Hi all:

To make a short story longer---please bear with me if this is old hat and already been discussed to the ends---we have an '83 Yamaha C5 purchased a bit over a year ago, based on: magic.
We spotted it at a dealer right out of the crate from Japan, before it could be touched up. When played, it had that hard to describe *feel* of warmth, fluidity, ease, as if it invited the player into it's world. If you are familiar with craniosacral massage, the sensation was similar to the relaxed, lit up ease of mmmmmm, that feels good. Must have played dozens of others in the store, but kept going back to that one, and lost track of time and place when playing it. Needless to say, we bought it. Moved a couple hundred miles south to Sandy Ego, CA, and after a couple of months of settle time had it tuned. The tech commented, hey, this is a good one. Even better, fluid, liquid, thecaptivating sensation of ahhhh, either listening of playing. A year later, the tech has moved, and a tuning by the person whom he worked for. Different touch, tuning fork rather than PDA, harder touch. Soooo, technically good, in tune, but---the magic is gone. Sounds, feels bland. Not bad, just not *alive*. It's an iPod piano now! Rather like going from a good tube amplifier to an average solid state one---technically clean, but boring, uninvolving.
The story we heard is that the first tech would deliberately, slightly shift one of the trio of strings for each key after "perfectly" tuning, creating a beat, probably in the milihertz range.
In art, being slightly off is often more asthetically pleasing, more warm and rich than being surgically precise and cold and lean.

I don't think the new tech gets it, was quite adamant about having been in the biz for decades, yada yada yada.

Funny thing is, we probably would have passed on this piano if it had been tuned this way when we were trying them out.

Any ideas? Suggestions? Offers to tune magically?

Lots of things affect piano tone, including, and perhaps especially, your expectations. Also, and especially too, the piano's environment--the size and shape of the room it's in and its furnishings. These elements with regard to your piano have, evidently, changed over time. Also hammers change with playing and need to be voiced on a regular basis.

You might do well to look for another tuner. You might contact your former tuner and ask him or her about tuning style and to specify just what was done to your piano. Many tuners who use electronic tuning devices (the PDA you refer to is just a small computer which is used as an electronic tuning device by installing appropriate software) do so because these devices allow the precise repetition of tunings which may be particularly suitable for specific pianos.

You could talk to your new tuner about your dissatisfaction with the current tuning (I would suggest that you make some more concrete sorts of observations than those you've written here, and note them down). Rather than trying to talk in magical terms, you could try to use some more musical notions such as resonance, or attack tone and sustain.

There are a number of tuners who are very good at inquiring of piano owners what kind of music they like to play and how they like the tuning of certain registers of the piano, such as the high treble. You might want to seek out such tuners to try out.

There is a definable quality of tuning usually referred to as "stretch" which has a major effect on the sound of a piano. You may be happier with more or less "stretch" in your tuning. Again, this is something which you will need to work at by learning to describe what you hear in more concrete terms, and then to discuss with your tuner.

Last, there are tuners who tune pianos in variants of historical temperaments other than equal temperament. Some musicians much prefer such tunings. If you can find a tuner who can do this kind of work for you, you may well find a useful resource.

You can do a search in the archives here and read some of the discussion of the merits of some nonequal temperments. Many of them have involved Bill Bremmer, who is well-known in the trade for his interest in this kind of work. You could search for posts by him.

I agree with Mike -- get a tech who will listen to you. I had this situation once and was able to figure out what the customer was looking for by playing different notes for her: "Which is prettier to you? This (solid unison) or this (slightly off unison)?" over and over till we had consensus on how far off she liked it. It took a little time, but it was a satisfying experience for both of us.

Tunings with the unisons a little off used to be called "wet tunings," and the ones with the spot-on unisons were "dry tunings." The wet tunings are not so fashionable now, but they were all the rage when my grandmother was a girl. She played great Chopin. Go for it.

I must say, to a new tuner like me, the notion of purposely making unisons just slightly off is mystifying. I try my best to get them perfect, but often don't succeed, and after a few days they slip, producing a most offensive sound...

No offence - I want to make sure I understand this correctly: You bought a grey market 1983 imported piano straight out of the box from Japan, before it had been touched. Then you moved it a few hundred miles, then waited a few months to have it tuned? It sounds like it would have been quite out of tune by then, after all that. By this time, any piano should have been tuned at least three or four times to be in tune. If this is the sound you prefer, then you are conditioned to a fairly out of tune piano, I would think.

If the piano is then tuned, the out of tune-ness goes away. That what piano tuning does.

Perhaps what you describe as "Magic" is your conditioning to a more-or-less out of tune piano, the "wet" tuning Dorrie described?

Nice history analysis, Jurgen -- leads right to a diagnostic conclusion!

It would be interesting to hear if the "magic" comes back in a few weeks (Anne would describe this phenomenon in a totally different way).

I'll just comfort myself from now on that what I have hitherto thought of as lousy tunings (i.e. my own) are actually "wet" tunings.

Thanks and tip of the hat to Mike and Dorrie for some concepts and nomenclature to work with, "search" is one's friend if one has the appropriate verbage.

So now that I have a slightly better idea of what to ask, the adventure is to find a tech who groks more fully.

I know what I like, and it is not the tuneness nor the out of tuneness per se that I am attempting to describe. Like Jazz, I may not be able to define it, but I know it when I hear it. It was really good after the first tuning, and if I could find the first tech and bribe him for his trade secrets....alas, he has emigrated and is out of touch. Things happen.

It's already been a few weeks, the magic has not come back, still bland and so-what, boring. Technically in tune, but, feh. A wasp honeymoon.
John Tesh plays Bill Evans.

Anne, are you familiar with the concept of: Art being the ability to ride the zone between coherence and chaos...too safe and it becomes linear, mechanical, boring, in the box; too chaotic and it becomes messy and entropic...but in that zone, just beyond the box, right on the edge, is where the magic, the creativity happens and complexity seemingly arises out of chaos. Most venues of expression pass through a linear phase which is essential as a foundation, but disasterous if the expressee remains stuck in that state...my guess is that the deliberate shift off of unison (an intentional wet tuning as distinct from a lousy tuning) produces beat frequencies, subharmonics that when lined up a particular way, bring the sound to life.

Offence indeed: a thinly veiled pejorative is the antithesis of open dialogue. No, you are not understanding. Think again.

Cheers,

ongaku

There is no mystery to coming around to some very useful definitions of such things as "jazz." There is only the challenge of actually attending to the structure of the music; this simply takes time and attention.

"Wet tuning" is a term that actually is used to describe some accordion tuning styles, in which a very rapid beat creates a tremelo effect. Such tuning does not work on pianos, for a number of reasons and "wet tuning" on a piano can only be incompetent.

It seems to me that "ongaku" might have a great deal to learn about what a good piano that is well-tuned actually sounds like. There is a vibrato that is evident in the sound of a well-tuned piano, heard in such intervals as thirds, sixths and tenths, but these are only evident and pleasant to hear when the piano is in fact tuned well. This requires unisons to be tuned as pure as possible.

If you still can contact the old tech, you might ask what program he used on his PDA to achieve the tuning. He may even have your tuning saved - which could be replicated by another tech using the same gear...

(There are 'magical' approaches - keep seeking!)

Did you get a good look at the PDA while he was tuning? If you can give us a few details, I'm sure someone would recognize the program.

I meant my comments to be self-deprecating, not critical. Like, I can only hope that some day I will be good enough at following the rules to break them on purpose.