Inharmonicity

[Ron Nossaman]

Hi Bob,

Boy, I wish this were the case! The problem is continuity. A species evolves
by the weeding out of the less viable characteristics and attributes by
attrition. Something eats the unworthy, un-wary, and dim. If they remain
un-eaten, they freeze, starve, fail to breed, or go into government service
(or some such similar evolutionary dead end). Pianos, unfortunately, don't
"evolve" by a similar set of criteria. Each one was designed by an engineer
who started from scratch a mere thirty to sixty years ago. Did you ever meet
an engineer who admired, embraced, and refined the work of all those who
have gone before? EVERY one I ever met seems to be convinced that all those
other clowns haven't got a clue how anything works and his/her opinions are
the only ones with any validity. Consequently, the same mistakes are
repeated again and again with endless variations. Evolution, in the piano
industry, happens in fits and starts as individual engineers introduce
features into their designs that other engineers consider worth stealing and
IMPROVING UPON. It isn't right unless it's theirs, you see. In all due
fairness, this built in attitude is what enables/drives them to become
engineers in the first place so it ain't all bad. Compound all this with the
near certainty that the piano wasn't designed with a "free hand", but rather
under a set of defined manufacturing criteria so restrictive as to make it
impossible to fit anything other than a design monstrosity into the
available slot. That, superficially covers the genesis of the piano. Then it
comes into our shop. We, with the same attitude of superiority the engineer
labors under but (usually) without the technical education, undertake to
improve the instrument by applying our own enlightened beliefs and attitudes
to this poor deprived product of the Troglodyte's art. Sometimes we do,
other times, not. Odds are, however, that we learned what we think we know
by our own process of trial and error (and error) more than by drawing on
the accumulated wisdom of those who have gone before. After all, their
situations were different, therefor their accumulated knowledge doesn't
apply, right? By the time we become old and experienced enough to recognize
and validate some of this accumulated wisdom, we quit working and die, or
the other way around, without managing to pass on all this hard won
knowledge to the next generation. After all, their situation is entirely
different than yours was, and they have very little use for fossilized
information. Our species has come a long way, from an evolutionary
standpoint, but we'll never get anywhere as long as each individual must
start from scratch at birth. How can a product designed by an un lightened,
narrow-minded individual of such an un-finished and fundamentally faulty
species who just got into the business last Tuesday, be anything but
somewhat less than optimal? So why not dink with it? How's that for an
opinion? %)

Ron 


At 08:08 PM 11/2/97 -0500, you wrote:
>Dear list,
>     A thought occurred to me concerning the practice of rescaling.  I know
>the first reason to do so is that we are improving the piano.  Admittidly,
>the early designers didn't have access to the tools we have now and would
>have used them if they had.
>I can't help comparing this to genetic engineering.  Are we possibly
>changing the nature of the instrument that two hundred years of evolution
>has brought us to?  Could it be that a certain amount of inharmonicity is
>part of the charm of the piano?  I'll admit that a Kimball spinet doesn't
>have a lot of charm and a lot of the other. I haven't seen this slant
>brought up before.  I hope it generates some opinions.
>
>Regards,
>
>Bob Sadowski RPT
>Erie, PA 
>


 Ron Nossaman