Pianotech

This week I have the honour of tuning Winifred Atwell's piano for a well known musician before it goes to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

The musician tells me that two strings should be pure and the third 1 beat off . . . I can't believe that's strong enough. What have others' experiences been?

My mentor tuned Honky Tonk for a stage piano in Porgy and Bess in the years he was working for an opera house but now in his late 80s, sadly he has forgotten the details and, this late at night UK time no doubt with some Christmas Cheer, his email is a mischievous incoherent grin :-) and tells me that the main thing is to make sure that it's in 440 . . . 

Thank you to all here at PTG who not only tolerate silly questions but welcome them and are happy to be other people's mentors!

Best wishes

David P


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David Pinnegar BSc ARCS
Hammerwood Park, East Grinstead, Sussex, UK
+44 1342 850594
"High Definition" Tuning
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David, one often has to quiz non tuners about what exactly they mean. Ideally, you could meet with him at the piano and try a few things to see what he's talking about. I doubt it's one beat per second. My guess would be somewhat more, unevenly spaced, with a few assorted screamers but maybe I'm wrong. Pure unisons don't indicate anything about the intervals at all, which might be more germane but as I suppose you won't be using an ET scheme that might be adequate. 
I associate the metallic tone with honky tonk more than the tunings.
Here's a video of Ms. Atwell playing a few different pianos, some are in tune and some aren't. The cottage piano is both out of tune and damping very poorly but that might have been a novelty piece, the others were pretty nice grands.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQlY6UoM_-E  more her work follows this one.
I tuned for a well known touring honky tonk player here a few years ago, he performed on a nice Bosendorfer grand and had no requests regarding the tuning other than it be tuned prior to both performances. The out of tune honky tonk sound might be more of a cliche than a practice.

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Steven Rosenthal RPT
Honolulu HI
(808) 521-7129
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I always thought honky tonk just referred to a really beat up and poorly performing upright, with inch-long string grooves in the hammer heads. I haven’t done this, but I have imagined just tuning the center strings on pitch, and tweaking the outer strings randomly up and down. I think underwater sounding is an appropriate result?
Just make sure the piano owner still thinks the piano is lovely sounding and don’t recommend any improvements!

Joe Wiencek
NYC

Have a customer with a really nice grand but also a Kawai upright. He does a lot of film/tv scoring and he wanted to dedicate the upright to honky tonk. Specifically, he was looking for the same sound as the Steinway Vertigrand at Abby Road that Mrs. Mills played and that the Beatles used frequently. NO information was available on how Mrs. Mills piano was actually tuned, only that it was a "special" tuning developed for that piano and Mrs. Mills. With much experimentation we finally settled on tuning the center string at A440, L string to 439 and right string to 441. Left and right can, obviously be swapped if you like. It was the difference that counted. We only detuned the plain wire strings, leaving the wound string bichords with clean unisons. Later, we added a mandolin rail for that tak piano sound. Interestingly enough, we found that as the tuning "aged" it actually sounded better and better. We rarely return it to the 439, 440, 441 tuning nowadays unless it has drifted so far that it is uselessly out of tune. 

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Geoff Sykes, RPT
Los Angeles CA
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Original Message:
Sent: 12/5/2022 11:31:00 AM
From: Geoff Sykes
Subject: RE: Winifred Atwell's piano - Formula for tuning Honky Tonk?

Have a customer with a really nice grand but also a Kawai upright. He does a lot of film/tv scoring and he wanted to dedicate the upright to honky tonk. Specifically, he was looking for the same sound as the Steinway Vertigrand at Abby Road that Mrs. Mills played and that the Beatles used frequently. NO information was available on how Mrs. Mills piano was actually tuned, only that it was a "special" tuning developed for that piano and Mrs. Mills. With much experimentation we finally settled on tuning the center string at A440, L string to 439 and right string to 441. Left and right can, obviously be swapped if you like. It was the difference that counted. We only detuned the plain wire strings, leaving the wound string bichords with clean unisons. Later, we added a mandolin rail for that tak piano sound. Interestingly enough, we found that as the tuning "aged" it actually sounded better and better. We rarely return it to the 439, 440, 441 tuning nowadays unless it has drifted so far that it is uselessly out of tune. 

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Geoff Sykes, RPT
Los Angeles CA
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