Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum Can most players REALLY hear the difference with stretch??

My first thought upon reading the subject line was that it would be helpful to the discussion to understand the meaning of the phrase, "most players."

My contribution is: Yes definitely, but not in the way the tuner hears it.

Stretch is often thrown around like a slider option to add to any tuning, but there is a narrow window in which the correct stretch aligns an instrument. I think this is where the development of machines has led to the mis-education of many technicians.. but that's another subject.

The average player hears proper stretch as a really good crystal clear tuning, which makes the treble 'light up' and the bass sound fuller and smoother. They'll voice amazement when they play a piano with the correct stretch.

Other than that, I've observed some people obviously can tell when a machine tuner places a very conservative or aggressive stretch in the treble. Besides that, I don't get the impression that the average person can tell.

Keith, I just read your thoughtful post and agree completely.

Most players ... would be the ones who would rather play a Steinway B than a Lester Spinet.

Oh, huh! Give me a Yamaha Conservatory Model any day. Steinways take too much work to play...

My second thought was, "stretch is something you can really only understand after you've done it."

Greetings,
I use a wild variety of stretches in my work. The recording studios have far less complaints when the bass is not stretched at all. I have seen happy producers with narrow octaves...
The bigger pianos have a wider range of acceptable stretching. I have tuned our D's for jazz and for Mozart, with the top C being approx. 8 or 9 cents different for the two. players were happy.
One artist really likes his C with the bottom fairly sharp and the treble even more so. That tuning is at 440 at A, but the rest of the octaves are bent, with fairly clean single octaves through the middle and 5th octave, with doubles getting pure by the sixth octave. The top two octaves make clean triple octaves, but noticeably beat as singles. This particular performer has a melodic approach to takes advantage of this. It sounds pretty busy to me, though.

My average customer, when given a higher stretch, (something I do on a continual basis,looking for what happens), will either not notice, or comment on how the piano seems to be leading somewhere. Others feel it as a crispness, or as one said, "Its got an edge on it, but it sounds clean". There are those that register it as "harsh", and that did cost me a return tuning, once.

The SAT makes it easy to incrementally change things. Sometimes I hear what I want to hear, and measure it. Other times, I measure out what I think should be there and then listen. Either way, once I have a number on it, I can compare choices with some chance of objectivity.
Regards,

So, Ed, basically, your answer to the OP's question is, "Yes."

Who was it from the Tuner/Tech forum that asked in Pianist Corner within the last half-year something to the effect of, "How do you know a good tuning when you hear it?" Whoever it was, he was gathering info for a presentation. If you are out there and reading this thread, whoever you are, what became of that?

Oh! It was RonTuner! Here's the thread:

https://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubb...ey%20piano%20players....html#Post1838945

Basically, some said a little of this:



Ron, if your work about this is not yet finished, you should ask the question again in Pianist Corner, and see what else you can glean from new replies. There were some regular Pianist Corner contributors that I was surprised you did not hear from.

Just when the term "stretch" was used by tuners, I don't know. However, in Dr. White's original Book, published in 1917, tuners are warned against tuning the treble too sharp. See paragraph 20: http://www.archive.org/stream/modernpianotunin00whit#page/126/mode/2up

In later editions of Dr. White's book he mentions the use of the Strob-o-Conn has shown that aural tuners make the high treble sharper by about the same amount that inharmonicity requires for smooth octaves.

So the term "stretch" may be new, but the act of it and the temptation to overdo it is not. In the mid seventies my tuning instructor recommended making the treble a little high and the bass a little low. It was certainly not an ETD thing. He was blind.

In my experience: yes.

I know several pianists who can certainly tell an incorrectly stretched treble and bass. When playing the high treble melodically with accompaniment in the middle of the instrument, they will notice, for example, a flat-sounding treble. Or when playing harmonies in the middle, together with bass notes in the lowest octave, they will notice any mis-match. They might not call it "insufficient stretch", but they will certainly hear that something is amiss. So I'm with Marty and Ando on this one. These pianists would not take kindly to a remark such as Jerry's.

OK, I was off by 5 years. In my copy of WB White, 1946 edition p 109 there is a paragraph/section which is captioned "Stretched Octaves" in which WBW discusses an "almost ineradicable" tendency of tuners to "'stretch'" (his quotes in original) the octaves which is "verified" by the Conn Stroboscope.

I stand with my contention, though. WBW himself was clearly caught up in the machine-centric perspective of speaking of beatless octaves as being stretched rather than machine tunings being compressed. During that time (and even continuing to this day) there was a certain awe accorded to the progress of science and the technological wonders that were emerging at that time. The StroboConn was the "latest technology" and the first in a whole series of tuning devices that have been touted as the latest or most advanced -- which leaves one to legitimately wonder what to think of the previous ones that were the "latest" or what to think of the current one which will not be "latest" for long.

This does bring up another phenomenon, though, which is a tendency to prefer "sharper" or "flatter" notes. For example, it is common to tune an octave where the notes are struck sequentially to be higher (wider) than a where both notes are struck at the same time. This ultimately has consequences if carried too far and a warning to that effect is appropriate. But it is still, nonetheless, a "real" psychoacoustic phenomenon -- even though it can't be measured by a machine.

So, then, there are two related but different meanings for stretch.
1) the difference found by a device between the actual pitch a note is tuned to in order to be audibly "beatless" and the predicted pitch without accounting for inharmonicity.

2) The psychoacoustic element of "liking" wide octaves.

Before becoming a technician, when the octaves are not stretched properly, or not tuned right, the octaves does not sound "grand" to me. Hard to describe what I am hearing. And yeah, It does not sound that grand because the partials are not line up at equat distance at that section and in some smaller pianos, it just sound out of tune to me. My brother on the other hand, is the best pianist in university hear not much difference at all. I guess that is why I end up being a techie girl. Anyway, he can only perceive that the piano is out of tune when the unisons are dirty.

Those who have tuned for many years know that (1) no two instruments are precisely the same. Even "identical" pianos separated only by the last digit in serial number will have differences: sometimes subtle, and sometimes not so subtle; and (2) no two pianists hear exactly the same. The challenge for the tech is to understand how the pianist hears his or her particular instrument, and effect tuning, "stretch," et al., accordingly. This does not mean that we do a sloppy job for the client who cannot really tell whether or not a piano is in tune. Neither do we accept a request to tune the piano after some crazy fashion that offends our ethical sensibilities. Rather, we do a professional job and make necessary, but legitimate, adjustments in, for example, "stretch," for the pianist whose level of aural proficiency requires it.

Hi!

The problem is that after nearly 100 years of equal temperament, pianists ears have been constantly wrapped in fudge to the point that they have never heard pure intervals and do not know their beauty.

The result is musicianship in which there is no reason to listen to the still small sound, leaving remaining only virtuosity - velocity and volume. For many a piano recital is no more than a circus spectacle . . . and I understand that if you don't actually break strings playing Liszt in Italy nowadays you don't win competitions nor pass exams.

This is one of the reasons why I have been working to explore different ways, as anyone searching my postings to this forum will discover or perhaps even know already.

In the last week I was tuning for a concert pianist on tour and in particular on a Grotrian Steinweg I was able to abandon machine stretching in the bass. After tuning my temperament octave middle C to treble C, I always fight the machine tuning middle C to tenor C straight as the temperament I use. With numerous perfect fifths the effect is beautifully pure. Below that, I was able to use the third pedal to hold both unisons and fifths in the temperament octave for tuning the bass note harmonics to. The result was utterly magic and I'll be posting a video in a new thread for Recordings of modern instruments tuned with pure fifths.

Afterwards, sadly, I had to return the instrument to equal temperament and I followed blindly the stretch set by the machine. It sounded fine. Shimmering and hard . . .

Best wishes

David P

David, just curious: After tuning the Grotian to what you considered to be harmonious tuning why did you have to return to a machine equal temperament and stretch?

pure intervals apply to organ and harpsichord, eventually, David, many tuners use pure intervals at some points (to the level of purity attaineable by the instrument)

I like what you do but interval wise I believe you are shooting in the dark and hoping for the best.

Think also of something : the "pure 5th or 12th" is helping the spectra, but musically the 5th is considered as a "poor interval" harmonically speaking (the poorest, in fact)

So it is nice that some are looking for things, for tones of the past, but I've find it difficult, out of real musicological approach, to use the methods with simplifications as it is done most often.

This is too far from my background for now, but even if I dont care for listening to more or less tempered tunings (in the end , tempering is just a "facility") I will need musical justifications more than illusions.

And we really need historical instruments for this to take sense, in the end.

I know enough musicians to be sure that they hear "pure" and "tempered" intervals, and that they use and appreciate both in the given context (some of them anyway)

The beauty is more generally in the way the music is played than in any artefact, then the instrument can have its place, and of course the tuning.

But what I listen to is what the composer had in mind, I will not stop for a too slow/fast interval and say "that one is false" I will appreciate it in the context of the music played, as will do the musician, that be annoyed, or not (or be sensitive or not to justness)

A good musician will save almost any instrument a good tuner can only help both.


PS Stretch mostly is a mean to allow more or less partial flow. not the same to be used when only 6 octaves will be used and the instrument is miked, than in a large hall with audience far.

When tuning outside I have no mean to know what is heard at 10 meters from the instrument, only experience helps.

Dear Friends:

I'm slightly hesitant to weigh-in on this discussion, esp. because I've had the wonderful good fortune to have my piano tuned and regulated, for the 17 years of my it's life, by one of New York's finest techs, Mike Miccio, RPT. It's not unlike being cared for by the Mayo Clinic. His tuning is crystal clear and no mechanical short-coming escapes his watchful gaze.

Having made the very deepest bow my arthritis allows, I'd like to mention an experience I had that is very like the one that Perri Knize writes about in "Grand Obsession." It's about the stretch.

David Stanwood replaced the action in my Petrof Model III (194cm). He took the action from the piano store on the day it was purchased and returned it after the piano had been moved to our apartment. After some hours of adjustment and regulation, David put the first tuning on my piano in our home. It was a tuning like no other that I've ever heard, with the poignant sweetness that Terri Knize calls her "Schubert" tuning. And, like that tuning, its life was as short-lived.

Since that time, any mention of the "stretch" has brought to my mind that unforgettable tuning.

Karl Watson,
Staten Island, NY

Greetings,
>> It was a tuning like no other that I've ever heard, with the poignant sweetness that Terri Knize calls her "Schubert" tuning. And, like that tuning, its life was as short-lived. <<

Yea, verily, David Stanwood is a Jedi Knight among the technician community !

There are a lot of differences in musical ears. In the recording studios, where I don't stretch the lower halves of pianos, I got in the habit of making the unisons as absolutely clear as possible, since any other problems in red-light sessions, (like tuning a guitar, or the tempo wandering as much as the pitch, or bad coffee, jealous producer's wife... or whatever), ultimately settles on the tuner, (who is absent while this ominous consensus builds). A unison that has awakened becomes a problem for everyone, so the tuner is called in to remedy all ills while the entourage is given someone to hate on. So, I really try to avoid loose ones.
Yet, a Steinway artist I tuned for regularly, for years, once told me that my tunings sounded better the day after I did them, that the sound felt tight for the first day or so. I once listened, and for the life of me, couldn't tell what the artist was hearing. I changed the stretch for this artist, from time to time, and no remarks were ever made. go figure..

regards,

Regards,
Ed that is funny that I see that comment also in the book "under the lid". I had similar feelings before working unison building and sound projection with more experienced tuners. Was liking the unisons better after the piano played a bit.

Actually I am sure that as long we are not using some moaning in the unison, its tone is better immediately and is more stable in time.

I really wish this would be more experimented, i.e. how is evolving an unisons under ideal temperature conditions, only played.

I believe that the piano only accepts a certain level of immediate power , the tuner can only try to push more the exactitude but the piano settles differently.

Actually most natural shape I find on most pianos is a center string that is a little low, and that, after concerts, or after one year. I can tune a different shape if I am fighting old strings or and old board, or trying to have more juice, even a tone which have too many defects, or try to have a boogie tone...

But if I want purity, allowing the piano own tone to escape, (no added manipulation) , I leave that differential with coupling right-left strings (done automatically I don't tune right string vs left string that would be really not easy) .

Another way is to rotate around the center string and balance the differential that way, but this is more sensitive to weather, and also the precedent shape is easy when I need to correct the pitch of a note...

I noticed that most tuners use a string, the last one tuned probably, to open their tone, and regulate the partials level and presence. No particular attention is given to the unison "shape" , and the string's pitch rarely is checked with an ETD when we are done .

(coupling is may be also modifying the individual string pitch a little even wen the 2 others are dampened, some simple mechanical effect possibly)

Why no experimentation done with more than one or two tuners in their own way of hearing things ?


Indeed this is not about "stretch" but I suggest it is in the same area, and that, is in the end noticed even on MP3 recordings, as it is the shape of tone that differs.