Temperament Strips

[Alan Barnard]

1. Personal preference: Use a split mute above the treble break though to the end of dampers. It's easier, safer, and faster, for me, and the damping is excellent.

2. If your felt is thin and the strings are widely spaced, you are going to get a lot of bleed. If the unisons are way out, while doing a pitch raise, for example, you will also get a lot of bleed that can sound like thumping. Learn to concentrate on the sounds and intervals you are tuning and psychologically "not hear" any other noises. This can't be learned from a book but will come with practice. You will likewise learn to stop trying to eliminate false beats in unisons and other intervals. There are some tricks (example below) but mostly it is training the old aural receptacles that is required.

Example. You are tuning an F3-A#3 fourth. The A# has a nasty false beat at about 1 bps. (This is not uncommon, sorry to say.) You can mute the offending string and use another in the unison as one solution. Another possibility is this: It seems to be the initial hammer blow that really gets the false beat going, so eliminate the hammer blow by holding down that note's (A#) key, silently, and giving the cleaner note in your tuning interval (the F) a firm whack. As long as the two notes are reasonably close to their desired pitches, the struck string will impart enough ghosting energy (sympathetic vibration) into the bad string to set up the tuning beat you are listening for without putting much, if any, energy into the false beat. This doesn't help with unisons, of course, but remember that the beat rate of any false beat WILL NOT CHANGE as you tune, at least not much in relation to the beats you are supposed to be hearing. So listen deeply, if necessary, to the beats that CHANGE while you tune.



Alan Barnard

Salem, MO









Original message

From: "Matthew Todd" 

To: pianotech at ptg.org

Received: 8/21/2007 11:03:12 PM

Subject: Temperament Strips





These two questions have been on my mind, and I would like to know your opinions.

In regards to strip muting the treble section where the strings are shorter.  So the hammers strike the strings, is it okay to move the strip carefully down behind the dampers?  I am always concerned about ruining the felt.  If I make the loops in my strip as small as possible, would this practice be okay?  Then if I made the loops too small, the temperament strip would actually mute all three of the strings instead.  Any advice here would be greatly appreciated.

The second question is this:

How do you all deal with strings "bleeding" through the mutes?  It has become an annoyance of mine lately.  Some a lot more subtle than others, but still the same regardless.  I even get some "bleeding" between strings that are not that far off at all.

Thanks in advance!

Matthew





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