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I'm keepin' my distance! It's cold enough where I am! Though I'm lovin' Florida's weather just now. Take that BOB!

Ron,

THANK YOU for your comment!

I must admit that I am only a part-time tuner. I am a music educator as my full time job. I am a PROUD user of an ETD (Tunelab to be exact, and I love it!) I could not set a temperament by ear if I had to, but I have the utmost respect for those who can, I CAN however set a pin and when I leave a piano, it's tuning is pretty darn stable. I have tuned several hundred pianos now, and 100% of my customers have been very pleased.

Several months ago I tuned my own piano using the EBVT III, and loved the results so much that I now tune all pianos that way. Several customers have mentioned that their piano has not sounded that good in years.

I recently read the book "Why Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony...and why you should care". It helped to confirm what I have always thought and heard. I have never been happy with the sound of the 3rds in ET.

As an educator, we often speak of teacher experience. We often ask the question does that teacher have 30 years of experience... or one year of experience 30 times? Unfortunately that seems to be the case with a lot of teachers...and tuners. Why would we not want to improve our craft and experiment with something other than ET. Why do we just accept the fact that ET is the best option?

For those skeptics out there, you cannot knock something until you have tried it. "Your" way may not necessarily be the only way....or the best.

The hornet nest has been stirred..... :-)

Ryan Hassell
Hassell's Piano Tuning
Farmington, MO

I think the tuning of historical temperaments has a great comercial and learning value.

When tuning ET we focus our attention into mathematical concepts as smooth progression of beats.

When tuning HT we focus on more musical concepts: fractions of a comma tempered fifths, pure intervals, equal beating intervals, etc. What matters here is the musical effect of these tempered/pure/equal beating intervals.

On the other side, the hammer technique, setting of the pins, rendering of the strins, stability of tuning, quality of the unisons and overall quality of the tuning is (must be) the same in whatever kind of temperament we choose.

By tuning other temperaments we can better understand the essence, particularities and goals of ET.

Naaah....Peter prefers his martinis shaken, not stirred, like most brits...

While I don't have daily experience with HTs, I have heard several types, and tried a couple of tunings (my experimental piano has an EBVT, but the shine has long since worn off of that tuning....). I've played pianos tuned in several of the Well temperaments, and I haven't heard any that I'm overly fund of. I've heard some that sound great in some keys, but don't try anything in the key of F# major.

My ears have been trained as a music student and a piano tuner to hear ET. As someone who is a jazz piano hacker as well as a tuner, I like to be able to modulate freely around the keyboard in my improvisation without fear of harmonic dissonance biting my ear off.

If you're being paid to tune, the way you tune should be what the customer wants. Setting the pins and doing stable tunings--within the constraints of local weather patterns--are a no brainer.

30 year Laphroig?? Now THATs a perfect temperment.

I have tools in my shop. I could use a adze, but I'd rather use a router. Could use a wooden mallet, but I'd rather use my nice Plumb hammer. Could use a hand saw, but I have nice circle saw, table saw, band saw, etc. Historical temperments are nice coffee table, (or whisky table) conversation. But, as me dear sainted Irish mother used to say, "what's it got to do with the price of beans??"

I tune the way I want; I don't really care what any other technician thinks about it (that is , if the opinion is based upon complete ignorance or just "banging" on certain intervals. I create music.) It's been a longer than 20 year tradition for me. If you're with me, great, if you're against me, go fly a kite or write an article, I don't really care, I do what I do and I believe in what I do. I don't tune ET. I don't even try what is impossible. I know something better than that. All of my clients modulate freely. None have their ears bitten off. Discover the pipe organ effect. Get a "WOW!" from your clients every time on every kind of piano. I do.

Most customers live every day with wonky unisons,treble sections getting flatter and and flatter the higher you go, bass sections normally sharper than the treble so when it is tuned to ET with very accurate unisons the piano sounds very much unlike they had before. In my opinion the historical temperments give the customer a bit of what they had before it was tuned! The tuners who push these "obsolete temperments" give the customer a warm and fuzzy feeling by saying that they have a "very special" historic temperment to boast about to their friends, in fact what they have is a slightly out of tune piano by the accepted standard of today.
As said earlier, learner tuners should forget about these exotic temperments and just learn to tune ET properly which is what 99.9% of customers want!!
Robin Stevens ARPT
South Australia

The title of this thread is misleading.

First, we must speak of Unequal Temperaments not Historical Tunings, as several of the most brilliant minds of our times had designed modern well temperaments in the 20th and 21th Centuries!

(BTW, there is a difference between a tuning, which involves pure intervals and a temperament, which involves tempered intervals)

See the following link:

Rolling Ball: ModernTemperaments



Second, the choice of the word “Hysterical” is unfortunate.

Peter,

I thought you could have found better to distinguish from the other current thread entitled "Historical Tunings".



Sam,

You can put away your adze and your gooden mallet and all your old tools and use the very new ones! I am not talking about routers and band saws, neither ET. I am talking about Modern Well Temperaments which were designed not to be used as coffe table conversation but to play piano modulating through all keys without being disturbed by unpleasant dissonances, designed to play music from De Falla, Debussy, Ravel and Gershwin to modern Jazz.


It is a shame that “la crème” of the piano tuners of our days could be so little minded to be locked to ET and couldn’t appreciate the beauty of Modern Well Temperaments, as many contemporary great musicians do!

Maybe the fact that many piano tuners are not musicians but technicians has something to do with that.

P.D.

Fortunately the future of music will be decided by musicians and composers, not by piano tuners.

After all, we tuners are here to tune pianos not to make music.

We'll be tuning what our customers (pianists and musicians) will be asking us!

Surely this issue reduces to the simple question:

``Are the differences between different temperaments greater than tuning inaccuracies, allowing for human error and the effects of time and environment?''

And the answer is, I think, `maybe'. I'm sure there are tuners out there, and pianos out there, will sufficient skill and stability respectively, that the differences between temperaments would be noticeable, at least after a recent tuning.

I'm interested in this primarily because I'm interested in the science and the mathematics. I'm not sure I'd make the effort from a purely musical point of view, particularly considering how infrequently most of the pianos I play are tuned.

Peter, should I read this as a veiled request for all theoreticians and enthusiastic amateurs to get out of the technicians' forum?

For my part, I tune my parents' harpsichord, and in due course I'd like to learn to touch up my own piano unisons and do some basic maintenance - but I'll never be a piano tuner, neither will I ever see a client.

Personally, I don't see how anything that's written here could possibly "dilute" the standards that you professionals work to - surely, the standards are not set on an internet forum? And surely, and most critically, nobody except yourself decides on the standards that you work to?

But pray, if you'd like the interested amateurs to disappear from the technicians' forum, then please say so - and please do so openly. I'd respect your wish and return to lurker status (although I'd be sorry to do so, since there's so much to learn by interaction).

Regards,
Mark

Dear Bill,

we met 2 years ago at the PTG convention in Anaheim and i want to say that this was an amazing experience and i like you personally very much. I always follow your contributions on pianoworld with great interest and i have to say even if i am from the fraction of ET, i don´t feel upset about your contributions of your ideas which are somehow against the rest of the world (among the tuners, probably not among your customers), but are somehow sympathical just because of that.

You have attended my class partially (as i did yours), played the piano i prepared and you did confirm a remarkable clear sound and (i find important) the pipe effect you are producing with your tuning method, to be present in my tuning too (i want to add that this is true for all keys).

But still i have to say that i felt a bit "pinched" by your recent contributions on pianoworld when you jumped up on the "wood vs plastic" contribution of an anonymous poster in grandpianoman´s "two ETD comparison" thread recently and changed your mind just whithin this thread. I just want in return pinch you a little bit too, and i hope you can take it with humour and smile about it as i don´t want to question your integrity at all (i am sure you can as you generally don´t care about what others say):

As i attended your class and listened to your tuning, i have to say that this was the sound character where i am usually phoned by my customers to pass by and do something about.

Sincerely,

Bernhard Stopper

I believe that when you are tuner in professional word, you have to face piano tuned by beginners that have not yet good tuning skills, pianos tuned by totally self taught , pianos tuned for a so low fee that the tuner get out fast, pianos tuned by people that dont have the slightest idea on what is laying a temperament and that rely on EDT (for historical tunings that does not make sense, as when HT is a way to temper the octave, while the ET is a way to divide it).

Then a good aural tuner will temper the octave in ET while an EDT based one will produce a tuning that spans on the instrument and have less character then.

I may say I understand what Peter said in few words, and it was not particularly aggressive even not against the one that try different temperaments, just a reminder.


it generally takes a long time before tuning begin to be solid and acute enough (the top of the piano say the same note than the bottom, and the piano may be played in all keys. An ET tuning is more easy to correct "on the fly", but is also harder to setup in a musical way.

And all the historical temperament, to me are only tuned in the medium range where they sound yet good, if the same relations where kept to the top of the piano, you'd finish with highly objectionnable fifths for instance, so I am believe that they are reconciliated towards ET in the treble and bass.

I understand what it brings in term of "old tone" to the tired piano, where ET will simply put emphasis on the need for new hammers, new strings etc. SO it please many customers as such certainly, but in the professional trade anyway in my customers, most are relatively exigent for tone and for a justness that have no tonalities that sticks out too much.
Immediately after tuning the piano always tone better and nicely, but after sometime it will move (only with the changes in weather for instance), and even if the customer does not notice (as usual) the initial tuning is not there anymore.

An ET tuning will accept those variations both directions, while a skewed one will change a lot more.

As the ear of the pianist accommodate, it may well not notice , but I bet that the piano is tuned more often then (good for business !!)

I've seen ET tuning keeping a piano playeable for 10 years, I cant say for other tunings, but when I was much younger, (in the60's) the flaws that many tuners installed in the temperament (by not using RBI at all, finish to stick out way too much, after one year you where playing on a honky tonk piano.

But I may say it is certainly an interesting instructional experience, and it can be pleasing for the ear as such.

then, will I install a temperament without asking the customer if he wants to ? certainly not, and at a professional pianist place unless he does not play in the farther tonalities it would be a good way to get out of the filed.

That said, I dont dare to have to reconciliate the tuning in the 5th octave if more precise work is not of the utmost importance, for instance on rare tunings or pianos that have not so much of a good tone.

We know with time so many ways to hide the defects, (sometime by adding more) all are valid !

Not a technician, so maybe my comments sren't welcome here. But if I want to play the Bach Inventions, and request my tuner to tune to historical standards (assuming I can find one who understands that) what's wrong with that. I would accept that much later music would sound strange (at best), but if that's what I want, why not? As long as an informed client requests alternate tuning, and understands the consequences, why not? And is there any reason why alternate tunings wouln't stay in tune as well as ET (after a settling-in period)?

Perhaps not, but that's not the issue. As I understand it, the gripe is that unless you're an excellent tuner working with an excellent instrument, and turning it very regularly, the effects of time, the environment, and human error make it impossible even to tell what temperament it is tuned to, particular some time after tuning. So, if I read it correctly, arguing about the merits of historical tunings is a distracting irrelevance in some cases.

I'm not saying I agree, merely that's what I understand the OP's complaint to be. Whether in a perfect (pianistic) world there is merit to using historical tunings is a different question, I think.

Hello, the only reason is that the soundboard shrinks and expand during the years and then modify the relations within the scale.

In the days the HT where tuned, on forte pianas, the pianist tuned his instrument, often daily.

If you can afford to have your piano tuned more often yes you will keep your tuning, but it will always react to humidity changes in a more audible way than an ET tuning, where the speed of RBI change, but the homogeneity of the progression let the piano playable really longer.

A HT tuning made with good taste is more fragile, good harpsichord players tune their instrument themselves most often.
Pianist unfortunately rarely can do that because of the training it necessitates - also because it is so difficult to found someone who could learn to you enough so you train efficiently, I guess that eventually it could be possible, if not to really tune to a professional good level, but to keep a tuning in shape somehow.

Actually, all my hysterical tunings involve clients with sharp wits who skewer my lame attempts at humor so well that it leaves us both laughing.

In the end, that's the question we should be asking our customers and ourselves. We should be here to meet the customers' needs.

The whole argument is a non-issue to me. People like what they like. The older we get, the more entrenched we get in our likes and dislikes.

The pin-setting/tuning stability IS an issue, but it's a different issue altogether than where one chooses to set the notes of any given temperament.

I'd like to propose a toast (coffee, at this hour) to the differences among us. Without them, life would be far less interesting.

David, my tech always gets around to asking if I need those black keys tuned. "They're just dividers, aren't they?" He's kidding, of course, but it's funny.

Yes Dave...Cheers!

I freely admit that there are times when a historical tuning would be a useful skill to have, and might be requested. I further freely admit that Bill and others (within and without the PTG family) have much to teach us all, provided we're open to the experience.

That said, in almost three decades of full time tuning, I've never had a single customer request an historical tuning. Those who work for colleges where the music department might seek this type of sound, may have varying opinions of course...but even at the colleges I service, I've never had a request for anything...even ET, actually...its just assumed we'll be working with ET.

So, really its more of a self-improvement thing to learn new ways of working, and new ways of compromise in setting the bearings. To which, I say "Bravo!" for those willing to share their knowledge.

FWIW

RPD