minutephysics had a nice video about the mathematics that go behind piano tuning too.
"Why It's Impossible to Tune a Piano" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Hqm0dYKUx4
Piano Tuning
11–20 of 71 posts
Re: Piano Tuning
#12This is certainly a fun way to introduce twelve-tone equal temperament to someone who knows enough math to understand logarithms but is new to music theory. It works well, because the only elementary music theory claims that we need to accept without explanation are that there are twelve different note names that repeat in the same order and that each note of a given name is twice the frequency of the previous note o…
> 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.
Re: Piano Tuning
#13Once, 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 Action was in Gdansk but the hammers were in Warsaw, and the dampers were in yet another location.
I bought the piano and bit by bit collected all the other pieces from wherever they had ended up. What really didn't help is that they had ripped out all of the strings except for the basses, and in the process had scratched the soundboard quite badly.
Over the course of a year I rebuilt it bit by bit with a lot of knowledge gleaned from a local piano tuner, Marek Koczy (he died some years ago). Finally at the end of all that I had a really nice piano, except for one little detail: it had to be tuned up from scratch.
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.
It took me a month, I could probably do it much faster a second time. Never realized that your ears could be tired either, after a couple of hours of tuning I was unable to hear the subtle beats that tell you that you are getting close, very low frequency and soft you need to really pay attention.
Keeping the rest of the piano quiet (especially when it is still a mess) with sympathetic resonances each of which will have their own harmonics is also quite a trick, in the end I used strips of felt woven through the strings that were not 'in scope'.
All in all a fantastic experience and I would be happy to just work on restoring musical instruments. The piano when it was done got donated to the Conservatory of Poznan where it still is in use today, with my lack of skills in play I did not feel that keeping it was right, an instrument like that should be used as much as possible.
edit: HAH! I am so happy. So, the message that Marek had died reached me in a pretty roundabout way through friends from long ago, I did not verify in any way that it was true. So, after writing this little bit above I decided to type his name into google to see if there was an obituary, but instead I found he's alive and well!! https://spsf.pl/pl/marek-koczy/
I will definitely send him a message and maybe go visit, he's one of the nicest people I ever met and had endless patience teaching me all the tricks of the trade.
Re: Piano Tuning
#14Once, 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 and rewarding process, highly recommended.
Re: Piano Tuning
#15Once, 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…
This is an extraordinary, lovely little story that implies all sorts of interesting sub-stories.
Re: Piano Tuning
#16Once, 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…
Once upon a time I was the de-facto bicycle mechanic for my local bicycle club. I built (well, put togeter) a lot of bicycle wheels. And yes I would pluck the spokes and listen when I was tensioning up the wheels. And they came out pretty good.
Re: Piano Tuning
#17Earlier 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.
The overtones of two notes a perfect fifth apart do not line up, as already the perfect fifth itself is not an overtone of the base tone. This is indeed the case for the octave+fifth, but there you've got already clearly a second order, as it's exactly 3 times the frequency of the base while the octave is 2 times the base frequency.
Re: Piano Tuning
#18This is certainly a fun way to introduce twelve-tone equal temperament to someone who knows enough math to understand logarithms but is new to music theory. It works well, because the only elementary music theory claims that we need to accept without explanation are that there are twelve different note names that repeat in the same order and that each note of a given name is twice the frequency of the previous note o…
> 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…
Vocal cords have even more pronounced overtones than strings. To a first approximation, they produce a series of pulses. And we are exposed to these harmonic-rich sounds from the womb.
It would be an interesting (and perhaps cruel) experiment to expose babies to synthesized sounds that have a harmonic structure with different mathematics. For example, sounds with lots of sqrt(2) frequency ratios.
Re: Piano Tuning
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
Once upon a time I was the de-facto bicycle mechanic for my local bicycle club. I built (well, put togeter) a lot of bicycle wheels. And yes I would pluck the spokes and listen when I was tensioning up the wheels. And they came out pretty good.
That's exactly how I do it. I rebuilt a tandem this year and the wheels had to be re-spoked, tuning the spokes is a great way to get equal tension all around. It is quite amazing how strong a well spoked wheel is, equally, how fast a wheel will go to pieces if the spokes are not tensioned properly. For tandem bikes a regular steel wheel is the best, not stainless (it is too soft). There are expensive spoke tension meters but your ear works just as good if you check the tension on a known good wheel with the same spoke thickness and length and use that as a reference.
It's a fun job and this too will take you some time the first time around.
Re: Piano Tuning
#20Once, 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 keys at once.
"Uh, Uh, B, D and F#!"
We were amazed.