Tuning vs intonation

[Michel Lachance]

I remember my first attempts in piano tunings as being a real strain for my 
brain by trying hear musical pitches instead of beats.  The problem with 
musical pitches is that your criterias would change as you modulate.  In the 
key of C, for example, one would tend to tune F a little flat because it has 
a natural tension toward E.  Likely, one would tend to tune B natural on the 
sharp side due to a resolution tendency toward the fundamental (C).  And all 
these would change in a different key...

Not all the musicians also have the same approach regarding this though.  
For me, two opposite examples on the cello would be Janos Starker who had a 
perfect sense of equal temperament (like if he had frets on his cello!) and 
Pablo Casals who was not afraid to make musical inflections (is that an 
english word?) on the notes.

I have training both as singer and as a piano tuner and it appears that I 
don't use the same side of my brain for both activities.  When I sing, I 
want to be warmful, musical and very sensitive.  But when I tune pianos, I 
find myself to be heartless, rational and very down to hearth.  I found out 
it is the best way to be done within an hour without having a headache...

Michel Lachance. RPT


>
>----------
> >
> > My question is, how do piano players become tuners since they
>have no
> > control of the intonation of the notes they play?
> >
> > Larry Messerly, RPT
> > Prescott/Phoenix
>
>
>I have always tuned by beats, never heard pitch.  Well, the
>pitch in upper treble and lower bass gets you to the neighborhood,
>but it always beats that finally determine tuning.  I never heard
>when I
>played on the piano, C4--E4,  that the E was sharper than what I
>would sing.
>	When you played violin or trombone, did you ever notice this
>intonation difference  on the piano before you were told
>about it?  I always wondered after I learned piano tuning why no
>one complained or said anything about the sharp thirds.   I haven't
>played musical instruments in an organized setting, but did sing in
>a HS chorus, and didn't notice the difference there.
>	My home piano was a half a tone flat from my teacher's piano but I
>never heard that I was playing a Chopin Prelude in a different key
>for the lesson than what I practiced in, and since she lived right
>around the corner,  sometimes that was within 15 minutes.
>---ric  Atleasthecanmatchpitch
>

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