question for aural tuners

[joel a. jones]

John & Allen,

A couple more bass tuning tips  that I believe need to be in our 
repertoire:

1. Ghosting the lower bass by checking with the octaves, seventeenth, 
double
octave, or any other interval of choice.

2. On grands it is possible to hit a node to check with the upper 
octaves, fifths,
etc.   At UW we had an Imperial on stage and by using a plate strut I 
could easily
find the octave node.  Long arms helped with this application.

3.  The final check I use is to play a chord in the middle of the piano 
and then play
the root in the low bass.   This tells the story as to how each piano 
is 'wired'.
This surprises me often but I can make micro adjustments to align for 
the best
sound.

I think this is the most important area on each piano to conquer.  
Working with the
Bosendorfer Imperial proved to me that these strings are adding to the 
sound
with every note.  When the dampers are open the lowest bass is being 
stimulated.
If the bass is  participating the response of the piano will be full 
and resonant.  I
f the partials are not connecting it's close by no cigar.

Keep in Tune.

Joel
Joel Jones, R

   On Jul 19, 2008, at 7:12 AM, John Formsma wrote:

> On Sat, Jul 19, 2008 at 5:25 AM, Allen Wright 
> <akwright at btopenworld.com> wrote:
>>
>> But isn't the sound of an octave (or double octave, or whatever) 
>> created largely by "the coincidences"? When I use tests like the 
>> m3-M6, it's in combination with listening to the quality of that 
>> octave, and to get a fix on what size seems to work best in that 
>> particular piano; ie. for musical reasons. There's certainly nothing 
>> hard to hear about that test - or listening to beats at the 10-5 
>> level for that matter (especially in medium to smaller pianos). To 
>> me, those seem like very direct ways of getting at the "musicality" 
>> of an octave. And if the octaves are consistent all the way down, 
>> chances are the other intervals will sound good, too.
>
> To be sure, yes.  My point was that we can possibly get that correct 
> octave faster by listening musically.  I do it and have done it both 
> ways.  It is piano dependent sometimes too.
>
> On the cheaper pianos, I'm normally listening at the 6:3 level and 
> calling that good.  On better pianos, I'm considering much more, and 
> seeking to blend the bass better with the rest of the scale.
>  I mean, there's always some noise in the bass - it's a matter of 
> choosing which noise you prefer.
>
> True.  It's always a compromise.  Always a choice of what to blend 
> with what.
>
> --
> JF
>
>  On Jul 19, 2008, at 3:08 AM, John Formsma wrote:
>>
>>> Perhaps if we spent a little bit more time listening to the overall 
>>> sound rather than picking apart coincidences, we would probably 
>>> spend less time testing.  After all, the goal is musicality, not how 
>>> many ways we can prove the width of a particular octave.  I'm 
>>> speaking to my own self as well as anyone else, mind you.
>>>

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