for "EBVT".

You can, of course, use the default stretch which the Verituner has, or a custom stretch that you know and prefer or one which Ron Koval recommends.

What I have noticed when I use the default stretch program of the SAT III is that while it produces a nice tuning, it does not have the very pleasing quality that I get when I tune aurally or construct the outer octaves the way I prefer to do by direct interval.

So, when you use the figures I supplied, you can expect to get something like what I do but not entirely.

Now, to what BDB says. Yes, he does often write good tips and give good advice and correct information. However, he seems to also enjoy dismissing nearly everything I write with a condescending, one line quip. When he does this, you can be sure it means that he doesn't know what he is talking about and he does it as a defensive reaction to something he doesn't understand. Rather than asking a question, he would rather try to make it seem that if he doesn't already know a particular item of information, then it must not exist.

The fact is, that the amount of stretch I use is determined purely and solely from the inharmonicity that any particular piano has. I don't simply stretch the octaves wildly sharp just because I think that sounds good the way BDB would have you think I do. The way I stretch does put beats between single octaves in the high treble, yes. But since BDB cannot hear a piano I have tuned, he only imagines it to be something crazy and is quick to say just that and then to profess that the way HE tunes the high treble is and can be the only one and correct way.

However, the way HE tunes the high treble puts beats to the narrow side between 12ths, double and triple octaves. To most people, that sounds flat. Of course, I understand what he does and can do it if I choose and there are indeed circumstances when I do just that or make some other kind of compromise somewhere in between.

BDB dismisses the very idea of the "pipe organ effect" for one reason only: he has never heard it and therefore, if he doesn't know about it, it couldn't possibly exist. He will never hear it because the way he stretches the octaves cannot even come close to producing that kind of sound.

One important thing should be considered about the high treble: this is not the area where harmony is played. The beats produced between single octaves that occur when triple octaves are beatless are generally not perceived by the pianist. They kind of playing that occurs in the high treble is generally ornamental. The higher pitch of a greater amount of stretch not only incorporates natural inharmonicity, it serves to please the desire of virtually all musicians to hear these pitches much higher than theoretical calculation would put them.

Personally, I believe the reason people want to hear pitches that high also does not come out of thin air, it is because the ear perceives inharmonicity subconciously. The 8th partial of C5 at or near theoretical pitch will be near +50 cents, so I believe that people do hear that whether they express it in words or not and therefore, the note C8 tuned at or near +50 cents is exactly what they expect to hear.

Even the most conservative stretch used by the PTG Tuning Exam produces a C8 at or near +30 cents. When I write that, BDB flies off the handle and says it just can't be right. It can't be because he believes there is not nearly as much inharmonicity in piano strings as there really is and that is because he never looks beyond the second partial when putting figures on a spreadsheet. Spreadsheets aren't pianos.

Bill:

I am sorry that BDB’s posts offend you.

Thank you for explaining more on how and why you stretch your octaves.

I have it in my mind that there are two kinds of octave stretch: Objective as required by a piano’s iH and Subjective as required by the human ear. I believe this is true because of how the pitch of a high treble note after playing a full keyboard arpeggio sounds different (to me) depending on whether the arpeggio is played up or down the keyboard. Then again, perhaps (as you say) the human ear hears the higher partials and expects the octaves to be at those pitches. I don’t think this is the case because of what I hear on old uprights. It is very easy to get nice sounding double, triple and quadruple octaves. I understand now that it is due to low iH. Yet on these pianos, the arpeggio test results in the treble note being intolerably low in pitch. And also there are certain spinets that require very little stretch, beyond what is required for iH, for the arpeggio test to result in a very acceptable high treble note.

I’ve been trying different octave stretches on the pianos I tune. My customers cannot tell any difference, so I don’t feel guilty for experimenting. After having tried as much stretch as I can stand from right in the temperament octave, I’ve been leaning more to what I understand is the Schubert tuning. I keep the middle octaves very conservative, and stretch the octaves as needed for my subjective ear starting around the treble break. Oddly, I find that I don’t need as much stretch in the high treble. It seems that my ear finds the less wide octaves in the low treble to be the norm and doesn’t expect them to be as stretched in the high treble. Of course I have only my own ears to judge this.

Something that I wasn’t expecting when tuning conservative octaves is the difference in the color of the 5ths. On old uprights they sound fine, but on more modern pianos they sound busier. I am thinking that this may be a limit on how conservative the temperament octave should be.

Now, instead of only making a compromise between what I call the Objective and Subjective Octaves, I may also have to compromise for the busyness of the 5ths.

Regards,

I cannot for the life of me understand why Mr. Bremmer got so upset about me pointing out that organs have sustain and no decay, while pianos have decay and no sustain. That is a simple fact. It is just to say that if there is any such thing as a "Pipe Organ Sound," that is not it. For that matter, as pipe organs are subject to a number of things that keep them being particularly well tuned, above all, being very heat sensitive, the chances are tuning has little to do with such an effect.

Really, when you get right down to it, the real question is what constitutes being in tune. That depends on the instrument. The strings on a violin are tuned to perfect fifths. Those on a piano are tuned to tempered fifths. Yet we do not say that one is in tune and the other is out of tune.

It all boils down to error analysis, or in layman terms, how much we can get away with. Tuning is never a matter of being exact down to whatever fineness you can imagine. At some point, you have to stop. If you have ever tried tuning a piano under a ceiling fan, for instance, you will have found that the interference from the echo off the whirling blades will affect the beats. Well, at some point, even your breathing will have the same effect, expanding the vibration as you inhale, shrinking it as you exhale. However, that happens too slowly to be noticeable. The point is, at some point, you are close enough.

If you play more than one string together, they will affect one another. This video, which came up in another topic, shows how that works. Things like that tend to make things sound okay if you are close enough.

I judge whether I am close enough by how intervals sound on the piano I am tuning. My goal is to avoid any interval that sounds bad. That may not be perfect, but there are so many other ways to deviate from perfection, such as scale design, regulation, voicing and things like that, that perfection in tuning may be no more than having all intervals sound good.

Incidentally, the way most people thing of the sound of a pipe organ is through the mixture of different ranks of pipes, adding harmonics to the rather pure sine wave form of a flute pipe. That is more the effect you aim for when voicing a piano, rather than tuning.

BDB:

It is unfortunate when someone gets offended during a discussion, because then the conversation usually turns negative.

I understand what you mean by “The point is, at some point, you are close enough.” I believe there can be different factors that determine what is “close enough.” On a good piano it can be the tuning pin friction and string rendering. On a poor piano maybe it is the scaling. And on a bad day even aural perception.

Also there are compromises. I would very much like to know how you make compromises with your octaves. Also, what do you think octave stretch and inharmonicity is all about?

Regards,

My own feeling is that "close enough" is when it as good as you can hear it to be. As long as you can hear it better than anyone else can.

BDB:

OK, I guess what I would like to know is if you listen only to the beating of intervals, or do you also listen to the pitch (especially in the high treble), when deciding if a note sounds good?

Actually, Upright, the tone is positive. BDB is always right. He knows everything. A piano could never sound like a pipe organ. Pianos have no sustain. They sound like xylophones. It's a simple fact.

Good Morning, Bill!

When I tune octaves, I check one octave, two octaves; thirds, fourths, fifths; thirds, fourths, fifths plus one octave; and thirds, fourths, fifths plus two octaves. Those are enough intervals for a pretty good compromise.

It is important to have tests that check over two octaves. That avoids accumulative errors.

Thank you, BDB.

If you are doing that, BDB, I would agree that you are making a fine compromise while adjusting for inharmonicity. However, what you say can barely be used beoyond the middle of octave 5. M3s become useless beyond A4. 4ths can no longer be heard beyond F5. Octave and 4ths are useless anywhere. So, while I fully imagine that whatever you do beyond F5 must satisfy you, it is significantly sharper nuermerically than what you imagine it must be in your wildest nightmares and it probably still sounds flat to most people.

Incidentally, I tuned a rather new Bohemia upright today; a rather nice vertical piano. It had gone significantly below pitch. When I finished, after having tuned the EBVT III aurally, since I do not have a stored program for that kind of piano and using a calculated program is always disappointing, I played that long C Major arpeggio when I finished and let it ring (read "sustain", not "decay"). Before I could even ask the lady what she thought, she blurted out, "It sounds like the organ at church!"

Need I say more? If you want to hear that sound for yourself, BDB, you need only register at the PTG Anuual Convention, a short trip south for you, next week. You can even take the weekend pass because my presentation is not until Saturday, June 21 at 1:30 PM.

I discount it when people say a piano sounds like a pipe organ, because it is really meaningless. I object to such descriptions because it is impossible to mistake the sound of a pipe organ for a piano, or vice versa. There may be some characteristic of the sound that someone thinks reminds them of a pipe organ, but who knows what that is?

I also do not understand what "4ths can no longer be heard beyond F5" means. You can play G5 and C6. That is a fourth. I use fourths and fifths. as well as their octave relatives, in those areas because I can hear that they are almost beatless. You can hear that if the notes are tuned well enough. I use thirds and their relatives to make sure I am close enough to test with fourths and fifths. I will admit that sometimes it can be difficult in the top half octave or so of a piano, especially if it is a poor piano, but if I cannot hear it as bad, nobody else will either. A beginning tuner may not be as good at hearing these things as I am, but I can at least assure them that they can get better at it.

I am not saying that anyone is doing anything wrong, other than not being clear. It is just that I cannot tell for certain unless we use the language properly.