True or False

Jim "pianotoo@imap2.asu.edu"@IMAP2.ASU.EDU
Sun, 28 Jul 1996 22:42:23 -0700 (mst)


Dear Dan:

I'm sorry that in my thinking I was restricting my comments to the Temper-
ament section.  You are right.  Most of my tuning these days involves the
use of the FAC stretch on the Sanderson AccuTuner.

My current experimentation involves altering the stretch numbers in order
to make the 5ths in the temperament section less narrow by giving as much
as .4 cents addition to the stretch number of A4 and then stretching the
C6 stretch number as much as 2 cents which in turn will make the C8 about
10 cents sharper than without this change.

When one does this, there are some tricky consequences to consider at the
locations where the partial changes come.  This can be handled very well
by doing some careful resetting of the pitch level of the machine.  I
will write an article about this later when my results are more definite
and consistent.

You are indeed sharp to recognize this problem.  Sometimes this
problem occurs only because of less care in selecting the correct stretch
number in the first place.  However, we still have the problem of not
knowing where the wire size changes occur (at least the machine doesn't
know where they occur).

In case you may be interested, I am now working toward providing much
sharper high treble tuning which I now think makes a piano sound better.
A tip on how sharp to make the treble involves keeping the octave-5th
pure up to about C7 and then balancing the stretch of the double octave
so that the octave-5th becomes sharp or on the wide side until the double
octave-5th is equal beating on the narrow side.  This makes the triple
octaves sound better at the expense of the single octaves, but the overall
sound of the piano is better, at least in my opinion.  You may have
fun experimenting with this.




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