Cracking the unisons

[David Ilvedson]

This sure sounds like Virgil Smith's "whole tone" tunings...

David Ilvedson, RPT
Pacifica, California



----- Original message ----------------------------------------
From: "Ric Brekne" <ricbrek@broadpark.no>
To: pianotech <pianotech@ptg.org>
Received: 1/6/2006 11:07:52 AM
Subject: Cracking the unisons


>Interesting to hear (once again) some citing the use of high coincident
>partials for tuning unisons.  Interesting because so many techs go about
>this differently.  One thing I learned at the Yamaha Technical Acadamy
>was to listen to the lowest possible coincidents... and not really to
>just one single pair.

>Their idea of a clean unison... one I have come more and more to rely on
>as time has passed since my last stay there..... has to do with how long
>one can stretch out a kind of conglomerate beat rate of the most audible
>lowest coincidents.  In almost every case you can keep it from going
>full circle if you cant get it to level out perfectly.  Sometimes you
>might have to exept a kind of sideways flutter... but no full circle
>wave was ever accepted.

>I'll never forget the instructor when test examining thetenor andbass
>area... when ever he found a unison that he thought perhaps a bit
>unclean he would sort of reach out with his arm and hand like he was
>trying to glide on a wave.  If he heard a beat go full circle he would
>always stop and demonstrate.  With his hand he would do a dip at the
>exact point in the decay he meant the beat turned the corner as it were.

>When I mentioned trying to match higher partials he just smiled and
>said...no no no...thats a disturbing and unclear sidestreet,  and he
>would repeat his demonstration.  Since he was the guy giving the scores
>out... I of course had to learn to do what he wanted.

>I think I've begun to like that approach as I started to often find that
>if I tuned higher partials beatless then afterwards when I ran through
>my quick double checks to just listen to the overall sound of octaves,
>10ths, 12ths, and the like... I found that the character of bass unisons
>varried far too much, where as if I did what the Japanese taught me I
>had more of a consistant colour to the bass unisons.

>Cheers
>RicB



>_______________________________________________
>pianotech list info: https://www.moypiano.com/resources/#archives