Pianotech

Back to discussions
Expand all | Collapse all

Clair de Lune, Yamaha C5 in modified Kirnberger III

  • 1.  Clair de Lune, Yamaha C5 in modified Kirnberger III

    Registered Piano Technician
    Posted 09-28-2024 20:33

    Hello,

    I've been studying and tweaking unequal temperaments for a little over a year now. I just presented a technical to my chapter on the subject (no one fell asleep!), and thought I'd share a recording I made from my iPhone yesterday. Clair de Lune is in Db major, which key has Pythagorean thirds in its tonic (Db), subdominant (Gb) and dominant (Ab) chords (each major third in these keys is 21.51 cents wide). By most counts, it should be the worst key in Kirnberger III. 

    David Pinnegar has been very generous to share his methods with me, and I've also developed a number of my own tweaks to the method.

    https://youtu.be/CkaPGI8NrWU?si=Ml-2ve9wkNA7A4AJ

    Thoughts?



    ------------------------------
    Tim Foster RPT
    New Oxford PA
    (470) 231-6074
    ------------------------------


  • 2.  RE: Clair de Lune, Yamaha C5 in modified Kirnberger III

    Registered Piano Technician
    Posted 09-29-2024 15:05
    Hi Tim, 

    Nice experiment. I do enjoy unequal temperaments in general, this use of Kimberger III is a little too fast beating to my personal taste and so I would not choose it.

    Keep bringing them on!

    Regards,



    Nicolas Lessard, RPT
    D.E.S.S., Art.Dip.Mus.
    cell 514 574-3308
       





  • 3.  RE: Clair de Lune, Yamaha C5 in modified Kirnberger III

    Registered Piano Technician
    Posted 09-29-2024 18:59

    Thanks for the feedback! What’s you’re favorite unequal temperament?



    ------------------------------
    Tim Foster RPT
    New Oxford PA
    (470) 231-6074
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


  • 4.  RE: Clair de Lune, Yamaha C5 in modified Kirnberger III

    Registered Piano Technician
    Posted 09-29-2024 19:57

    Tim,


    I do like and use Bill Bremmrr's EBVT III. but I also just developed my own, that I would humbly like to share, it goes like this: 

    A# +1

    B -2l

    C +

    C# -1

    D +2

    D# 0

    E -2

    F +2

    F# -2

    G +2

    G # 0


    One of the interests of this temperament is to get purer, slower beating thirds in major keys of  C, D and G, somewhat purer thirds than ET in F, B flat and A major. The rest, the "bad" thirds are only 2 or 3 cents wider than in ET. Please consider it a work in progress. 

    Everything in this temperament is close enough to be able to switch back and forth to ET if needed without too much work and disturbance on string tension. 


    Would you be willing to try it and share your impressions on it?


    Cheers,







    Original Message


  • 5.  RE: Clair de Lune, Yamaha C5 in modified Kirnberger III

    Posted 09-30-2024 08:25
    Kellner well executed is guaranteed to make an instrument sound nice.

    Kirnberger III gives clarity and a definition that brings through the nature of the music.

    The trouble with the tuner technician world is that the focus of Equal Temperament is beats and beats are beaten into the psyche. The result is that technical people listen to the beats but not so much the music. Since cross stringing of pianos the piano world has been divorced from the fundamentals of vibration and of the intended effect of the music.

    Last weekend at Hammerwood Park we used the 1802 Stodart tuned to meantone deliberately in F minor. The audience were overwhelmed and the pianist much inspired.

    Tim's explorations are golden.

    Best wishes

    DavidP

    --
    - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
    David Pinnegar, B.Sc., A.R.C.S.
    - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
    +44 1342 850594



    Original Message


  • 6.  RE: Clair de Lune, Yamaha C5 in modified Kirnberger III

    Registered Piano Technician
    Posted 09-30-2024 09:30

    Nicholas,

    Being a strong proponent of EBVT myself, I will gladly give your temperament scheme a try on my personal Chickering 121.

    The last time I tuned it in EBVT I slowed the specified 5 bps 3rds down to about 4bps and the result (to my ear) "resembled" what I heard in the Kellner. I am always interested in well thought out alternatives to ET (although P12, carefully done, does seem to have a masking effect on RBI's to some degree). However I agree that there is a resonance improvement with UT's. 

    I'll let you know what I think of your WIP.

    Edit: Is that a minor misprint on the B offset? 

    Peter Grey Piano Doctor 



    ------------------------------
    Peter Grey
    Stratham NH
    (603) 686-2395
    pianodoctor57@gmail.com
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


  • 7.  RE: Clair de Lune, Yamaha C5 in modified Kirnberger III

    Posted 09-30-2024 23:24

    Ok, let's get musically serious now! Go play some Bartok or more radically play some Schoenberg and tell me what you get with UT. Let's roll back even more and play the Chopin Op. 60 in F# Major and tune your UT to root C. Yikes (!) to all of the above. 



    ------------------------------
    Steven Norsworthy
    CEO/President
    RF2BITS, Inc.
    Cardiff CA
    619-964-0101
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


  • 8.  RE: Clair de Lune, Yamaha C5 in modified Kirnberger III

    Posted 10-03-2024 12:18
    Steven - there is nothing that cannot be played in Kellner temperament.

    As requested here's Schoenberg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wiu68b85N1Y

    And here's the Chopin Barcarolle in F# Major https://youtu.be/AHAZjcPmtrs?t=715

    And Liszt in F# major and minor https://youtu.be/aIVUyu7v48U?t=1914 and Rachmaninoff in Bb minor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH1dhrPGHoI both in Kirnberger III

    Best wishes

    David P

    --
    - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
    David Pinnegar, B.Sc., A.R.C.S.
    - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
    +44 1342 850594



    Original Message


  • 9.  RE: Clair de Lune, Yamaha C5 in modified Kirnberger III

    Registered Piano Technician
    Posted 10-03-2024 19:01

    David, your Schoenberg link was actually to Schumann.

    I checked your youtube profile and found the Schoenberg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvrGV58ZsAU



    ------------------------------
    Adam Schulte-Bukowinski, RPT
    Great Plains Piano Company
    www.greatplainspiano.com
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


  • 10.  RE: Clair de Lune, Yamaha C5 in modified Kirnberger III

    Posted 10-03-2024 22:08

    I try not to criticize others for their tuning preferences. I'm on the same page as Bernhard Stopper about the Pure 12th tuning system. The pure sound of the consonant intervals from this system is very noticeable, and I am yet to find any piece of music from any period that is not aesthetically pleasing from this technique. There is a connection between the elegance of the math and the aesthetic results, as there should be. The fact that the 5ths and octaves are inversely balanced allows a type of 'cancellation' of beats of these intervals when played together. I appreciate that aural tuners use 3rds, 10ths, as aural checks for chromatically increasing beat rates. This is not really needed in Pure 12th tuning as long as the piano is a good scale design. Also, the music literature has as much minor 3rds as major 3rds. I personally conclude that UT does not make sense in 'tonal' music after 1850, or certainly not in the more chromatic non-tonal music that followed and into the 20th Century.

    I produced a short YouTube demonstration of an aural check I do after tuning my Fazioli with the Pure 12th curve. My piano is an ideal candidate for Pure 12th because I analyzed that it has a nearly flat curve of the 3:1 and 6:2 across the entire piano, which means that all the coincident partials related are in line with each other. The IH of my piano is also very consistent and very low. There is hardly any stretch needed on it. The bass A0 stretch is -10c and the C8 is +33c. That's remarkable.

    Here is my aural check after tuning:

    https://youtu.be/_QiC8pjkqZE

    Best regards,

    Steve N.



    ------------------------------
    Steven Norsworthy
    CEO/President
    RF2BITS, Inc.
    Cardiff CA
    619-964-0101
    steven@rf2bits.com
    http://RF2BITS.com
    http://PianoSens.com

    Original Message


  • 11.  RE: Clair de Lune, Yamaha C5 in modified Kirnberger III

    Posted 10-04-2024 06:12
    Adam - thanks so much - you're a star. There is so much interest in unequal temperament that there are too many tabs open on my computer and sometimes I get the wrong one.

    Unequal temperament isn't a matter of preferences - it's about what the music is saying. The performer playing the Liszt the other day https://youtu.be/aIVUyu7v48U?t=1912 became totally inspired recognising the resonances of harmonics that Liszt is playing with in that piece and said that the tuning opened up a dimension which her teacher had told her about. Apparently Liszt was often encapturing the spirit of the Cimbalom but her teacher said it was impossible on the modern piano. But when tuned appropriately Johanna found it possible.

    Music isn't about how we, with conditioned ears, think we like to hear things but about what the music is communicating. Sometimes the music isn't nice and it's not meant to be. This was the point of performing Mozart's masonic sonata in that concert https://youtu.be/aIVUyu7v48U?t=1329 on the 1802 instrument in meantone. In F minor it's not meant to sound nice. It's meant to express all the emotions that you'd experience being buried alive in the grave - anger, frustration, regret, resignation - effectively visiting hell - and in that tuning on that instrument perhaps one can catch a glimpse. Transferred onto the more modern instrument in Kirnberger III https://youtu.be/aIVUyu7v48U?t=3079 it's not quite as unpleasant as it should be without the spice of Meantone.

    Whilst an instrument as Tim Foster is now tuning has its resonance and harmony improved, sounding nice, smooth and sour too, tuning isn't wholly about tuning for the instrument to sound nice - it's about tuning for the music to express. That expression is not only in loud and soft and fast and slow but in the vibrations themselves as to whether they coincide smoothly or sharply, sweetly or sourly.

    One should remember that as A flat major was the key of putrefaction and death, one should be able to experience it, to smell it. If we can't, then our tuning is wrong. Of course that's extreme deriving from Schubart's 1806 catalogue of keys but nevertheless, diluted, the nuances of variation given by choice of key remained and persisted and right through to Liszt and beyond. Why else would choose the F# major minor pair to transport us between hell and heaven?

    The comment about Liszt and the cimbalom puts paid to the notion that only equal temperament is suitable for 19th century music. Twisting the ear was part of its communication.

    Best wishes

    David P

    --
    - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
    David Pinnegar, B.Sc., A.R.C.S.
    - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
    +44 1342 850594



    Original Message