I wrote the following article about five years ago. It is one experience with the honky tonk request. To me, many of the suggestions seem mild.
The Weird Stuff: The Dornfeld Bierstube Tuning
Bruce Dornfeld, RPT
Last month I got an unusual request. My client, Bob Baker of Electric Orchestras, would mail a tape recording of Crazy Otto to me. He said, "Listen to Crazy Otto's piano. I want that sound. Can we tune two of my pianos to sound like Crazy Otto?" He had recently talked with Art Reblitz who told him that any piano tuner who listened to it could figure out what to do.
I got the tape and put it on the upstairs stereo. It was fun, no holes barred, ragtimey jazz, with drums and bass accompanying the piano. Crazy Otto was born in Germany and was a big draw in the Hot Club in Paris, and many other jazz clubs in the 1940s and 1950s. He recorded for Decca in the fifties (Photo 1). The liner notes say that he used his "tipsy wire box" to get his sound on the piano. Before he would perform, he would "prepare" the piano first. He was not trying to make it sound like a Javanese Gamelan, the way John Cage did; he made it sound like an old barroom piano. We have not found anything written about how he did this, but we suspect a tuning hammer was involved.
When the tape was playing, my nine year old son came up for a bath. He asked, "What is that?" I just told him it is Crazy Otto, and he started dancing. He danced to four or five tracks. I have heard that in Nashville, some studios use a special tuning to get a honky tonk sound. I seem to recall that, in the three string unisons, the left and right strings would be tuned two or three cents above and below the center string. This gave me something to go on. I tried tuning this way on my old upright in my shop; it was way too tame. Next I tried tuning the bichord strings three cents above and below where they would normally be. The middle was tuned with the left strings five cents flat and the right strings five cents sharp. In the top octaves, it was eight cents high and low.
I tried this on one of Bob's pianos and he kind of liked it, but wanted more. We listened to the old Decca vinyl record on his stereo and decided it was not enough. So the bass strings were tuned five cents flat and sharp. The center section was tuned ten cents flat and sharp. The top octaves were tuned twelve cents flat and sharp. Yes, that means a difference of twenty-four cents in one "unison." I juiced the hammers up to get a much brighter sound. It sounded perfect! I played some Joplin rags and some blues riffs, and it was the sound we were trying for. Bob dubbed it: the Dornfeld Bierstube Tuning.
Our biggest technical concern was the possibility of string breakage. Pulling bass strings up five cents high is more than I do when performing a pitch raise. Twelve cents high in the treble sounds like a lot too, but no strings broke. I have run into many pianos that were sharper from high humidity, or had the top notes tuned fifty cents or more higher. The tuning was done with a Sanderson Accu-Tuner custom measured for each piano with a normal, moderate amount of stretch. After tuning all of the center strings of the three string unisons as normal, the left strings were tuned. A strip of thin key bushing cloth worked well for strip muting the center and right strings (photo 2). The Accu-Tuner was set for ten cents flat, so all of the left strings would be offset the same amount. After the left strings were tuned, the thin strip was inserted between the middle and left strings. Then the right strings were tuned sharp.
Some of you might wonder why tune so precisely to get the "out of tune" effect. These pianos will be part of Electric Orchestra's automated Hot Jazz unit. Along with the piano will be a tuba, saxophone, banjo, trumpet, and clarinet. Even with the really wide "unisons" we still need all of the instruments at the same pitch and in tune with each other. We also need a controlled and standardized way of getting this sound. It certainly is not everybody's cup of tea, but it is a powerful and distinctive sound. For his hotel lobby and commercial clientele, Bob thinks it will give him a competitive advantage. A week after playing the Crazy Otto tape upstairs, I played it for my wife on the way to pick up our son from baseball. He got into the car and within five seconds, asked "Is that Crazy Otto?" That fits my definition of a signature sound.
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Bruce Dornfeld, RPT
North Shore Chapter
Northbrook, IL
(847) 498-0379
bdornfeld@earthlink.net -------------------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 01-19-2015 07:36
From: Kent Burnside
Subject: Honky Tonk tuning "methods"
The "busyness" in the high treble might be a moot point, as the honky-tonk effect heard on recordings is typically in octaves 3-5, at least all the ones I can recall hearing.
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Kent Burnside, RPT
Franklin TN
615.430.0653
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Original Message:
Sent: 01-17-2015 18:35
From: Ronald Nossaman
Subject: Honky Tonk tuning "methods"
> That's why I'm looking forward to the next test.
>
> I used an ETD to do the tuning and the detuning so my offsets were
> based on A440. I went for full beats at A4 but that means a cents
> offset in the settings. At A4, 4?? = ~ 1Hz. I then let the EDT
> calculate that for the rest of the piano so as we move away from A4
> it likely no longer works out to a 1 Hz beat.
Well, yes, I got all that which is why I asked, within that context, if
the treble didn't get pretty busy. There would be three different beat
speeds in the C-8 unison, two at around 9.7 (and for reasonably
practical purposes the same) and one around 19.4. Yes, I understand
that's the worst of it, and it gets closer to 1 and 2 beats toward A-4,
but it does mean that the unisons get noisier (less pure) as they go
farther above A-4. Which is why I asked, there being a considerable
difference between 1,2, and 19bps.
> Interesting effect? Noise? Depends on who's judging.
Cases in point, rap and prepared piano, but then I'd consider 19 beats
in a unison noise too. Yea, I know, intent counts. Yes, that is supposed
to smoke like that...
Ron N