Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum My Piano in EBVT III

Thank you so much, Forrest!



I totally buy that!



LOL!!!

Still laughing!

Andy & Bill thanks for the invitation, but I cannot leave my family there for now.

On a piano who tend to some harshness you can lower the saturation in the attack by the early coupling, it may leave some false beats, but will straighten most of them.

How to say, if the tone is soon concentrated it will rule the spectra, that will be more linear.
Certainly Inlanding could explain that to you with a better language than me.

Try to have the attack musical. think of the tone you wish to hear and make it ... If the percussion of the key/hammer is yet generating some coupling the noise level lower, and you have more control on tone.
The tone will be long enough even when some energy is concentrated sooner.

I listened without the reverb, indeed you have to work on strong pin setting. The attack is not that bad, for instance the bichords are correct, to me, but you could gain some energy, be it in a more strong pin setting which tend to clean up the tone and strenghten the lower partial.

Even a piano with poor rendering and limited pin tightness can be made more sonorous with the adequate pin setting.

Well it seems that you are overdue to get the complete French Suites score. I must admit to them being personal favourites ever since an early age when my teacher introduced them. I always seem to come back to them. Suite #6 will blow your socks off.

The unadorned version still seems to have a resonance with the piano tone. Whatever causes it is a blessing because the tone comes across as very appealing and seems to mimic early pianos to some degree,

I have one concern with the interpretation: A Gigue should be about twice as fast and be in keeping with a lively dance. This one is also moderated a little by being march-like as well, but not really slow at all I think. At least, I am used to it being much faster than you present. Some sparing pedal is OK for me, as you do quite tastefully.

BTW - The F natural query is in the Allemande third bar from the end.

Chris, you are oh, so right about the Allemande. It should be an F#, as the previous accidental in the measure indicates, and I would have helped myself by pencilling in a helper sharp, there! I think I got caught up in the downward trend of the musical line, and simply quit reading so closely. (I'd never heard this one before I started working on it, and ignorance being bliss, I just never noticed the error of my way... ) Thanks for the tip!

As to the interpretation, I absolutely intended to play the Gigue unconventionally slowly. (I am often chastised in Pianist Corner for not obeying traditions... or respecting the will of the composer by strict adherence to the score... *ahem*.) But here is why I made that interpretive choice: This piece seems to me to be largely about experiencing profound grief, and coming through a period of mourning. I considered taking the Allemande and Courante even more slowly than I did, but the tempos seemed to settle where they did. To my mind's ear (and spirit) the Allemande, Courante, and Sarabande cry, writhe, and ache (respectively) with something of the experience of the meaningful loss of a very close loved one. When, Menuet 1 comes around, it is as if the crying is done, and the tears are wiped, the way you feel after you are all cried out and it's time to move on. Menuet 2 carries on with a forward, positive, "the sun still shines and life goes on" flow, then Menuet 1 recaps with a memory of coming out of the fresh throes of grief, giving a little more distance from the raw pain of loss. I chose to play the Gigue as slowly as I did, because the music seemed to want to express the integration of the mourning with who we are after experiencing the loss of a close loved one. The grief from the loss is always there. And especially so soon after experiencing the loss, you tend to dance a little differently if you choose to dance.

I am presently working on Handel's Keyboard Suite No. 13 in Bb Maj. It is, emotionally and expressively, the exact opposite of Bach's French Suite No. 1. It is simple, light, happy, peppy, and carefree. I am a ways away from being ready to share it, but I will in due time!

Thanks for your thoughts, Chris!
--Andy

Just a thought, Andy

The lady's tea club is sharing the loss of a dear friend and they are exploring their various feelings of grief. The emotions ebb and flow with all of the memories and emotions.

But then...

The cat walks in and does something silly and the ladies are suddenly ROTFL. Aha, the Gigue.

As Annie says: "Tomorrow, tomorrow, there's always tomorrow. Tomorrow's another Gigue."

Bill,

Messing about last night I found this SOUND(!) which I thought was incredible.

Just to clarify your response, you were referring to the type of stretch being necessary for this type of sound(I agree), but with the reference to ET, were you also implying that ET could not pull this off with a proper stretch? If so, Why?

Jim Ialeggio

Idiotic! If it is supposed to sound like a pipe organ when you play in one particular key in a particular unequal temperament, unlike equal temperament, then what does it sound like when you play it in one of the keys that is farther away from just intonation than equal temperament, a vacuum cleaner?

That is quite an incredible sound Glen!

It's amazing to me, the amount of views this posting has had since I started it back on 3/4/10. I never imagined that it would garner this many views....I would venture to say, there must be something to this EBVT III .....Onwards and upwards as they say!

Most of what you hear with the pipe organ effect is just the massed harmonics from the lower strings that have been excited by the higher notes, which will naturally sound harmonious.

Sounds good Glen!

Right.

But is this example a real full keyboard tuning, or is it a "one chord" tuning, to see what one idealized chord could sound like. Quite lovely, but is it doable to this degree in a "real" tuning?

I've heard and tuned some very nice stretches, but not one with this level of purity.

Jim Ialeggio

It's a full keyboard tuning, Jim. If you look back through the thread, you'll see other examples posted. And if you do a PW search on "Pipe Organ Effect," you'll find it referenced (contentiously) in other threads, as well. Bernhard Stopper mentioned at some point that he could get the effect with his tuning, too.

--Andy

I have often read the term "pipe organ effect" and was never quite sure of what it was. Hearing this single chord explained it all.

I had no idea of what to expect and my immediate reaction was that it was an organ and a piano comparison would follow. This reaction was probably within a 10th of a second. My ear told me that it was a final tonic chord based on a 16' principal with a 2' flute or a IV mixture, in a very reverberant setting.

It probably took a full second or two for me to realize that I was hearing a piano. I listened again and again. Then I tried it on my own piano and there it was. I had been hearing it all along but didn't ever apply the term to what I had been hearing.

Thank you Bill. I believe it was you who coined the term.

Here, Marty. Perhaps you would like to take this blind test. It, too, is a blast from the past (so to speak ).

Hey...no fair, Andy, the attack is edited out!...That's cheating ...

Without the attack it's not so clear. # 4 has the reedy sound of an organ, but of the other 3 its not so clear..probably #1 is the mighty Lester...But point well made.

Jim Ialeggio

In Sample 4, I was expecting to hear the low strings enter. 'Nuff said. I liked the clarity of the registration on that organ. Where was that recorded and with which orchestra? Sounds like a good issue.

Sample 1, Sample 2, and/or Sample 3 would be the Mighty Lester.

BTW - Have you ever erected the Home of the World's Most Famous Lester Spinet signs at all of Rockford exits?

Marty,

That C Major chord from the pipe organ is from an old CD I have of the Saint-Seans "Organ Symphony". I don't have the time to try to look up the specific information about it, however. That piece is one that I remember from my youth, where midway in the final movement, the pipe organ suddenly blasts that loud, C Major chord and then dominates the rest of the piece as a solo instrument.

That is something that had always stuck in my mind. After many years of tuning the EBVT, I noticed the particular effect one day that a broad C Major chord had when played on a piano I had tuned in the EBVT III with the particular amount of stretch which I customarily use. The effect reminded me of that sudden entrance of the pipe organ in the Saint-Seans "Organ" symphony, so it was at that moment that I dubbed the effect on the piano, "The Pipe Organ Effect".

Many attempts have been made to explain why the grand C Major arpeggio produces that effect in the EBVT III ever since. I have really only ever considered it an interesting piece of trivia. However, it never fails to impress my customers as a sign that their piano is truly very well in tune with itself.

If you ask me, the effect comes from a combination of both temperament and octave stretch. The equal beating intervals have a canceling effect, one upon the other that produces a kind of slow, phasing effect that one hears from the same chord played on a pipe organ.

Many, many years ago, I heard a recording of a piano playing a church hymn where all of the "attack" of the hammers hitting the strings was edited out. The person who made the recording suggested that the results sounded more like an organ than a piano. Indeed, they did to me too and that contributed to me calling the effect produced by the EBVT III and octave stretch, the "Pipe Organ Effect".

Once, when demonstrating who to tune the EBVT III at a seminar, I played the results of a G Major chord when I had it tuned and a member of the audience quipped that the chord sounded like that of an organ. G Major in the EBVT III also has Rapidly Beating Intervals (RBI) which cancel themselves. Perhaps for that listener, that sound also reminded him of the sound of an organ, possibly a pipe organ.

I don't feel that some of the condescending remarks which have been written such as "What if she wants the piano to sound like a piano which is what she is paying for" and others about vacuum cleaners, etc., deserve any response.

Thank you Bill, for providing the historical context for the term.

Searching back through this thread, I found the recordings made in 2010 at Grandpianoman's home in Washington. Listening with headphones, I closed my eyes to enjoy, and really listen to, the Reflets dans L'eau. It literally was three dimensional. Each note in a different place, a location in depth, within a sonic world. It is impossible to convey with words.

I believe it is what tonal color is all about. To experience is to understand.