Clean unisons

[John M. Formsma]

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pianotech@ptg.org [mailto:owner-pianotech@ptg.org]On Behalf
Of JIMRPT@AOL.COM


<<Notes can't be "too clean".
But "clean" notes can be very lifeless.
A unison which is very very slightly off, perhaps on just one string, will
have more presence and sustain than one which is 'dead on'. Played one note
at a time this should be no problem but if the combinations of notes, as in
a
chord, are all 'dead on' than the overall perception of the chord will
likewise be more Lifeless than a chord where all the notes were not 'dead
on'
but just a tiny-tiny bit out.>>

Jim,

I read this last night and thought you were full of it. Heh-heh, my
apologies, my good man. :-)  Had a Yamaha G3 and Diapason 183-E today on
which I tried the above to test for myself. It is true that there is more
"life" from unisons that are a teensy bit "out." However, lest anyone should
get the wrong impression of how much, could you clarify and describe the
amount of "outness"?

This is how I describe what I think you are saying: what I did was to tune
the unisons so that there was a little more "zing" in them (in the upper
partials). Or, to put it another way, the sound sort of "expanded" or
"bloomed" as the note was held. After figuring out this was what you meant,
I went back to the totally still, dead-on unisons. There was a slight
difference, but a difference nonetheless. From a musical perspective, the
unisons were better that tiny bit off. There was more life.

Now, your point being proved, why is that? I was thinking about it during
tuning today, and wondered if it might be something like what we
occasionally do with false beats. Sometimes false beats can be eliminated by
mistuning a string in the unison, which clears up the false beat, but leaves
that one string at a slightly different pitch than the other two. I assume
that what causes this is that the sound wave created by the mistuned string
offsets or cancels the false beats, creating the illusion of a pure single
wave. Could it be that a dead-on unison has the same cancelling effect of
sound waves going on? That the cancelling effect is such that some of the
energy is lost? I'm thinking out loud, which usually gets me in trouble, but
I'm asking anyway. What's your thought on this? And should we do all our
tunings this way, or attempt to work more with voicing to achieve that kind
of sound?

John Formsma
Blue Mountain, MS