Temperament$

[Billbrpt@AOL.COM]

---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment
In a message dated 12/30/00 10:53:36 AM Central Standard Time, 
pianolover88@hotmail.com (pianolover 88)
 writes:


> Hi ed,
> 
> I'm just curious, if you get a reaction like that to your "modified" 
> tuning, 
> why not tune ALL your customer's pianos like that? Also, can I program this 
> 

I thank Ed for his post because after all, this is really my area of greatest 
interest and expertise.  Ironically, I too had an experience with a Steinway 
L yesterday that is worth telling about.

I received a referral to this very nice, talented lady who lives in a nice 
house in a town about 20 miles away.  She had bought her Steinway from the 
local dealer about a year ago and after a year of being less than satisfied 
with it, she ended up trying my services.

Now, I am not opposed to talking to my clients about the difference from 
Equal Temperament (ET) and the way I usually tune a piano in the Equal 
Beating Victorian Temperament (EBVT) that I designed 9 years ago, I have just 
become so used to providing it as the usual way that I tune a piano and I am 
generally far too busy to get involved with a discussion that will severely 
cut into the time I have available.  Most of the time, I "just do it", as 
they say.  

I also do not consider it to be a "modified" tuning as you put it.  That 
implies that there is only one "normal" way to tune a piano and what I do is 
some kind of alternative.  While I understand that probably most people think 
this way, I have long ago reached the conclusion that Equal Temperament (ET) 
is but one choice and even though it is the most common choice, it is the 
very last choice that I would ever make.

I had to make this trip in yet another snowstorm, there now being well over 3 
feet of snow on the ground here.  It is very cold outside.  This means that 
just to go outside, you have to put on a hat, heavy coat, gloves and boots.  
In weather like this, you have to take your boots, hat, gloves and coat off 
as soon as you get inside.  The lady gave me a towel to wipe off the snow 
that was half way up my legs.  So, just getting there, getting out of the 
car, getting inside and getting up to the piano is an odyssey in itself.

Now, because it is so cold, the air in most environments here is severely dry 
and so even though the piano had been tuned only 3 months before, it was 
nearly 20 cents flat.  She also said before I even got started that there was 
a range of the piano that sounded "dull" to her.  It seemed to be the treble 
section and after I listened to it, I determined that it was indeed too soft 
sounding from A4-A6.  I said, OK, that is a Voicing problem and I'll be happy 
to take care of that but in order to do so, I'll have to go get something out 
of my car.

"Oh phooey!" she said.  But she went to get my coat she had hung up, I put 
it, the hat, the boots and the gloves back on and went out to get my hammer 
hardening solution and the applicator bottle.  When I came back in, she 
immediately asked if that was something I was going to "spray" on the 
hammers.  I could see immediately that I would have to explain that this is 
what Steinway concert technician would do and that it would not ruin or cause 
any unalterable effect.

This has been a recent topic.  There are all kinds of voicing methods and 
theories.  I always look for methods that give me the most, best, quickest, 
easiest, least risky, etc., results.  New Steinway hammers are known for 
being on the soft side.  Particularly in a home piano like this one, the 
thinking is that once the hammers have been played and need shaping, the tone 
will develop of its own accord as the string cuts into a harder portion of 
the hammer.

There are however, many instances where some "instant gratification" is 
desired.  This can be at a concert performance.  The great Steinway 
Technician, Franz Mohr was often called upon to "do *something*" and being a 
very gracious man, he always found a way.  He told about having tuned for 
Alicia de la Rocha and having essentially the same problem very shortly 
before a performance.

He got the idea to use some very dilute keytop & acetone solution and put it 
right on the striking surface of the hammer.  It would be dry in 20 minutes, 
he reasoned.  After the concert, Alicia exclaimed, "It was a miracle!"  
Franz, being a devoutly religious man, liked that kind of compliment.

Taking a cue from this kind of experiment/experience, it makes a whole lot of 
sense to me to use this idea in many circumstances.  My solution is very 
dilute, it looks like whey or what skim milk might look like if you cut it 
half with water.  With my applicator, I merely put a scant drop or two on 
each striking surface to the right side.  I leave the left side as untouched 
as possible because this is the part of the hammer used when soft pedaling.

It took all of 3 minutes at most to treat A4-A6.  I put the action back in a 
prepared to tune.  I did notice that there was a remarkable amount of wear on 
the hammers for only being a year old and that the spacing needed correction. 
 It is common for the whole action to start to drift to the left because the 
packing on the left side of the action cavity begins to compress.  This 
leaves the centering of the hammers opposite of the way the should be, 
slightly to the right for maximum soft pedal effects.

It might be said that the "proper" thing to do would have been to file and 
align those hammers and see what kind of tone resulted.  But obviously, the 
circumstances did not permit that.  I had 4 more appointments and she had to 
leave in about 2 hours.  To produce some kind of good, positive results in 
the usual time it is considered to take for a piano tuning is what was 
incumbent upon me, not doing what is theoretically "best".  

I decided that when I had finished tuning the piano, I would suggest to her 
that I do the filing, alignment, flange tightening and touch up regulation 
the next time she wants the piano serviced if she is pleased with the results 
so far.  In all likelihood, the filing I would do would go beneath and strip 
away any hardener I had applied regardless of whether my efforts had produced 
little, just right or too much effect.

The tuning needed to be at pitch and done very well.  This was not the time 
to say that I could only produce a rough tuning and that I would have to come 
back.  The tuning pins were tight, springy and "snappy" as in the recent post 
by Phil.  I had no time to complain about this to anyone, I just had to 
knuckle down and get the job done.

I used my usual custom program in my SAT for a Steinway L.  I did the initial 
pitch raise of the entire piano in about 15 minutes, "snap, crackle, pop".  
Putting the strip mutes right back in, I went through each section of the 
piano again twice.  One rough tuning and one fine tuning.  Any stubbornness 
was ignored in the rough tuning.  No sense fighting with springy pins.  After 
the rough tuning, I played "chopsticks" (loud, hard test blows) through the 
entire section to make whatever was unsettled reveal itself.  This allowed 
for a quick and easy fine tuning with extra time needing only to be spent on 
the occasional stubborn strings and pins.  The result was a performance level 
tuning.

She could hear when I was finished and came out.  I told her about the 
recommendations I had and put the fallboard assembly back in, putting a 
little grease on the keyblock lag screws which had been so tight you could 
hardly turn them.  They went in easily.

She sat down and got out a book that I saw was Chopin literature but I didn't 
see exactly what.  She started playing some of the very advanced literature 
and spoke once, saying "yes" then again as she played a passage into the 
treble and exclaimed in a raised voice, "YES"!!!, with a big, wide eyed grin 
on her face.

She played just a bit more, then stopped to write out my check and to ask for 
my card.  Just as with Ed, she added a nice little chunk over and above what 
I had asked for.  I had arrived at 10 am, nearly to the minute in spite of 
the weather and I saw on my watch that it was now 11:30, just time enough for 
me to make it to the next appointment which was scheduled for Noon.

Now, the whole concept of the difference I make in the way I tune the 
temperament and octaves is about as subtle as the voicing difference I made.  
As it turns out, I was lucky in that my hardener brought up the tone just the 
right amount without the least bit of any "ping-y" sound.  That is real 
voicing efficiency: 3 minutes and no needling needed to fix any too bright 
sounds.

I, of course, know about the "Best Broadwood" Temperament and have tried it 
but long ago found it to be less desirable than what I could come up with 
myself.  The "Best" merely means that this is the one temperament among the 
Broadwood Factory styles that is closest to ET.  It is called "Best" because 
the idea at the time was to really tune ET but the habits of the tuners of 
that era always produced a remnant of the Well-Tempered Tuning style that was 
most common in the 18th and early part of the 19th Centuries.  Skip Becker 
RPT who has written a long series of articles on the history of tuning 
prefers the "Usual Broadwood" which is a little more unequal.

The EBVT I designed has about the same inequality as one of the Broadwood 
styles but is far more meticulously and purposefully crafted rather than 
being just the results of certain habitually used patterns that were not 
fully understood.  It retains 4 pure 5ths the way early 19th Century 
Well-Temperaments do and is loaded with the Equal Beating (EB) phenomenon 
which produces effects that virtually no other Victorian era temperament has.

It causes the piano to have a distinctly different character for each and 
every one of the 24 Major and minor keys and yet produces no sounds that the 
"contemporary ear" usually find objectionable.  In short, I consider it to be 
a distinct refinement in the way the modern piano should be tuned, not a 
modification for some specific or unusual circumstance.

I also use the Equal Beating principal to tune the octaves, something which 
no program such as the FAC program or any of the calculated programs for 
other Electronic Tuning can quite match.  It is however, quite simple and 
easy to do and in my opinion, produces the very best compromise by providing 
a solution to the two most fundamental problems there are in tuning the 
modern piano:  The Pythagorean Comma or in other words, the discrepancy 
between the results of tuning pure octaves and pure 5ths (the reason why 
*tempering* is necessary to begin with) and the other major obstacle, 
Inharmonicity.  I use, in fact, the second dilemma in order to mitigate the 
first.  I literally fight fire with fire.

Unfortunately, no one can understand and put these concepts into practice by 
using an FAC type program and that is why I do not.  So, Terry, there's 
nothing wrong with trying out what Ed suggests and has done but if you really 
want to get everything out of the piano that it has to offer, you'll have to 
learn to do some creative aural tuning.  You can use your SAT to record and 
preserve what you do, the way I do but you can never expect to get those 
results from a calculated program.

I'm glad I was able to offer you the referral to my sister who badly needed 
her piano tuned when I could not be there immediately for her.  She was quite 
pleased with your work, no doubt about that.  Most people who listen to a 
piano I have tuned say they cannot recognize the difference between my tuning 
and ET although they consistently say it is a superb sound.  It takes a 
direct comparison like those that were done at the Convention in Providence 
and at a Regional meeting in Chicago where we compared the EBVT with Virgil 
Smith RPT's ET.

The effect is subtle but inviting.  It consistently produces the wide eyed 
grin and exclamations of pleasure that Ed talked about in his post.  That is 
why I do it.  It is my feeling that it is the very best sound that I am 
capable of producing.  Therefore, I have every reason to do it, as my own 
personal level of standard practice.  It makes the pianos I service have a 
quality that is at least as good as, if not a cut above the very best that is 
available anywhere.

I'll be out in Southern California within the next few months and will do the 
EBVT for that Disney producer both in his home and in the production studio.  
I'm hoping that some great things will come about by his experiencing the 
difference in what I am able to do and the way pianos are usually tuned these 
days.

Bill Bremmer RPT
Madison, Wisconsin

---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/fc/7b/cb/62/attachment.htm

---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment--