Pianotech

Good point. I'm thinking not, but I'm not really asking which is better. I'm asking why one would want to capture a millisecond of an attack with an ETD freeze frame and use that to tune. I don't understand it and am interested in figuring out why that would have an advantage. Even if I don't agree with it, I'd like to understand it. 

If you are "LISTENING" closer to the attack, that's still not the freeze frame thing ETD's are trying to capture. ...unless I'm wrong about that which would help to explain my confusion. 

Thanks for the thoughts. Good things to keep in mind. I'd still like to understand the rationale. *shrug*

Good point. I'm thinking not, but I'm not really asking which is better. I'm asking why one would want to capture a millisecond of an attack with an ETD freeze frame and use that to tune. I don't understand it and am interested in figuring out why that would have an advantage. Even if I don't agree with it, I'd like to understand it. 

If you are "LISTENING" closer to the attack, that's still not the freeze frame thing ETD's are trying to capture. ...unless I'm wrong about that which would help to explain my confusion. 

Thanks for the thoughts. Good things to keep in mind. I'd still like to understand the rationale. *shrug*

I think the attack technique is mainly helpful for the very highest notes that don't have much, or any sustain. At least that's been my impression and experience. I have PianoScope and have used the "Freeze" setting. I found it interesting information to have, but not necessarily where I want to set the note. For the main part of the piano, I think it can be a little confusing or even unhelpful. 

------------------------------
"That Tuning Guy"
Scott Kerns
Lincoln, Nebraska
www.thattuningguy.com
------------------------------

By the way, if you want to try out PianoScope and the Freeze function (assuming you use Apple), there's a fully functional free trial version for two weeks. After that there are options to purchase it or subscribe monthly or yearly.

I think the attack technique is mainly helpful for the very highest notes that don't have much, or any sustain. At least that's been my impression and experience. I have PianoScope and have used the "Freeze" setting. I found it interesting information to have, but not necessarily where I want to set the note. For the main part of the piano, I think it can be a little confusing or even unhelpful. 

------------------------------
"That Tuning Guy"
Scott Kerns
Lincoln, Nebraska
www.thattuningguy.com

Hi David,

You're absolutely right that a digital pitch meter is never going to be AS fast as a purely analog one.  But some types of digital display really are quite snappy -- ex. the phase display in TuneLab updates at 20hz, and as far as I know the readout is pretty much instantaneous (i.e. it doesn't have to buffer samples for longer than that before giving you a visual response).  So you're looking at something like 50-100ms of delay, which is to me quite usable for realtime feedback on our tuning motions.

Hi David,

You're absolutely right that a digital pitch meter is never going to be AS fast as a purely analog one.  But some types of digital display really are quite snappy -- ex. the phase display in TuneLab updates at 20hz, and as far as I know the readout is pretty much instantaneous (i.e. it doesn't have to buffer samples for longer than that before giving you a visual response).  So you're looking at something like 50-100ms of delay, which is to me quite usable for realtime feedback on our tuning motions.

Hi David,

You're absolutely right that a digital pitch meter is never going to be AS fast as a purely analog one.  But some types of digital display really are quite snappy -- ex. the phase display in TuneLab updates at 20hz, and as far as I know the readout is pretty much instantaneous (i.e. it doesn't have to buffer samples for longer than that before giving you a visual response).  So you're looking at something like 50-100ms of delay, which is to me quite usable for realtime feedback on our tuning motions.

Hi Maggie:

Interesting question, and some very good responses.  We all know that the pitch of the string is going to be a little higher when first struck.  After about a second, it settles and the pitch goes flatter.  So, where we put emphasis, during the attack or the sustain, is the question.  There is a natural convergence of pitch among strings.  If they aren't quite perfect, they will tend to come together, like so many metronomes that tend to do the same thing.  It is true that if the attack is in perfect unison, the power is at its peak.  It will sound louder, and "crisp".  You can use this when you find a note that is too strident, detune the strings a little, and that strong attack will be somewhat mitigated. 

There is some argument that music is not played holding notes for a long time, but piano music is played with many fast notes with not much sustain in between.  That would bolster the argument that pure unisons tuned to the "attack" would be more effective, and also project the sound better in a large venue.

As far as the "freeze" feature, which is in fact tuning to the attack, measuring this interval of less than 1 second accurately has really not been possible before, especially in apps that are older that don't use FFT's and even then most can't do it very well.  Our devices have processing power that was not available before, so it is only recently that they have allowed us to calculate this accurately.  The reason the freeze feature was invented was the fact that we can't calculate with our imperfect senses exactly where the pitch is during this time, consistently.  There has to be a timer to limit the time window (freeze frame).  The phenomenon is too short to wrap our heads around.  But with our digital devices it is possible.  All of the information, ie., pitch of each partial, is available during this time.  In Pianoscope, the first 100ms (.1 sec) is ignored.  The timer then counts down while it measures all these pitches, then stops and displays the freeze line.  There is no need to wait while things settle.  Of course there is a slight delay while the calculation is made and then displayed.  This is annoying to those of us who are used to an immediate display.  I liked the Accutuner for this reason, and many have expressed this argument against ETD's. 

Strings do not always decay in pitch at the same rate, so capturing the pitch is done better during this attack phase than later.  It also means that the pitch is going to be falling over the next seconds, which may be audible as beats start to appear as each string decays differently.  It also means that if you tune to the decay that the attack second is going to be sharp, and then settle down. 

Of course, during the attack the blow force will affect the reading of the freeze line.  A hard blow will make the indicator show sharper.  I use sharp blows to settle the string, then play the test blow softly, and as consistently as possible.  Playing to a hard blow will of course make your tuning flatter, since you'd have to adjust it down.  Then your soft blows would indicate flat.  Personally (if you're familiar with Pianoscope) I like to see the freeze line just a little sharp (.1 to .2 cents) and watch the red line settle immediately to zero.  As long as you use the same technique on each string, you should be good and the unisons should be very pure.  I wish I had a device I could use that would give a consistent blow, adjustable of course.  That would help make the freeze more accurate.  I like to see the freeze line end up inside the "0" of the display.  It's easier to see this than to read the actual cents on the display. 

When you have strings with false beats or mismatched wound strings, you just have to find one that is steadier and tune the others by ear.  A prominent beat can't be tuned out, but averaging the partials seems to be the best way to get around it. 

All,

"Where have all the pianists and composers gone? They instinctively knew the answer all these hundreds of years!"

We have not had the tools until now to fix a window of time in the first second from the attack and measure the partial frequencies averaged over that window of time. Now we do. Prior aural 'talent' cannot do this consistently. Analog signal processing tools cannot either. Now let's discuss the music and physics which coincide with the composers who knew all along.

The piano literature and piano physics unambiguously coincide and tell us the answer. The power is in the attack, and the composers knew that. Take a Chopin melodic line and you will find a slow passage has a quarter note = 48-60 range, so we get about one note per second. Isn't that interesting, because the piano decays 20 dB / sec in the middle register. 20 dB = 10x in amplitude. So after the attack we have lost 10x. In the last octave we see a 20 dB decay in 300 msec, and for low register, the 20 dB decay is about 2 sec. This is why I initially 'conceived' of the Freeze Frame concept for tuning. There is yet another physical aspect that the piano is an ever-moving target of partial frequency movement. I previously published this with graphs. Some partials will decay at least another 2-5 cents after the first second from the attack. Tuning to these is tantamount to tuning to a very weak amplitude that is now down another 20 dB or 10x so that would be tuning to something that is not even in the music that is so weak that it would cause a severe mistuning in the attack phase of the first second. Now for a funny rhetorical question, where is that piece of piano music that has one note held down for 3 seconds by itself without the sustain pedal, and the tuner says, "Oh what a beautiful piece of music that was!" Someone challenged me when I said that and showed me a Chopin prelude with a note that was a couple secs long in a melody all by itself but I pointed out that the sustain pedal is down throughout that passage. Oops!

Now if the piano partials held to their same frequencies during the decay, we have no argument and this thread is irrelevant. It isn't because the partials are also decaying significantly and at different rates, and the next neighboring half step has a different character as we see in careful spectral analysis, and we can hear that, of course.

If anyone wants me to re-post the sustain graphs of partial spread, I can do that. It is so revealing that it makes one wonder why all these years we have been tuning to a sustain that is not pianistic and fights the very laws of physics that the great composers intuitively already understood. 

Best regards,

Steve

------------------------------
Steven Norsworthy
Cardiff By The Sea CA
(619) 964-0101
------------------------------

As an addendum to the comments I made yesterday. 

I paid attention to my process while tuning one grand and one upright today, both having sections 5-10 cents away from the target. I observed that I spend 75 or 80% of my time getting close to the target's pitch and getting the pin and non speaking segments balanced and the remainder settling the system at pitch. The proportions might differ for an aural tuner. But the majority of my time and energy goes to the mechanical aspects of the system compared to the final setting of the pitch.

I do use sustained tones during the set-up period, it would be counterproductive to use a series of short blows as that would interrupt the process of moving the pitch several cents, pin setting... in other words stabilizing. I did overstate yesterday that it is only the feel of the lever that informs this process, clearly it is one of ear/hand coordination. Then, when actually setting the pitch I noticed I'm still playing relatively longer tones though I'm physically making the adjustment towards the beginning but I'm listening for how it settles and then check again for where the pitch is on the attack. And there may be test blows in there if needed.

While I do like the concept of tuning each string at the same point in the envelope, I think Steve N's assertion that there's no musical reason to play sustained tones is a bit of red herring in that whether or not there's a "musical" reason, there are certainly mechanical reasons to employ long tones in the process of tuning a string that will stay where you want it. Certainly if the tuning involves moving the pin in the block which is the case more often than not.

Sorry for all the verbiage.

------------------------------
Steven Rosenthal RPT
Honolulu HI
(808) 521-7129
------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 04-02-2024 03:51
From: Steven Norsworthy
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

All,

"Where have all the pianists and composers gone? They instinctively knew the answer all these hundreds of years!"

We have not had the tools until now to fix a window of time in the first second from the attack and measure the partial frequencies averaged over that window of time. Now we do. Prior aural 'talent' cannot do this consistently. Analog signal processing tools cannot either. Now let's discuss the music and physics which coincide with the composers who knew all along.

The piano literature and piano physics unambiguously coincide and tell us the answer. The power is in the attack, and the composers knew that. Take a Chopin melodic line and you will find a slow passage has a quarter note = 48-60 range, so we get about one note per second. Isn't that interesting, because the piano decays 20 dB / sec in the middle register. 20 dB = 10x in amplitude. So after the attack we have lost 10x. In the last octave we see a 20 dB decay in 300 msec, and for low register, the 20 dB decay is about 2 sec. This is why I initially 'conceived' of the Freeze Frame concept for tuning. There is yet another physical aspect that the piano is an ever-moving target of partial frequency movement. I previously published this with graphs. Some partials will decay at least another 2-5 cents after the first second from the attack. Tuning to these is tantamount to tuning to a very weak amplitude that is now down another 20 dB or 10x so that would be tuning to something that is not even in the music that is so weak that it would cause a severe mistuning in the attack phase of the first second. Now for a funny rhetorical question, where is that piece of piano music that has one note held down for 3 seconds by itself without the sustain pedal, and the tuner says, "Oh what a beautiful piece of music that was!" Someone challenged me when I said that and showed me a Chopin prelude with a note that was a couple secs long in a melody all by itself but I pointed out that the sustain pedal is down throughout that passage. Oops!

Now if the piano partials held to their same frequencies during the decay, we have no argument and this thread is irrelevant. It isn't because the partials are also decaying significantly and at different rates, and the next neighboring half step has a different character as we see in careful spectral analysis, and we can hear that, of course.

If anyone wants me to re-post the sustain graphs of partial spread, I can do that. It is so revealing that it makes one wonder why all these years we have been tuning to a sustain that is not pianistic and fights the very laws of physics that the great composers intuitively already understood. 

Best regards,

Steve

------------------------------
Steven Norsworthy
Cardiff By The Sea CA
(619) 964-0101

One aspect of this that I had sort of forgotten about (not really forgotten about but just not actively thinking about it) is the tendency for the entire unison to change pitch (usually flat) upon adding (particularly) the third string into the mix. This is particularly evident now that I'm combining some digital assistants into my work. This of course is one thing that Virgil Smith taught all the time and it got me thinking...

Part of the reason I started intentionally spreading my unisons years ago was to in fact counteract (or help) this phenomenon. By tuning the middle string "slightly" higher than the left (but of course not introducing an audible beat, then tuning the right string similarly, I found that I could often (but not always) get the completed unison to stay put at the target pitch. (Some unisons can be quite stubborn and persistent in this regard).

Anyway, those of you who regularly use the digital assistant, I ask how do you cope with this phenomenon whether you tune on the attack or to the aftersound? It quite obvious with the electronics. 

Peter Grey Piano Doctor 

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


Original Message:
Sent: 04-03-2024 01:21
From: Steven Rosenthal
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

As an addendum to the comments I made yesterday. 

I paid attention to my process while tuning one grand and one upright today, both having sections 5-10 cents away from the target. I observed that I spend 75 or 80% of my time getting close to the target's pitch and getting the pin and non speaking segments balanced and the remainder settling the system at pitch. The proportions might differ for an aural tuner. But the majority of my time and energy goes to the mechanical aspects of the system compared to the final setting of the pitch.

I do use sustained tones during the set-up period, it would be counterproductive to use a series of short blows as that would interrupt the process of moving the pitch several cents, pin setting... in other words stabilizing. I did overstate yesterday that it is only the feel of the lever that informs this process, clearly it is one of ear/hand coordination. Then, when actually setting the pitch I noticed I'm still playing relatively longer tones though I'm physically making the adjustment towards the beginning but I'm listening for how it settles and then check again for where the pitch is on the attack. And there may be test blows in there if needed.

While I do like the concept of tuning each string at the same point in the envelope, I think Steve N's assertion that there's no musical reason to play sustained tones is a bit of red herring in that whether or not there's a "musical" reason, there are certainly mechanical reasons to employ long tones in the process of tuning a string that will stay where you want it. Certainly if the tuning involves moving the pin in the block which is the case more often than not.

Sorry for all the verbiage.

------------------------------
Steven Rosenthal RPT
Honolulu HI
(808) 521-7129
------------------------------

One aspect of this that I had sort of forgotten about (not really forgotten about but just not actively thinking about it) is the tendency for the entire unison to change pitch (usually flat) upon adding (particularly) the third string into the mix. This is particularly evident now that I'm combining some digital assistants into my work. This of course is one thing that Virgil Smith taught all the time and it got me thinking...

Part of the reason I started intentionally spreading my unisons years ago was to in fact counteract (or help) this phenomenon. By tuning the middle string "slightly" higher than the left (but of course not introducing an audible beat, then tuning the right string similarly, I found that I could often (but not always) get the completed unison to stay put at the target pitch. (Some unisons can be quite stubborn and persistent in this regard).

Anyway, those of you who regularly use the digital assistant, I ask how do you cope with this phenomenon whether you tune on the attack or to the aftersound? It quite obvious with the electronics. 

Peter Grey Piano Doctor 

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


Original Message:
Sent: 04-03-2024 01:21
From: Steven Rosenthal
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

As an addendum to the comments I made yesterday. 

I paid attention to my process while tuning one grand and one upright today, both having sections 5-10 cents away from the target. I observed that I spend 75 or 80% of my time getting close to the target's pitch and getting the pin and non speaking segments balanced and the remainder settling the system at pitch. The proportions might differ for an aural tuner. But the majority of my time and energy goes to the mechanical aspects of the system compared to the final setting of the pitch.

I do use sustained tones during the set-up period, it would be counterproductive to use a series of short blows as that would interrupt the process of moving the pitch several cents, pin setting... in other words stabilizing. I did overstate yesterday that it is only the feel of the lever that informs this process, clearly it is one of ear/hand coordination. Then, when actually setting the pitch I noticed I'm still playing relatively longer tones though I'm physically making the adjustment towards the beginning but I'm listening for how it settles and then check again for where the pitch is on the attack. And there may be test blows in there if needed.

While I do like the concept of tuning each string at the same point in the envelope, I think Steve N's assertion that there's no musical reason to play sustained tones is a bit of red herring in that whether or not there's a "musical" reason, there are certainly mechanical reasons to employ long tones in the process of tuning a string that will stay where you want it. Certainly if the tuning involves moving the pin in the block which is the case more often than not.

Sorry for all the verbiage.

------------------------------
Steven Rosenthal RPT
Honolulu HI
(808) 521-7129


Original Message:
Sent: 04-02-2024 03:51
From: Steven Norsworthy
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

All,

"Where have all the pianists and composers gone? They instinctively knew the answer all these hundreds of years!"

We have not had the tools until now to fix a window of time in the first second from the attack and measure the partial frequencies averaged over that window of time. Now we do. Prior aural 'talent' cannot do this consistently. Analog signal processing tools cannot either. Now let's discuss the music and physics which coincide with the composers who knew all along.

The piano literature and piano physics unambiguously coincide and tell us the answer. The power is in the attack, and the composers knew that. Take a Chopin melodic line and you will find a slow passage has a quarter note = 48-60 range, so we get about one note per second. Isn't that interesting, because the piano decays 20 dB / sec in the middle register. 20 dB = 10x in amplitude. So after the attack we have lost 10x. In the last octave we see a 20 dB decay in 300 msec, and for low register, the 20 dB decay is about 2 sec. This is why I initially 'conceived' of the Freeze Frame concept for tuning. There is yet another physical aspect that the piano is an ever-moving target of partial frequency movement. I previously published this with graphs. Some partials will decay at least another 2-5 cents after the first second from the attack. Tuning to these is tantamount to tuning to a very weak amplitude that is now down another 20 dB or 10x so that would be tuning to something that is not even in the music that is so weak that it would cause a severe mistuning in the attack phase of the first second. Now for a funny rhetorical question, where is that piece of piano music that has one note held down for 3 seconds by itself without the sustain pedal, and the tuner says, "Oh what a beautiful piece of music that was!" Someone challenged me when I said that and showed me a Chopin prelude with a note that was a couple secs long in a melody all by itself but I pointed out that the sustain pedal is down throughout that passage. Oops!

Now if the piano partials held to their same frequencies during the decay, we have no argument and this thread is irrelevant. It isn't because the partials are also decaying significantly and at different rates, and the next neighboring half step has a different character as we see in careful spectral analysis, and we can hear that, of course.

If anyone wants me to re-post the sustain graphs of partial spread, I can do that. It is so revealing that it makes one wonder why all these years we have been tuning to a sustain that is not pianistic and fights the very laws of physics that the great composers intuitively already understood. 

Best regards,

Steve

------------------------------
Steven Norsworthy
Cardiff By The Sea CA
(619) 964-0101

So, I assume this is what many people do when they talk of "hybrid ETD/aural tuning", but I don't see it outlined a lot...  My own typical process goes something like:

Pass #1: A0-A8 with ETD overpull.  I put everything exactly where the ETD says to (or at least as close as I think is reasonable for the amount of overpull going on), and tune unisons by ear.  Repeat if needed till everything is close, ex. for a piano that's getting a big pitch adjustment.  Generally I try not to be too picky here -- I believe that speed and multiple passes are a better use of my time than trying to get glorious unisons only to have them move on me because of settling.

Pass #2: Do aural checks, especially octaves, P5's, and P12's, with open unisons and listen for anything stinky.  Usually what sticks out quickest is just bad unisons were left behind from the first pass (blame settling or my own inaccuracy as desired).  Correct those however is convenient, i.e. by ear if it's obvious just one string slipped, or by ETD if the problem is more complicated.  If the unisons are good but certain intervals still don't sound good, again correct however is convenient.  I might use unison shimming if I'm close, or just mute off all but a single string and retune to the ETD.  No matter what I'm doing the final interval eval against open unisons.

So after a fashion, you could say that I'm using the ETD to get _close_ to the point where I can do Virgil Smith-style refinement as quickly and easily as possible.

To be honest, I do not often notice times where I say "wow, that string coupling effect really messed with things!"  Open unisons usually seem to read within a few tenths of a cent on the ETD compared to single strings -- there are exceptions of course.  It's usually enough of a struggle just trying to get all the unisons, P4's, P5's, octaves, and P12's sounding good.  Incidentally if I do pull that off, the rapid beating intervals (RBI's) usually sound pretty darn good too.  It may be possible to tune those such that the RBI's are a bit suboptimal but I find with the ETD curve acting as my "nanny" that doesn't typically happen.

------------------------------
Nathan Monteleone RPT
Fort Worth TX
(817) 675-9494
nbmont@gmail.com
------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 04-04-2024 09:10
From: Peter Grey
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

One aspect of this that I had sort of forgotten about (not really forgotten about but just not actively thinking about it) is the tendency for the entire unison to change pitch (usually flat) upon adding (particularly) the third string into the mix. This is particularly evident now that I'm combining some digital assistants into my work. This of course is one thing that Virgil Smith taught all the time and it got me thinking...

Part of the reason I started intentionally spreading my unisons years ago was to in fact counteract (or help) this phenomenon. By tuning the middle string "slightly" higher than the left (but of course not introducing an audible beat, then tuning the right string similarly, I found that I could often (but not always) get the completed unison to stay put at the target pitch. (Some unisons can be quite stubborn and persistent in this regard).

Anyway, those of you who regularly use the digital assistant, I ask how do you cope with this phenomenon whether you tune on the attack or to the aftersound? It quite obvious with the electronics. 

Peter Grey Piano Doctor 

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


Original Message:
Sent: 04-03-2024 01:21
From: Steven Rosenthal
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

As an addendum to the comments I made yesterday. 

I paid attention to my process while tuning one grand and one upright today, both having sections 5-10 cents away from the target. I observed that I spend 75 or 80% of my time getting close to the target's pitch and getting the pin and non speaking segments balanced and the remainder settling the system at pitch. The proportions might differ for an aural tuner. But the majority of my time and energy goes to the mechanical aspects of the system compared to the final setting of the pitch.

I do use sustained tones during the set-up period, it would be counterproductive to use a series of short blows as that would interrupt the process of moving the pitch several cents, pin setting... in other words stabilizing. I did overstate yesterday that it is only the feel of the lever that informs this process, clearly it is one of ear/hand coordination. Then, when actually setting the pitch I noticed I'm still playing relatively longer tones though I'm physically making the adjustment towards the beginning but I'm listening for how it settles and then check again for where the pitch is on the attack. And there may be test blows in there if needed.

While I do like the concept of tuning each string at the same point in the envelope, I think Steve N's assertion that there's no musical reason to play sustained tones is a bit of red herring in that whether or not there's a "musical" reason, there are certainly mechanical reasons to employ long tones in the process of tuning a string that will stay where you want it. Certainly if the tuning involves moving the pin in the block which is the case more often than not.

Sorry for all the verbiage.

------------------------------
Steven Rosenthal RPT
Honolulu HI
(808) 521-7129


Original Message:
Sent: 04-02-2024 03:51
From: Steven Norsworthy
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

All,

"Where have all the pianists and composers gone? They instinctively knew the answer all these hundreds of years!"

We have not had the tools until now to fix a window of time in the first second from the attack and measure the partial frequencies averaged over that window of time. Now we do. Prior aural 'talent' cannot do this consistently. Analog signal processing tools cannot either. Now let's discuss the music and physics which coincide with the composers who knew all along.

The piano literature and piano physics unambiguously coincide and tell us the answer. The power is in the attack, and the composers knew that. Take a Chopin melodic line and you will find a slow passage has a quarter note = 48-60 range, so we get about one note per second. Isn't that interesting, because the piano decays 20 dB / sec in the middle register. 20 dB = 10x in amplitude. So after the attack we have lost 10x. In the last octave we see a 20 dB decay in 300 msec, and for low register, the 20 dB decay is about 2 sec. This is why I initially 'conceived' of the Freeze Frame concept for tuning. There is yet another physical aspect that the piano is an ever-moving target of partial frequency movement. I previously published this with graphs. Some partials will decay at least another 2-5 cents after the first second from the attack. Tuning to these is tantamount to tuning to a very weak amplitude that is now down another 20 dB or 10x so that would be tuning to something that is not even in the music that is so weak that it would cause a severe mistuning in the attack phase of the first second. Now for a funny rhetorical question, where is that piece of piano music that has one note held down for 3 seconds by itself without the sustain pedal, and the tuner says, "Oh what a beautiful piece of music that was!" Someone challenged me when I said that and showed me a Chopin prelude with a note that was a couple secs long in a melody all by itself but I pointed out that the sustain pedal is down throughout that passage. Oops!

Now if the piano partials held to their same frequencies during the decay, we have no argument and this thread is irrelevant. It isn't because the partials are also decaying significantly and at different rates, and the next neighboring half step has a different character as we see in careful spectral analysis, and we can hear that, of course.

If anyone wants me to re-post the sustain graphs of partial spread, I can do that. It is so revealing that it makes one wonder why all these years we have been tuning to a sustain that is not pianistic and fights the very laws of physics that the great composers intuitively already understood. 

Best regards,

Steve

------------------------------
Steven Norsworthy
Cardiff By The Sea CA
(619) 964-0101

So, I assume this is what many people do when they talk of "hybrid ETD/aural tuning", but I don't see it outlined a lot...  My own typical process goes something like:

Pass #1: A0-A8 with ETD overpull.  I put everything exactly where the ETD says to (or at least as close as I think is reasonable for the amount of overpull going on), and tune unisons by ear.  Repeat if needed till everything is close, ex. for a piano that's getting a big pitch adjustment.  Generally I try not to be too picky here -- I believe that speed and multiple passes are a better use of my time than trying to get glorious unisons only to have them move on me because of settling.

Pass #2: Do aural checks, especially octaves, P5's, and P12's, with open unisons and listen for anything stinky.  Usually what sticks out quickest is just bad unisons were left behind from the first pass (blame settling or my own inaccuracy as desired).  Correct those however is convenient, i.e. by ear if it's obvious just one string slipped, or by ETD if the problem is more complicated.  If the unisons are good but certain intervals still don't sound good, again correct however is convenient.  I might use unison shimming if I'm close, or just mute off all but a single string and retune to the ETD.  No matter what I'm doing the final interval eval against open unisons.

So after a fashion, you could say that I'm using the ETD to get _close_ to the point where I can do Virgil Smith-style refinement as quickly and easily as possible.

To be honest, I do not often notice times where I say "wow, that string coupling effect really messed with things!"  Open unisons usually seem to read within a few tenths of a cent on the ETD compared to single strings -- there are exceptions of course.  It's usually enough of a struggle just trying to get all the unisons, P4's, P5's, octaves, and P12's sounding good.  Incidentally if I do pull that off, the rapid beating intervals (RBI's) usually sound pretty darn good too.  It may be possible to tune those such that the RBI's are a bit suboptimal but I find with the ETD curve acting as my "nanny" that doesn't typically happen.

------------------------------
Nathan Monteleone RPT
Fort Worth TX
(817) 675-9494
nbmont@gmail.com
------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 04-04-2024 09:10
From: Peter Grey
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

One aspect of this that I had sort of forgotten about (not really forgotten about but just not actively thinking about it) is the tendency for the entire unison to change pitch (usually flat) upon adding (particularly) the third string into the mix. This is particularly evident now that I'm combining some digital assistants into my work. This of course is one thing that Virgil Smith taught all the time and it got me thinking...

Part of the reason I started intentionally spreading my unisons years ago was to in fact counteract (or help) this phenomenon. By tuning the middle string "slightly" higher than the left (but of course not introducing an audible beat, then tuning the right string similarly, I found that I could often (but not always) get the completed unison to stay put at the target pitch. (Some unisons can be quite stubborn and persistent in this regard).

Anyway, those of you who regularly use the digital assistant, I ask how do you cope with this phenomenon whether you tune on the attack or to the aftersound? It quite obvious with the electronics. 

Peter Grey Piano Doctor 

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


Original Message:
Sent: 04-03-2024 01:21
From: Steven Rosenthal
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

As an addendum to the comments I made yesterday. 

I paid attention to my process while tuning one grand and one upright today, both having sections 5-10 cents away from the target. I observed that I spend 75 or 80% of my time getting close to the target's pitch and getting the pin and non speaking segments balanced and the remainder settling the system at pitch. The proportions might differ for an aural tuner. But the majority of my time and energy goes to the mechanical aspects of the system compared to the final setting of the pitch.

I do use sustained tones during the set-up period, it would be counterproductive to use a series of short blows as that would interrupt the process of moving the pitch several cents, pin setting... in other words stabilizing. I did overstate yesterday that it is only the feel of the lever that informs this process, clearly it is one of ear/hand coordination. Then, when actually setting the pitch I noticed I'm still playing relatively longer tones though I'm physically making the adjustment towards the beginning but I'm listening for how it settles and then check again for where the pitch is on the attack. And there may be test blows in there if needed.

While I do like the concept of tuning each string at the same point in the envelope, I think Steve N's assertion that there's no musical reason to play sustained tones is a bit of red herring in that whether or not there's a "musical" reason, there are certainly mechanical reasons to employ long tones in the process of tuning a string that will stay where you want it. Certainly if the tuning involves moving the pin in the block which is the case more often than not.

Sorry for all the verbiage.

------------------------------
Steven Rosenthal RPT
Honolulu HI
(808) 521-7129


Original Message:
Sent: 04-02-2024 03:51
From: Steven Norsworthy
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

All,

"Where have all the pianists and composers gone? They instinctively knew the answer all these hundreds of years!"

We have not had the tools until now to fix a window of time in the first second from the attack and measure the partial frequencies averaged over that window of time. Now we do. Prior aural 'talent' cannot do this consistently. Analog signal processing tools cannot either. Now let's discuss the music and physics which coincide with the composers who knew all along.

The piano literature and piano physics unambiguously coincide and tell us the answer. The power is in the attack, and the composers knew that. Take a Chopin melodic line and you will find a slow passage has a quarter note = 48-60 range, so we get about one note per second. Isn't that interesting, because the piano decays 20 dB / sec in the middle register. 20 dB = 10x in amplitude. So after the attack we have lost 10x. In the last octave we see a 20 dB decay in 300 msec, and for low register, the 20 dB decay is about 2 sec. This is why I initially 'conceived' of the Freeze Frame concept for tuning. There is yet another physical aspect that the piano is an ever-moving target of partial frequency movement. I previously published this with graphs. Some partials will decay at least another 2-5 cents after the first second from the attack. Tuning to these is tantamount to tuning to a very weak amplitude that is now down another 20 dB or 10x so that would be tuning to something that is not even in the music that is so weak that it would cause a severe mistuning in the attack phase of the first second. Now for a funny rhetorical question, where is that piece of piano music that has one note held down for 3 seconds by itself without the sustain pedal, and the tuner says, "Oh what a beautiful piece of music that was!" Someone challenged me when I said that and showed me a Chopin prelude with a note that was a couple secs long in a melody all by itself but I pointed out that the sustain pedal is down throughout that passage. Oops!

Now if the piano partials held to their same frequencies during the decay, we have no argument and this thread is irrelevant. It isn't because the partials are also decaying significantly and at different rates, and the next neighboring half step has a different character as we see in careful spectral analysis, and we can hear that, of course.

If anyone wants me to re-post the sustain graphs of partial spread, I can do that. It is so revealing that it makes one wonder why all these years we have been tuning to a sustain that is not pianistic and fights the very laws of physics that the great composers intuitively already understood. 

Best regards,

Steve

------------------------------
Steven Norsworthy
Cardiff By The Sea CA
(619) 964-0101

One aspect of this that I had sort of forgotten about (not really forgotten about but just not actively thinking about it) is the tendency for the entire unison to change pitch (usually flat) upon adding (particularly) the third string into the mix. This is particularly evident now that I'm combining some digital assistants into my work. This of course is one thing that Virgil Smith taught all the time and it got me thinking...

Part of the reason I started intentionally spreading my unisons years ago was to in fact counteract (or help) this phenomenon. By tuning the middle string "slightly" higher than the left (but of course not introducing an audible beat, then tuning the right string similarly, I found that I could often (but not always) get the completed unison to stay put at the target pitch. (Some unisons can be quite stubborn and persistent in this regard).

Anyway, those of you who regularly use the digital assistant, I ask how do you cope with this phenomenon whether you tune on the attack or to the aftersound? It quite obvious with the electronics. 

Peter Grey Piano Doctor 

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


Original Message:
Sent: 04-03-2024 01:21
From: Steven Rosenthal
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

As an addendum to the comments I made yesterday. 

I paid attention to my process while tuning one grand and one upright today, both having sections 5-10 cents away from the target. I observed that I spend 75 or 80% of my time getting close to the target's pitch and getting the pin and non speaking segments balanced and the remainder settling the system at pitch. The proportions might differ for an aural tuner. But the majority of my time and energy goes to the mechanical aspects of the system compared to the final setting of the pitch.

I do use sustained tones during the set-up period, it would be counterproductive to use a series of short blows as that would interrupt the process of moving the pitch several cents, pin setting... in other words stabilizing. I did overstate yesterday that it is only the feel of the lever that informs this process, clearly it is one of ear/hand coordination. Then, when actually setting the pitch I noticed I'm still playing relatively longer tones though I'm physically making the adjustment towards the beginning but I'm listening for how it settles and then check again for where the pitch is on the attack. And there may be test blows in there if needed.

While I do like the concept of tuning each string at the same point in the envelope, I think Steve N's assertion that there's no musical reason to play sustained tones is a bit of red herring in that whether or not there's a "musical" reason, there are certainly mechanical reasons to employ long tones in the process of tuning a string that will stay where you want it. Certainly if the tuning involves moving the pin in the block which is the case more often than not.

Sorry for all the verbiage.

------------------------------
Steven Rosenthal RPT
Honolulu HI
(808) 521-7129


Original Message:
Sent: 04-02-2024 03:51
From: Steven Norsworthy
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

All,

"Where have all the pianists and composers gone? They instinctively knew the answer all these hundreds of years!"

We have not had the tools until now to fix a window of time in the first second from the attack and measure the partial frequencies averaged over that window of time. Now we do. Prior aural 'talent' cannot do this consistently. Analog signal processing tools cannot either. Now let's discuss the music and physics which coincide with the composers who knew all along.

The piano literature and piano physics unambiguously coincide and tell us the answer. The power is in the attack, and the composers knew that. Take a Chopin melodic line and you will find a slow passage has a quarter note = 48-60 range, so we get about one note per second. Isn't that interesting, because the piano decays 20 dB / sec in the middle register. 20 dB = 10x in amplitude. So after the attack we have lost 10x. In the last octave we see a 20 dB decay in 300 msec, and for low register, the 20 dB decay is about 2 sec. This is why I initially 'conceived' of the Freeze Frame concept for tuning. There is yet another physical aspect that the piano is an ever-moving target of partial frequency movement. I previously published this with graphs. Some partials will decay at least another 2-5 cents after the first second from the attack. Tuning to these is tantamount to tuning to a very weak amplitude that is now down another 20 dB or 10x so that would be tuning to something that is not even in the music that is so weak that it would cause a severe mistuning in the attack phase of the first second. Now for a funny rhetorical question, where is that piece of piano music that has one note held down for 3 seconds by itself without the sustain pedal, and the tuner says, "Oh what a beautiful piece of music that was!" Someone challenged me when I said that and showed me a Chopin prelude with a note that was a couple secs long in a melody all by itself but I pointed out that the sustain pedal is down throughout that passage. Oops!

Now if the piano partials held to their same frequencies during the decay, we have no argument and this thread is irrelevant. It isn't because the partials are also decaying significantly and at different rates, and the next neighboring half step has a different character as we see in careful spectral analysis, and we can hear that, of course.

If anyone wants me to re-post the sustain graphs of partial spread, I can do that. It is so revealing that it makes one wonder why all these years we have been tuning to a sustain that is not pianistic and fights the very laws of physics that the great composers intuitively already understood. 

Best regards,

Steve

------------------------------
Steven Norsworthy
Cardiff By The Sea CA
(619) 964-0101

Peter,

Speaking for myself, I find "the tendency for the entire unison to change pitch (usually flat) upon adding (particularly) the third string into the mix." to be a non-issue. DIdn't find it when tuning aurally for 15 years, haven't found it using electronics for nearly 30 years.

Aurally, having read Virgil Smith's assertions, I tested them by listening to beat rates. Single string against another single string, compared to three string unison to the same other string. No difference in beat rate that I could hear. Also was unable to confirm the phenomenon using an Accutuner once I started tuning with it - measuring pitch of each string, zeroed to the display, then checking the unison, I found no difference.

Then, in the late 1990s, Jim Coleman wrote that he hadn't been able to measure such a difference using his Accutuner, but when he got RCT, which had a more precise reading, he was able to find that difference, in the range of about 0.1 - 0.2¢. 

Once I got Cybertuner, I made my own, very careful measurements with it. I carefully chose unisons made up of three strings that I could produce stable full blush on. I tuned the three strings of each such unison carefully to get full blush, and rechecked that they were spot on. I then read the unison. I again rechecked to see that all three single strings were zeroed.  

Result: most often, the three string unison was at full blush. In those cases where the display showed a small creep from stable, that creep was as often in the sharp direction as in the flat direction.

Meanwhile, Jim Ellis had made some theoretical calculations of the physics behind the assertion, and found that at most it would be in the less than 0.1¢ range, insignificant for purposes of practical tuning.

I agree with that assessment. I further believe that the tiny flattening of pitch between about 200-300 microseconds after impact and 1.5 - 2 seconds after impact is insignificant for purposes of tuning. It is only that first quarter second or so where the maximum pitch change occurs, and that period is also where we are hearing all the percussive impact noise. 

In any case, absolute pitch of individual notes, within one to two cents, makes little to no difference. The "just noticeable difference" for pitch, in rough terms as measured in many studies, tends to be around 5-6¢. When played in context (intervals and particularly unisons and then octaves) it is quite a bit smaller, but that is due to interference patterns. Raw pitch is very forgiving. Differences of less than one cent are imperceptible for most practical purposes.

One aspect of this that I had sort of forgotten about (not really forgotten about but just not actively thinking about it) is the tendency for the entire unison to change pitch (usually flat) upon adding (particularly) the third string into the mix. This is particularly evident now that I'm combining some digital assistants into my work. This of course is one thing that Virgil Smith taught all the time and it got me thinking...

Part of the reason I started intentionally spreading my unisons years ago was to in fact counteract (or help) this phenomenon. By tuning the middle string "slightly" higher than the left (but of course not introducing an audible beat, then tuning the right string similarly, I found that I could often (but not always) get the completed unison to stay put at the target pitch. (Some unisons can be quite stubborn and persistent in this regard).

Anyway, those of you who regularly use the digital assistant, I ask how do you cope with this phenomenon whether you tune on the attack or to the aftersound? It quite obvious with the electronics. 

Peter Grey Piano Doctor 

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


Original Message:
Sent: 04-03-2024 01:21
From: Steven Rosenthal
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

As an addendum to the comments I made yesterday. 

I paid attention to my process while tuning one grand and one upright today, both having sections 5-10 cents away from the target. I observed that I spend 75 or 80% of my time getting close to the target's pitch and getting the pin and non speaking segments balanced and the remainder settling the system at pitch. The proportions might differ for an aural tuner. But the majority of my time and energy goes to the mechanical aspects of the system compared to the final setting of the pitch.

I do use sustained tones during the set-up period, it would be counterproductive to use a series of short blows as that would interrupt the process of moving the pitch several cents, pin setting... in other words stabilizing. I did overstate yesterday that it is only the feel of the lever that informs this process, clearly it is one of ear/hand coordination. Then, when actually setting the pitch I noticed I'm still playing relatively longer tones though I'm physically making the adjustment towards the beginning but I'm listening for how it settles and then check again for where the pitch is on the attack. And there may be test blows in there if needed.

While I do like the concept of tuning each string at the same point in the envelope, I think Steve N's assertion that there's no musical reason to play sustained tones is a bit of red herring in that whether or not there's a "musical" reason, there are certainly mechanical reasons to employ long tones in the process of tuning a string that will stay where you want it. Certainly if the tuning involves moving the pin in the block which is the case more often than not.

Sorry for all the verbiage.

------------------------------
Steven Rosenthal RPT
Honolulu HI
(808) 521-7129


Original Message:
Sent: 04-02-2024 03:51
From: Steven Norsworthy
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

All,

"Where have all the pianists and composers gone? They instinctively knew the answer all these hundreds of years!"

We have not had the tools until now to fix a window of time in the first second from the attack and measure the partial frequencies averaged over that window of time. Now we do. Prior aural 'talent' cannot do this consistently. Analog signal processing tools cannot either. Now let's discuss the music and physics which coincide with the composers who knew all along.

The piano literature and piano physics unambiguously coincide and tell us the answer. The power is in the attack, and the composers knew that. Take a Chopin melodic line and you will find a slow passage has a quarter note = 48-60 range, so we get about one note per second. Isn't that interesting, because the piano decays 20 dB / sec in the middle register. 20 dB = 10x in amplitude. So after the attack we have lost 10x. In the last octave we see a 20 dB decay in 300 msec, and for low register, the 20 dB decay is about 2 sec. This is why I initially 'conceived' of the Freeze Frame concept for tuning. There is yet another physical aspect that the piano is an ever-moving target of partial frequency movement. I previously published this with graphs. Some partials will decay at least another 2-5 cents after the first second from the attack. Tuning to these is tantamount to tuning to a very weak amplitude that is now down another 20 dB or 10x so that would be tuning to something that is not even in the music that is so weak that it would cause a severe mistuning in the attack phase of the first second. Now for a funny rhetorical question, where is that piece of piano music that has one note held down for 3 seconds by itself without the sustain pedal, and the tuner says, "Oh what a beautiful piece of music that was!" Someone challenged me when I said that and showed me a Chopin prelude with a note that was a couple secs long in a melody all by itself but I pointed out that the sustain pedal is down throughout that passage. Oops!

Now if the piano partials held to their same frequencies during the decay, we have no argument and this thread is irrelevant. It isn't because the partials are also decaying significantly and at different rates, and the next neighboring half step has a different character as we see in careful spectral analysis, and we can hear that, of course.

If anyone wants me to re-post the sustain graphs of partial spread, I can do that. It is so revealing that it makes one wonder why all these years we have been tuning to a sustain that is not pianistic and fights the very laws of physics that the great composers intuitively already understood. 

Best regards,

Steve

------------------------------
Steven Norsworthy
Cardiff By The Sea CA
(619) 964-0101

Peter,

Speaking for myself, I find "the tendency for the entire unison to change pitch (usually flat) upon adding (particularly) the third string into the mix." to be a non-issue. DIdn't find it when tuning aurally for 15 years, haven't found it using electronics for nearly 30 years.

Aurally, having read Virgil Smith's assertions, I tested them by listening to beat rates. Single string against another single string, compared to three string unison to the same other string. No difference in beat rate that I could hear. Also was unable to confirm the phenomenon using an Accutuner once I started tuning with it - measuring pitch of each string, zeroed to the display, then checking the unison, I found no difference.

Then, in the late 1990s, Jim Coleman wrote that he hadn't been able to measure such a difference using his Accutuner, but when he got RCT, which had a more precise reading, he was able to find that difference, in the range of about 0.1 - 0.2¢. 

Once I got Cybertuner, I made my own, very careful measurements with it. I carefully chose unisons made up of three strings that I could produce stable full blush on. I tuned the three strings of each such unison carefully to get full blush, and rechecked that they were spot on. I then read the unison. I again rechecked to see that all three single strings were zeroed.  

Result: most often, the three string unison was at full blush. In those cases where the display showed a small creep from stable, that creep was as often in the sharp direction as in the flat direction.

Meanwhile, Jim Ellis had made some theoretical calculations of the physics behind the assertion, and found that at most it would be in the less than 0.1¢ range, insignificant for purposes of practical tuning.

I agree with that assessment. I further believe that the tiny flattening of pitch between about 200-300 microseconds after impact and 1.5 - 2 seconds after impact is insignificant for purposes of tuning. It is only that first quarter second or so where the maximum pitch change occurs, and that period is also where we are hearing all the percussive impact noise. 

In any case, absolute pitch of individual notes, within one to two cents, makes little to no difference. The "just noticeable difference" for pitch, in rough terms as measured in many studies, tends to be around 5-6¢. When played in context (intervals and particularly unisons and then octaves) it is quite a bit smaller, but that is due to interference patterns. Raw pitch is very forgiving. Differences of less than one cent are imperceptible for most practical purposes.

------------------------------
Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico
fssturm@unm.edu
http://fredsturm.net
http://www.artoftuning.com
"We either make ourselves happy or miserable. The amount of work is the same." - Carlos Casteneda
------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 04-04-2024 09:10
From: Peter Grey
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

One aspect of this that I had sort of forgotten about (not really forgotten about but just not actively thinking about it) is the tendency for the entire unison to change pitch (usually flat) upon adding (particularly) the third string into the mix. This is particularly evident now that I'm combining some digital assistants into my work. This of course is one thing that Virgil Smith taught all the time and it got me thinking...

Part of the reason I started intentionally spreading my unisons years ago was to in fact counteract (or help) this phenomenon. By tuning the middle string "slightly" higher than the left (but of course not introducing an audible beat, then tuning the right string similarly, I found that I could often (but not always) get the completed unison to stay put at the target pitch. (Some unisons can be quite stubborn and persistent in this regard).

Anyway, those of you who regularly use the digital assistant, I ask how do you cope with this phenomenon whether you tune on the attack or to the aftersound? It quite obvious with the electronics. 

Peter Grey Piano Doctor 

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


Original Message:
Sent: 04-03-2024 01:21
From: Steven Rosenthal
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

As an addendum to the comments I made yesterday. 

I paid attention to my process while tuning one grand and one upright today, both having sections 5-10 cents away from the target. I observed that I spend 75 or 80% of my time getting close to the target's pitch and getting the pin and non speaking segments balanced and the remainder settling the system at pitch. The proportions might differ for an aural tuner. But the majority of my time and energy goes to the mechanical aspects of the system compared to the final setting of the pitch.

I do use sustained tones during the set-up period, it would be counterproductive to use a series of short blows as that would interrupt the process of moving the pitch several cents, pin setting... in other words stabilizing. I did overstate yesterday that it is only the feel of the lever that informs this process, clearly it is one of ear/hand coordination. Then, when actually setting the pitch I noticed I'm still playing relatively longer tones though I'm physically making the adjustment towards the beginning but I'm listening for how it settles and then check again for where the pitch is on the attack. And there may be test blows in there if needed.

While I do like the concept of tuning each string at the same point in the envelope, I think Steve N's assertion that there's no musical reason to play sustained tones is a bit of red herring in that whether or not there's a "musical" reason, there are certainly mechanical reasons to employ long tones in the process of tuning a string that will stay where you want it. Certainly if the tuning involves moving the pin in the block which is the case more often than not.

Sorry for all the verbiage.

------------------------------
Steven Rosenthal RPT
Honolulu HI
(808) 521-7129


Original Message:
Sent: 04-02-2024 03:51
From: Steven Norsworthy
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

All,

"Where have all the pianists and composers gone? They instinctively knew the answer all these hundreds of years!"

We have not had the tools until now to fix a window of time in the first second from the attack and measure the partial frequencies averaged over that window of time. Now we do. Prior aural 'talent' cannot do this consistently. Analog signal processing tools cannot either. Now let's discuss the music and physics which coincide with the composers who knew all along.

The piano literature and piano physics unambiguously coincide and tell us the answer. The power is in the attack, and the composers knew that. Take a Chopin melodic line and you will find a slow passage has a quarter note = 48-60 range, so we get about one note per second. Isn't that interesting, because the piano decays 20 dB / sec in the middle register. 20 dB = 10x in amplitude. So after the attack we have lost 10x. In the last octave we see a 20 dB decay in 300 msec, and for low register, the 20 dB decay is about 2 sec. This is why I initially 'conceived' of the Freeze Frame concept for tuning. There is yet another physical aspect that the piano is an ever-moving target of partial frequency movement. I previously published this with graphs. Some partials will decay at least another 2-5 cents after the first second from the attack. Tuning to these is tantamount to tuning to a very weak amplitude that is now down another 20 dB or 10x so that would be tuning to something that is not even in the music that is so weak that it would cause a severe mistuning in the attack phase of the first second. Now for a funny rhetorical question, where is that piece of piano music that has one note held down for 3 seconds by itself without the sustain pedal, and the tuner says, "Oh what a beautiful piece of music that was!" Someone challenged me when I said that and showed me a Chopin prelude with a note that was a couple secs long in a melody all by itself but I pointed out that the sustain pedal is down throughout that passage. Oops!

Now if the piano partials held to their same frequencies during the decay, we have no argument and this thread is irrelevant. It isn't because the partials are also decaying significantly and at different rates, and the next neighboring half step has a different character as we see in careful spectral analysis, and we can hear that, of course.

If anyone wants me to re-post the sustain graphs of partial spread, I can do that. It is so revealing that it makes one wonder why all these years we have been tuning to a sustain that is not pianistic and fights the very laws of physics that the great composers intuitively already understood. 

Best regards,

Steve

------------------------------
Steven Norsworthy
Cardiff By The Sea CA
(619) 964-0101

Fred,

Interesting, since I have noticed the phenomenon both aurally (confirming with beat rates) and with the ETD, and I continue to experience it now.

 It is of course agreed that 1) it is inconsistent from note to note, 2) it also sometimes goes sharp, 3) sometimes it does both, 4) sometimes it stays put and doesn't move a wink, 5) occasionally it occurs between just two strings, rather than three. Virgil acknowledged all of this from what I read. His point simply was if it does it (particularly goes flat) you want to compensate for it. In my own experimentation I found that I could (often) counteract the pitch decay (when I detect it) by slightly raising the pitch of next string and relying on the bridge coupling to prevent a "beat" from arising. Then, if needed (for stubborn ones) I could do the same with the third string. What I began to notice though in the process was that the body of the tone seemed to improve as well as the sustain. Admittedly, one can go too far with this so it is necessary to keep a tight rein on the process (and of course some pianos simply will not tolerate any spread whatsoever and must be tuned as close to the attack as possible for any kind of clean sound). However, over time I have arrived at a satisfying process that allows a bit of "voicing" of the unison focusing on beauty over power, with a pretty good success rate. 

Currently I am using the sensor and the ETD to try to refine the process. Still a work in progress. I do not believe that the phenomenon is "all in my head". 

Nonetheless, there is merit in tuning directly in the "attack" phase, and therefore it is also on the "menu".

Peter Grey Piano Doctor 

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


Original Message:
Sent: 04-05-2024 16:52
From: Fred Sturm
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

Peter,

Speaking for myself, I find "the tendency for the entire unison to change pitch (usually flat) upon adding (particularly) the third string into the mix." to be a non-issue. DIdn't find it when tuning aurally for 15 years, haven't found it using electronics for nearly 30 years.

Aurally, having read Virgil Smith's assertions, I tested them by listening to beat rates. Single string against another single string, compared to three string unison to the same other string. No difference in beat rate that I could hear. Also was unable to confirm the phenomenon using an Accutuner once I started tuning with it - measuring pitch of each string, zeroed to the display, then checking the unison, I found no difference.

Then, in the late 1990s, Jim Coleman wrote that he hadn't been able to measure such a difference using his Accutuner, but when he got RCT, which had a more precise reading, he was able to find that difference, in the range of about 0.1 - 0.2¢. 

Once I got Cybertuner, I made my own, very careful measurements with it. I carefully chose unisons made up of three strings that I could produce stable full blush on. I tuned the three strings of each such unison carefully to get full blush, and rechecked that they were spot on. I then read the unison. I again rechecked to see that all three single strings were zeroed.  

Result: most often, the three string unison was at full blush. In those cases where the display showed a small creep from stable, that creep was as often in the sharp direction as in the flat direction.

Meanwhile, Jim Ellis had made some theoretical calculations of the physics behind the assertion, and found that at most it would be in the less than 0.1¢ range, insignificant for purposes of practical tuning.

I agree with that assessment. I further believe that the tiny flattening of pitch between about 200-300 microseconds after impact and 1.5 - 2 seconds after impact is insignificant for purposes of tuning. It is only that first quarter second or so where the maximum pitch change occurs, and that period is also where we are hearing all the percussive impact noise. 

In any case, absolute pitch of individual notes, within one to two cents, makes little to no difference. The "just noticeable difference" for pitch, in rough terms as measured in many studies, tends to be around 5-6¢. When played in context (intervals and particularly unisons and then octaves) it is quite a bit smaller, but that is due to interference patterns. Raw pitch is very forgiving. Differences of less than one cent are imperceptible for most practical purposes.

------------------------------
Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico
fssturm@unm.edu
http://fredsturm.net
http://www.artoftuning.com
"We either make ourselves happy or miserable. The amount of work is the same." - Carlos Casteneda
------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 04-04-2024 09:10
From: Peter Grey
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

One aspect of this that I had sort of forgotten about (not really forgotten about but just not actively thinking about it) is the tendency for the entire unison to change pitch (usually flat) upon adding (particularly) the third string into the mix. This is particularly evident now that I'm combining some digital assistants into my work. This of course is one thing that Virgil Smith taught all the time and it got me thinking...

Part of the reason I started intentionally spreading my unisons years ago was to in fact counteract (or help) this phenomenon. By tuning the middle string "slightly" higher than the left (but of course not introducing an audible beat, then tuning the right string similarly, I found that I could often (but not always) get the completed unison to stay put at the target pitch. (Some unisons can be quite stubborn and persistent in this regard).

Anyway, those of you who regularly use the digital assistant, I ask how do you cope with this phenomenon whether you tune on the attack or to the aftersound? It quite obvious with the electronics. 

Peter Grey Piano Doctor 

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


Original Message:
Sent: 04-03-2024 01:21
From: Steven Rosenthal
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

As an addendum to the comments I made yesterday. 

I paid attention to my process while tuning one grand and one upright today, both having sections 5-10 cents away from the target. I observed that I spend 75 or 80% of my time getting close to the target's pitch and getting the pin and non speaking segments balanced and the remainder settling the system at pitch. The proportions might differ for an aural tuner. But the majority of my time and energy goes to the mechanical aspects of the system compared to the final setting of the pitch.

I do use sustained tones during the set-up period, it would be counterproductive to use a series of short blows as that would interrupt the process of moving the pitch several cents, pin setting... in other words stabilizing. I did overstate yesterday that it is only the feel of the lever that informs this process, clearly it is one of ear/hand coordination. Then, when actually setting the pitch I noticed I'm still playing relatively longer tones though I'm physically making the adjustment towards the beginning but I'm listening for how it settles and then check again for where the pitch is on the attack. And there may be test blows in there if needed.

While I do like the concept of tuning each string at the same point in the envelope, I think Steve N's assertion that there's no musical reason to play sustained tones is a bit of red herring in that whether or not there's a "musical" reason, there are certainly mechanical reasons to employ long tones in the process of tuning a string that will stay where you want it. Certainly if the tuning involves moving the pin in the block which is the case more often than not.

Sorry for all the verbiage.

------------------------------
Steven Rosenthal RPT
Honolulu HI
(808) 521-7129

Fred,

Interesting, since I have noticed the phenomenon both aurally (confirming with beat rates) and with the ETD, and I continue to experience it now.

 It is of course agreed that 1) it is inconsistent from note to note, 2) it also sometimes goes sharp, 3) sometimes it does both, 4) sometimes it stays put and doesn't move a wink, 5) occasionally it occurs between just two strings, rather than three. Virgil acknowledged all of this from what I read. His point simply was if it does it (particularly goes flat) you want to compensate for it. In my own experimentation I found that I could (often) counteract the pitch decay (when I detect it) by slightly raising the pitch of next string and relying on the bridge coupling to prevent a "beat" from arising. Then, if needed (for stubborn ones) I could do the same with the third string. What I began to notice though in the process was that the body of the tone seemed to improve as well as the sustain. Admittedly, one can go too far with this so it is necessary to keep a tight rein on the process (and of course some pianos simply will not tolerate any spread whatsoever and must be tuned as close to the attack as possible for any kind of clean sound). However, over time I have arrived at a satisfying process that allows a bit of "voicing" of the unison focusing on beauty over power, with a pretty good success rate. 

Currently I am using the sensor and the ETD to try to refine the process. Still a work in progress. I do not believe that the phenomenon is "all in my head". 

Nonetheless, there is merit in tuning directly in the "attack" phase, and therefore it is also on the "menu".

Peter Grey Piano Doctor 

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


Original Message:
Sent: 04-05-2024 16:52
From: Fred Sturm
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

Peter,

Speaking for myself, I find "the tendency for the entire unison to change pitch (usually flat) upon adding (particularly) the third string into the mix." to be a non-issue. DIdn't find it when tuning aurally for 15 years, haven't found it using electronics for nearly 30 years.

Aurally, having read Virgil Smith's assertions, I tested them by listening to beat rates. Single string against another single string, compared to three string unison to the same other string. No difference in beat rate that I could hear. Also was unable to confirm the phenomenon using an Accutuner once I started tuning with it - measuring pitch of each string, zeroed to the display, then checking the unison, I found no difference.

Then, in the late 1990s, Jim Coleman wrote that he hadn't been able to measure such a difference using his Accutuner, but when he got RCT, which had a more precise reading, he was able to find that difference, in the range of about 0.1 - 0.2¢. 

Once I got Cybertuner, I made my own, very careful measurements with it. I carefully chose unisons made up of three strings that I could produce stable full blush on. I tuned the three strings of each such unison carefully to get full blush, and rechecked that they were spot on. I then read the unison. I again rechecked to see that all three single strings were zeroed.  

Result: most often, the three string unison was at full blush. In those cases where the display showed a small creep from stable, that creep was as often in the sharp direction as in the flat direction.

Meanwhile, Jim Ellis had made some theoretical calculations of the physics behind the assertion, and found that at most it would be in the less than 0.1¢ range, insignificant for purposes of practical tuning.

I agree with that assessment. I further believe that the tiny flattening of pitch between about 200-300 microseconds after impact and 1.5 - 2 seconds after impact is insignificant for purposes of tuning. It is only that first quarter second or so where the maximum pitch change occurs, and that period is also where we are hearing all the percussive impact noise. 

In any case, absolute pitch of individual notes, within one to two cents, makes little to no difference. The "just noticeable difference" for pitch, in rough terms as measured in many studies, tends to be around 5-6¢. When played in context (intervals and particularly unisons and then octaves) it is quite a bit smaller, but that is due to interference patterns. Raw pitch is very forgiving. Differences of less than one cent are imperceptible for most practical purposes.

------------------------------
Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico
fssturm@unm.edu
http://fredsturm.net
http://www.artoftuning.com
"We either make ourselves happy or miserable. The amount of work is the same." - Carlos Casteneda


Original Message:
Sent: 04-04-2024 09:10
From: Peter Grey
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

One aspect of this that I had sort of forgotten about (not really forgotten about but just not actively thinking about it) is the tendency for the entire unison to change pitch (usually flat) upon adding (particularly) the third string into the mix. This is particularly evident now that I'm combining some digital assistants into my work. This of course is one thing that Virgil Smith taught all the time and it got me thinking...

Part of the reason I started intentionally spreading my unisons years ago was to in fact counteract (or help) this phenomenon. By tuning the middle string "slightly" higher than the left (but of course not introducing an audible beat, then tuning the right string similarly, I found that I could often (but not always) get the completed unison to stay put at the target pitch. (Some unisons can be quite stubborn and persistent in this regard).

Anyway, those of you who regularly use the digital assistant, I ask how do you cope with this phenomenon whether you tune on the attack or to the aftersound? It quite obvious with the electronics. 

Peter Grey Piano Doctor 

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


Original Message:
Sent: 04-03-2024 01:21
From: Steven Rosenthal
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

As an addendum to the comments I made yesterday. 

I paid attention to my process while tuning one grand and one upright today, both having sections 5-10 cents away from the target. I observed that I spend 75 or 80% of my time getting close to the target's pitch and getting the pin and non speaking segments balanced and the remainder settling the system at pitch. The proportions might differ for an aural tuner. But the majority of my time and energy goes to the mechanical aspects of the system compared to the final setting of the pitch.

I do use sustained tones during the set-up period, it would be counterproductive to use a series of short blows as that would interrupt the process of moving the pitch several cents, pin setting... in other words stabilizing. I did overstate yesterday that it is only the feel of the lever that informs this process, clearly it is one of ear/hand coordination. Then, when actually setting the pitch I noticed I'm still playing relatively longer tones though I'm physically making the adjustment towards the beginning but I'm listening for how it settles and then check again for where the pitch is on the attack. And there may be test blows in there if needed.

While I do like the concept of tuning each string at the same point in the envelope, I think Steve N's assertion that there's no musical reason to play sustained tones is a bit of red herring in that whether or not there's a "musical" reason, there are certainly mechanical reasons to employ long tones in the process of tuning a string that will stay where you want it. Certainly if the tuning involves moving the pin in the block which is the case more often than not.

Sorry for all the verbiage.

------------------------------
Steven Rosenthal RPT
Honolulu HI
(808) 521-7129


Original Message:
Sent: 04-02-2024 03:51
From: Steven Norsworthy
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

All,

"Where have all the pianists and composers gone? They instinctively knew the answer all these hundreds of years!"

We have not had the tools until now to fix a window of time in the first second from the attack and measure the partial frequencies averaged over that window of time. Now we do. Prior aural 'talent' cannot do this consistently. Analog signal processing tools cannot either. Now let's discuss the music and physics which coincide with the composers who knew all along.

The piano literature and piano physics unambiguously coincide and tell us the answer. The power is in the attack, and the composers knew that. Take a Chopin melodic line and you will find a slow passage has a quarter note = 48-60 range, so we get about one note per second. Isn't that interesting, because the piano decays 20 dB / sec in the middle register. 20 dB = 10x in amplitude. So after the attack we have lost 10x. In the last octave we see a 20 dB decay in 300 msec, and for low register, the 20 dB decay is about 2 sec. This is why I initially 'conceived' of the Freeze Frame concept for tuning. There is yet another physical aspect that the piano is an ever-moving target of partial frequency movement. I previously published this with graphs. Some partials will decay at least another 2-5 cents after the first second from the attack. Tuning to these is tantamount to tuning to a very weak amplitude that is now down another 20 dB or 10x so that would be tuning to something that is not even in the music that is so weak that it would cause a severe mistuning in the attack phase of the first second. Now for a funny rhetorical question, where is that piece of piano music that has one note held down for 3 seconds by itself without the sustain pedal, and the tuner says, "Oh what a beautiful piece of music that was!" Someone challenged me when I said that and showed me a Chopin prelude with a note that was a couple secs long in a melody all by itself but I pointed out that the sustain pedal is down throughout that passage. Oops!

Now if the piano partials held to their same frequencies during the decay, we have no argument and this thread is irrelevant. It isn't because the partials are also decaying significantly and at different rates, and the next neighboring half step has a different character as we see in careful spectral analysis, and we can hear that, of course.

If anyone wants me to re-post the sustain graphs of partial spread, I can do that. It is so revealing that it makes one wonder why all these years we have been tuning to a sustain that is not pianistic and fights the very laws of physics that the great composers intuitively already understood. 

Best regards,

Steve

------------------------------
Steven Norsworthy
Cardiff By The Sea CA
(619) 964-0101

Fred,

Interesting, since I have noticed the phenomenon both aurally (confirming with beat rates) and with the ETD, and I continue to experience it now.

 It is of course agreed that 1) it is inconsistent from note to note, 2) it also sometimes goes sharp, 3) sometimes it does both, 4) sometimes it stays put and doesn't move a wink, 5) occasionally it occurs between just two strings, rather than three. Virgil acknowledged all of this from what I read. His point simply was if it does it (particularly goes flat) you want to compensate for it. In my own experimentation I found that I could (often) counteract the pitch decay (when I detect it) by slightly raising the pitch of next string and relying on the bridge coupling to prevent a "beat" from arising. Then, if needed (for stubborn ones) I could do the same with the third string. What I began to notice though in the process was that the body of the tone seemed to improve as well as the sustain. Admittedly, one can go too far with this so it is necessary to keep a tight rein on the process (and of course some pianos simply will not tolerate any spread whatsoever and must be tuned as close to the attack as possible for any kind of clean sound). However, over time I have arrived at a satisfying process that allows a bit of "voicing" of the unison focusing on beauty over power, with a pretty good success rate. 

Currently I am using the sensor and the ETD to try to refine the process. Still a work in progress. I do not believe that the phenomenon is "all in my head". 

Nonetheless, there is merit in tuning directly in the "attack" phase, and therefore it is also on the "menu".

Peter Grey Piano Doctor 

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


Original Message:
Sent: 04-05-2024 16:52
From: Fred Sturm
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

Peter,

Speaking for myself, I find "the tendency for the entire unison to change pitch (usually flat) upon adding (particularly) the third string into the mix." to be a non-issue. DIdn't find it when tuning aurally for 15 years, haven't found it using electronics for nearly 30 years.

Aurally, having read Virgil Smith's assertions, I tested them by listening to beat rates. Single string against another single string, compared to three string unison to the same other string. No difference in beat rate that I could hear. Also was unable to confirm the phenomenon using an Accutuner once I started tuning with it - measuring pitch of each string, zeroed to the display, then checking the unison, I found no difference.

Then, in the late 1990s, Jim Coleman wrote that he hadn't been able to measure such a difference using his Accutuner, but when he got RCT, which had a more precise reading, he was able to find that difference, in the range of about 0.1 - 0.2¢. 

Once I got Cybertuner, I made my own, very careful measurements with it. I carefully chose unisons made up of three strings that I could produce stable full blush on. I tuned the three strings of each such unison carefully to get full blush, and rechecked that they were spot on. I then read the unison. I again rechecked to see that all three single strings were zeroed.  

Result: most often, the three string unison was at full blush. In those cases where the display showed a small creep from stable, that creep was as often in the sharp direction as in the flat direction.

Meanwhile, Jim Ellis had made some theoretical calculations of the physics behind the assertion, and found that at most it would be in the less than 0.1¢ range, insignificant for purposes of practical tuning.

I agree with that assessment. I further believe that the tiny flattening of pitch between about 200-300 microseconds after impact and 1.5 - 2 seconds after impact is insignificant for purposes of tuning. It is only that first quarter second or so where the maximum pitch change occurs, and that period is also where we are hearing all the percussive impact noise. 

In any case, absolute pitch of individual notes, within one to two cents, makes little to no difference. The "just noticeable difference" for pitch, in rough terms as measured in many studies, tends to be around 5-6¢. When played in context (intervals and particularly unisons and then octaves) it is quite a bit smaller, but that is due to interference patterns. Raw pitch is very forgiving. Differences of less than one cent are imperceptible for most practical purposes.

------------------------------
Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico
fssturm@unm.edu
http://fredsturm.net
http://www.artoftuning.com
"We either make ourselves happy or miserable. The amount of work is the same." - Carlos Casteneda


Original Message:
Sent: 04-04-2024 09:10
From: Peter Grey
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

One aspect of this that I had sort of forgotten about (not really forgotten about but just not actively thinking about it) is the tendency for the entire unison to change pitch (usually flat) upon adding (particularly) the third string into the mix. This is particularly evident now that I'm combining some digital assistants into my work. This of course is one thing that Virgil Smith taught all the time and it got me thinking...

Part of the reason I started intentionally spreading my unisons years ago was to in fact counteract (or help) this phenomenon. By tuning the middle string "slightly" higher than the left (but of course not introducing an audible beat, then tuning the right string similarly, I found that I could often (but not always) get the completed unison to stay put at the target pitch. (Some unisons can be quite stubborn and persistent in this regard).

Anyway, those of you who regularly use the digital assistant, I ask how do you cope with this phenomenon whether you tune on the attack or to the aftersound? It quite obvious with the electronics. 

Peter Grey Piano Doctor 

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


Original Message:
Sent: 04-03-2024 01:21
From: Steven Rosenthal
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

As an addendum to the comments I made yesterday. 

I paid attention to my process while tuning one grand and one upright today, both having sections 5-10 cents away from the target. I observed that I spend 75 or 80% of my time getting close to the target's pitch and getting the pin and non speaking segments balanced and the remainder settling the system at pitch. The proportions might differ for an aural tuner. But the majority of my time and energy goes to the mechanical aspects of the system compared to the final setting of the pitch.

I do use sustained tones during the set-up period, it would be counterproductive to use a series of short blows as that would interrupt the process of moving the pitch several cents, pin setting... in other words stabilizing. I did overstate yesterday that it is only the feel of the lever that informs this process, clearly it is one of ear/hand coordination. Then, when actually setting the pitch I noticed I'm still playing relatively longer tones though I'm physically making the adjustment towards the beginning but I'm listening for how it settles and then check again for where the pitch is on the attack. And there may be test blows in there if needed.

While I do like the concept of tuning each string at the same point in the envelope, I think Steve N's assertion that there's no musical reason to play sustained tones is a bit of red herring in that whether or not there's a "musical" reason, there are certainly mechanical reasons to employ long tones in the process of tuning a string that will stay where you want it. Certainly if the tuning involves moving the pin in the block which is the case more often than not.

Sorry for all the verbiage.

------------------------------
Steven Rosenthal RPT
Honolulu HI
(808) 521-7129


Original Message:
Sent: 04-02-2024 03:51
From: Steven Norsworthy
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

All,

"Where have all the pianists and composers gone? They instinctively knew the answer all these hundreds of years!"

We have not had the tools until now to fix a window of time in the first second from the attack and measure the partial frequencies averaged over that window of time. Now we do. Prior aural 'talent' cannot do this consistently. Analog signal processing tools cannot either. Now let's discuss the music and physics which coincide with the composers who knew all along.

The piano literature and piano physics unambiguously coincide and tell us the answer. The power is in the attack, and the composers knew that. Take a Chopin melodic line and you will find a slow passage has a quarter note = 48-60 range, so we get about one note per second. Isn't that interesting, because the piano decays 20 dB / sec in the middle register. 20 dB = 10x in amplitude. So after the attack we have lost 10x. In the last octave we see a 20 dB decay in 300 msec, and for low register, the 20 dB decay is about 2 sec. This is why I initially 'conceived' of the Freeze Frame concept for tuning. There is yet another physical aspect that the piano is an ever-moving target of partial frequency movement. I previously published this with graphs. Some partials will decay at least another 2-5 cents after the first second from the attack. Tuning to these is tantamount to tuning to a very weak amplitude that is now down another 20 dB or 10x so that would be tuning to something that is not even in the music that is so weak that it would cause a severe mistuning in the attack phase of the first second. Now for a funny rhetorical question, where is that piece of piano music that has one note held down for 3 seconds by itself without the sustain pedal, and the tuner says, "Oh what a beautiful piece of music that was!" Someone challenged me when I said that and showed me a Chopin prelude with a note that was a couple secs long in a melody all by itself but I pointed out that the sustain pedal is down throughout that passage. Oops!

Now if the piano partials held to their same frequencies during the decay, we have no argument and this thread is irrelevant. It isn't because the partials are also decaying significantly and at different rates, and the next neighboring half step has a different character as we see in careful spectral analysis, and we can hear that, of course.

If anyone wants me to re-post the sustain graphs of partial spread, I can do that. It is so revealing that it makes one wonder why all these years we have been tuning to a sustain that is not pianistic and fights the very laws of physics that the great composers intuitively already understood. 

Best regards,

Steve

------------------------------
Steven Norsworthy
Cardiff By The Sea CA
(619) 964-0101

Fred,

Interesting, since I have noticed the phenomenon both aurally (confirming with beat rates) and with the ETD, and I continue to experience it now.

 It is of course agreed that 1) it is inconsistent from note to note, 2) it also sometimes goes sharp, 3) sometimes it does both, 4) sometimes it stays put and doesn't move a wink, 5) occasionally it occurs between just two strings, rather than three. Virgil acknowledged all of this from what I read. His point simply was if it does it (particularly goes flat) you want to compensate for it. In my own experimentation I found that I could (often) counteract the pitch decay (when I detect it) by slightly raising the pitch of next string and relying on the bridge coupling to prevent a "beat" from arising. Then, if needed (for stubborn ones) I could do the same with the third string. What I began to notice though in the process was that the body of the tone seemed to improve as well as the sustain. Admittedly, one can go too far with this so it is necessary to keep a tight rein on the process (and of course some pianos simply will not tolerate any spread whatsoever and must be tuned as close to the attack as possible for any kind of clean sound). However, over time I have arrived at a satisfying process that allows a bit of "voicing" of the unison focusing on beauty over power, with a pretty good success rate. 

Currently I am using the sensor and the ETD to try to refine the process. Still a work in progress. I do not believe that the phenomenon is "all in my head". 

Nonetheless, there is merit in tuning directly in the "attack" phase, and therefore it is also on the "menu".

Peter Grey Piano Doctor 

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


Original Message:
Sent: 04-05-2024 16:52
From: Fred Sturm
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

Peter,

Speaking for myself, I find "the tendency for the entire unison to change pitch (usually flat) upon adding (particularly) the third string into the mix." to be a non-issue. DIdn't find it when tuning aurally for 15 years, haven't found it using electronics for nearly 30 years.

Aurally, having read Virgil Smith's assertions, I tested them by listening to beat rates. Single string against another single string, compared to three string unison to the same other string. No difference in beat rate that I could hear. Also was unable to confirm the phenomenon using an Accutuner once I started tuning with it - measuring pitch of each string, zeroed to the display, then checking the unison, I found no difference.

Then, in the late 1990s, Jim Coleman wrote that he hadn't been able to measure such a difference using his Accutuner, but when he got RCT, which had a more precise reading, he was able to find that difference, in the range of about 0.1 - 0.2¢. 

Once I got Cybertuner, I made my own, very careful measurements with it. I carefully chose unisons made up of three strings that I could produce stable full blush on. I tuned the three strings of each such unison carefully to get full blush, and rechecked that they were spot on. I then read the unison. I again rechecked to see that all three single strings were zeroed.  

Result: most often, the three string unison was at full blush. In those cases where the display showed a small creep from stable, that creep was as often in the sharp direction as in the flat direction.

Meanwhile, Jim Ellis had made some theoretical calculations of the physics behind the assertion, and found that at most it would be in the less than 0.1¢ range, insignificant for purposes of practical tuning.

I agree with that assessment. I further believe that the tiny flattening of pitch between about 200-300 microseconds after impact and 1.5 - 2 seconds after impact is insignificant for purposes of tuning. It is only that first quarter second or so where the maximum pitch change occurs, and that period is also where we are hearing all the percussive impact noise. 

In any case, absolute pitch of individual notes, within one to two cents, makes little to no difference. The "just noticeable difference" for pitch, in rough terms as measured in many studies, tends to be around 5-6¢. When played in context (intervals and particularly unisons and then octaves) it is quite a bit smaller, but that is due to interference patterns. Raw pitch is very forgiving. Differences of less than one cent are imperceptible for most practical purposes.

------------------------------
Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico
fssturm@unm.edu
http://fredsturm.net
http://www.artoftuning.com
"We either make ourselves happy or miserable. The amount of work is the same." - Carlos Casteneda


Original Message:
Sent: 04-04-2024 09:10
From: Peter Grey
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

One aspect of this that I had sort of forgotten about (not really forgotten about but just not actively thinking about it) is the tendency for the entire unison to change pitch (usually flat) upon adding (particularly) the third string into the mix. This is particularly evident now that I'm combining some digital assistants into my work. This of course is one thing that Virgil Smith taught all the time and it got me thinking...

Part of the reason I started intentionally spreading my unisons years ago was to in fact counteract (or help) this phenomenon. By tuning the middle string "slightly" higher than the left (but of course not introducing an audible beat, then tuning the right string similarly, I found that I could often (but not always) get the completed unison to stay put at the target pitch. (Some unisons can be quite stubborn and persistent in this regard).

Anyway, those of you who regularly use the digital assistant, I ask how do you cope with this phenomenon whether you tune on the attack or to the aftersound? It quite obvious with the electronics. 

Peter Grey Piano Doctor 

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


Original Message:
Sent: 04-03-2024 01:21
From: Steven Rosenthal
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

As an addendum to the comments I made yesterday. 

I paid attention to my process while tuning one grand and one upright today, both having sections 5-10 cents away from the target. I observed that I spend 75 or 80% of my time getting close to the target's pitch and getting the pin and non speaking segments balanced and the remainder settling the system at pitch. The proportions might differ for an aural tuner. But the majority of my time and energy goes to the mechanical aspects of the system compared to the final setting of the pitch.

I do use sustained tones during the set-up period, it would be counterproductive to use a series of short blows as that would interrupt the process of moving the pitch several cents, pin setting... in other words stabilizing. I did overstate yesterday that it is only the feel of the lever that informs this process, clearly it is one of ear/hand coordination. Then, when actually setting the pitch I noticed I'm still playing relatively longer tones though I'm physically making the adjustment towards the beginning but I'm listening for how it settles and then check again for where the pitch is on the attack. And there may be test blows in there if needed.

While I do like the concept of tuning each string at the same point in the envelope, I think Steve N's assertion that there's no musical reason to play sustained tones is a bit of red herring in that whether or not there's a "musical" reason, there are certainly mechanical reasons to employ long tones in the process of tuning a string that will stay where you want it. Certainly if the tuning involves moving the pin in the block which is the case more often than not.

Sorry for all the verbiage.

------------------------------
Steven Rosenthal RPT
Honolulu HI
(808) 521-7129


Original Message:
Sent: 04-02-2024 03:51
From: Steven Norsworthy
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

All,

"Where have all the pianists and composers gone? They instinctively knew the answer all these hundreds of years!"

We have not had the tools until now to fix a window of time in the first second from the attack and measure the partial frequencies averaged over that window of time. Now we do. Prior aural 'talent' cannot do this consistently. Analog signal processing tools cannot either. Now let's discuss the music and physics which coincide with the composers who knew all along.

The piano literature and piano physics unambiguously coincide and tell us the answer. The power is in the attack, and the composers knew that. Take a Chopin melodic line and you will find a slow passage has a quarter note = 48-60 range, so we get about one note per second. Isn't that interesting, because the piano decays 20 dB / sec in the middle register. 20 dB = 10x in amplitude. So after the attack we have lost 10x. In the last octave we see a 20 dB decay in 300 msec, and for low register, the 20 dB decay is about 2 sec. This is why I initially 'conceived' of the Freeze Frame concept for tuning. There is yet another physical aspect that the piano is an ever-moving target of partial frequency movement. I previously published this with graphs. Some partials will decay at least another 2-5 cents after the first second from the attack. Tuning to these is tantamount to tuning to a very weak amplitude that is now down another 20 dB or 10x so that would be tuning to something that is not even in the music that is so weak that it would cause a severe mistuning in the attack phase of the first second. Now for a funny rhetorical question, where is that piece of piano music that has one note held down for 3 seconds by itself without the sustain pedal, and the tuner says, "Oh what a beautiful piece of music that was!" Someone challenged me when I said that and showed me a Chopin prelude with a note that was a couple secs long in a melody all by itself but I pointed out that the sustain pedal is down throughout that passage. Oops!

Now if the piano partials held to their same frequencies during the decay, we have no argument and this thread is irrelevant. It isn't because the partials are also decaying significantly and at different rates, and the next neighboring half step has a different character as we see in careful spectral analysis, and we can hear that, of course.

If anyone wants me to re-post the sustain graphs of partial spread, I can do that. It is so revealing that it makes one wonder why all these years we have been tuning to a sustain that is not pianistic and fights the very laws of physics that the great composers intuitively already understood. 

Best regards,

Steve

------------------------------
Steven Norsworthy
Cardiff By The Sea CA
(619) 964-0101

Peter,

Speaking for myself, I find "the tendency for the entire unison to change pitch (usually flat) upon adding (particularly) the third string into the mix." to be a non-issue. DIdn't find it when tuning aurally for 15 years, haven't found it using electronics for nearly 30 years.

Aurally, having read Virgil Smith's assertions, I tested them by listening to beat rates. Single string against another single string, compared to three string unison to the same other string. No difference in beat rate that I could hear. Also was unable to confirm the phenomenon using an Accutuner once I started tuning with it - measuring pitch of each string, zeroed to the display, then checking the unison, I found no difference.

Then, in the late 1990s, Jim Coleman wrote that he hadn't been able to measure such a difference using his Accutuner, but when he got RCT, which had a more precise reading, he was able to find that difference, in the range of about 0.1 - 0.2¢. 

Once I got Cybertuner, I made my own, very careful measurements with it. I carefully chose unisons made up of three strings that I could produce stable full blush on. I tuned the three strings of each such unison carefully to get full blush, and rechecked that they were spot on. I then read the unison. I again rechecked to see that all three single strings were zeroed.  

Result: most often, the three string unison was at full blush. In those cases where the display showed a small creep from stable, that creep was as often in the sharp direction as in the flat direction.

Meanwhile, Jim Ellis had made some theoretical calculations of the physics behind the assertion, and found that at most it would be in the less than 0.1¢ range, insignificant for purposes of practical tuning.

I agree with that assessment. I further believe that the tiny flattening of pitch between about 200-300 microseconds after impact and 1.5 - 2 seconds after impact is insignificant for purposes of tuning. It is only that first quarter second or so where the maximum pitch change occurs, and that period is also where we are hearing all the percussive impact noise. 

In any case, absolute pitch of individual notes, within one to two cents, makes little to no difference. The "just noticeable difference" for pitch, in rough terms as measured in many studies, tends to be around 5-6¢. When played in context (intervals and particularly unisons and then octaves) it is quite a bit smaller, but that is due to interference patterns. Raw pitch is very forgiving. Differences of less than one cent are imperceptible for most practical purposes.

One aspect of this that I had sort of forgotten about (not really forgotten about but just not actively thinking about it) is the tendency for the entire unison to change pitch (usually flat) upon adding (particularly) the third string into the mix. This is particularly evident now that I'm combining some digital assistants into my work. This of course is one thing that Virgil Smith taught all the time and it got me thinking...

Part of the reason I started intentionally spreading my unisons years ago was to in fact counteract (or help) this phenomenon. By tuning the middle string "slightly" higher than the left (but of course not introducing an audible beat, then tuning the right string similarly, I found that I could often (but not always) get the completed unison to stay put at the target pitch. (Some unisons can be quite stubborn and persistent in this regard).

Anyway, those of you who regularly use the digital assistant, I ask how do you cope with this phenomenon whether you tune on the attack or to the aftersound? It quite obvious with the electronics. 

Peter Grey Piano Doctor 

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


Original Message:
Sent: 04-03-2024 01:21
From: Steven Rosenthal
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

As an addendum to the comments I made yesterday. 

I paid attention to my process while tuning one grand and one upright today, both having sections 5-10 cents away from the target. I observed that I spend 75 or 80% of my time getting close to the target's pitch and getting the pin and non speaking segments balanced and the remainder settling the system at pitch. The proportions might differ for an aural tuner. But the majority of my time and energy goes to the mechanical aspects of the system compared to the final setting of the pitch.

I do use sustained tones during the set-up period, it would be counterproductive to use a series of short blows as that would interrupt the process of moving the pitch several cents, pin setting... in other words stabilizing. I did overstate yesterday that it is only the feel of the lever that informs this process, clearly it is one of ear/hand coordination. Then, when actually setting the pitch I noticed I'm still playing relatively longer tones though I'm physically making the adjustment towards the beginning but I'm listening for how it settles and then check again for where the pitch is on the attack. And there may be test blows in there if needed.

While I do like the concept of tuning each string at the same point in the envelope, I think Steve N's assertion that there's no musical reason to play sustained tones is a bit of red herring in that whether or not there's a "musical" reason, there are certainly mechanical reasons to employ long tones in the process of tuning a string that will stay where you want it. Certainly if the tuning involves moving the pin in the block which is the case more often than not.

Sorry for all the verbiage.

------------------------------
Steven Rosenthal RPT
Honolulu HI
(808) 521-7129


Original Message:
Sent: 04-02-2024 03:51
From: Steven Norsworthy
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

All,

"Where have all the pianists and composers gone? They instinctively knew the answer all these hundreds of years!"

We have not had the tools until now to fix a window of time in the first second from the attack and measure the partial frequencies averaged over that window of time. Now we do. Prior aural 'talent' cannot do this consistently. Analog signal processing tools cannot either. Now let's discuss the music and physics which coincide with the composers who knew all along.

The piano literature and piano physics unambiguously coincide and tell us the answer. The power is in the attack, and the composers knew that. Take a Chopin melodic line and you will find a slow passage has a quarter note = 48-60 range, so we get about one note per second. Isn't that interesting, because the piano decays 20 dB / sec in the middle register. 20 dB = 10x in amplitude. So after the attack we have lost 10x. In the last octave we see a 20 dB decay in 300 msec, and for low register, the 20 dB decay is about 2 sec. This is why I initially 'conceived' of the Freeze Frame concept for tuning. There is yet another physical aspect that the piano is an ever-moving target of partial frequency movement. I previously published this with graphs. Some partials will decay at least another 2-5 cents after the first second from the attack. Tuning to these is tantamount to tuning to a very weak amplitude that is now down another 20 dB or 10x so that would be tuning to something that is not even in the music that is so weak that it would cause a severe mistuning in the attack phase of the first second. Now for a funny rhetorical question, where is that piece of piano music that has one note held down for 3 seconds by itself without the sustain pedal, and the tuner says, "Oh what a beautiful piece of music that was!" Someone challenged me when I said that and showed me a Chopin prelude with a note that was a couple secs long in a melody all by itself but I pointed out that the sustain pedal is down throughout that passage. Oops!

Now if the piano partials held to their same frequencies during the decay, we have no argument and this thread is irrelevant. It isn't because the partials are also decaying significantly and at different rates, and the next neighboring half step has a different character as we see in careful spectral analysis, and we can hear that, of course.

If anyone wants me to re-post the sustain graphs of partial spread, I can do that. It is so revealing that it makes one wonder why all these years we have been tuning to a sustain that is not pianistic and fights the very laws of physics that the great composers intuitively already understood. 

Best regards,

Steve

------------------------------
Steven Norsworthy
Cardiff By The Sea CA
(619) 964-0101

Hi Fred,

I'm with Peter on this one. I think the reason you haven't found this is you picked random samples. WHEN I experience this, it it probably around .5% of the time, but with 250ish strings, that can add up enough for me to notice. Not counting bass strings, I find this doesn't happen often on newer, high end pianos. It's usually on older pianos or those with scaling problems. This tells me it could, in reality, be mismatched strings. As I mentioned to Nathan, this happens to me all the time with mismatched bass strings. I can get very clear differences read on an ETD (Tunelab & iRCT). Most of the time these differences are very small (around a cent, give or take), particularly in the unwound strings, but not always. Sometimes the difference can be as much as 2 cents in unwound strings and 5ish cents in wound strings. When I have mismatched wound strings and am reading them with an ETD, sometimes the unison will match one of the strings while the other is tuned sharp or flat to make a good sounding unison. Sometimes the unison is pitched between the two strings, with one reading sharp and the other reading flat. It happens often enough that I tend to be extra careful around the wound strings with unisons. I can easily tune a high bass section to my liking, then find the beat rates off after putting unisons together. ETD readings match this. 

But, like I said, this averages out to around 2 strings per piano (some have no problems; others have several). Picking random samples will likely show no problems. 

Maggie

Peter,

Speaking for myself, I find "the tendency for the entire unison to change pitch (usually flat) upon adding (particularly) the third string into the mix." to be a non-issue. DIdn't find it when tuning aurally for 15 years, haven't found it using electronics for nearly 30 years.

Aurally, having read Virgil Smith's assertions, I tested them by listening to beat rates. Single string against another single string, compared to three string unison to the same other string. No difference in beat rate that I could hear. Also was unable to confirm the phenomenon using an Accutuner once I started tuning with it - measuring pitch of each string, zeroed to the display, then checking the unison, I found no difference.

Then, in the late 1990s, Jim Coleman wrote that he hadn't been able to measure such a difference using his Accutuner, but when he got RCT, which had a more precise reading, he was able to find that difference, in the range of about 0.1 - 0.2¢. 

Once I got Cybertuner, I made my own, very careful measurements with it. I carefully chose unisons made up of three strings that I could produce stable full blush on. I tuned the three strings of each such unison carefully to get full blush, and rechecked that they were spot on. I then read the unison. I again rechecked to see that all three single strings were zeroed.  

Result: most often, the three string unison was at full blush. In those cases where the display showed a small creep from stable, that creep was as often in the sharp direction as in the flat direction.

Meanwhile, Jim Ellis had made some theoretical calculations of the physics behind the assertion, and found that at most it would be in the less than 0.1¢ range, insignificant for purposes of practical tuning.

I agree with that assessment. I further believe that the tiny flattening of pitch between about 200-300 microseconds after impact and 1.5 - 2 seconds after impact is insignificant for purposes of tuning. It is only that first quarter second or so where the maximum pitch change occurs, and that period is also where we are hearing all the percussive impact noise. 

In any case, absolute pitch of individual notes, within one to two cents, makes little to no difference. The "just noticeable difference" for pitch, in rough terms as measured in many studies, tends to be around 5-6¢. When played in context (intervals and particularly unisons and then octaves) it is quite a bit smaller, but that is due to interference patterns. Raw pitch is very forgiving. Differences of less than one cent are imperceptible for most practical purposes.

One aspect of this that I had sort of forgotten about (not really forgotten about but just not actively thinking about it) is the tendency for the entire unison to change pitch (usually flat) upon adding (particularly) the third string into the mix. This is particularly evident now that I'm combining some digital assistants into my work. This of course is one thing that Virgil Smith taught all the time and it got me thinking...

Part of the reason I started intentionally spreading my unisons years ago was to in fact counteract (or help) this phenomenon. By tuning the middle string "slightly" higher than the left (but of course not introducing an audible beat, then tuning the right string similarly, I found that I could often (but not always) get the completed unison to stay put at the target pitch. (Some unisons can be quite stubborn and persistent in this regard).

Anyway, those of you who regularly use the digital assistant, I ask how do you cope with this phenomenon whether you tune on the attack or to the aftersound? It quite obvious with the electronics. 

Peter Grey Piano Doctor 

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


Original Message:
Sent: 04-03-2024 01:21
From: Steven Rosenthal
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

As an addendum to the comments I made yesterday. 

I paid attention to my process while tuning one grand and one upright today, both having sections 5-10 cents away from the target. I observed that I spend 75 or 80% of my time getting close to the target's pitch and getting the pin and non speaking segments balanced and the remainder settling the system at pitch. The proportions might differ for an aural tuner. But the majority of my time and energy goes to the mechanical aspects of the system compared to the final setting of the pitch.

I do use sustained tones during the set-up period, it would be counterproductive to use a series of short blows as that would interrupt the process of moving the pitch several cents, pin setting... in other words stabilizing. I did overstate yesterday that it is only the feel of the lever that informs this process, clearly it is one of ear/hand coordination. Then, when actually setting the pitch I noticed I'm still playing relatively longer tones though I'm physically making the adjustment towards the beginning but I'm listening for how it settles and then check again for where the pitch is on the attack. And there may be test blows in there if needed.

While I do like the concept of tuning each string at the same point in the envelope, I think Steve N's assertion that there's no musical reason to play sustained tones is a bit of red herring in that whether or not there's a "musical" reason, there are certainly mechanical reasons to employ long tones in the process of tuning a string that will stay where you want it. Certainly if the tuning involves moving the pin in the block which is the case more often than not.

Sorry for all the verbiage.

------------------------------
Steven Rosenthal RPT
Honolulu HI
(808) 521-7129

Original Message:
Sent: 4/6/2024 11:39:00 AM
From: Maggie Jusiel
Subject: RE: why measure at the point of attack?

Hi Fred,

I'm with Peter on this one. I think the reason you haven't found this is you picked random samples. WHEN I experience this, it it probably around .5% of the time, but with 250ish strings, that can add up enough for me to notice. Not counting bass strings, I find this doesn't happen often on newer, high end pianos. It's usually on older pianos or those with scaling problems. This tells me it could, in reality, be mismatched strings. As I mentioned to Nathan, this happens to me all the time with mismatched bass strings. I can get very clear differences read on an ETD (Tunelab & iRCT). Most of the time these differences are very small (around a cent, give or take), particularly in the unwound strings, but not always. Sometimes the difference can be as much as 2 cents in unwound strings and 5ish cents in wound strings. When I have mismatched wound strings and am reading them with an ETD, sometimes the unison will match one of the strings while the other is tuned sharp or flat to make a good sounding unison. Sometimes the unison is pitched between the two strings, with one reading sharp and the other reading flat. It happens often enough that I tend to be extra careful around the wound strings with unisons. I can easily tune a high bass section to my liking, then find the beat rates off after putting unisons together. ETD readings match this. 

But, like I said, this averages out to around 2 strings per piano (some have no problems; others have several). Picking random samples will likely show no problems. 

Maggie

------------------------------
Maggie Jusiel, RPT
Athens, WV
(304)952-8615
mags@timandmaggie.net
------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 04-05-2024 16:52
From: Fred Sturm
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

Peter,

Speaking for myself, I find "the tendency for the entire unison to change pitch (usually flat) upon adding (particularly) the third string into the mix." to be a non-issue. DIdn't find it when tuning aurally for 15 years, haven't found it using electronics for nearly 30 years.

Aurally, having read Virgil Smith's assertions, I tested them by listening to beat rates. Single string against another single string, compared to three string unison to the same other string. No difference in beat rate that I could hear. Also was unable to confirm the phenomenon using an Accutuner once I started tuning with it - measuring pitch of each string, zeroed to the display, then checking the unison, I found no difference.

Then, in the late 1990s, Jim Coleman wrote that he hadn't been able to measure such a difference using his Accutuner, but when he got RCT, which had a more precise reading, he was able to find that difference, in the range of about 0.1 - 0.2¢. 

Once I got Cybertuner, I made my own, very careful measurements with it. I carefully chose unisons made up of three strings that I could produce stable full blush on. I tuned the three strings of each such unison carefully to get full blush, and rechecked that they were spot on. I then read the unison. I again rechecked to see that all three single strings were zeroed.  

Result: most often, the three string unison was at full blush. In those cases where the display showed a small creep from stable, that creep was as often in the sharp direction as in the flat direction.

Meanwhile, Jim Ellis had made some theoretical calculations of the physics behind the assertion, and found that at most it would be in the less than 0.1¢ range, insignificant for purposes of practical tuning.

I agree with that assessment. I further believe that the tiny flattening of pitch between about 200-300 microseconds after impact and 1.5 - 2 seconds after impact is insignificant for purposes of tuning. It is only that first quarter second or so where the maximum pitch change occurs, and that period is also where we are hearing all the percussive impact noise. 

In any case, absolute pitch of individual notes, within one to two cents, makes little to no difference. The "just noticeable difference" for pitch, in rough terms as measured in many studies, tends to be around 5-6¢. When played in context (intervals and particularly unisons and then octaves) it is quite a bit smaller, but that is due to interference patterns. Raw pitch is very forgiving. Differences of less than one cent are imperceptible for most practical purposes.

------------------------------
Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico
fssturm@unm.edu
http://fredsturm.net
http://www.artoftuning.com
"We either make ourselves happy or miserable. The amount of work is the same." - Carlos Casteneda


Original Message:
Sent: 04-04-2024 09:10
From: Peter Grey
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

One aspect of this that I had sort of forgotten about (not really forgotten about but just not actively thinking about it) is the tendency for the entire unison to change pitch (usually flat) upon adding (particularly) the third string into the mix. This is particularly evident now that I'm combining some digital assistants into my work. This of course is one thing that Virgil Smith taught all the time and it got me thinking...

Part of the reason I started intentionally spreading my unisons years ago was to in fact counteract (or help) this phenomenon. By tuning the middle string "slightly" higher than the left (but of course not introducing an audible beat, then tuning the right string similarly, I found that I could often (but not always) get the completed unison to stay put at the target pitch. (Some unisons can be quite stubborn and persistent in this regard).

Anyway, those of you who regularly use the digital assistant, I ask how do you cope with this phenomenon whether you tune on the attack or to the aftersound? It quite obvious with the electronics. 

Peter Grey Piano Doctor 

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


Original Message:
Sent: 04-03-2024 01:21
From: Steven Rosenthal
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

As an addendum to the comments I made yesterday. 

I paid attention to my process while tuning one grand and one upright today, both having sections 5-10 cents away from the target. I observed that I spend 75 or 80% of my time getting close to the target's pitch and getting the pin and non speaking segments balanced and the remainder settling the system at pitch. The proportions might differ for an aural tuner. But the majority of my time and energy goes to the mechanical aspects of the system compared to the final setting of the pitch.

I do use sustained tones during the set-up period, it would be counterproductive to use a series of short blows as that would interrupt the process of moving the pitch several cents, pin setting... in other words stabilizing. I did overstate yesterday that it is only the feel of the lever that informs this process, clearly it is one of ear/hand coordination. Then, when actually setting the pitch I noticed I'm still playing relatively longer tones though I'm physically making the adjustment towards the beginning but I'm listening for how it settles and then check again for where the pitch is on the attack. And there may be test blows in there if needed.

While I do like the concept of tuning each string at the same point in the envelope, I think Steve N's assertion that there's no musical reason to play sustained tones is a bit of red herring in that whether or not there's a "musical" reason, there are certainly mechanical reasons to employ long tones in the process of tuning a string that will stay where you want it. Certainly if the tuning involves moving the pin in the block which is the case more often than not.

Sorry for all the verbiage.

------------------------------
Steven Rosenthal RPT
Honolulu HI
(808) 521-7129


Original Message:
Sent: 04-02-2024 03:51
From: Steven Norsworthy
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

All,

"Where have all the pianists and composers gone? They instinctively knew the answer all these hundreds of years!"

We have not had the tools until now to fix a window of time in the first second from the attack and measure the partial frequencies averaged over that window of time. Now we do. Prior aural 'talent' cannot do this consistently. Analog signal processing tools cannot either. Now let's discuss the music and physics which coincide with the composers who knew all along.

The piano literature and piano physics unambiguously coincide and tell us the answer. The power is in the attack, and the composers knew that. Take a Chopin melodic line and you will find a slow passage has a quarter note = 48-60 range, so we get about one note per second. Isn't that interesting, because the piano decays 20 dB / sec in the middle register. 20 dB = 10x in amplitude. So after the attack we have lost 10x. In the last octave we see a 20 dB decay in 300 msec, and for low register, the 20 dB decay is about 2 sec. This is why I initially 'conceived' of the Freeze Frame concept for tuning. There is yet another physical aspect that the piano is an ever-moving target of partial frequency movement. I previously published this with graphs. Some partials will decay at least another 2-5 cents after the first second from the attack. Tuning to these is tantamount to tuning to a very weak amplitude that is now down another 20 dB or 10x so that would be tuning to something that is not even in the music that is so weak that it would cause a severe mistuning in the attack phase of the first second. Now for a funny rhetorical question, where is that piece of piano music that has one note held down for 3 seconds by itself without the sustain pedal, and the tuner says, "Oh what a beautiful piece of music that was!" Someone challenged me when I said that and showed me a Chopin prelude with a note that was a couple secs long in a melody all by itself but I pointed out that the sustain pedal is down throughout that passage. Oops!

Now if the piano partials held to their same frequencies during the decay, we have no argument and this thread is irrelevant. It isn't because the partials are also decaying significantly and at different rates, and the next neighboring half step has a different character as we see in careful spectral analysis, and we can hear that, of course.

If anyone wants me to re-post the sustain graphs of partial spread, I can do that. It is so revealing that it makes one wonder why all these years we have been tuning to a sustain that is not pianistic and fights the very laws of physics that the great composers intuitively already understood. 

Best regards,

Steve

------------------------------
Steven Norsworthy
Cardiff By The Sea CA
(619) 964-0101

I was gonna say roughly the same thing but Fred said it better 😂. And I'm strangely hungry for fish now.

I too encounter a lot of mismatched bass strings. I realize it's a bit off topic but have you tried the pitch lok string couplers that Scott Jones used to sell? They aren't a perfect solution but they are an absolute godsend when time/funds aren't available to replace the stinky bichord(s). I will be very sad when mine run out because I don't know that you can still buy them. I'll have to figure out how to make more.

------------------------------
Nathan Monteleone RPT
Fort Worth TX
(817) 675-9494
nbmont@gmail.com
------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 04-06-2024 11:56
From: Fred Sturm
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

Original Message:
Sent: 4/6/2024 11:39:00 AM
From: Maggie Jusiel
Subject: RE: why measure at the point of attack?

Hi Fred,

I'm with Peter on this one. I think the reason you haven't found this is you picked random samples. WHEN I experience this, it it probably around .5% of the time, but with 250ish strings, that can add up enough for me to notice. Not counting bass strings, I find this doesn't happen often on newer, high end pianos. It's usually on older pianos or those with scaling problems. This tells me it could, in reality, be mismatched strings. As I mentioned to Nathan, this happens to me all the time with mismatched bass strings. I can get very clear differences read on an ETD (Tunelab & iRCT). Most of the time these differences are very small (around a cent, give or take), particularly in the unwound strings, but not always. Sometimes the difference can be as much as 2 cents in unwound strings and 5ish cents in wound strings. When I have mismatched wound strings and am reading them with an ETD, sometimes the unison will match one of the strings while the other is tuned sharp or flat to make a good sounding unison. Sometimes the unison is pitched between the two strings, with one reading sharp and the other reading flat. It happens often enough that I tend to be extra careful around the wound strings with unisons. I can easily tune a high bass section to my liking, then find the beat rates off after putting unisons together. ETD readings match this. 

But, like I said, this averages out to around 2 strings per piano (some have no problems; others have several). Picking random samples will likely show no problems. 

Maggie

------------------------------
Maggie Jusiel, RPT
Athens, WV
(304)952-8615
mags@timandmaggie.net


Original Message:
Sent: 04-05-2024 16:52
From: Fred Sturm
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

Peter,

Speaking for myself, I find "the tendency for the entire unison to change pitch (usually flat) upon adding (particularly) the third string into the mix." to be a non-issue. DIdn't find it when tuning aurally for 15 years, haven't found it using electronics for nearly 30 years.

Aurally, having read Virgil Smith's assertions, I tested them by listening to beat rates. Single string against another single string, compared to three string unison to the same other string. No difference in beat rate that I could hear. Also was unable to confirm the phenomenon using an Accutuner once I started tuning with it - measuring pitch of each string, zeroed to the display, then checking the unison, I found no difference.

Then, in the late 1990s, Jim Coleman wrote that he hadn't been able to measure such a difference using his Accutuner, but when he got RCT, which had a more precise reading, he was able to find that difference, in the range of about 0.1 - 0.2¢. 

Once I got Cybertuner, I made my own, very careful measurements with it. I carefully chose unisons made up of three strings that I could produce stable full blush on. I tuned the three strings of each such unison carefully to get full blush, and rechecked that they were spot on. I then read the unison. I again rechecked to see that all three single strings were zeroed.  

Result: most often, the three string unison was at full blush. In those cases where the display showed a small creep from stable, that creep was as often in the sharp direction as in the flat direction.

Meanwhile, Jim Ellis had made some theoretical calculations of the physics behind the assertion, and found that at most it would be in the less than 0.1¢ range, insignificant for purposes of practical tuning.

I agree with that assessment. I further believe that the tiny flattening of pitch between about 200-300 microseconds after impact and 1.5 - 2 seconds after impact is insignificant for purposes of tuning. It is only that first quarter second or so where the maximum pitch change occurs, and that period is also where we are hearing all the percussive impact noise. 

In any case, absolute pitch of individual notes, within one to two cents, makes little to no difference. The "just noticeable difference" for pitch, in rough terms as measured in many studies, tends to be around 5-6¢. When played in context (intervals and particularly unisons and then octaves) it is quite a bit smaller, but that is due to interference patterns. Raw pitch is very forgiving. Differences of less than one cent are imperceptible for most practical purposes.

------------------------------
Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico
fssturm@unm.edu
http://fredsturm.net
http://www.artoftuning.com
"We either make ourselves happy or miserable. The amount of work is the same." - Carlos Casteneda


Original Message:
Sent: 04-04-2024 09:10
From: Peter Grey
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

One aspect of this that I had sort of forgotten about (not really forgotten about but just not actively thinking about it) is the tendency for the entire unison to change pitch (usually flat) upon adding (particularly) the third string into the mix. This is particularly evident now that I'm combining some digital assistants into my work. This of course is one thing that Virgil Smith taught all the time and it got me thinking...

Part of the reason I started intentionally spreading my unisons years ago was to in fact counteract (or help) this phenomenon. By tuning the middle string "slightly" higher than the left (but of course not introducing an audible beat, then tuning the right string similarly, I found that I could often (but not always) get the completed unison to stay put at the target pitch. (Some unisons can be quite stubborn and persistent in this regard).

Anyway, those of you who regularly use the digital assistant, I ask how do you cope with this phenomenon whether you tune on the attack or to the aftersound? It quite obvious with the electronics. 

Peter Grey Piano Doctor 

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


Original Message:
Sent: 04-03-2024 01:21
From: Steven Rosenthal
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

As an addendum to the comments I made yesterday. 

I paid attention to my process while tuning one grand and one upright today, both having sections 5-10 cents away from the target. I observed that I spend 75 or 80% of my time getting close to the target's pitch and getting the pin and non speaking segments balanced and the remainder settling the system at pitch. The proportions might differ for an aural tuner. But the majority of my time and energy goes to the mechanical aspects of the system compared to the final setting of the pitch.

I do use sustained tones during the set-up period, it would be counterproductive to use a series of short blows as that would interrupt the process of moving the pitch several cents, pin setting... in other words stabilizing. I did overstate yesterday that it is only the feel of the lever that informs this process, clearly it is one of ear/hand coordination. Then, when actually setting the pitch I noticed I'm still playing relatively longer tones though I'm physically making the adjustment towards the beginning but I'm listening for how it settles and then check again for where the pitch is on the attack. And there may be test blows in there if needed.

While I do like the concept of tuning each string at the same point in the envelope, I think Steve N's assertion that there's no musical reason to play sustained tones is a bit of red herring in that whether or not there's a "musical" reason, there are certainly mechanical reasons to employ long tones in the process of tuning a string that will stay where you want it. Certainly if the tuning involves moving the pin in the block which is the case more often than not.

Sorry for all the verbiage.

------------------------------
Steven Rosenthal RPT
Honolulu HI
(808) 521-7129


Original Message:
Sent: 04-02-2024 03:51
From: Steven Norsworthy
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

All,

"Where have all the pianists and composers gone? They instinctively knew the answer all these hundreds of years!"

We have not had the tools until now to fix a window of time in the first second from the attack and measure the partial frequencies averaged over that window of time. Now we do. Prior aural 'talent' cannot do this consistently. Analog signal processing tools cannot either. Now let's discuss the music and physics which coincide with the composers who knew all along.

The piano literature and piano physics unambiguously coincide and tell us the answer. The power is in the attack, and the composers knew that. Take a Chopin melodic line and you will find a slow passage has a quarter note = 48-60 range, so we get about one note per second. Isn't that interesting, because the piano decays 20 dB / sec in the middle register. 20 dB = 10x in amplitude. So after the attack we have lost 10x. In the last octave we see a 20 dB decay in 300 msec, and for low register, the 20 dB decay is about 2 sec. This is why I initially 'conceived' of the Freeze Frame concept for tuning. There is yet another physical aspect that the piano is an ever-moving target of partial frequency movement. I previously published this with graphs. Some partials will decay at least another 2-5 cents after the first second from the attack. Tuning to these is tantamount to tuning to a very weak amplitude that is now down another 20 dB or 10x so that would be tuning to something that is not even in the music that is so weak that it would cause a severe mistuning in the attack phase of the first second. Now for a funny rhetorical question, where is that piece of piano music that has one note held down for 3 seconds by itself without the sustain pedal, and the tuner says, "Oh what a beautiful piece of music that was!" Someone challenged me when I said that and showed me a Chopin prelude with a note that was a couple secs long in a melody all by itself but I pointed out that the sustain pedal is down throughout that passage. Oops!

Now if the piano partials held to their same frequencies during the decay, we have no argument and this thread is irrelevant. It isn't because the partials are also decaying significantly and at different rates, and the next neighboring half step has a different character as we see in careful spectral analysis, and we can hear that, of course.

If anyone wants me to re-post the sustain graphs of partial spread, I can do that. It is so revealing that it makes one wonder why all these years we have been tuning to a sustain that is not pianistic and fights the very laws of physics that the great composers intuitively already understood. 

Best regards,

Steve

------------------------------
Steven Norsworthy
Cardiff By The Sea CA
(619) 964-0101

I haven't tried them! I should. 

And yes about the wound strings. I was adding that to the mix because my experience with unwound strings is basically the same except divide by 4 in quality and divide by 10 in number. 

I was gonna say roughly the same thing but Fred said it better 😂. And I'm strangely hungry for fish now.

I too encounter a lot of mismatched bass strings. I realize it's a bit off topic but have you tried the pitch lok string couplers that Scott Jones used to sell? They aren't a perfect solution but they are an absolute godsend when time/funds aren't available to replace the stinky bichord(s). I will be very sad when mine run out because I don't know that you can still buy them. I'll have to figure out how to make more.

------------------------------
Nathan Monteleone RPT
Fort Worth TX
(817) 675-9494
nbmont@gmail.com
------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 04-06-2024 11:56
From: Fred Sturm
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

Original Message:
Sent: 4/6/2024 11:39:00 AM
From: Maggie Jusiel
Subject: RE: why measure at the point of attack?

Hi Fred,

I'm with Peter on this one. I think the reason you haven't found this is you picked random samples. WHEN I experience this, it it probably around .5% of the time, but with 250ish strings, that can add up enough for me to notice. Not counting bass strings, I find this doesn't happen often on newer, high end pianos. It's usually on older pianos or those with scaling problems. This tells me it could, in reality, be mismatched strings. As I mentioned to Nathan, this happens to me all the time with mismatched bass strings. I can get very clear differences read on an ETD (Tunelab & iRCT). Most of the time these differences are very small (around a cent, give or take), particularly in the unwound strings, but not always. Sometimes the difference can be as much as 2 cents in unwound strings and 5ish cents in wound strings. When I have mismatched wound strings and am reading them with an ETD, sometimes the unison will match one of the strings while the other is tuned sharp or flat to make a good sounding unison. Sometimes the unison is pitched between the two strings, with one reading sharp and the other reading flat. It happens often enough that I tend to be extra careful around the wound strings with unisons. I can easily tune a high bass section to my liking, then find the beat rates off after putting unisons together. ETD readings match this. 

But, like I said, this averages out to around 2 strings per piano (some have no problems; others have several). Picking random samples will likely show no problems. 

Maggie

------------------------------
Maggie Jusiel, RPT
Athens, WV
(304)952-8615
mags@timandmaggie.net


Original Message:
Sent: 04-05-2024 16:52
From: Fred Sturm
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

Peter,

Speaking for myself, I find "the tendency for the entire unison to change pitch (usually flat) upon adding (particularly) the third string into the mix." to be a non-issue. DIdn't find it when tuning aurally for 15 years, haven't found it using electronics for nearly 30 years.

Aurally, having read Virgil Smith's assertions, I tested them by listening to beat rates. Single string against another single string, compared to three string unison to the same other string. No difference in beat rate that I could hear. Also was unable to confirm the phenomenon using an Accutuner once I started tuning with it - measuring pitch of each string, zeroed to the display, then checking the unison, I found no difference.

Then, in the late 1990s, Jim Coleman wrote that he hadn't been able to measure such a difference using his Accutuner, but when he got RCT, which had a more precise reading, he was able to find that difference, in the range of about 0.1 - 0.2¢. 

Once I got Cybertuner, I made my own, very careful measurements with it. I carefully chose unisons made up of three strings that I could produce stable full blush on. I tuned the three strings of each such unison carefully to get full blush, and rechecked that they were spot on. I then read the unison. I again rechecked to see that all three single strings were zeroed.  

Result: most often, the three string unison was at full blush. In those cases where the display showed a small creep from stable, that creep was as often in the sharp direction as in the flat direction.

Meanwhile, Jim Ellis had made some theoretical calculations of the physics behind the assertion, and found that at most it would be in the less than 0.1¢ range, insignificant for purposes of practical tuning.

I agree with that assessment. I further believe that the tiny flattening of pitch between about 200-300 microseconds after impact and 1.5 - 2 seconds after impact is insignificant for purposes of tuning. It is only that first quarter second or so where the maximum pitch change occurs, and that period is also where we are hearing all the percussive impact noise. 

In any case, absolute pitch of individual notes, within one to two cents, makes little to no difference. The "just noticeable difference" for pitch, in rough terms as measured in many studies, tends to be around 5-6¢. When played in context (intervals and particularly unisons and then octaves) it is quite a bit smaller, but that is due to interference patterns. Raw pitch is very forgiving. Differences of less than one cent are imperceptible for most practical purposes.

------------------------------
Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico
fssturm@unm.edu
http://fredsturm.net
http://www.artoftuning.com
"We either make ourselves happy or miserable. The amount of work is the same." - Carlos Casteneda


Original Message:
Sent: 04-04-2024 09:10
From: Peter Grey
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

One aspect of this that I had sort of forgotten about (not really forgotten about but just not actively thinking about it) is the tendency for the entire unison to change pitch (usually flat) upon adding (particularly) the third string into the mix. This is particularly evident now that I'm combining some digital assistants into my work. This of course is one thing that Virgil Smith taught all the time and it got me thinking...

Part of the reason I started intentionally spreading my unisons years ago was to in fact counteract (or help) this phenomenon. By tuning the middle string "slightly" higher than the left (but of course not introducing an audible beat, then tuning the right string similarly, I found that I could often (but not always) get the completed unison to stay put at the target pitch. (Some unisons can be quite stubborn and persistent in this regard).

Anyway, those of you who regularly use the digital assistant, I ask how do you cope with this phenomenon whether you tune on the attack or to the aftersound? It quite obvious with the electronics. 

Peter Grey Piano Doctor 

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


Original Message:
Sent: 04-03-2024 01:21
From: Steven Rosenthal
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

As an addendum to the comments I made yesterday. 

I paid attention to my process while tuning one grand and one upright today, both having sections 5-10 cents away from the target. I observed that I spend 75 or 80% of my time getting close to the target's pitch and getting the pin and non speaking segments balanced and the remainder settling the system at pitch. The proportions might differ for an aural tuner. But the majority of my time and energy goes to the mechanical aspects of the system compared to the final setting of the pitch.

I do use sustained tones during the set-up period, it would be counterproductive to use a series of short blows as that would interrupt the process of moving the pitch several cents, pin setting... in other words stabilizing. I did overstate yesterday that it is only the feel of the lever that informs this process, clearly it is one of ear/hand coordination. Then, when actually setting the pitch I noticed I'm still playing relatively longer tones though I'm physically making the adjustment towards the beginning but I'm listening for how it settles and then check again for where the pitch is on the attack. And there may be test blows in there if needed.

While I do like the concept of tuning each string at the same point in the envelope, I think Steve N's assertion that there's no musical reason to play sustained tones is a bit of red herring in that whether or not there's a "musical" reason, there are certainly mechanical reasons to employ long tones in the process of tuning a string that will stay where you want it. Certainly if the tuning involves moving the pin in the block which is the case more often than not.

Sorry for all the verbiage.

------------------------------
Steven Rosenthal RPT
Honolulu HI
(808) 521-7129

I was gonna say roughly the same thing but Fred said it better 😂. And I'm strangely hungry for fish now.

I too encounter a lot of mismatched bass strings. I realize it's a bit off topic but have you tried the pitch lok string couplers that Scott Jones used to sell? They aren't a perfect solution but they are an absolute godsend when time/funds aren't available to replace the stinky bichord(s). I will be very sad when mine run out because I don't know that you can still buy them. I'll have to figure out how to make more.

------------------------------
Nathan Monteleone RPT
Fort Worth TX
(817) 675-9494
nbmont@gmail.com
------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 04-06-2024 11:56
From: Fred Sturm
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

Original Message:
Sent: 4/6/2024 11:39:00 AM
From: Maggie Jusiel
Subject: RE: why measure at the point of attack?

Hi Fred,

I'm with Peter on this one. I think the reason you haven't found this is you picked random samples. WHEN I experience this, it it probably around .5% of the time, but with 250ish strings, that can add up enough for me to notice. Not counting bass strings, I find this doesn't happen often on newer, high end pianos. It's usually on older pianos or those with scaling problems. This tells me it could, in reality, be mismatched strings. As I mentioned to Nathan, this happens to me all the time with mismatched bass strings. I can get very clear differences read on an ETD (Tunelab & iRCT). Most of the time these differences are very small (around a cent, give or take), particularly in the unwound strings, but not always. Sometimes the difference can be as much as 2 cents in unwound strings and 5ish cents in wound strings. When I have mismatched wound strings and am reading them with an ETD, sometimes the unison will match one of the strings while the other is tuned sharp or flat to make a good sounding unison. Sometimes the unison is pitched between the two strings, with one reading sharp and the other reading flat. It happens often enough that I tend to be extra careful around the wound strings with unisons. I can easily tune a high bass section to my liking, then find the beat rates off after putting unisons together. ETD readings match this. 

But, like I said, this averages out to around 2 strings per piano (some have no problems; others have several). Picking random samples will likely show no problems. 

Maggie

------------------------------
Maggie Jusiel, RPT
Athens, WV
(304)952-8615
mags@timandmaggie.net
------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 04-05-2024 16:52
From: Fred Sturm
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

Peter,

Speaking for myself, I find "the tendency for the entire unison to change pitch (usually flat) upon adding (particularly) the third string into the mix." to be a non-issue. DIdn't find it when tuning aurally for 15 years, haven't found it using electronics for nearly 30 years.

Aurally, having read Virgil Smith's assertions, I tested them by listening to beat rates. Single string against another single string, compared to three string unison to the same other string. No difference in beat rate that I could hear. Also was unable to confirm the phenomenon using an Accutuner once I started tuning with it - measuring pitch of each string, zeroed to the display, then checking the unison, I found no difference.

Then, in the late 1990s, Jim Coleman wrote that he hadn't been able to measure such a difference using his Accutuner, but when he got RCT, which had a more precise reading, he was able to find that difference, in the range of about 0.1 - 0.2¢. 

Once I got Cybertuner, I made my own, very careful measurements with it. I carefully chose unisons made up of three strings that I could produce stable full blush on. I tuned the three strings of each such unison carefully to get full blush, and rechecked that they were spot on. I then read the unison. I again rechecked to see that all three single strings were zeroed.  

Result: most often, the three string unison was at full blush. In those cases where the display showed a small creep from stable, that creep was as often in the sharp direction as in the flat direction.

Meanwhile, Jim Ellis had made some theoretical calculations of the physics behind the assertion, and found that at most it would be in the less than 0.1¢ range, insignificant for purposes of practical tuning.

I agree with that assessment. I further believe that the tiny flattening of pitch between about 200-300 microseconds after impact and 1.5 - 2 seconds after impact is insignificant for purposes of tuning. It is only that first quarter second or so where the maximum pitch change occurs, and that period is also where we are hearing all the percussive impact noise. 

In any case, absolute pitch of individual notes, within one to two cents, makes little to no difference. The "just noticeable difference" for pitch, in rough terms as measured in many studies, tends to be around 5-6¢. When played in context (intervals and particularly unisons and then octaves) it is quite a bit smaller, but that is due to interference patterns. Raw pitch is very forgiving. Differences of less than one cent are imperceptible for most practical purposes.

------------------------------
Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico
fssturm@unm.edu
http://fredsturm.net
http://www.artoftuning.com
"We either make ourselves happy or miserable. The amount of work is the same." - Carlos Casteneda


Original Message:
Sent: 04-04-2024 09:10
From: Peter Grey
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

One aspect of this that I had sort of forgotten about (not really forgotten about but just not actively thinking about it) is the tendency for the entire unison to change pitch (usually flat) upon adding (particularly) the third string into the mix. This is particularly evident now that I'm combining some digital assistants into my work. This of course is one thing that Virgil Smith taught all the time and it got me thinking...

Part of the reason I started intentionally spreading my unisons years ago was to in fact counteract (or help) this phenomenon. By tuning the middle string "slightly" higher than the left (but of course not introducing an audible beat, then tuning the right string similarly, I found that I could often (but not always) get the completed unison to stay put at the target pitch. (Some unisons can be quite stubborn and persistent in this regard).

Anyway, those of you who regularly use the digital assistant, I ask how do you cope with this phenomenon whether you tune on the attack or to the aftersound? It quite obvious with the electronics. 

Peter Grey Piano Doctor 

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


Original Message:
Sent: 04-03-2024 01:21
From: Steven Rosenthal
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

As an addendum to the comments I made yesterday. 

I paid attention to my process while tuning one grand and one upright today, both having sections 5-10 cents away from the target. I observed that I spend 75 or 80% of my time getting close to the target's pitch and getting the pin and non speaking segments balanced and the remainder settling the system at pitch. The proportions might differ for an aural tuner. But the majority of my time and energy goes to the mechanical aspects of the system compared to the final setting of the pitch.

I do use sustained tones during the set-up period, it would be counterproductive to use a series of short blows as that would interrupt the process of moving the pitch several cents, pin setting... in other words stabilizing. I did overstate yesterday that it is only the feel of the lever that informs this process, clearly it is one of ear/hand coordination. Then, when actually setting the pitch I noticed I'm still playing relatively longer tones though I'm physically making the adjustment towards the beginning but I'm listening for how it settles and then check again for where the pitch is on the attack. And there may be test blows in there if needed.

While I do like the concept of tuning each string at the same point in the envelope, I think Steve N's assertion that there's no musical reason to play sustained tones is a bit of red herring in that whether or not there's a "musical" reason, there are certainly mechanical reasons to employ long tones in the process of tuning a string that will stay where you want it. Certainly if the tuning involves moving the pin in the block which is the case more often than not.

Sorry for all the verbiage.

------------------------------
Steven Rosenthal RPT
Honolulu HI
(808) 521-7129

As an addendum to the comments I made yesterday. 

I paid attention to my process while tuning one grand and one upright today, both having sections 5-10 cents away from the target. I observed that I spend 75 or 80% of my time getting close to the target's pitch and getting the pin and non speaking segments balanced and the remainder settling the system at pitch. The proportions might differ for an aural tuner. But the majority of my time and energy goes to the mechanical aspects of the system compared to the final setting of the pitch.

I do use sustained tones during the set-up period, it would be counterproductive to use a series of short blows as that would interrupt the process of moving the pitch several cents, pin setting... in other words stabilizing. I did overstate yesterday that it is only the feel of the lever that informs this process, clearly it is one of ear/hand coordination. Then, when actually setting the pitch I noticed I'm still playing relatively longer tones though I'm physically making the adjustment towards the beginning but I'm listening for how it settles and then check again for where the pitch is on the attack. And there may be test blows in there if needed.

While I do like the concept of tuning each string at the same point in the envelope, I think Steve N's assertion that there's no musical reason to play sustained tones is a bit of red herring in that whether or not there's a "musical" reason, there are certainly mechanical reasons to employ long tones in the process of tuning a string that will stay where you want it. Certainly if the tuning involves moving the pin in the block which is the case more often than not.

Sorry for all the verbiage.

All,

"Where have all the pianists and composers gone? They instinctively knew the answer all these hundreds of years!"

We have not had the tools until now to fix a window of time in the first second from the attack and measure the partial frequencies averaged over that window of time. Now we do. Prior aural 'talent' cannot do this consistently. Analog signal processing tools cannot either. Now let's discuss the music and physics which coincide with the composers who knew all along.

The piano literature and piano physics unambiguously coincide and tell us the answer. The power is in the attack, and the composers knew that. Take a Chopin melodic line and you will find a slow passage has a quarter note = 48-60 range, so we get about one note per second. Isn't that interesting, because the piano decays 20 dB / sec in the middle register. 20 dB = 10x in amplitude. So after the attack we have lost 10x. In the last octave we see a 20 dB decay in 300 msec, and for low register, the 20 dB decay is about 2 sec. This is why I initially 'conceived' of the Freeze Frame concept for tuning. There is yet another physical aspect that the piano is an ever-moving target of partial frequency movement. I previously published this with graphs. Some partials will decay at least another 2-5 cents after the first second from the attack. Tuning to these is tantamount to tuning to a very weak amplitude that is now down another 20 dB or 10x so that would be tuning to something that is not even in the music that is so weak that it would cause a severe mistuning in the attack phase of the first second. Now for a funny rhetorical question, where is that piece of piano music that has one note held down for 3 seconds by itself without the sustain pedal, and the tuner says, "Oh what a beautiful piece of music that was!" Someone challenged me when I said that and showed me a Chopin prelude with a note that was a couple secs long in a melody all by itself but I pointed out that the sustain pedal is down throughout that passage. Oops!

Now if the piano partials held to their same frequencies during the decay, we have no argument and this thread is irrelevant. It isn't because the partials are also decaying significantly and at different rates, and the next neighboring half step has a different character as we see in careful spectral analysis, and we can hear that, of course.

If anyone wants me to re-post the sustain graphs of partial spread, I can do that. It is so revealing that it makes one wonder why all these years we have been tuning to a sustain that is not pianistic and fights the very laws of physics that the great composers intuitively already understood. 

Best regards,

Steve

------------------------------
Steven Norsworthy
Cardiff By The Sea CA
(619) 964-0101

All,

"Where have all the pianists and composers gone? They instinctively knew the answer all these hundreds of years!"

We have not had the tools until now to fix a window of time in the first second from the attack and measure the partial frequencies averaged over that window of time. Now we do. Prior aural 'talent' cannot do this consistently. Analog signal processing tools cannot either. Now let's discuss the music and physics which coincide with the composers who knew all along.

The piano literature and piano physics unambiguously coincide and tell us the answer. The power is in the attack, and the composers knew that. Take a Chopin melodic line and you will find a slow passage has a quarter note = 48-60 range, so we get about one note per second. Isn't that interesting, because the piano decays 20 dB / sec in the middle register. 20 dB = 10x in amplitude. So after the attack we have lost 10x. In the last octave we see a 20 dB decay in 300 msec, and for low register, the 20 dB decay is about 2 sec. This is why I initially 'conceived' of the Freeze Frame concept for tuning. There is yet another physical aspect that the piano is an ever-moving target of partial frequency movement. I previously published this with graphs. Some partials will decay at least another 2-5 cents after the first second from the attack. Tuning to these is tantamount to tuning to a very weak amplitude that is now down another 20 dB or 10x so that would be tuning to something that is not even in the music that is so weak that it would cause a severe mistuning in the attack phase of the first second. Now for a funny rhetorical question, where is that piece of piano music that has one note held down for 3 seconds by itself without the sustain pedal, and the tuner says, "Oh what a beautiful piece of music that was!" Someone challenged me when I said that and showed me a Chopin prelude with a note that was a couple secs long in a melody all by itself but I pointed out that the sustain pedal is down throughout that passage. Oops!

Now if the piano partials held to their same frequencies during the decay, we have no argument and this thread is irrelevant. It isn't because the partials are also decaying significantly and at different rates, and the next neighboring half step has a different character as we see in careful spectral analysis, and we can hear that, of course.

If anyone wants me to re-post the sustain graphs of partial spread, I can do that. It is so revealing that it makes one wonder why all these years we have been tuning to a sustain that is not pianistic and fights the very laws of physics that the great composers intuitively already understood. 

Best regards,

Steve

------------------------------
Steven Norsworthy
Cardiff By The Sea CA
(619) 964-0101
------------------------------

I read Fred Sturm's post and I must say I was sitting next to Dr Sanderson watching Virgil Tune when he was showing how the pitch changes adding another wire. Dr Sanderson couldn't find the difference until he switched to measuring the partials. He found the difference in the 4th partial,, I believe. It's been awhile. The 4th partial went flat but none of the other partials or the fundamental. That's why Virgil's aural checks showed the change.

Keith

------------------------------
Keith Roberts
owner
Hathaway Pines CA
(209) 770-4312
------------------------------

I read Fred Sturm's post and I must say I was sitting next to Dr Sanderson watching Virgil Tune when he was showing how the pitch changes adding another wire. Dr Sanderson couldn't find the difference until he switched to measuring the partials. He found the difference in the 4th partial,, I believe. It's been awhile. The 4th partial went flat but none of the other partials or the fundamental. That's why Virgil's aural checks showed the change.

Keith

Original Message:
Sent: 4/6/2024 10:38:00 AM
From: Keith Roberts
Subject: RE: why measure at the point of attack?

I read Fred Sturm's post and I must say I was sitting next to Dr Sanderson watching Virgil Tune when he was showing how the pitch changes adding another wire. Dr Sanderson couldn't find the difference until he switched to measuring the partials. He found the difference in the 4th partial,, I believe. It's been awhile. The 4th partial went flat but none of the other partials or the fundamental. That's why Virgil's aural checks showed the change.

Keith

------------------------------
Keith Roberts
owner
Hathaway Pines CA
(209) 770-4312
------------------------------

When possible, the piano techs should provide an audio example of actual music from a real piano they tuned using a passage from the piano literature. It is not going to show a result relative to other methods as evidence that their tuning results in a high quality musical result.

Here is a soundcloud link I made this morning playing the opening slow melodic passage of the Chopin Op 48 No 1 Nocturne, with me. It was freshly tuned using the techniques I have previously described. The crystal clean clarity of the line and transparency. Hall reverb and pedal sustain are all there of course, as in a professional recording or an audience listening on Row 7 of Disney Hall. 

Steve

https://soundcloud.com/snorsworthy/chopin-48-1-open?in=snorsworthy/sets/piano

------------------------------
Steven Norsworthy
Cardiff By The Sea CA
(619) 964-0101
------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 04-06-2024 11:45
From: Fred Sturm
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

When possible, the piano techs should provide an audio example of actual music from a real piano they tuned using a passage from the piano literature. It is not going to show a result relative to other methods as evidence that their tuning results in a high quality musical result.

Here is a soundcloud link I made this morning playing the opening slow melodic passage of the Chopin Op 48 No 1 Nocturne, with me. It was freshly tuned using the techniques I have previously described. The crystal clean clarity of the line and transparency. Hall reverb and pedal sustain are all there of course, as in a professional recording or an audience listening on Row 7 of Disney Hall. 

Steve

https://soundcloud.com/snorsworthy/chopin-48-1-open?in=snorsworthy/sets/piano

------------------------------
Steven Norsworthy
Cardiff By The Sea CA
(619) 964-0101
------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 04-06-2024 11:45
From: Fred Sturm
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

Original Message:
Sent: 4/6/2024 10:38:00 AM
From: Keith Roberts
Subject: RE: why measure at the point of attack?

I read Fred Sturm's post and I must say I was sitting next to Dr Sanderson watching Virgil Tune when he was showing how the pitch changes adding another wire. Dr Sanderson couldn't find the difference until he switched to measuring the partials. He found the difference in the 4th partial,, I believe. It's been awhile. The 4th partial went flat but none of the other partials or the fundamental. That's why Virgil's aural checks showed the change.

Keith

------------------------------
Keith Roberts
owner
Hathaway Pines CA
(209) 770-4312

David, for a more fair comparison to my Chopin, try an ET tuning on a 9' great concert modern grand rather than an unequal temperament 19th century Broadwood. Or compare my recording to that of a modern recorded ET 9' grand commercially made recording. Try Eliane Rodrigues's recordings of the Nocturnes on Apple Music, and she is on a Fazioli. She is my mentor, even though we have different interpretations, her singing line concept is like mine. --- Steve

When possible, the piano techs should provide an audio example of actual music from a real piano they tuned using a passage from the piano literature. It is not going to show a result relative to other methods as evidence that their tuning results in a high quality musical result.

Here is a soundcloud link I made this morning playing the opening slow melodic passage of the Chopin Op 48 No 1 Nocturne, with me. It was freshly tuned using the techniques I have previously described. The crystal clean clarity of the line and transparency. Hall reverb and pedal sustain are all there of course, as in a professional recording or an audience listening on Row 7 of Disney Hall. 

Steve

https://soundcloud.com/snorsworthy/chopin-48-1-open?in=snorsworthy/sets/piano

------------------------------
Steven Norsworthy
Cardiff By The Sea CA
(619) 964-0101


Original Message:
Sent: 04-06-2024 11:45
From: Fred Sturm
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

Original Message:
Sent: 4/6/2024 10:38:00 AM
From: Keith Roberts
Subject: RE: why measure at the point of attack?

I read Fred Sturm's post and I must say I was sitting next to Dr Sanderson watching Virgil Tune when he was showing how the pitch changes adding another wire. Dr Sanderson couldn't find the difference until he switched to measuring the partials. He found the difference in the 4th partial,, I believe. It's been awhile. The 4th partial went flat but none of the other partials or the fundamental. That's why Virgil's aural checks showed the change.

Keith

------------------------------
Keith Roberts
owner
Hathaway Pines CA
(209) 770-4312

Unequal temperament is neither historic nor accurate unless one is talking about an 1830's or earlier model.  By 1865 broadwood were pitched

higher than Steinway's and used long string scales derived by geometric calculalations rather than Hansing, Steinway, Bechstein, Bluthner

who used mathematics for their scale calculations and short scales especially in the treble.

David, for a more fair comparison to my Chopin, try an ET tuning on a 9' great concert modern grand rather than an unequal temperament 19th century Broadwood. Or compare my recording to that of a modern recorded ET 9' grand commercially made recording. Try Eliane Rodrigues's recordings of the Nocturnes on Apple Music, and she is on a Fazioli. She is my mentor, even though we have different interpretations, her singing line concept is like mine. --- Steve

When possible, the piano techs should provide an audio example of actual music from a real piano they tuned using a passage from the piano literature. It is not going to show a result relative to other methods as evidence that their tuning results in a high quality musical result.

Here is a soundcloud link I made this morning playing the opening slow melodic passage of the Chopin Op 48 No 1 Nocturne, with me. It was freshly tuned using the techniques I have previously described. The crystal clean clarity of the line and transparency. Hall reverb and pedal sustain are all there of course, as in a professional recording or an audience listening on Row 7 of Disney Hall. 

Steve

https://soundcloud.com/snorsworthy/chopin-48-1-open?in=snorsworthy/sets/piano

------------------------------
Steven Norsworthy
Cardiff By The Sea CA
(619) 964-0101


Original Message:
Sent: 04-06-2024 11:45
From: Fred Sturm
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

Original Message:
Sent: 4/6/2024 10:38:00 AM
From: Keith Roberts
Subject: RE: why measure at the point of attack?

I read Fred Sturm's post and I must say I was sitting next to Dr Sanderson watching Virgil Tune when he was showing how the pitch changes adding another wire. Dr Sanderson couldn't find the difference until he switched to measuring the partials. He found the difference in the 4th partial,, I believe. It's been awhile. The 4th partial went flat but none of the other partials or the fundamental. That's why Virgil's aural checks showed the change.

Keith

------------------------------
Keith Roberts
owner
Hathaway Pines CA
(209) 770-4312

I have been following this thread with interest, even as I don't have the depth of understanding of aspects of the tuning process that several of you are demonstrating.  Steven has provided a link to a recording of Chopin Op 48 No. 1 Nocturne on his Fazioli F308 concert grand and further asked for professional recordings and asked for other recordings using equal temperament on a 9' grand  His piano's clarity of line and transparency, along with excellent recording, offer an excellent vehicle for deep listening.

David Pinneager has made the comment to the effect that the disposition of the harmonics may take place on a piano that is possibly more distinctive that the tuning, and in effect colors our response to the tuning.  He also offered a recording of a Steinway B where the same Chopin piece is played, but where the tuning is an alternative tuning.  Good to have at least a partial apples to apples comparision.

Given the above, I would like to offer a couple of recordings on a distinctly different sounding concert grand – Stephen Paulello's Opus 102 (9' 8" long).  I wish I could have found a recording on this instrument of Op 48, No. 1, but not to be.  I do offer Chopin Ballade No. 4, played by Lucas Debargue. It is from a concert in a decent sized hall.  The recording is adequate. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaglAzsdVDw&ab_channel=lucasdebarguevideo

A better recording, done in Stephen Paulello's recording studio/recital hall is professional.  Indeed, the artist Lucas Debargue recorded all 68 of Faure's solo piano pieces in this room on this piano, for an album just released a few weeks ago.  I will let you judge whether the piano is sufficiently revealing.  The piece is Faure:  3 Nocturnes, Op. 33: III, Nocturne in A Flat Major. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-VAHN_tdnM&ab_channel=LucasDebargueVEVO

The piano does sound different in both the attack and character of the sustain.

Unequal temperament is neither historic nor accurate unless one is talking about an 1830's or earlier model.  By 1865 broadwood were pitched

higher than Steinway's and used long string scales derived by geometric calculalations rather than Hansing, Steinway, Bechstein, Bluthner

who used mathematics for their scale calculations and short scales especially in the treble.

David, for a more fair comparison to my Chopin, try an ET tuning on a 9' great concert modern grand rather than an unequal temperament 19th century Broadwood. Or compare my recording to that of a modern recorded ET 9' grand commercially made recording. Try Eliane Rodrigues's recordings of the Nocturnes on Apple Music, and she is on a Fazioli. She is my mentor, even though we have different interpretations, her singing line concept is like mine. --- Steve

When possible, the piano techs should provide an audio example of actual music from a real piano they tuned using a passage from the piano literature. It is not going to show a result relative to other methods as evidence that their tuning results in a high quality musical result.

Here is a soundcloud link I made this morning playing the opening slow melodic passage of the Chopin Op 48 No 1 Nocturne, with me. It was freshly tuned using the techniques I have previously described. The crystal clean clarity of the line and transparency. Hall reverb and pedal sustain are all there of course, as in a professional recording or an audience listening on Row 7 of Disney Hall. 

Steve

https://soundcloud.com/snorsworthy/chopin-48-1-open?in=snorsworthy/sets/piano

------------------------------
Steven Norsworthy
Cardiff By The Sea CA
(619) 964-0101


Original Message:
Sent: 04-06-2024 11:45
From: Fred Sturm
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

I have been following this thread with interest, even as I don't have the depth of understanding of aspects of the tuning process that several of you are demonstrating.  Steven has provided a link to a recording of Chopin Op 48 No. 1 Nocturne on his Fazioli F308 concert grand and further asked for professional recordings and asked for other recordings using equal temperament on a 9' grand  His piano's clarity of line and transparency, along with excellent recording, offer an excellent vehicle for deep listening.

David Pinneager has made the comment to the effect that the disposition of the harmonics may take place on a piano that is possibly more distinctive that the tuning, and in effect colors our response to the tuning.  He also offered a recording of a Steinway B where the same Chopin piece is played, but where the tuning is an alternative tuning.  Good to have at least a partial apples to apples comparision.

Given the above, I would like to offer a couple of recordings on a distinctly different sounding concert grand – Stephen Paulello's Opus 102 (9' 8" long).  I wish I could have found a recording on this instrument of Op 48, No. 1, but not to be.  I do offer Chopin Ballade No. 4, played by Lucas Debargue. It is from a concert in a decent sized hall.  The recording is adequate. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaglAzsdVDw&ab_channel=lucasdebarguevideo

A better recording, done in Stephen Paulello's recording studio/recital hall is professional.  Indeed, the artist Lucas Debargue recorded all 68 of Faure's solo piano pieces in this room on this piano, for an album just released a few weeks ago.  I will let you judge whether the piano is sufficiently revealing.  The piece is Faure:  3 Nocturnes, Op. 33: III, Nocturne in A Flat Major. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-VAHN_tdnM&ab_channel=LucasDebargueVEVO

The piano does sound different in both the attack and character of the sustain.

Unequal temperament is neither historic nor accurate unless one is talking about an 1830's or earlier model.  By 1865 broadwood were pitched

higher than Steinway's and used long string scales derived by geometric calculalations rather than Hansing, Steinway, Bechstein, Bluthner

who used mathematics for their scale calculations and short scales especially in the treble.

David, for a more fair comparison to my Chopin, try an ET tuning on a 9' great concert modern grand rather than an unequal temperament 19th century Broadwood. Or compare my recording to that of a modern recorded ET 9' grand commercially made recording. Try Eliane Rodrigues's recordings of the Nocturnes on Apple Music, and she is on a Fazioli. She is my mentor, even though we have different interpretations, her singing line concept is like mine. --- Steve

When possible, the piano techs should provide an audio example of actual music from a real piano they tuned using a passage from the piano literature. It is not going to show a result relative to other methods as evidence that their tuning results in a high quality musical result.

Here is a soundcloud link I made this morning playing the opening slow melodic passage of the Chopin Op 48 No 1 Nocturne, with me. It was freshly tuned using the techniques I have previously described. The crystal clean clarity of the line and transparency. Hall reverb and pedal sustain are all there of course, as in a professional recording or an audience listening on Row 7 of Disney Hall. 

Steve

https://soundcloud.com/snorsworthy/chopin-48-1-open?in=snorsworthy/sets/piano

------------------------------
Steven Norsworthy
Cardiff By The Sea CA
(619) 964-0101


Original Message:
Sent: 04-06-2024 11:45
From: Fred Sturm
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

Original Message:
Sent: 4/6/2024 10:38:00 AM
From: Keith Roberts
Subject: RE: why measure at the point of attack?

I read Fred Sturm's post and I must say I was sitting next to Dr Sanderson watching Virgil Tune when he was showing how the pitch changes adding another wire. Dr Sanderson couldn't find the difference until he switched to measuring the partials. He found the difference in the 4th partial,, I believe. It's been awhile. The 4th partial went flat but none of the other partials or the fundamental. That's why Virgil's aural checks showed the change.

Keith

------------------------------
Keith Roberts
owner
Hathaway Pines CA
(209) 770-4312

A couple comments concerning this thread within the thread:

The initial post concerning listening to a recording of Chopin asserted various things about "what the composer heard or intended." All these samples except one of Pinnegar's are on modern instruments, far different from the piano Chopin played. Chopin's piano had considerably thinner strings at lower tension activated by far light hammers. The tonal profile was quite distinct from that of a late 19th century grand, let alone a late 20th or early 21st century instrument.

If you want to make assertions about Chopin, you need a Chopin piano. McNulty now makes a couple facsimiles that would be appropriate. The Chopin Period Piano Competition is a good resource for listening to such instruments as well as well prepped pianos made in Chopin's time (two competitions have been held to date, and they have been archived). 

Of course, another important factor is the pianist. Listen to the same instrument played by difference pianists, and it is often difficult to believe the instrument is the same.

With the above in mind, asserting that the particular tuning of an instrument is a major factor and has something to do with what Chopin heard or wanted to hear is, shall we say, a bit of a stretch :-)

I have been following this thread with interest, even as I don't have the depth of understanding of aspects of the tuning process that several of you are demonstrating.  Steven has provided a link to a recording of Chopin Op 48 No. 1 Nocturne on his Fazioli F308 concert grand and further asked for professional recordings and asked for other recordings using equal temperament on a 9' grand  His piano's clarity of line and transparency, along with excellent recording, offer an excellent vehicle for deep listening.

David Pinneager has made the comment to the effect that the disposition of the harmonics may take place on a piano that is possibly more distinctive that the tuning, and in effect colors our response to the tuning.  He also offered a recording of a Steinway B where the same Chopin piece is played, but where the tuning is an alternative tuning.  Good to have at least a partial apples to apples comparision.

Given the above, I would like to offer a couple of recordings on a distinctly different sounding concert grand – Stephen Paulello's Opus 102 (9' 8" long).  I wish I could have found a recording on this instrument of Op 48, No. 1, but not to be.  I do offer Chopin Ballade No. 4, played by Lucas Debargue. It is from a concert in a decent sized hall.  The recording is adequate. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaglAzsdVDw&ab_channel=lucasdebarguevideo

A better recording, done in Stephen Paulello's recording studio/recital hall is professional.  Indeed, the artist Lucas Debargue recorded all 68 of Faure's solo piano pieces in this room on this piano, for an album just released a few weeks ago.  I will let you judge whether the piano is sufficiently revealing.  The piece is Faure:  3 Nocturnes, Op. 33: III, Nocturne in A Flat Major. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-VAHN_tdnM&ab_channel=LucasDebargueVEVO

The piano does sound different in both the attack and character of the sustain.

Unequal temperament is neither historic nor accurate unless one is talking about an 1830's or earlier model.  By 1865 broadwood were pitched

higher than Steinway's and used long string scales derived by geometric calculalations rather than Hansing, Steinway, Bechstein, Bluthner

who used mathematics for their scale calculations and short scales especially in the treble.

David, for a more fair comparison to my Chopin, try an ET tuning on a 9' great concert modern grand rather than an unequal temperament 19th century Broadwood. Or compare my recording to that of a modern recorded ET 9' grand commercially made recording. Try Eliane Rodrigues's recordings of the Nocturnes on Apple Music, and she is on a Fazioli. She is my mentor, even though we have different interpretations, her singing line concept is like mine. --- Steve

When possible, the piano techs should provide an audio example of actual music from a real piano they tuned using a passage from the piano literature. It is not going to show a result relative to other methods as evidence that their tuning results in a high quality musical result.

Here is a soundcloud link I made this morning playing the opening slow melodic passage of the Chopin Op 48 No 1 Nocturne, with me. It was freshly tuned using the techniques I have previously described. The crystal clean clarity of the line and transparency. Hall reverb and pedal sustain are all there of course, as in a professional recording or an audience listening on Row 7 of Disney Hall. 

Steve

https://soundcloud.com/snorsworthy/chopin-48-1-open?in=snorsworthy/sets/piano

------------------------------
Steven Norsworthy
Cardiff By The Sea CA
(619) 964-0101


Original Message:
Sent: 04-06-2024 11:45
From: Fred Sturm
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?

A couple comments concerning this thread within the thread:

The initial post concerning listening to a recording of Chopin asserted various things about "what the composer heard or intended." All these samples except one of Pinnegar's are on modern instruments, far different from the piano Chopin played. Chopin's piano had considerably thinner strings at lower tension activated by far light hammers. The tonal profile was quite distinct from that of a late 19th century grand, let alone a late 20th or early 21st century instrument.

If you want to make assertions about Chopin, you need a Chopin piano. McNulty now makes a couple facsimiles that would be appropriate. The Chopin Period Piano Competition is a good resource for listening to such instruments as well as well prepped pianos made in Chopin's time (two competitions have been held to date, and they have been archived). 

Of course, another important factor is the pianist. Listen to the same instrument played by difference pianists, and it is often difficult to believe the instrument is the same.

With the above in mind, asserting that the particular tuning of an instrument is a major factor and has something to do with what Chopin heard or wanted to hear is, shall we say, a bit of a stretch :-)

I have been following this thread with interest, even as I don't have the depth of understanding of aspects of the tuning process that several of you are demonstrating.  Steven has provided a link to a recording of Chopin Op 48 No. 1 Nocturne on his Fazioli F308 concert grand and further asked for professional recordings and asked for other recordings using equal temperament on a 9' grand  His piano's clarity of line and transparency, along with excellent recording, offer an excellent vehicle for deep listening.

David Pinneager has made the comment to the effect that the disposition of the harmonics may take place on a piano that is possibly more distinctive that the tuning, and in effect colors our response to the tuning.  He also offered a recording of a Steinway B where the same Chopin piece is played, but where the tuning is an alternative tuning.  Good to have at least a partial apples to apples comparision.

Given the above, I would like to offer a couple of recordings on a distinctly different sounding concert grand – Stephen Paulello's Opus 102 (9' 8" long).  I wish I could have found a recording on this instrument of Op 48, No. 1, but not to be.  I do offer Chopin Ballade No. 4, played by Lucas Debargue. It is from a concert in a decent sized hall.  The recording is adequate. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaglAzsdVDw&ab_channel=lucasdebarguevideo

A better recording, done in Stephen Paulello's recording studio/recital hall is professional.  Indeed, the artist Lucas Debargue recorded all 68 of Faure's solo piano pieces in this room on this piano, for an album just released a few weeks ago.  I will let you judge whether the piano is sufficiently revealing.  The piece is Faure:  3 Nocturnes, Op. 33: III, Nocturne in A Flat Major. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-VAHN_tdnM&ab_channel=LucasDebargueVEVO

The piano does sound different in both the attack and character of the sustain.

Unequal temperament is neither historic nor accurate unless one is talking about an 1830's or earlier model.  By 1865 broadwood were pitched

higher than Steinway's and used long string scales derived by geometric calculalations rather than Hansing, Steinway, Bechstein, Bluthner

who used mathematics for their scale calculations and short scales especially in the treble.

David, for a more fair comparison to my Chopin, try an ET tuning on a 9' great concert modern grand rather than an unequal temperament 19th century Broadwood. Or compare my recording to that of a modern recorded ET 9' grand commercially made recording. Try Eliane Rodrigues's recordings of the Nocturnes on Apple Music, and she is on a Fazioli. She is my mentor, even though we have different interpretations, her singing line concept is like mine. --- Steve

When possible, the piano techs should provide an audio example of actual music from a real piano they tuned using a passage from the piano literature. It is not going to show a result relative to other methods as evidence that their tuning results in a high quality musical result.

Here is a soundcloud link I made this morning playing the opening slow melodic passage of the Chopin Op 48 No 1 Nocturne, with me. It was freshly tuned using the techniques I have previously described. The crystal clean clarity of the line and transparency. Hall reverb and pedal sustain are all there of course, as in a professional recording or an audience listening on Row 7 of Disney Hall. 

Steve

https://soundcloud.com/snorsworthy/chopin-48-1-open?in=snorsworthy/sets/piano

------------------------------
Steven Norsworthy
Cardiff By The Sea CA
(619) 964-0101


Original Message:
Sent: 04-06-2024 11:45
From: Fred Sturm
Subject: why measure at the point of attack?