Inharmonicity

[Ron Nossaman]

Hi Del,

Sorry about the mish-mosh, but this saves having to un-ravel it any more
than necessary. Comments interspersed.


At 08:15 AM 11/3/97 -0800, you wrote:
>
>
>Ron Nossaman wrote:
>
>> 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.
>
>Ah, would that this were only true. Some of our most revered pianos trace
their design history back
>more like a hundred plus years. And all too many other "new" pianos are
essentially copies of other
>pianos that also date back that far. I know... You were being generous.
>

I said the ENGINEER started from scratch, not the DESIGN. Even engineers
were once untrained infants. If they were born with the accumulated
knowledge and experience of the species (engineers, I hear there's talk of
lobbying for their own phylum), progress would be a lot closer to linear. 


>> 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.
>
>Actually, yes I have. I've known several piano engineers with a great
respect for the work done by
>their predecessors. That doesn't imply that they thought that all of the
work done by those
>predecessors was necessarily the last word in the development of the piano.
But much can be learned
>by studying the work of those who have gone before in light of what is
known today. Hindsight has a
>way of sharpening one's "vision."
>


It's a shame these several weren't put in charge.


>
>> 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.
>
>Yes, well... while this may be true to some extent, isn't it reasonable for
the piano manufacturer
>-- he is, after all, the one who is paying the bills -- to insist that the
designers and the
>engineers develop something that he can actually build and fit into his
product line? Designers are
>dreamers by nature. Out of those dreams can come some marvelous ideas, but
if the manufacturer wants
>a nice 5'8" grand that will sell in the $25,000 range and the designer
gives him a 7'6" piano that
>will cost $42,000 to build -- wholesale -- it won't do either of them much
good.
>


Yea, well, isn't that what I said, and why I said it?


>
>> 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.
>
>I would certainly hope that this also is not entirely true although I
realize that to some extent it
>probably is. Most of those that I know who are seriously interested in
improving the piano as we
>know it today are serious students of the past efforts of our predecessors.
(And, no, I don't mean
>to include all of those who are simply able to write out a check for a
rescaling software package
>and are then able to consider themselves to be scale designers.) A few have
also made at least some
>effort to pass on what has been learned along the way -- although doing so
has not been easy. If you
>want a really interesting and challenging project, try convincing the PTG
Technical Institute
>Committee that a few really advanced classes should be taught at the
National Convention. Well, you
>try it...I'm no longer interested in that particular struggle.
>


The problem here, as I see it, is that what we KNOW today is different and,
presumably better, than what we KNEW yesterday. What we KNOW tomorrow will
just as likely make us a little embarrassed with what we thought we KNEW
today. Admiring as we may be of the clever methods of yesterday's
technology, we tend to think our present state of semi-ignorance is somehow
more exalted than the state of semi-ignorance our predecessors labored
under. Occasionally, we will pick up a piece of "outdated" information that
is so elegant, obvious, and beautiful that we wonder how it could been the
by-product of this miasma of witchcraft, genius, and dumb luck that is our
individual perception of the state of the art of piano engineering. Also,
why didn't I think of that?  


>> 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
>
>It obviously can't be. But fortunately that's not the way it works in real
life. Not everybody is
>un-enlightened and narrow-minded. And not everyone got into the business
just last Tuesday. Some of
>us came on Monday. 



Beg to differ. Everyone IS unenlightened and narrow minded. Each of us sees
the universe through our own narrow perspective, filtered through our
individual prejudices of accumulated experience. This exchange ought to
pretty well prove that. Even though that sounds like I'm trying to pick a
fight, that isn't the intent. The point is that no two people are privy to
the same information set. Without "absolute knowledge" meters on our
foreheads, we are able to separate the learned from the blowhard only by
comparison of the output with our own internal information base. Since we
can only judge by incomplete or suspect criteria... 

Arriving a day early, however, ought to be worth a few extra points.   




>Besides, I remain convinced that one of the most formidable obstacles to the
>ongoing development of the piano is not the designer, or even that
obstinate and disgustingly
>practical manufacturer, it is the piano technician in the field who is
unwilling to accept anything
>new in his favorite instrument. I've sat through too many meetings in which
what I thought were good
>ideas were set aside because of concern that they, no matter how good the
end result, the product
>would not be accepted by piano technicians and that the resulting criticism
would hurt the product's
>sales potential. Now, I'll be the first to admit that not every new idea or
concept that has been
>introduced into the marketplace has been perfect. In fact, some of them
have been rather disastrous.
>But, the only way to avoid making any mistakes at all is to do nothing. And
that is the biggest
>mistake of all.
>


I don't understand this one. Maybe I haven't been paying attention (it's
happened before). Don't I read right here on this list, messages from techs
applauding the tonal quality, action response, tuning stability, and
tunability of high quality instruments and grunching about the lack of these
qualities in low-end instruments? Most of us probably wouldn't notice a new
scale design, different rib placement, bridge configuration, or
modifications in action design unless it was pointed out to us. What we
would notice is the overall improvement in the instrument. It tunes better.
It sounds better. It feels better. Why? Most of us probably wouldn't know,
or possibly even care, but we certainly wouldn't gripe about it to
prospective purchasers. By all means, spoil me! Personally, I'm all for any
changes that make a piano a better piano. If you are talking about changes
radical enough to put the instrument onto a category other than that of
"piano", then it's a moot point. Maybe a little clarification. What sort of
changes do you mean?    



>Regards,
>
>-- ddf
>
>"Conventional Wisdom is an Idiot."
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Bottom line on my original post is that I don't consider engineers to be
useless except as a potential source of protein. Quite the contrary. I daily
enjoy the fruits of their labors and depend on the realization of their
brainstorms for my basic survival. I envy some of them their jobs, brains,
and toys. The whole point was to try to illustrate that the modern piano is
not the culmination of a linear evolutionary process any more than a modern
engineer knows everything that all the engineers preceding him knew. It
isn't cumulative. 


Regards back to you,

 Ron Nossaman