Octave Tuning

[Richard Cromwell]

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I would not suggest practicing your tuning on someone else's piano.
especially if you want to stay friends with them.

 

R.Cromwell

Cromwell's Piano Service - Detroit,MI

 

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From: pianotech-bounces@ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces@ptg.org] On Behalf
Of Matthew Todd
Sent: Wednesday, September 29, 2004 2:13 PM
To: Pianotech
Subject: Re: Octave Tuning

 

Thanks for the replies.  I am practicing my tuning on a 1913 Hinze upright.
Is that doing me more harm than good here?  I think it is hard to hear lots
of stuff on that piano, but then again, I am a beginner, so I don't know if
it's more the piano or more me not having trained ears yet.  I know lots of
families with much newer pianos, should I try to hook up with one of them
and maybe work it out with them to practice my tuning on it?

 

Matthew

BobDavis88@aol.com wrote:

Matthew writes:

When I tune the temperament octave (A3-A4), it needs to be a 4:2 octave,
correct?  

No. Read the many replies which said that it should usually be wider than
that.

And one way to test this octave is to play the A two octaves above the lower
note as the test key, to hear the partials in the octave, am I right?

Not exactly, but read Don Rose's comments on ghosting.

  If the octave you are testing has no beat whatsoever, you have a perfect
temperament octave, is this true?

No. There is no such thing as a beatless octave. An octave which is not
beating at one level, such as 4:2, will be beating at all other coincident
partials, such as 2:1, 6:3, 8:4. The higher the beatless coincident is in
the chain, the wider the octave. A good compromise octave is usually pretty
quiet, though, 

 

Matthew,

 

If you have kept this trail of posts on octave tuning, please go back and
re-read it, and the links to which you were referred, including the ones to
the AccuTuner manual Appendices F and H. People are happy to spend time
helping you, but you've got to do your homework and read the replies. At the
risk of repetition, I include, directly below, a copy of my post from last
week on this subject:

Bob Davis

-------------

Matthew's original question was how to tune a 4:2 octave. Several people,
myself included, sent the tests, aural and visual. Whether that [meaning
4:2] is appropriate for the temperament octave on a particular piano is a
second question. Tuning so that "the 10th is just noticeably faster than the
third" might produce a good width of octave, but it is NOT a 4:2. [It's
wider] 

 

A clean 4:2 octave IS wide at 2:1, and narrow at 6:3. Most aural tuners
naturally gravitate towards a temperament octave that is very slightly wide
of 4:2 ("the 10th is just noticeably faster than the third"), which will be
substantially wide of 2:1 and a tiny narrow of 6:3. This gives an octave
that is pretty clean-sounding, and produces fifths which are pretty clean
and fourths that aren't too trashy. Any octave size can be divided into 12
equal half steps. A true 4:2 octave will produce cleaner fourths and more
movement in the fifths, and on most pianos will be unnecessarily narow.
However, on some pianos with high inharmonicity, a wide temperament octave
added to a clean octave below, will produce a double octave that is too
noisy. It's a balancing act. 

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