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Once I'm done tuning EBVT III, and they listen to the piano, my clients always end up happy also.

You insist that EBVT III or other tuning than ET is not a correct tuning and you can not see that there is not only one way to correctly tune a piano!

Any tuning is a correct tuning if the customer wants it and is happy. If EBVTlll catches on and if people demand it, I would try and be the first person in my area to provide it......thats a lot of "ifs".

So far maybe a dozen posters on this thread...lets say half on one side...half on the other. Out of the 4000 + tuners....what are all those other guys/girls doing. I wonder why they aren't all lining up taking sides. Maybe no one cares. I get plenty of calls to "tune" a piano, and thats what I do.

Ok, so be honest now... In 25 years of tuning, how many times has a client asked for equal temperament by name without any prompting by you?

I ask this in class all the time and most techs with more years than you can count the number on one hand, if there have been any...

Ron Koval
chicagoland

What I see again is what I expected. Resorting to ridiculous analogies, ridicule and mockery. You won't gain anything by doing that. You won't influence anyone's beliefs or opinions and you won't change what they do in their daily practice. I've seen the statement about "when the time comes that people ask for it..." before too, many times over many years, in fact. The very greatest fear is that it will come. Ignorance is strength.

Leave a subject in which you have no interest, knowledge and experience alone. I have also seen from other ET only people who claim that they "know" all about all of the various HT's, could do any of them at the drop of a hat but what they know best is why they never would. I simply don't buy that.

I have also seen on another thread on a completely different subject the very same type of behavior. A young pianist wants to know if his Acrosonic can be improved with regulation. Of course, the answer is yes but immediately, all those who prefer to ridicule and mock, the very same people who have ridiculed and mocked here on this thread, ridicule and mock the young artist and only suggest an impractical solution, knowing full well that it is impractical. Then, when specifics are given, bringing into question the knowledge and experience one may have with that kind of work, the defense is, "I have done that kind of work before", "I 'know' how to do that kind of work but I wouldn't" and then proceed with more ridicule and mockery.

If you don't want to offer anything other than what you customarily do to your customers for whatever reasons either real or imagined that you have, that is your business. What is not your business is to tell other technicians what to do, how to run their businesses and it is especially not your business to do it with ridicule and mockery.

And once again, this posting demonstrates the complete inability of one person to see that the claims made in this posting are exactly what they themselves are up to. This posting is full of instructions and demands about other technicians who post to this forum, telling us what to do and where to post, how to post, what to think and on and on.

We accept that you do things your way Bill. But some of us do things different than that. Why can you not accept that some people are different than others, and they just might do things in a different way?

This does not make them wrong, just different from you that’s all.....

So far in this thread we are ignorant, idiots, useless, anti-PTG, ill-informed, I think I have eventually lost count on the labels provided. Labels have been provided in a magnanimous way for Jeff Deutschle, BDB, Peter Sumner, Emmery, myself, and probably a few I have missed along the way.

Perhaps if there was a little more than insults provided from one side of the debate it just might lend that side a bit more legitimacy....because this kind of thing just drags the whole forum down for quality of information and morale in general.

But it has all been mentioned previous on pages gone by and Richard summed it up once again. Most people don’t care; they just want the piano to sound good.

Whether it is tuned in ET or the tuning is completed standing on one foot the majority of folks don’t know and don’t care.
All this chatter about how all-important which mathematical sequence is used is just a lot of navel-gazing.

This thread outlived its usefulness after the first couple of pages. I cannot see the wisdom of having it continue, as most of the postings now have little in the way of educational information for any reader of it.

Yes, the title of this Topic was inappropriate. It should have been Hysterical TUNERS. That is the real problem.

Now if anyone takes offense to what I just posted, let me just say, "If the shoe fits, wear it."

Now today I recorded one of those Clinical ET on a German Steinway O - 1924 I have in the workshop , after having made a little sampling of unison tuning , for a change !

http://dl.free.fr/t1IxJwQuV

new plain strings, I am about to change the action stack rails, and install new parts, but the hammers.
so a few notes dont play as well as they should, but all in all I have hard time to understnad wher is that clinical problem ...

Dan,

Hold these words which you just wrote up in front of a mirror and look at yourself:

"Perhaps if there was a little more than insults provided from one side of the debate it just might lend that side a bit more legitimacy....because this kind of thing just drags the whole forum down for quality of information and morale in general."

Here is another example of you using ridicule and mockery to express yourself in your very last post:

"All this chatter about how all-important which mathematical sequence is used is just a lot of navel-gazing."

Your problem is that you cannot take what you dish out. I know that you are an ET only tuner, you have your own way of tuning ET and are satisfied with it and I know that only a small number of technicians ever engage in or are interested in non-ET's. I have always accepted that as fact and I teach people how to tune ET. PTG hires me to teach ET and publishes articles I have written on how to tune ET. Of those I teach, I never even mention what I actually do unless they ask about it and I in fact, tell them if they are novices that they should learn ET first, pass their exams and then move on to more advanced techniques. I have always done that and I will continue to do that.

However, what I do see quite consistently from certain people and that does include you, that as soon as I write about the subject which I have developed as a specialty, it is ridiculed and mocked. I also see the same behavior when techniques about servicing small verticals are discussed. It is often done so rather crudely and vulgarly as well. When I try to explain myself, what I do and why I do it, I only receive more ridicule and mockery. The more I receive, the more those who engage in it broadcast to everyone else how much they do not know, how much they are unwilling to learn any more than what they already know and how much they don't want anyone else to know about it either.

I have not written any posts on any subject whatsoever with the idea of telling you what to do. However, if you continue to ridicule and mock me, you can expect that I will point out what it is that you do not know and how truly and foolishly bigoted you are about that. If I were to go back through all posts I have written, then copied what your responses were to them, virtually all ridicule and mockery, then copied my rebuttal to what you said, then copied how you flew off the handle about it every single time, not being able to take what you, yourself dished out, the list would be very long, covering many pages.

So, don't try to pick on me because you will always end up making a fool out of yourself if you do. If you disagree with any technique or idea which I write about, you are going to have to find a better way to disagree with it than ridicule, mockery or any invalid analogy. Otherwise, you can expect a rebuttal that demonstrates what you have said for what it is. The rebuttal may include, as it has in the past, the suggestion that you join PTG and take the exams. If you did, you would find out just where you do fit in with the very large body of knowledge and skills that constitutes piano technology and truly come to the understanding that no one knows it all and no one is an expert at all there is to know. You might then well understand how really foolish it is to ridicule and mock something you know nothing about and want to learn as much more as you can instead.

So, if you don't want what you dish out thrown back in your face and you don't want me to say anything to you about PTG, just stop your ridicule and mockery. That, I am, in fact, telling you to do. Stop it.

Kamin,

Thank you for posting your file. To those who do not read French, "Télécharger ce fichier" means "Download this file" just in case you are hesitant to click on the link. It is a rather large file (67.6 MB), so you may want to direct the download appropriately (such as to a CD). Elsewhere, it says that these files are regularly scanned for viruses and that this file is virus free (which it is). Below the download link is an offer to subscribe to anti-virus software, so don't click on that unless you really want that. It would be a European, French language product.

This sounded fine to me, very clear and a good recording. I guess that was why the file was so large, limited compression. It is a very professional sound, certainly broadcast quality. I find no fault with it whatsoever.

In private discussions, Kamin and I have discussed the difference in voicing preferences between North America, Europe and Asia. I have heard elsewhere that what Americans generally prefer sounds too soft in other markets. That may be so generally but it is not always the case. I know that certain popular music, particularly the Nashville market likes a very bright voicing.

I sent Kamin some links to a website of a local colleague who uses exclusively HT's but Kamin could not seem to get past how soft and dull the voicing sounded to him. It seemed to be far more of an issue than the temperament for him.

Now, having said all of that, that I find no fault, that the sound is good, far beyond merely acceptable but indeed, superior, it still, for me personally, does not interest me nearly as much as the first trials which Patrick posted.

I'll take Bernhard Stopper's comments with all due respect as well. Some may find what Patrick did as beautiful and interesting, just the sound they were looking for while others may prefer what Kamin offers. I would remind Bernhard however, to not use such terms that may be taken as ridicule and mockery. That is offensive to those who are working hard to perfect the goals which they have. I have found Bernhard's sound to be quite exceptionally good and have said so although I have seen that Bernhard has also been the victim of ridicule and mockery on the Pianotech list.

There is a way to express one's dislike without ridicule and mockery. That kind of behavior only encourages a contest to determine who can ridicule and mock the best. It shows no respect for what one artist (which any fine technician is) tries to accomplish. It distracts entirely from the discussion about the merits of one style of art versus the other. It only leads to an argument about who is right and who is wrong when there is something good and positive about what anyone may put forth as one's art.

Thanks again, Kamin for posting the sample of the sound you work so hard to get. It may be a good idea at some point to assemble a collection of these samples on a special page, like the FAQ page, where anyone who is interested can compare various tuning styles and decide for themselves which they prefer.

Jeff, you have never written a post I could agree with more! That is exactly the point I have been trying to make. It has completely distracted me from writing the post about reverse well. I have been thinking about it, however and how to present it in a purely clinical, non-inflammatory way.

Long ago, I did write a very long article about it which I will not even look at for reference. I titled it, "What the heckis Reverse Well?" because any time I wrote about it, that was the gist of the reaction I got about it with many people saying exactly that. It was an example of ridicule and mockery by people who knew nothing about the topic, preferred not to know anything about it and didn't want anyone else to know about it either.

So, can it be presented and discussed without producing a flame war? I don't know but we'll see.

Thanks for you listening and comments Bill.

Indeed it is a large wav file, but I used a 130 USD recorder (Zoom H2, it is very handy, really).

I mostly wanted to make listen how there is some aerial resonance when unisons are good and stretch is near the natural stretch of the piano, (I believe) in ET (hence a few notes not much stretched in the beginning of the 5 octave). I did not really tune the high treble last 8 notes... I did just a recording of how unisons may speak the voyel "oh" , then I tuned/corrected a few octaves and find the piano was toning nicely so I wanted to record it to give an example of what I like.

Of course what I play is way less rich harmonically than what plays Pat. I would have to work more at the piano to play really something more elaborated ! Less crispness than with a more modern piano, also. I used a lot the sustain pedal to show that when the tuning was somehow pure it was possible without having beats in all directions.

What I said about the tunings in Ut that you gave me the link is that, even if I hear that the temperament is of course not ET, (I really do not understand what it is supposed to add to the music on those records) the pianos have so poorly tuned unisons that there is no interest in listening, no musicl phrases, no articulation.
In that sense I even could not see which kind of effect was intended with the use of those HT UT, and I suggested that because their unisons are unlively, they look for other tricks to have contrast and funny resonances in while playing (I always have in mind that the player is hearing a totally different piano than me)

You say that it is because of the voicing , may be the pianos are voiced powerless because of the way the unisons are tuned, may be the unisons are tuned as this because the pianos are voiced powerless, but I am pretty sure that even with little power hammers one can have some projection and articulation (even if it is harder because the tone is so straight then)

All in all i find that pretty sad as by evidence they make a very nice repair and rebuild job on those pianos, and they are fine technicians and music lovers.

I guess I know what you say when talking of bland or clinical tunings, that does not come to the use of "ET" but the tuning based on the smoothing of one partial only, in a region, then another in some other be it in the bass region or in the medium, it always tone in an unatural way, the resonance of the instrument and the one of the room is not taken in account as a whole, it is only a method to have things in line, and it is sometime heard too much in the final product.

(notice that "pure 5ths or pure 12ths is not that, as it is the temperament method, it is more a well affirmed way of having the piano in tune, while I understand that some even progressing beats does not suffice to have a piano sounding musical.

The same may happens with a tuning which have too much compromising as for instance raising the speed of the intervals in 5th octave because there is more iH than usual at the end of that octave, idem in the basses because of the lowest strings.

Then ,certainly the more resonant intervals are not taken in account enough. and the coherence of tonality dissipates.

I like to have the piano express its resonance, but I understand and accept another way to tune/temper, as I am conscious that there are flaws in the ET theory and that we avoid them with different tricks, the audience is generally so little exigent that almost anything can be done , for instance the older clavinovas had stretch that raised by 2 cts,in the middle of temperament zone, then 2 to 4 cts each 4 or 8 notes , and nobody stated that those things where untuned (nobody stated that they where toning well, either ! )

I guess that some tuners begin to be tired of the huge eveness they could obtain with EDT's and begin to look for "old style tone" so they begin to reconciliate with 5ths, more or less.

Now the good tuner here have a nicely portable tuning that can be corrected or warmed by the next one without problems, even if he find a 3d which beats a tad slowly he can choose to correct it or not that is not so important.

As long as the instrument have its own voice that is enough taken in account in the output , I guess that the musicality is there.

The old methods to temper did not know the use of RBI, hence much more unevennesses and mistakes.

I understand what you are after with EBVT (find synchronism so to clean some harmony and hide the dust under the carpet to the remaining intervals, but as you are obliged to reconciliate it towards a more moderate tuning in basses and treble, I am unsure of its musicality, what could be done is make an EVBT on a software as Pianoteq, to have an idea of the output, but frankly I am still waiting to listen to it in close harmony to see how far it is from a basic ET.

BTW my kind of stretch may not be far from what makes Alfredo, on that tuning recorded, I guess (but more speed for the RBI in the mediums).

I am sure that on the same piano with more high partial in unisons I would have a larger tuning, here the hammers are 20 years old, as the plain strings (the basses are 80 years old) It is one of the nicest Steinway O I've find, We will have new basses anyway and a complete action rebuild, then I'll work to have more tone in the killer octave !.

The differences I recorded vs a perfect progression of thirds in the temperament of my colleagues where to the most of 1.2 cts, and often only on one interval. It was not high enough to change audibly the 3ds progression, so to say.
At those times I corrected that , and I had sometime the impression that too much of that compromising was at the expense of musicality, I bet it is because my main goal was to have those RBI progressiveness perfect, then I sometime loosed the feel for 5ths (or let's say the 12ths !) which may always rule a tuning whatever method is used.

Actually I say that RBI are there to put you on the good place faster, but then only you can tune the resonant intervals.

Hope I don,t look too much stupid saying so, The perfect progressiveness of RBI is a must for all modern harmony as the construction is easy on them, but if it rules the tuning the natural harmony of the piano may well be left aside a little too much.

Then , the way you express your frustration and abuse of strong words as Clinical or Reverse Well is more deserving you than anything else.

And a student tuner may learn to obtain a classical ET tuning before working something else, it is a convenience that is a tad easy to provide lively tuning because of the intervals size unevenness, there are other ways that some are may be not aware of.

I'll try to post a few links of tunings which are considered professionally good, but are too straight or lack harmonic richness to my ears. (On some I believe I recognize the SAT basic FAC curve, sorry for the SAT users the same apply with a 3d partial smoothing with other softwares/EDT)

I agree with Bernhard on the term "pure" in unisons.

And I am back to my cavern !

Something about purity, power and energy. Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-nKB56kigo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9wps-xwISM

Absolutely superb, Thanks !

The painting also !

that Bb D 17 th is beating (may have be a A 415 probably so it is more a A C# and prove that tempering was based on A's not C at that time, which string instrument have a C as a bass note ?)

They have a very just intonation (is not it changed at each tonality change ?)

I enjoyed that much, will listen to the others now !

The "bell" is wonderful -
We are far from our keyboards and modern music , thanks again !

Bill:

I am amazed that you see your behavior in this Topic as appropriate.

Yes, I hope your Reverse Well Topic goes better.

Actually you guys 'sound' like a bunch of Middle School kids.

It's pretty funny to read though, keep it up!

It cracks me up, hilarious!

Roger that Roger thanks Roger!

No, YOU are the one being immature!

(Is that what you mean? )

Kamin:

Can you tell us what piece (pieces?) you were playing passages from in the recording?

And do you by any chance plan to post the rest of it? (The downloaded file seems to cut off in the middle of a passage.)

Hello,

I am sorry, you may have tried to download the MP3 it is partial I should have corrected it.

The long version (wav file) is complete, may be it is a tad large and your upload did not work completely.

Frankly I dont play a real piece, I just try the tuning on improvisation (not that good , I listen to it after !!)
Some time more inspired than others.

Even the tuning (I checked on next day) needed a few corrections (I did not completely tune the piano, it was to have listen that a basic ET tuning but with well tuned unisons, is lively enough)

The wav file is there : http://dl.free.fr/t1IxJwQuV

The MP3 I have to upload again http://dl.free.fr/pZIt0O9Pj - I did not verify the file yet.

It is an old piano but it have a really nice behavior, despite original bass strings, and soft hammers (22 years old, after 25 years hammers are said to be changed if they played enough).


Best Regards.