[CAUT] Tuning a Steinway D and a Bosendorfer Imperial together

[Mark Schecter]

Hi, Kent.

They do sound well-matched, especially when you play the chromatic 
scale; apart from that, it's hard to judge.

I'm interested in the way you played the chord of nature. Your left hand 
played the Fm chord in root position from F3 to F4, and the right hand 
played C5 followed by C6. That's a new way (for me) of thinking of the 
chord of nature (see below). I see that the left-hand chord notes all 
contain the C6, but I'm not sure what the C5's role is (OK, its 2nd 
partial is C6, is that all?). Could you explain?

Just for clarity, the way I have thought of it is (and BTW thanks, I got 
the general idea from you!): play the Fm chord in 2nd inversion, from C4 
to C5, then, after the coincident partials have emerged and hopefully 
converged, follow with C7, which should match the ghost note projected 
by the sounding 4-note chord. The magic of it for me is that the 
convergence produces a tone of audible amplitude at C7, making it easier 
to judge whether C7's fundamental is in good relationship to the 4th and 
5th octave. Since this gets us up into the 7th octave, which is the area 
most in need of validation, it seems slightly more useful. Comments?

Thanks.

-Mark Schecter

PS   OK, I'll bite. How did you go about it? Thanks!

Kent Swafford wrote:
> I wanted to see if I could improve my ability to tune a Steinway D and a 
> Bosendorfer Imperial together. The Steinway has relatively high 
> inharmonicity and the Bosendorfer has very, very low inharmonicity. Some 
> of you will be familiar with the problem.
> 
> I have uploaded an audio file to:
> 
> http://www.kentswafford.com/mp3/d_dorf.mp3
> 
> The recording attempts to show that each piano is well-tuned with itself 
> and that the pianos also are tuned together. The Steinway plays first 
> and should be on the right. The pianos are side by side. There are a 
> number of bad unisons in the high treble, especially on the Bosendorfer. 
> You are welcome to come try to tune them yourself.
> 
> In the recording you hear:
> 
> Steinway arpeggios
> Bosendorfer arpeggios
> Bosendorfer chord of nature progression
> Steinway chord of nature progression
> Chromatic scale played both on both pianos together
> 
> I think the results are good. How I did this may surprise a few...
> 
> Later.
> 
> 
> Kent Swafford
> 
> 
>