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Piano Tuning

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Re: Piano Tuning

#21

Post by jacquesm »

sureaboutthis wrote: post #20
jacquesm wrote: post #13

Once, long ago I landed in a house in Poznan, Poland which had the wreck of a Bosendorfer baby grand piano sitting in one of the rooms. I had a lot of time on my hand and tried to figure out the story behind the piano. After tracing the owner it turned out that he was trying to 'restore' the piano but in the process had butchered it and had sent parts all over Poland for refurbishing. For some strange reason the Acti…

I had a friend, Jim, who was blind. He went to school to become a piano tuner. Once, we were at another friend's house who had a piano. The friend played a short piece on the piano and Jim mentioned that it could use some tuning and went on to claim he had perfect pitch hearing. Well, of course, we had to test him. We hit one key. "That's D!", he said. We hit another. "That's G!" With a smirk, my friend pressed three…

I have a somewhat similar funny story. I was ill a lot as a child, and spent a lot of time at home as a consequence. My mom would go to work, my sister to school and I would be in an empty house with not much to do but play with toys or read which you can only do so much of before getting bored. So I would play the records, especially the piano ones because I loved the sound of the piano. And then I'd try to imitate the music on the piano, which was hard enough to keep me busy for a while. And so, over the course of a week or so I taught myself to play Fur Elise (the easy part...). Then, one evening with my mom at home I played her the piece to ask what she thought of it and she burst out laughing wondering what music sheets I had used because it was all wrong: transposed downwards. It turned out the record player was a bit slow...

I'm really happy I picked computers over music because I think that it was more in line with my skills and it is super hard to make a living in music if you are not absolutely top grade, and even then it is hard. But I've always enjoyed music very much.

Super impressive what your blind friend did there, especially to be able to name them like that, I could pick out the chord after a number of tries but to be able to decompose a chord like that without being able to try whether you have it right or not is quite a skill. I'd love to be able to do that but I am not sure how you would train that particular ability.

The number of blind piano tuners is probably much larger than what you'd expect from statistics, I know of two myself, one in Toronto at Lowrey's and another in Amsterdam who used to work for Cristofiori. That's one profession where lack of sight is not an obstacle, and where a better developed sense of hearing is an asset.

Re: Piano Tuning

#22

Post by richardhod »

Our old piano tuner explained to me how in practice when tuning you must stretch the high notes higher and the low notes lower so as to make the piano sound right. He didn't explain why. It was obvious if you played octaves and listened to the notes, and he was an excellent piano tuner and the piano did sound good. The first comment in the article describes it nicely and links to the excellent Wikipedia section which everybody here ought to read:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_acoustics#The_Railsbac...

Re: Piano Tuning

#23

Post by stfwn »

baddox wrote: post #12
clarry wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And, most importantly to me, since it’s the question I can find the least solid information on: why do we take for granted that one note with twice the frequency of another note sounds so similar that we call both notes by the same name? I have a pretty good understanding of other details of music theory, but I’ve never gotten a straight answer on why (and indeed to what extent) octave equivalence exists. I don't k…

That’s the usual explanation I read, but I don’t fully buy it. Yes, two notes an octave apart have lots of overtones in common. But that’s true of two notes a perfect fifth apart as well. Or even better, two notes an octave and a fifth apart.

For this exact reason, in music theory, the perfect fifth is seen as a note that amplifies/emboldens the root note of a chord and does not add a particular harmonic color.

In jazz it's often left out to open up chords more (i.e. not muddy the frequency distribution with too many adjacent notes unless you explicitly want the powerful sound). In pop the nondescript nature is used to create a strong sense of grounding in the scale; the root note of the scale and its fifth fit over every possible diatonic root note (play c-g in your right hand with root notes c,f,a,g in the left one after the other, it will sound familiar). In rock they literally call the perfect fifth a 'power chord' and they play melodies with it. It fattens up the melody note without adding any harmonic identity that would create tension with the rest of the harmonic content of the song.

Re: Piano Tuning

#24

Post by S_A_P »

jacquesm wrote: post #13

Once, long ago I landed in a house in Poznan, Poland which had the wreck of a Bosendorfer baby grand piano sitting in one of the rooms. I had a lot of time on my hand and tried to figure out the story behind the piano. After tracing the owner it turned out that he was trying to 'restore' the piano but in the process had butchered it and had sent parts all over Poland for refurbishing. For some strange reason the Acti…

great story- I spent some time watching/discussing piano tuning with the guy that does my yamaha C2. You basically bring it up in 3-5 passes depending on how out of tune it starts in. He started with a tuning fork and then continued with an app/microphone to dial it in. Another cool trick to dial in the harmonics is to play a (13th? my music theory has escaped me for a moment) but basically play a C and then an octave higher E and keep that spacing throughout the piano and you should hear the notes beating in a pleasant manner. If they dont, you need a tune. Also important to keep in mind that tuning a piano early and often is the best thing for it. Having to make drastic changes to bring it up to pitch is very likely to crack the sound board and or bend/break the harp. If you live in an area with high humidity keep the piano at least 3-5 feet(1-2 meters) from the outside wall of your home.

Re: Piano Tuning

#25

Post by isolli »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #6
veli_joza wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been down that rabbit hole. Math and music aren't really in such harmony as advertised. Yeah, equal tuning gives your instrument ability to play in any key, but it will always be slightly off. For more enjoyable tuning, your frequency ratios should actually be fractions of small integers. For example, note E to note C ratio should be 5/4. This is called "just intonation", you can hear some examples on youtube wh…

It's easy to set up just intonation digitally. The problem is that most classical music modulates to other keys. So why not just set up some switches or programmed changes? Because as you modulate there's a grey area in which you're not fully in one key or the other. If you interpolate the intervals as you go through this area, it sounds wrong. If you switch to a new tuning when you land in the new key, that sounds w…

Note that violinists (and cellists, and others) are not constrained by their instrument and can play in different temperaments depending on the situation.

Re: Piano Tuning

#26

Post by naringas »

richardhod wrote: post #22

Our old piano tuner explained to me how in practice when tuning you must stretch the high notes higher and the low notes lower so as to make the piano sound right. He didn't explain why. It was obvious if you played octaves and listened to the notes, and he was an excellent piano tuner and the piano did sound good. The first comment in the article describes it nicely and links to the excellent Wikipedia section which…

Indeed, if one tuned a piano like the article describes it wouldn't sound good.

As far as I undesrtand it has to do with the thickness (i.e. the real world physicallity) of the lower octave strings.

The strings are not trully one-dimensional. this makes their timbre deviate from the ideal harmonic series. This is specially true for the thicker strings of the lower notes.

If we could make a piano using very thin strings we could get away with a less stretched tuning.

Re: Piano Tuning

#27

Post by radiowave »

naringas wrote: post #26
richardhod wrote: post #22

Our old piano tuner explained to me how in practice when tuning you must stretch the high notes higher and the low notes lower so as to make the piano sound right. He didn't explain why. It was obvious if you played octaves and listened to the notes, and he was an excellent piano tuner and the piano did sound good. The first comment in the article describes it nicely and links to the excellent Wikipedia section which…

Indeed, if one tuned a piano like the article describes it wouldn't sound good. As far as I undesrtand it has to do with the thickness (i.e. the real world physicallity) of the lower octave strings. The strings are not trully one-dimensional. this makes their timbre deviate from the ideal harmonic series. This is specially true for the thicker strings of the lower notes. If we could make a piano using very thin strin…

Making the strings (and therefore the piano) longer helps, hence the size of concert grand pianos.

Re: Piano Tuning

#29

Post by snarfy »

xavieralexandre wrote: post #14
jacquesm wrote: post #13

Once, long ago I landed in a house in Poznan, Poland which had the wreck of a Bosendorfer baby grand piano sitting in one of the rooms. I had a lot of time on my hand and tried to figure out the story behind the piano. After tracing the owner it turned out that he was trying to 'restore' the piano but in the process had butchered it and had sent parts all over Poland for refurbishing. For some strange reason the Acti…

> Tuning up a piano from zero is a lot harder than it seems. As the tension on the cast iron frame increases it deforms a bit, enough to de-tune everything you've done up to that point. So the only way to get this done is to tune the whole thing up gradually and to pace yourself so you don't end up overstretching part of the frame or end up in a never ending cycle of de-tunings. Like tensioning a bicycle wheel! Easy…

Also like putting strings on a guitar with a floating (floyd rose) bridge.

Re: Piano Tuning

#30

Post by chrisweekly »

isolli wrote: post #25
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to set up just intonation digitally. The problem is that most classical music modulates to other keys. So why not just set up some switches or programmed changes? Because as you modulate there's a grey area in which you're not fully in one key or the other. If you interpolate the intervals as you go through this area, it sounds wrong. If you switch to a new tuning when you land in the new key, that sounds w…

Note that violinists (and cellists, and others) are not constrained by their instrument and can play in different temperaments depending on the situation.

Right - because they're fretless. Same goes for slide guitar.
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