What do you listen

[Michael Jorgensen]

Hi Isaac,
     You raise fascinating questions about tuning and its' affects on tone.  I
assume you are speaking about quality of unison and not about the amount of
octave stretch.
     Every unison requires some compromise, since no three strings have exactly
the same inharmonicity, falseness, sustain, fluctuation rate of pitch during
attack and decay, and timbre (relative intensity of overtones).  Therefore the
tuner chooses which harmonics to match, and at what points they match during
the attack decay cycle.  I agree 100% that there are differences and that they
are significant.  Wonderfully, this dictates that unison tuning is an art.
      The six million dollar question is:  Which way is best and for which
music?  My tunings seem mellowing to a piano, and I'd like to think helpful for
sustain and carry, but I don't know.
      I like a blend of unison, perhaps no harmonics are in perfect phase, but
none are sacrificed either.   I prefer clearer overall sound where all aspects
of the unison are considered.  I don't like electronically tuned unisons where
one harmonic is chosen, usually at the expense of others.  That sounds thin and
noisy.  Generally the higher one listens the greater the accuracy.  I tune
during that fraction of a second after being struck, when strings are searching
to find their pitch and phase.  I also listen during die off.   Unisons can be
in tune during decay, and out of tune during attack.  I'm not sure the opposite
is true. Many classical period works use very short staccato and fast runs such
that only the attack is important.  If a unison has a slow false swell, as on
most steinway trebles, that seems to help the tone, though I'm always trying to
tune that out of existence.
     I firmly believe consistency of unisons is the most vital thing.  Easier
for me, I rarely touch up unisons on other tuners' work so I don't have to
change my unison style to be consistent with theirs.   It may vary with mood.
In actual practice, I haven't  thought much about how my unisons affect power,
sustain, and carry,  (that's the pianos' problem, has been my attitude), but
perhaps I should.
-Mike Jorgensen
I will be off list for a while in about three hours.  I hope someone will send
me the rest of this thread so I can read it when I get back.


Isaac OLEG SIMANOT wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I have a question for you .
>
> I am often tuning grand pianos for concert service (S&S). There are 4 other
> tuners so we all follow one by one.
>
> Each one have his own sound that makes me think they listen differently to
> the piano when they tune ( they play differently too of course).
>
> With time I became good for "blend" my tuning in the last tuning done on the
> piano, and so I had to vary the way I was listening, to keep my unissons in
> phase with what was on before (most of the time in the morning the same day)
>
> The Yamaha concert tuners showed me how to listen in the sound "oh" at the
> "top" of the note, so I can tune as they do.
>
> One of our tuners have a sound wich projects very well and another have a
> sound that lasts long, another one have a very brillant/lively sound (but
> not good projection BMO), and another one have a somewhat dark sound on the
> mellow side, where the attack is contained.
>
> So , what do you listen for :
>
> A       A precise attack ? renforced, or erased ?
> B       The max power ?
> C       The longuer sound (sustain)?
> D       The max Dwell time (after attack when the sound goes in a rebound)?
> E       The projection sound (far away from you)?
> F       The strenght of high partials ?
> G       The strenght of fondamental ?
>
> Personnally I like a strong  sound with immediate power in the middle of the
> keyboard then I try progressively to blend the dwell in the sustain in the
> treble, so there is life in my note, (life but not a beat). I don't like a
> too rigid sound .
> As I work mostly on recent pianos we have all that possibilities, of course
> on older instruments, we may sometime use some artifice so the listener
> thinks he is hearing a lively sound. A more explosive attack is one of them
> ( plastic on the top of the hammer ) letting the beat goes on (!) is another
> (but I don't like this one too much)
>
> I hope this makes sense !
>
> Thks for your earstorming.
>
> Isaac OLEG