[CAUT] The fundamental - Where is it?

[Donald McKechnie]

Ed,

We had a discussion about the sense of the phantom fundamental and are  
clear on that. One of the techs posted on the RCT list and got some  
good responses. i had noticed that the RCT does not record a  
fundamental below A1. Dean posted that he did not set up the program  
to record below 55 hz. The program got a little unstable below that.  
However, with advances in technology he might go lower in a future  
version.

My main interest is in whether or not a large soundboard at least, can  
produce the fundamental that the lowest strings are producing. One of  
the techs had an old Sohmer concert grand in the shop. without strings  
and plate installed he pounded the soundboard. The frequency produced  
was about F1, approximately 43.5 hz. His contention is that the belly  
system cannot produce any frequency below that. True?

Don


> From: Ed Foote <a440a at aol.com>
> Date: March 26, 2010 12:12:01 PM EDT
> To: caut at ptg.org
> Subject: Re: [CAUT] The fundamental - Where is it?
> Reply-To: caut at ptg.org
>
>
> >>We agree that, at least on larger pianos, the low strings produce  
> the fundamental but we differ on whether or not the rest of the  
> belly system can produce even a recordable fundamental.<<
>
>
>         Greetings,
>        This can't be done aurally, since experiments show that   
> humans "hear" the fundamental even when it is missing, if the  
> partials indicate to us where that fundamental would be, ie, if we  
> hear 200, 300,400,500 cycles, all put together, we also "hear" the  
> fundamental at 100. Our brains will synthesize the missing  
> fundamental.  I don't think we normally will do the same going the  
> other way, ie, if we hear 100 and 200 Hz  together, I am not aware  
> of any research that indicates we hear additional higher ones.
>    Maybe this is why we can often hear, ("sense" might be a better  
> word), the A0 on a smaller piano, when it is doubtful that the tubby  
> spinet is capable of producing it. While aurally tuning these 36  
> inch wonders, (how many of us have been kept alive cranking through  
> these?)  I would tune the lowest strings simply by where there was  
> the least clang in the partials.  I may have been hearing the  
> fundmentals, but putting them somewhere based on where the 2nd  
> partials lined up with octave above  left them all over the place.
> Probably good not to hear them, sometimes.
> Regards,
>
> Ed Foote RPT
> http://www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/index.html

Donald McKechnie
Piano Technician
Ithaca College
dmckech at ithaca.edu
607.274.3908





-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20100326/55a2aae8/attachment.htm>