Electronic vs Aural Tuning
Michael John Holme
I strikes me from the current discussions that piano tuners just will not
accept that technology has caught them up. Years of practise to conquer their
art (as they call it) has been made almost redundant (granted there are some
customers who also haven't caught up with modern times) by the Invention of
good electronic tuning aids, in particular the Sanderson Accu Tuner. I tune
electronically and I'm also a competent classical pianist. I don't accept
second best and have very discerning customers how like me know when a piano
sounds right. I tune for the leading supplier of pianos in my area my
employer has frequently suggested that my tunings have been better than those
of the other tuners who tune by ear (one of which has been doing it for 40
years, an expert) .
I believe that for a piano to be in tune it MUST be tuned to equal
temperament, otherwise some keys will not sound as good as others. For this to
be achieved the distance between each semitone shound be equal ( in a
logrithmic sense ). This can be achieved using a Sanderson Accutuner.
Somebody has said yes but listen to the octaves after tuning
electronically, they will beat. Off course they will have a slight beat any
body who knows anything about inharmonicity will know that. If the octaves
don't beat the double octaves will and vica versa the best compromise is a
slight beat in both. This stems from the fact that the first second and fourth
partials are not in multiples of two, they are more like e.g. 440Hz 882Hz
1767Hz. It is the degree of inhamonicity that makes each piano different to
tune, if it wasn't for inharmonicity you could set your temperament with 12
chromatic tuning forks. The Sanderson Accutuner measures the ammount of
inharmomicity at three locations and then extrapolates to cover the entire
piano.
It's understandable why ear tuners are so biased after spending so long
learning to do it by ear, but I'm sorry, unless you can explain scientifically
why ear tuning is better I will not accept that it is. As I have said before
equal temperment is aimed for, this can be mathematically explained with
reference to inharmonicity, the days of well tempering or any other forms are
over.
Mike Holme
Albert-Michel C Luong
Right on buddy! Now if only they'd lower the price of that blasted
machine.
-am
Richard m
> mho...@enterprise.net (Michael John Holme) wrote in article
<54395a$p...@news.enterprise.net>...
> I strikes me from the current discussions that piano tuners just
will not
> accept that technology has caught them up. Years of practise to conquer
their
> art (as they call it) has been made almost redundant (granted there are
some
> customers who also haven't caught up with modern times) by the Invention
of
> good electronic tuning aids, in particular the Sanderson Accu Tuner. I
tune
> electronically ........snip
I tune aurally. Yet I set pitch according to a quartz needle type ET
(electronic tuner). The reasons are subject for another discussion. NOT
all tuners are as described above. If the Sanderson Accu Tuner, (SAT)
accelerates the learning process, so be it. If a person needs a SAT to be
a better tuner, then by all means please use it. Would a SAT make me a
better tuner? I'll have to try one out. Suppose some one comes along who
tunes better than the SAT. But how will they know? Will I meet some one
who is a better tuner? I hope so. It has happened, and I look forward to
it. For some strange : ) reason they usually have 10 to 20 years more
experience, and are in career situations I aspire to, like universities,
concert halls, artist's personal tuners, televison studios, recording
studios. The old pros of 40 and 50 years are retiring. Whether they will
be followed by those with SAT's remains to be seen.
> Somebody has said yes but listen to the octaves after tuning
> electronically, they will beat. Off course they will have a slight beat
any
> body who knows anything about inharmonicity will know that.
But according to Reblitz, " the second partial of A880 may be
1765",...so when "A (theoretically, A 1760) is tuned, its fundamental
pitch must be raised or stretched 1765 in order for it to be beatless.
p53, Piano Servicing, Tuning and Rebuilding.
. The Sanderson Accutuner measures the ammount of
> inharmomicity at three locations and then extrapolates to cover the
entire
> piano.
Only three locations?? Reblitz prescribes and describes checking
inharmonicity for each note. p. 60.
>
> It's understandable why ear tuners are so biased after spending so long
> learning to do it by ear, but I'm sorry, unless you can explain
scientifically
> why ear tuning is better I will not accept that it is.
Once again you seem to be type casting aural tuners as biased toward
machines. I don't know how many professional tuners you have met, but if
they have shown crude bias toward machines please don't be swayed by the
few who may display a paucity of professionalism.
snip ....,
> the days of well tempering or any other forms are
> over.
>
> Mike Holme
>
The "Well Tempered Clavier" was Bach's attempt at equal temperament.
Is there a description of the method he used to set his temperament?
Richard Moody ptt
A440A
R. Moody writes;
>The "Well Tempered Clavier" was Bach's attempt >at equal temperament.
I must disagree. There was nobody tuning equal temperament at the time,
even though it was a concept that had been around for thousands of years.
The title is "Well Tempered", not "Equal Tempered" and these are two
different things.
>>Is there a description of the method he used to set his >>temperament?
We know quite a bit about the temperament practises of the day,
though not about Bach's particular preferences in 1722.
It had only been 40 years since Werckmiester had published his
first plan for tempering a meantone tuning to allow modulation all the way
around the circle, but this was not equal temperament. It was an
irregular, circulating temperament that was ultimately refined by Thomas
Young in 1799.
Equal temperament is something else entirely.
Ed Foote
Precision Piano Works
Nashville, Tenn.
Daniel Wilson
Mike Holme <mho...@enterprise.net> said:
> It's understandable why ear tuners are so biased after spending
> so long learning to do it by ear, but I'm sorry, unless you can
> explain scientifically why ear tuning is better I will not
> accept that it is. As I have said before equal temperment is
> aimed for, this can be mathematically explained with reference
> to inharmonicity, the days of well tempering or any other forms
> are over.
I'm not a professional tuner - only do my own four pianos with a Korg
gismo plus ear for the outer octaves - but I think you're missing the
point. Electronic tuners handle the "stretch sharpening" to keep the
higher octaves in tune with the 2nd harmonic partials of the one lower,
but they don't and can't deal with the other harmonics which sometimes
demand a compromise. Ear tuners can handle this with relative ease. I do
recall a cathode-ray-tube tuner of the 1950s which displayed all the
harmonics, though.
Dan Wilson
Steven Abrams
I was under the impression that aside from determining the temperament
and doing the stretch towards the upper octaves, a good tuner nearly
imperceptibly detunes thbe strings of a unison. That is, if all
strings of a unison are precicely in unison, the piano sounds deader,
but if they are too far detune from one another, the piano sounds out
bright, brittle, and of tune. You don't want to actually hear beats
(so the strings are within 1cps or better of one another), but you
still don't want them to be precisely the same. Part of a piano's
tone is goveerned by how the unisons are tuned with regard to one
another. Or so I was told.
Is this right?
It seems to me that accomplishing this is a matter of taste and skill,
and could simply *not* be accomplished by electronic means.
~~~Steve
--
Steven Abrams abr...@cs.columbia.edu
Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.
-Lennon/McCartney
Michael John Holme
In article <y8seniw...@play.cs.columbia.edu>,
Steven Abrams <abr...@play.cs.columbia.edu> wrote:
>
>I was under the impression that aside from determining the
temperament
>and doing the stretch towards the upper octaves, a good tuner nearly
>imperceptibly detunes thbe strings of a unison. That is, if all
>strings of a unison are precicely in unison, the piano sounds
deader,
>but if they are too far detune from one another, the piano sounds
out
>bright, brittle, and of tune. You don't want to actually hear beats
>(so the strings are within 1cps or better of one another), but you
>still don't want them to be precisely the same. Part of a piano's
>tone is goveerned by how the unisons are tuned with regard to one
>another. Or so I was told.
>
>Is this right?
>
>It seems to me that accomplishing this is a matter of taste and
skill,
>and could simply *not* be accomplished by electronic means.
>
>~~~Steve
This is not really relevant because when tuning electronically one
still tunes unisons aurally, the device just gives the pitch for one
of the strings.
Mike Holme
wa...@ari.net
> mho...@enterprise.net (Michael John Holme) writes:
> I strikes me from the current discussions that piano tuners just will not
> accept that technology has caught them up. Years of practise to conquer their
> art (as they call it) has been made almost redundant (granted there are some
Mike - The Accu Tuner is no more than a recording of a good ear tuning, and tuning a piano is MUCH more than just matching tones to what
comes out of an electronic device. You would know this is you actually tuned as much as you claim. It is not just a matter of putting the pins in
the right place, it's a matter of recognizing the precisely right place, then putting them there so that they will stay. A great degree of subtlety is
required.
Don't get me wrong. You can probably teach any monkey to tune a piano, or a least to tune it well enough so that a monkey will enjoy playing it
and hearing it.
Frank Weston
A440A
Greetings;
Steven Abrams writes;
""I was under the impression that aside from determining the temperament
and doing the stretch towards the upper octaves, a good tuner nearly
strings of a unison are precicely in unison, the piano sounds deader,
but if they are too far detune from one another, the piano sounds out
bright, brittle, and of tune.
You don't want to actually hear beats (so the strings are within
1cps or better of one another), but you still don't want them to be
precisely the same. Part of a piano's tone is goveerned by how the
unisons are tuned with regard to one another. Or so I was told.
Is this right?""
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Sorta.. The three string unisons are often in need of detuning from
mathematically perfect in order to present a consistant clarity from note
to note. This is often the case when false beats are present, or there
are phase considerations.
Unisons exhibit coupled motion,i.e., the pitch of one string can
be shown to have a mechanical effect on the others. If one string is
moving at a slightly different rate, the other two strings attempt to
match its speed, and it attempts to match theirs.
While these three strings are going about trying to find agreement,the
tone is prolonged, (due to the reflective nature of energy that the bridge
is trying to pass along to the soundboard). Waves that are out of phase
tend to "stiffen" the bridge in regard to the other string's input that is
coming in slightly "out of step".
The perfect unison dumps its energy into the bridge at a faster rate,
so the slightly mistuned unison often has a longer sustain. HOWEVER< the
perfect unison will have more power, and if the piano is a good one, the
tone will be more malleable, (voicing difference).
Some numbers to keep in mind:
1) A unison that has one cps beat in it is 4 cents out of tune, (in the
middle of the keyboard). This is a totally unacceptable amount, and most
would hear it as out of tune.
2) Unison detuning of 1 cent is about the limit that is commercially
acceptable, recording studios usually demand tolerances closer to .2
cents.
3) the amount of change you may expect a unison to show after several
hours of play is in the neighborhood of .1 to .2 cents
If all three strings are exactly in phase, the quality of sound is
different than if one is slightly off. This calls subjective taste into
consideration, which means there may be more than one best way!
Good tuners usually tune as closely as possible, knowing that there
will be a .2 cent variation in short order. If you start off slightly
out, it quickly gets worse than acceptable.
The amount of de-tuning that is usually needed to make the unisons
clear is in the .2 cent range. this is just 5% of 1 cps !
The electronic machine I use is very trustworthy, but I cannot trust
it to tune unisons, as some of the mathematically perfect unisons don't
sound like the others. In order to achieve consistancy at this level,
the organic hearing qualities of a good tuner will be superior to the
machine.
Regards,
Ed Foote
Precision Piano Works
Nashville, Tn
Richard m
> a4...@aol.com (A440A) wrote in article
<5453p5$9...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>...
> R. Moody writes;
>
> >The "Well Tempered Clavier" was Bach's attempt >at equal temperament.
Moody
OOOPs ,, The above statement should have read
The WTC, **WAS** this Bach's attempt at equal temperament.??
>Foote
> I must disagree. There was nobody tuning equal temperament at the time,
> even though it was a concept that had been around for thousands of
years.
Moody
To nit pic,,,,, If EQ was a concept that had been around for "thousands
of years" how come "There was nobody tuning equal temperament at the time"
(of Bach) Are you saying Bach wasn't interested in a thousand year old
concept??
>Foote
> The title is "Well Tempered", not "Equal Tempered" and these are
two
> different things.
Moody
Interesting,,, More so if differences were explained and sources cited.
Is there a description of the method he used to set his >>temperament?
>Foote
> We know quite a bit about the temperament practises of the day,
> though not about Bach's particular preferences in 1722.
> It had only been 40 years since Werckmiester had published his
> first plan for tempering a meantone tuning to allow modulation all the
way
> around the circle, but this was not equal temperament. It was an
> irregular, circulating temperament that was ultimately refined by Thomas
> Young in 1799.
> Equal temperament is something else entirely.
>
> Ed Foote
> Precision Piano Works
> Nashville, Tenn.
>
Moody
As posted earlier, Bach must have included instructions as to how to
tune the Clavier in order to play the 48 pieces he wrote under the title
"Well Tempered Clavier".
Any one know of these instructions??
The hypothesis is that these 48 compositions could be played on a
keyboard tuned to one tuning, well tempered, or equal temperament. I
would venture to state that that the tuning scheme if extant would be
close enough to call it Equal Temperament.
Richard Moody ptt
Hope Morrow
Steven Abrams wrote:
>
> I was under the impression that aside from determining the temperament
> and doing the stretch towards the upper octaves, a good tuner nearly
> strings of a unison are precicely in unison, the piano sounds deader,
> but if they are too far detune from one another, the piano sounds out
> bright, brittle, and of tune. You don't want to actually hear beats
> (so the strings are within 1cps or better of one another), but you
> still don't want them to be precisely the same. Part of a piano's
> tone is goveerned by how the unisons are tuned with regard to one
> another. Or so I was told.
>
> Is this right?
Unisons need to be cleanly tuned -- keep in mind that piano tone is
determined by the *overtone* structure (volume and duration of each) and
that if you "detune" the fundamental by .5 cps (for example) the
overtones one octave above will beat at 1.0 cps, 2 octaves above at 2.0
cps, and the other overtones (12th, 17th and so forth) will also beat
according to their relative frequency. If the unisons are out of tune
then each note will also sound out of tune to the rest of the piano
(even if the middle/original string tuned is correct).
>
> It seems to me that accomplishing this is a matter of taste and skill,
> and could simply *not* be accomplished by electronic means.
>
When there are "false beats" (a single string can have a beat in it for
a multitude of reasons), especially if more than one string has them,
the visual feedback of an electronic tuner can be helpful in setting
each string and aural listening can also be helpful in verifying a
musical result.
> ~~~Steve
> --
> Steven Abrams abr...@cs.columbia.edu
>
> Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.
> -Lennon/McCartney
--
Hope E. Morrow, M.A.
Los Angeles, California
hope...@earthlink.net
Marshall Price
Nobody seems to have touched upon the real issue here, which is, as I see
it, that somebody has to handle the tuning pins.
I've been tuning for almost 30 years, and have gone through several
drastic changes in my approach (though I've always been a very good,
conscientious tuner). I've used temperaments using thirds, fifths, based
on A, based on C, based on C-#, extended over 1-1/3 to 3 octaves, using
many different kinds of tests, etc., but in the long run, people tune not
by ear, or by machine, but by HAND!
It's wrestling with those tuning pins that's the tricky part.
--
Marshall Price
d021...@dcfreenet.seflin.lib.fl.us
Gerry Geddings
To amplify slightly, tuners are tools like mutes and tuning hammers. They save time
amy make tuning easier in the hands of an expert. Nothing more.
Gerry Geddings
us to use our eyes along with our ears. I don't use an SAT. I would if someone gave
me one, but I can't justify $1450 for a new one. I do use an old model Sight O Tuner
that does a similar thing without the computer. I have used SAT's and I could tune a
little faster with one I think.
Robert Scott
Hope Morrow <hope...@earthlink.net> wrote:
There is a subtle difference between aural and electronic tuning of
unisons which is best described in the 1979 Scientific American
article by Gabriel Weinreich. It has to do with the non-linear
interaction of unison strings through the bridge. This
non-linear interaction causes unisons to "lock" together in frequency
when they are tuned very close (but not perfectly) together. This
would make a pair of unison strings sound perfectly in tune even
though each string, if allowed to vibrate with the other damped off
would vibrate at a slightly different frequency. Since electronic
tuning of unisons is done with only one string sounding at a time, the
locking phenomenon would not come into play, and the "natural"
frequency of each string could be more perfectly tuned because it
would be unaffected by the other string sounding simultaneously.
This is an advantage for electronic tuning. If a unison is tuned
aurally it may sound perfect for a while. But if it happens to be
at the extreme edge of where the locking phenomenon is effective, it
would only take a slight drift of some tuning parameter (such as
temperature or humidity) to fall outside of the locking range. And
then you would get a comparatively larger detuning of the unison.
-Bob Scott
cc...@aol.com
Unisons need to be precisely tuned, except for the fact that pianos are
imperfect. It may not be possible to tune in unison because harmonics are
not precise and accurate unison can be attained only by using harmonics.
In this sense, you detune the unison, but this depends on the piano --
which harmonic is the loudest?? See my book, Fundamentals of Piano
Practice, in my web page, at http://members.aol.com/cc88m/PianoBook.html
(watch the capitals).