Hi, Mark
Okay, test blows.
The first thing to consider is where on the piano they are needed. If you've ever tried to set a bass string slightly sharp and beat it down, you'll realize that the chance of a pianist beating out a unison in the bass is very small. When I first started concert work (on a 1970 Baldwin SD-10 with difficult rendering) most of the damage from playing happened in the first capo section, so that is where I used firm blows. Well, until I improved the rendering on that piano. I had to really beat on it repeatedly before it would behave. When one of those strings went out from heavy playing, it didn't go out just a little bit!
I spend a lot of time getting the first capo section right and stable and voiced. It is where many of the melodies reside, the "killer" octave which has to be able to dominate the texture. Unfortunately, the natural tendency of grand pianos is to have the tenor much louder than it musically needs to be. Doug Wood put it well when he told me that it is good to voice down the lower tenor area, because if a pianist wants to play it loudly, they will find it easy to, however you voice it. Being able to play it soft enough is the problem.
So, I'd get the first capo behaving, and that seemed all right. However, as time went on, some pianists who played very heavily or in a percussive (poking, jamming) manner would then throw out the top half of octave 4, while the capo, having received a lot of work for stability, was still pretty good. I have tuned for pianists who could throw out unisons all the way down into the lower part of octave 3, but it's rare. So I'd beat up whatever they had thrown out. And I'd beat up the high treble, too, trying for stability.
I learned not to beat notes in octave 7 too hard, the year I broke C#7 in three Steinway D's, two of them less than a year old. I came to understand that there is a natural vulnerability in the Steinway D scale up near there, and I'd better respect it. So, how to replace the firm settling blows in that area? All I have figured out to do is to retune up there over and over again, with extremely tiny adjustments, and to work on the voicing.
So, on a normally stable concert instrument, I tune with firm but not brutal blows, somewhat more firm in the middle and high middle treble, but not too hard in either the high treble, or the low tenor and bass. Blows too hard in areas which don't need them just leads to wear and tear on both the piano and the technician. Extremely loud blows in the tenor and bass also make it harder to hear the pitch accurately, because of all the prominent high overtones one is exciting. Of course, playing the bass loud sometimes is needed to evaluate the voicing, but that's a separate issue.
Physical self-defense: for very hard blows I cluster my thumb and two fingers, and I make the blow from just above the key by a very sharp motion of the wrist. After the blow I relax my hand instead of holding the note down. Unless I'm doing repeated very hard blows to try to settle something, I'll make a hard blow followed immediately by a soft blow so I can hear the pitch better.
There are firm blows as part of normal tuning of a stable instrument, f or ff, just part of everyday work. Then there are "test" blows, or very very hard blows, for a situation where one senses instability. The last time I had to do a lot of that was when a small college out of town I sometimes tune for had invited a really fun intelligent Russian piano prof from Eastman. They hired a 9 foot Bösendorfer to pair with their Steinway D for her master class. I don't tune Bosies very often at all, so it was interesting. In the capo sections it reminded me of the Baldwin, in that to get stability I needed to tune the notes slightly sharp and beat them down, and then I'd micro-manage the tuning of them at the end of the process, when, beaten down, they were stable and I could polish them with very small adjustments. It all seemed to work.
If someone has destabilized a piano, or wire has been slacked off a long way and not stabilized after it has been pulled up, or when wire is new, then I use repeated heavy, very heavy blows, leave the notes alone for awhile while I tune in another area, and then come back to see if the notes have responded to the heavy blows by shifting. Sometimes the notes will stay put after being beaten up, but often they will not.
A thought or two more on octave 7, which gives me the most trouble these days. Musically, it's convenient for the pianist to have both ends of the piano voiced bright, phasing in gradually, with the very highest and very lowest notes voiced very bright. I saw what happened to our OSU piano when Doug Wood did this, and it was good, very good. However, that does make it hard to get the high treble tuning really smooth. The brightness will show every tiny problem with the unisons. Add in the necessity to temper between melodic and harmonic intonation, and one faces some real difficulties. Listening to individual strings in octave 7 of most concert level instruments, one hears that very fast false beats almost give some of the notes a kind of sandy texture. So, pitting the three different beat patterns against each other to try to get a clean sound helps, but it can only do just so much.
I thought about this, in a philosophical manner. Is perfection in tuning of a piano the most important thing about it? Well, while of course tuning is very, very important, letting an artist get the necessary access to the piano is more important than the final picayune details. Getting the action responsive and controllable, and getting the voicing uniform and the balance between registers musical are more important than getting octave 7 crystal clear. I also realized over time that those "false" fast beats in the high treble serve a purpose. They allow the notes to reach to the back of the hall when an extremely clean stable unison would die out too soon. In fact, I think that this is the reason for the fourth string in Blüthners, though perhaps this isn't how the company thinks of it. The clarity in the normal three strings in the high treble of a Blüthner is remarkable -- too remarkable. They sort of go white and lose power from their beatless nature. Add in some dissonance from the strange bearing of the fourth string, and they sing and get their power back.
So, I consider tuning and voicing in octave 7 (for me) to still be a work in progress.
Hope all this chattering helps.
------------------------------
Susan Kline
Philomath, Oregon
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Original Message:
Sent: 06-06-2017 09:52
From: Mark Davis
Subject: Building a Temperament
Susan,
Wow, what a pleasant surprise of a response! Your post is very informative. Thank you very much! It is wonderful to hear the passion that you have for your work 40 years down the line.
Yes, I did listen to about 20 min of the concert in total, at various points throughout the concert, but not the running commentary.
I am glad that your work has got onto Youtube. The piano sounds really good.
Still tuning at 71? Wow, what a wonderful example of perseverance and of a good work ethic! It is something to emulate. I am sorry to hear of your ailment/s and struggles, and I am amazed at you enduring with such fortitude. I hope that you are able to find some help and relief with your physical difficulties. It is obviously very helpful to have all of your work within close proximity. That is good.
I am going to need to re-read and re-read your post to digest all that is in it.
If I may ask you another question Susan? What is your protocol for test blows? When, where, how and why?
Thank you Susan.
Kind regards,
------------------------------
Mark Davis
Piano Tuner/Technician
------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 06-06-2017 03:09
From: Susan Kline
Subject: Building a Temperament
Hi, Mark
You visited and listened to my YouTube! Thank you!
For this piano, I use the hammer technique I use most of the time. I've had a long extension hammer for many years, with a short and very angled head, which I bought from Jim Coleman, Jr. at a convention. (pictured)
From the time I started tuning in 1978, I've tried to use two tactics to avoid physical wear and tear:
First, I try to use a lot of different right hand positions and holds so that I don't end up with repetitive stress,
Second, as soon as I've done the part of the work requiring stress or movement, I relax everything. It's like a pianist relaxing in the smallest increments of time between playing, which prevents seizing up in fast passages.
Many years ago, now, Jim Coleman, Sr. (lots of Jim Coleman in this post --- a good thing!) came and gave a tuning seminar in Washington State. He showed us a technique where he tapped the side of the tuning hammer instead of holding and pulling it. Then he gave us a beautifully reasoned argument about why this led to better stability. To cut to the chase, this tapping or slapping technique gets the pin to move in very small increments, without bending or twisting. One does not have to adjust for a rebound reaction of the tuning pin which a slow pull, then let go, requires. I believe I had already realized that it is important not to judge the pitch change while one still has hold of the hammer, because it can shift when one lets go -- but with tapping, the issue does not even arise.
Jim Sr. used this in a relatively limited way, but I took hold of the idea and used it a LOT, with quite a bit of variety, depending on the condition of the piano. As I got older, I realized how valuable this approach is to avoiding muscle strain and fatigue. For an upright with tight pins, especially one needing a pitch raise, a long tuning hammer at about 2 or 3 o'clock and an open-handed SLAP way out near the end of the hammer is the very easiest and least stressful way to move pitch. I believe it's also the least stressful for the wire, because the length of time it is put under strain in the shortest. Of course one calibrates the strength of the slap to the resistance in the tuning pins -- that hard a slap on a piano with loose pins could well break wire. It becomes a subliminal choice, how hard to tap or whack the tuning hammer, depending on how far one wishes the pitch to move and how easily the pin can turn -- unconscious in practice; one gets better at it over time.
There's a cute little thing to try, just for fun. Put the tuning hammer on a pin for a new note, play an octave to see how far out of tune it is ... stop playing. Move the pin in your usual manner. Then play the octave again and see how close you got. I suspect you'll be surprised by how close it usually is. All those hours of tuning year after year do have an effect.
You'd think that heavy slapping and tapping and whacking a tuning hammer with an open hand would lead to injury, but it doesn't seem to hurt me. I'm 71, have tuned for nearly forty years, and have fibromyalgia and arthritic knees and general muscle soreness in the background of everything I do, but my hands, wrists, elbows, and shoulders are really just fine. I do not get more sore from tuning, thank heavens.
A long tuning hammer seems awkward at first, but one gets used to it. I manipulate it way out at the end a lot, then I pick it up near the head to put it onto the next tuning pin. As the years have gone by, I use less and less pulling of the hammer (which I do by closing my hand) and more and more tapping and hitting, and grabbing the very end of the hammer, kind of nibbling the pitch back down if it has gone too far. I repeatedly nudge the tuning pin, almost using the natural sloppiness of the tip on the pin as a kind of micro impact hammer. I judge how hard I'm pushing on the pin by the resistance I feel as I "nibble", even when I can't hear the pitch changing. Six or seven little pushes like that and it will move by that infinitesimal amount I want.
I think that the key to tuning stability is to move everything repeatedly in the smallest possible degree, and to avoid bending and flagpoling of the tuning pin. I will sometimes stress the pin just a bit by pulling on the very end of the hammer with a little twist, giving the pin just a slight strain which if earnestly applied would be a bend -- then I let it go. This is partly to ascertain where in the "marshmallow zone" the tuning pin is.
Are you aware of the idea of the marshmallow zone? On some pianos it's a lot wider than on others. It's the area where you can bend or otherwise annoy the tuning pin, and the pitch will change, but without the pin turning in the pinblock. And then it will change back, in unpredictable ways. One wishes to master the marshmallow zone. If I think a note might not be as dependable as I would desire, I like to stress it downward and then upward, both just slightly, and hear it change equally in each direction, ending in the middle. I know that some people like to make the last strain on the wire upwards, the better to resist a hard blow, but I like to leave it right in the middle.
There is a happy idea, possibly with some degree of self-delusion: the "self-healing" tuning. The idea is that if all the back lengths are tensioned exactly right, without any extra tension waiting to work across bridge or bearings, a monster killer blow might whack out a unison, but then a moderately heavy blow a minute later -- might just get it right back to where it started! The idea is that the killer blow will pull some of the back length wire so it is no longer equal in tension to the rest of the string, and then a moderate blow may just equalize it again.
Well, sometimes we need happy ideas.
You asked about multiple passes. I like the general principle, because I want to react directly to what a note actually does after it has been moved, instead of what one theoretically assumes it will do. Of course a good hammer technique reduces the tendency of changed notes to stray very far, but it is not infallible. I think there are two variations of multiple passes: tunings and pitch raises when the piano is far out to begin with, versus pianos which are looked after so frequently and carefully that they are very close to being in tune at all times. Of course one tunes them differently.
For a major change like a pitch raise, multiple passes can be done very quickly, using a "circles of refinement" model. The earlier the pass, the faster it can go, because one is going to come back to it later. One gets as much of the piano as in tune as possible as fast as possible, by roughing in the worst sections first. If you're raising a piano more than a semitone, you have to be realistic about what you will end up with. Multiple passes will get it better faster than trying to do detail work too early. Given that some degradation of the tuning will occur within a few weeks, it also makes sense to try hardest for stability in the areas of the piano which will be the most used. And then one has to inform the customer of what to expect. The ETD over-pull programs are reported to work very well, and a rough seat-of-the-pants aural overpull isn't too bad, either -- except if a piano is fragile and old or visibly a string breaker, I'd much rather do a fast pass exactly to pitch, and then do only a minor overpull on the second pass if the piano has accepted the first pass. The overpull and the strain on the wire is less if the strings all have moved over the bearings once already. Today I tuned an 1886 Steinway upright -- fun piano, still has a lot of "piano" in it, but with wire this old, there's no way I'd pull any of the wire over pitch. The main challenge of this piano is that the treble wire has a real warble in it, and it feels work-hardened when one turns the pins, which are not terribly tight. I do some very light tapping. One wire resisted considerable effort to bring it up the last cent or so. I decided it was truly ready to break, and I ended up tuning the other two strings down that cent, as being the better part of valor.
For concert instruments one has often seen, and which are very stable, "multiple passes" has a different meaning for me. I'm basically polishing, or doing a very minor pitch change due to change of season. I'm also doing very minor voicing, which I do with one short needle in the chopstick tool. I think that voicing for evenness is most effective when one is dealing with the soft end of the dynamic range -- mezzo piano or softer. This is where voicing problems will show up the most in the playing. It's also important to deal with the shift voicing, and sometimes with half-shift voicing. One assumes and hopes that the voicing in the loud dynamic ranges was set up properly to begin with, and/or that the hammers were well enough made that they are naturally even when played very loudly. By using a short needle sparingly, I'm not interfering with the natural progression of brightness as notes are played harder and harder, bringing the support of the inner layers of felt into play. One hopes that no one else has mucked up the inner structure of the hammers, either.
So, for me, "multiple passes" of a piano nearly perfectly in tune to begin with means that I want to see it often, actually at all opportunities, though I will often spend only a few minutes on it, searching for "strays", after it has been played. A visiting artist may of course practice anything, but whatever else they work on, one can usually assume they will try the pieces they are going to perform. Therefore, though they may knock out notes practicing for that performance of Petrushka next month, more of the time they'll be playing the pieces they are going to play the same or the next day, and therefore anything in the tuning which has changed is going to be challenged again -- so one can focus almost entirely on those notes. I prefer to do the full tuning before the pianist practices -- and then go over the tuning just before the people come in, and then I always check it an intermission. Mind, sometimes I can hear that it really doesn't need checking at intermission, but I always do it anyway, because I tell the artists that I am going to attend the concert -- they look gratified -- and then I tell them that I'll check the tuning at intermission -- and they look SO gratified that I realize this is something which very seldom is done for them.
My situation is fortunate, and I realize that a lot of people would find it hard to follow my example. When my mother died in 2004, she left me some money. I paid off my mortgage and car loan, and still had something left for a modest retirement, though when I got ill and had a hospital stay in 2010, it took a big chunk of it, but not all. Living costs are quite low here, I'm not retired, though I keep my schedule light, and I get a dab of Social Security. I tune for almost all the concerts in my area, but there are a manageable number. I can afford to take my time and to do everything the way I'd like it to be done. The OSU hall is only ten minutes from my house, and they offer me lots of time for working on the piano. The acoustics are clear, the people are nice to work with, the audience is very quiet, attentive, and numerous enough, and Rachelle (my boss) brings superb pianists. Not that big a concert series, but every one is memorable. And life is good.
So, checking the piano at intermission is easy. I'm there, I just have a few steps up onto the stage. Everyone is used to seeing me doing it, and I imagine many probably think it's standard practice, instead of being totally rare. It only takes a few minutes; sometimes I've come up, tested everything, and not had to touch a note. A few times I've worked flat out for the whole time available, and someone says, "are you about done?" and I always say "YES." I can stop whenever I choose on the rare occasions when someone has really messed with the tuning, because I always correct the worst notes first. Generally, there isn't all that much to do. It's easy for me, and the pianists love it -- so why not? The piano already sounds good -- why shouldn't it sound as good as possible? And, once again coming back to the basic idea: I'm dealing with what the notes actually did, not what I imagined they might do. If a piano goes only a tiny bit out of tune for only a few notes, they can be improved quickly. So that's what I do.
Regards,
------------------------------
Susan Kline
Philomath, Oregon
------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 06-05-2017 10:34
From: Mark Davis
Subject: Building a Temperament
Hello Susan
Thank you for all that you have written on this thread. Very informative! The piano in the youtube link sounds good and solid.
If I may ask you a couple of questions,
1. For the piano in the video, what hammer technique did you use?
2. Please can you expand on tuning a piano with multiple passes?
Thank you.
------------------------------
Mark Davis
Piano Tuner/Technician
www.pianotuning.co.za
------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 06-02-2017 22:49
From: Susan Kline
Subject: Building a Temperament
Patrick, thank you. I love the quote about aural tuning being part science and part flower arranging! That's a keeper.
If one is tuning a spinet with a very poor scaling, for instance a spinet where part of the temperament octave is wound strings, or where the break is really problematic, it's possible to expand the stacked thirds beyond the temperament octave, taking them downward to try to make some sense of it all. First set the three thirds dividing the temperament octave, then go down: F3 down to Db3, C#3 down to A2, etc. One seldom needs to, but it's at least something to try when having a hard time.
As for my habit of checking fifths and fourths below each new treble note all the way to the top, I think of it as a way to keep the temperament from drifting because of small but repeated errors as one goes up. Making sure that both fourths and fifths are acceptable at all times (fifths a trace more than fourths) will weave any small mistakes in the temperament octave back into the fabric of the tuning.
I agree that Benjamin will make much faster progress if he can get access to a decent grand, or even an old very big and well-designed upright. Still, he can learn on lesser pianos, and certainly almost all of us will spend a lot of time tuning them. There's just a certain strain in trying to get them to do what they are not really able to do. So long as the time spent attempting the impossible doesn't get totally out of hand, the struggle can still be a learning experience. I've spent many an hour trying to clean up middle treble unisons on poor pianos with lots of false beats. I think it did pay dividends when I got to better grands. I remember that back when I first started tuning I'd be sweating over some notes in the fifth octave of a crate, and I'd fret to myself, "but I can't leave it sounding like this!!" when it had become apparent some time before that I was going to have to. I started consoling myself by muttering, "well, they are used to it sounding even worse."
If Benjamin could find a friendly music department of fairly small size, and start doing a lot of frequent tuning on the practice and studio grands, even at a fairly deep discount, that might give him both the access and the volume he could use to get his aural tuning very serviceable and comfortable. Like you say about starting a temperament over again instead of sweating the details of it -- just doing everything quickly over and over again yields better results than slowly sweating through a tuning much less frequently, trying to make it perfect. I like fast multiple passes, some of the later ones just looking for strays or taking care of minor voicing. I seem to get results that way which are better, but which don't take more time in total. This reminds me of something I have thought of saying about concert stability for awhile.
OSU isn't a huge department. Most of the concert tuning is done on one pleasing Steinway D, in a good hall. This one, I finally have some of my work on YouTube! (along with a very earnest plea for ecology, which somehow seems very appropriate this week.) It's also appropriate to give people a chance to see whether I'm blowing smoke when I write about tuning -- it's not something I can judge, everyone would have to decide for themselves. -- and I can hear one thing I didn't do well in this recording, never mind ....
A Call to Life: Variations on a Theme of Extinction: Kathleen Dean Moore and Rachelle McCabe,
We look after this piano carefully. Most of the time the unisons are very stable and I need barely move the tuning pins to polish everything. Only every now and then I'm tuning a rental for a concert, and it is not stable, so I'm beating on notes and really moving pins to try to get everything to stay put. I like multiple passes. I tune a note, beat on it, go on to other notes, and then come back and check to see what happened to the one I just beat up. I don't feel safe with a unison, especially in the middle treble, till it has been given a chance to drift and ends up so close that I can make my last move on it very tiny. It's one thing to have the theory that a beat up note is now stable, and another to give it a chance to go out and see what it actually does. In a pitch raise with a carefully chosen over-pull, one may end up pretty close pretty quickly, but there is really no substitute for seeing what the notes actually have done, which multiple passes and short but frequent visits to check a tuning can provide. If I can check the tuning after an artist has practiced, I feel that he or she will have left a perfect pattern of what the performance is likely to do, so I can focus my attention where it is best spent. I live ten minutes from the hall and have a permanent parking permit for the loading dock area -- what a luxury!
Well, as usual, I've probably said too much ...
------------------------------
Susan Kline
Philomath, Oregon
------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 06-02-2017 19:56
From: Patrick Wingren
Subject: Building a Temperament
Hi Benjamin,
This is good advice from Peter and Paul ( no Mary has joined the discussion yet :) )
If you go for the F3-F4 temperament octave, the larger the instrument (ie the farther away F3 is from the break), the easier it will be to get a fair chance at building something out of preference, not compromise.
Susan's post is very helpful - thank you for putting in so much effort time and time again, Susan, it is much appreciated!
Since you wrote that your strengths were hearing beating fifths and identifying equal-beating intervals, a good idea might be build the F3-A3-C#4-F4 M3's so widely used and advocated, and then - following that:
- tune F#3 and E4 as pure 5ths at the 6:4 partial match:
- F#3 from C#4, should be equal-beating using A2 as a test note, and
- E4 from A3 should be equal-beating using C3 as a test note.
You can adjust the test notes to whatever beat speed you feel comfortable with. [EDIT: as long as the M6ths and M10ths are wide of pure]
- then, tune B3 until the beat speeds between F#3-B3 and B3-E4 are the same ( = until those two 4ths are equal-beating). This will give you a B3 that is surprisingly "close to the truth".
- Following this, tune G3 so G3-B3 is faster than F3-A3 and slower than A3-C#4, there should be a smooth acceleration between the three 3rds upwards. Then do the same with B3-D#4; faster than A3-C#3, slower than C#4-F4. Now you should have a smooth acceleration of 3rds up through the whole-tone scale. (F3-A3, G3-B3, A3-C#4, B3-D#4, C#4-F4). To make it as smooth as possible, adjust G3 and D#4 as needed.
- Then, fill in the missing notes by listening to their 4ths and 5ths, which are already tuned. Make the 4th sound a bit busier than the 5th. That is, F#3-C#4 a bit calmer than F#3-B3, G#3-D#4 a bit calmer than G#3-C#4, and so on. Inharmonicity makes the 4ths beat close to the same speed in the temperament range, so you can use equal-beating 4ths for A#3 (F3-A3-D#4) if you wish.
Then, finally check all fourth and fifths in the temperament range, go for busier fourths and fifths, and don't consider any notes "sacred". This is a homage to Kent Swafford's "Every Which Way" temperament. If you end up with a mess, start over. This is not sarcasm, its a pragmatic and liberating advice. I spent too much time in the beginning trying to build the perfect temperament, fretting over every note.
The anchored B3 is, I think, Jim Coleman Sr's idea. Interpolating using pure 5ths are also used by Bill Bremmer (ET via Marpurg). It is accidentally also how I learned to tune myself, without knowing that others had presented the idea. In fact, I was embarrassed to bring forth my "homemade theory" until I saw that others used it, too :)
Jack Stebbins "Let the piano tell you" approach uses the fact that it's easier to hear the slower beat rates in the C#3-C#4 octave, the temperament octave that Jack uses himself. But again, this is much easier to appreciate on a taller instrument.
If nothing in this feels right to you, don't hesitate to build your own method, grabbing pieces of advice and coming up with your own ideas.
Finally, sometimes we put considerate effort into the temperament and then treat the area above and below with another approach. This is of course not the case, the whole piano is the final and ultimate temperament, along Susan's reasoning earlier. Irregularities in the temperament octave, even small ones, will show up if you listen to the 4ths, 5ths and the octave as you are expanding the range downwards and upwards! I never hesitate to go back to those irregularities and move things around if need arises.
[Aural] tuning is part science, part flower decoration (a quote I love). That's one of the reasons I prefer tuning aurally to tuning using an ETD. Sometimes if the bass/tenor break plays games with me (on shorter instruments), I build something new around that problematic area and expand from there.
If you get the chance to tune a large high-quality grand, grab it immediately! Everything is so much easier on those.
------------------------------
Patrick Wingren, RPT
Jakobstad, Finland
0035844-5288048
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Original Message:
Sent: 05-29-2017 07:23
From: Paul Williams
Subject: Building a Temperament
When I was mentoring with Steve Brady at Univ of WA, I had access to all the practice grands to,...well...practice. Gave me a nice variety of brands and ages of grands. At home, I had an Aldrich console with an aluminum plate! I figured if I could tune that, I could tune anything!
If there is a college near you that has a music program, you might ask if you could practice in a practice room. Especially over the summer, access could be very easy.
Paul
------------------------------
Paul T. Williams RPT
Director of Piano Services
School of Music
813 Assembly St
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208
pwilliams@mozart.sc.edu
------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 05-28-2017 21:46
From: Peter Grey
Subject: Building a Temperament
Ok, well that sort of makes it tough because you need to be able hear what "ideal" sounds like before you can duplicate it. Sorry to say that ain't gonna happen on an Acrosonic spinet.
I don't know quite how to guide you unless you can spend some time on a decent brand or big upright.
Any other suggestions from anyone?
Pwg
------------------------------
Peter Grey
Stratham NH
603-686-2395
pianodoctor57@gmail.com
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Original Message:
Sent: 05-28-2017 21:24
From: Benjamin Sanchez
Subject: Building a Temperament
An acrosonic spinet. I know, not the best, but after the restoration process is complete it will be a lot better. I currently have three pianos in my home, a Baldwin console, a half restored old upright (a long story), and the acrosonic. Occasionally I also have a baby grand to practice on.
------------------------------
Benjamin Sanchez
Professional Piano Services
(805)315-8050
www.professional-piano-services.com
BenPianoPro@comcast.net
------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 05-28-2017 19:21
From: Peter Grey
Subject: Building a Temperament
Benjamin,
What kind of piano do you have available to practice aural tuning on? A good one, or a mediocre one?
Pwg
------------------------------
Peter Grey
Stratham NH
603-686-2395
pianodoctor57@gmail.com
------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 05-28-2017 07:46
From: Benjamin Sloane
Subject: Building a Temperament
Sad to admit Rosenthal,
All you'll get from the majority of Steinway C&A guys today is the infamous Allen Iverson speech:
Iverson Practice!
| YouTube |
remove preview |
|
| Iverson Practice! |
| Allen Iverson says practive 20 times in a press conference. One for the ages. |
| View this on YouTube > |
|
|
Why I quit the academy. I think the Technical Guide should be changed to reflect the Iverson attitude personally, about tuning, and then, we will understand why the piano industry is a buyers market today much better...
------------------------------
Benjamin Sloane
Cincinnati OH
513-257-8480
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Original Message:
Sent: 05-28-2017 05:49
From: Steven Rosenthal
Subject: Building a Temperament
Oh Benjamin, I hope you're not sorry you asked the question. I know it took me years to digest a lot of the theory of acoustic phenomena. Note the advice above represents probably over 700 years of practice, there's a boggling amount of experience on this forum.
It's great that you want to cultivate your ear, I think that the use of ETD's are generally a disincentive to mastering aural tuning and that's a truly unfortunate byproduct of the technology. I find aural tuning to be deeply satisfying, using my ETD, not so much. If you spend 5 or 10 minutes on every piano practicing without the ETD I'm sure you'll make quick progress.
Pretty much every aspect of piano design is ultimately in service to the tonal spectrum (that we define in the tuning process), tuning offers insights into the action, scaling, soundboard, etc. as an integrated system; your tuning is the last, most transient layer of that system.
Tuning, as is music of course, is a sensory experience and as I think Susan indicates, at some point one learns how these different intervals and relationships feel. The numbers and ratios are checks to help us keep our bearings but ultimately we rely on our senses.
Something I've come to appreciate recently is how much musical instrument building is a long series of compromises, one can't get around that but you can exercise control and creative intent by prioritizing those compromises. Certainly the tempered scale and navigating the inharmonicity of the piano is an example of this truth.
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Steven Rosenthal
Honolulu HI
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Original Message:
Sent: 05-27-2017 22:51
From: Susan Kline
Subject: Building a Temperament
I never used mnemonic one-potato-two-potato kinds of tricks to remember the F-A rate. I just remember the rate. If I were to guess it wrong the stacked thirds dividing F3-F4 wouldn't work well -- besides, some pianos don't want quite the same rate as others.
I like simplicity. I don't like fiddling around working out coincident partials, either. Sure, the data is there, and the machines make it easy to access -- but is it useful? If partials coincide or don't coincide, I'll hear it in the whole sound. Each piano has a different profile as to which partials sound more prominent -- I'll hear that in the whole sound, too, without having to make allowances for it. Virgil Smith took this much further than I have. The one seminar I got to hear him do, he had curls in all the unisons, but he got a very musical result -- and a differently musical result than conventional tuners. Too bad I heard that only once, and didn't get to play and listen to the piano after he was done.
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Susan Kline
Philomath, Oregon
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Original Message:
Sent: 05-27-2017 15:54
From: Geoff Sykes
Subject: Building a Temperament
The theme song for Final Jeopardy works well for me.
A disco music producer once explained to me that the heartbeat rate relates quite closely to the frequency at which the mass of an average human body can comfortably bounce up and down in synchronous rhythm with gravity. In other words, to dance at the natural fundamental 1st partial frequency of your bouncing body requires a lot less energy when the tempo of the music is in unison with your body's natural 1st partial bounce frequency. That frequency just happens to be very close to a normal heartbeat. Slower and faster tempo's require more energy for the dancer to maintain.
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Geoff Sykes, RPT
Los Angeles CA
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Original Message:
Sent: 05-27-2017 08:45
From: Peter Grey
Subject: Building a Temperament
Benjamin,
Susan's dissertation is outstanding. The sequence she described is also essentially what I do regularly. Here though, is a little tidbit recently picked up from the PTG journal:
7 beats per second happens to be the same speed as the Bee Fees song "Stayin' Alive". Very handy reference to have. My memory wants to "play" it faster than it was originally (when I youtubed it I found it a little slower than I thought). So...I consciously slow it down slightly less than my memory serves, and it's perfect! (Turns out that they determined the meter of the song to closely match the average human heartbeat).
Also, it turns out that, if you get that F3-A3 third exactly where the piano wants it, everything else will work out correctly.
Practice makes almost perfect!
Pwg
------------------------------
Peter Grey
Stratham NH
603-686-2395
pianodoctor57@gmail.com
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Original Message:
Sent: 05-27-2017 02:18
From: Horace Greeley
Subject: Building a Temperament
Hi, Geoff, Benjamin,
Hoping that the system does not totally mangle (or make otherwise
unavailable) these two attachments:
- Kent's excellent paper on Temperament; and,
- Wm. Braid White's classic: "Modern Piano Tuning and Allied Arts".
I'm not sure how I got a copy of Kent's work, but here is a PDF of same.
I've checked the links; and, while most of them seem to still work,
apparently Kent's site is no longer running...very much too bad, he has
published some really wonderful articles over the years.
Scribd is a membership based site. There's more there than one can
easily read in a single lifetime; but, it's great fun to poke around on.
While I've played with various ETDs off and on for decades, I'm still a
dinosaur, and prefer Wm. Braid White's instructions in Chapters 4 and 5
of the attached PDF of his Modern Piano Tuning and Allied Arts. I come
by the prejudice naturally as I worked with one of Braid White's
students for a number of years.
Another good source for learning more is the document published as
Steinway's World-Wide Technical Reference Guide, the section entitled:
Tuning and Voicing. I say a good start because, in the 2007 version
that I have, it includes stuff from both Hamburg and NY in ways which do
not (to my eye) always clearly differentiate between the differences in
production; and, the nuances between the two instruments. Further, I've
run into a number of otherwise very competent technicians who have
inadvertently become confused when trying to learn from it. (Yes, my
Hofsammer Mk7 flame suit is on and fully zipped.)
I hope that this is of some help.
Kind regards.
Horace
On 5/26/2017 6:45 PM, Geoff Sykes via Piano Technicians Guild wrote:
> Please do not forward this message due to Auto Login.
>
> There must be dozens of temperament sequences out there. Um... Why are you trying to create a new one?
>
> Any, and every, temperament sequence will get you to about the same place. Close. And that's all it's supposed to do. The trick in selecting a temperament sequence is to try many and settle on one that works for you. Is it easy to remember? Does it make logical sense to you?
>
> There's no such thing as a one pass temperament sequence. The skill comes in refining that temperament so you can then spread it out over the rest of the piano. ANY temperament sequence that you identify with will get you to that refinement point. The hard part is finding the right one. (Wink-wink: Creating your own is even harder.)
>
> The one that works for me is called "Every Which Way" and was developed by Kent Swafford, RPT. Don't know why Kent has allowed it to become hard to find. None of the links in the following page work any more. Even the ones back to his own site. Pity. It's brilliant!
>
> https://www.scribd.com/doc/2424528/Every-Which-Way-Temperament-Swafford
>
> When I started learning to tune, the biggest obstacle for me was finding a temperament sequence that I could identify with. Kent's sequence was my answer. I passed my tuning exam with it. I still use it when I stupidly walk out of the house without my ETD. It's easy to remember. It's absolutely logical. For me, it was, and remains, the answer.
>
> ------------------------------
> Geoff Sykes, RPT
> Los Angeles CA
> ------------------------------
> -------------------------------------------
> Original Message:
> Sent: 05-25-2017 22:14
> From: Benjamin Sanchez
> Subject: Building a Temperament
>
> Hello all,
>
> I am trying to improve my aural skills, and thought it might be helpful to build my own temperament sequence. How would I go about doing that? Thanks
>
> ------------------------------
> Benjamin Sanchez
> Professional Piano Services
> (805)315-8050
> www.professional-piano-services.com
> BenPianoPro@comcast.net
> ------------------------------
>
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