Andre, Thanks you for your extensive and thoughtful reply. I'm partial to any wisdom you may parcel out. At 3:03 PM +0200 10/23/04, antares wrote: >....... and there is so much to listen to in all of the world. > >Now we come to 'listening' to a piano : >(snip) >I tell you these things to show to you that much more is possible >than we think, than we can imagine even. Who among us has their ears closed to these little messages which come at us with each sound from the piano. Yes, there is a wider sphere of listening occurring, and inventorying things on the piano which need attention, responding emotionally to the voice of the piano, being vigilant that whatever may not be satisfactory about the piano or its circumstances doesn't interfere with the fairly simple process of tuning. (And it's not an unfair simplification that all tuning is unison tuning.) However there is a certain portion of our consciousness which is assigned the task of tuning. And that area of consciousness proceeds with its work. knowing that at the end of tempering an interval or bringing a unison into focus, the bass end of the keyframe is still going to be slapping, a hammerhead still needs a drop of glue, an aggraphe hole still needs burnishing, and on down the above inventoried list. Tuning is a feedback loop, beginning with the hand that plays the note, the ear which listens to it and the other hand on the tuning hammer. All this other which you describe (and it certainly deserves repeating) is outside of that loop. Other parts of the consciousness are assigned to those areas of work which involve other tools say, a screwdriver or a sandpaper file instead of a tuning hammer. So back to the hearing that's participating in the tuning feedback loop. >>Agreed the mix of lower and higher partials is determined by how >>hard we strike, but on a hard blow, the lower partials are no less >>obvious (and as measured by a sophisticated spectrum analyzer, no >>smaller in comparison to the higher partials) than on a soft blow. >>What changes in the sound from soft blow to hard, is the emergence >>of the higher partials which feed on the extra strength of the blow. > >Well, I do not entirely agree with you here. >I have tested this partial stuff myself with the aid of the spectrum >analysis, built within my VT. The VT works up to, I think, A5 with 8 >partials, then with 4. 2 and 1 partial. >If you strike very hard, we see that the emphasis lies indeed much >stronger on the higher partials. Where the lowest partials react >less strongly, the highest partials visibly react much more. So far my ear and your ETD agree. >But there is another phenomenon at hand here : if you strike really >hard, the tone gets distorted and so does your hearing. With a >really hard bang, there is a tendency for the higher partials to >overrule, probably in combination with other physical factors I am >not familiar with. >It may also be that our ears react in a much different way then we >think to a violent sound. I agree that's another phenomenon, that of the prompt sound containing the sound of initial collision as well as the first chaotic phase before the wave plane shifts from vertical (ie parallel to its original displacement by the hammer) to omnidirectional, and while the wave is still stabilizing its form into something which best couples with the impedance of the bridge/board assembly. You physicists (or anyone else who actually has studied the matter) can clear up any misconceptions in mar characterization of the prompt sound, as well as the remarks which follow. I pity anyone trying to tune during such distortions of piano sound. But I also seem to understand that the waveform and frequency of partials during the aftersound (the longer phase after the initial sorting out of the prompt sound) is the same, regardless of whether the total energy of the prompt sound was high medium or low. I'm also gathering that it was the high energy in the prompt sound of your original unison tuning that afternoon is Japan, which resulted in the ugliness of the unisons thus tuned. >The notes were retuned on the basis of the "whole" sound. There was >no need to really pick out this or that partial. >btw, I never really consciously tune with the aid of partials. I >just tune, I just use my basic musical talent which defines my >"ear/tone print". Which also confirms my understanding of the difference in our tuning styles. You do perfectly well without concentrating your efforts on a particular partial. The forest and the trees, as I remarked to David Anderson. As far as picking out this or that partial, I pick out any partial which is moving. If all are moving, I pick out the highest and zero-beat it, if some are moving and others, still, then that's a horse of a different feather (and we all know horses don't have feathers). >My musical talent and my trained ears tell me exactly when the >combination of the two or three strings is at its most beautiful >(according to my frayed nerve endings hehe). >I am convinced that our eyes work the same : it is a matter of > >1. the technical/physical situation with your eyes i.e. are they >healthy, are they functioning well enough? >2. How do our eyes and optical nerves perceive and especially >'translate' the spectrum of light beams. > >So it must be that my green resembles your green, but is probably >fractionally different. >That's why I state that all tuners have a different way of creating >unisons. I am not talking here about counting beats or creating a >temperament etc. no, this is purely related to the way we can >perceive and process sound and the combination of two or three >sounds, coming from the unisons. >That is most fascinating stuff and tuners with under developed >'ears' could highly benefit from a 'unison seminar' of maybe 1 hour. Again, the forest and the trees. I think we've got a pretty good unison seminar right here. >As I told before : the best example I heard of this was at the >Yamaha Academy in Japan, where a number of 'developed' students in >my class (Concert course) had to do a tuning test every day at 8 a.m. >My instructor secretly invited me to compare their unisons, and >Bill... It was a total and complete "ear opener". (Are you sure he wasn't secretly doing that with every other student also?) >And then there was in particular this one Japanese lady tuner who >made the ultimate tuning, by which I mean that she was able to tune >every note on the tuning curve. It was absolutely amazing, and she >performed this incredible work of precision every day. She was >almost like a tuning machine, and a very good one too >Her unisons however were of very very poor 'tonal' quality. The best >tuning maybe on Earth, but the ugliest CFIII-S I ever heard (and it >was a rather new one, with new hammers). So her tempering of the octaves was flawless, but her unisons subtracted from the tone quality of the piano. Is this to say that in tuning unisons as flawlessly (ie, in this case, beatless) as her octaves, the resulting notes sounded dead, lifeless? That's another issue, as I mentioned in the previous post, more a subjective one and not necessarily supported by scientific observation. >Well Bill, >I think I could describe this unison stuff best by comparing a very >rich and coarse sounding unison with a train track of which the >rails lie very wide. >The louder you strike, the smaller the gauge of the tracks. That's I >think a good comparison. I agree with the effect on a hard blow on the sound. The extra energy shows up in the higher partials, even to the extent of sapping energy from the lower partials, leaving them choked. >For punishment, I should have tuned his battered Steinway in my most >favorite tuning, called Freud 2, where all fourths are tuned into >pure fifths. This is btw a tuning, which, if not performed with vast >experience and total dedication, will drive you completely nuts and >bonkers, the tech usually ending up in a very tight straight jacket, >hence the name : Freud nr 2) There is also another one I like very >much called Jung, number 7, but that is for advanced nuts..... Tuned downwards, the inverted 4ths tuned pure (as you seem to described) would make for wide 6:4 octaves, and upwards, narrow 4:2 octaves. Sounds like one them thar bi-polar psychoses. Either that or a pitch lowering. <G> I look forward to your further thoughts.
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC