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Well, this is a thread about a teaching instrument which, ideally, should be as close as possible to a typical accompanying performance instrument. While we might not be able to run to a 7' or 9' grand, at least we can get a typical tuning right. I hope it goes without saying that an unequal temperament is not typical.

A solo performance pIano is, by it's very nature prominent, it's the only instrument up there!!! Perhaps you are thinking concerto, in which case the piano has to, in turn, blend and also be prominent at different tImes. How do you reconcile that from a tuning point of view?

Mwm,

I'm afraid you're getting way ahead of your knowledge and experience. With no more to go on but a single anecdotal experience, your advice to a technician regarding whether or not to use a non-equal temperament was "Don't do it!"

I hope you don't mind if I don't personally take your advice since I have been doing just that for the past 24 years and have made my living as a professional piano technician doing what you say in effect, wouldn't work, couldn't work and shouldn't be tried. You're not the first to blurt out such advice. Thousands have preceded you. None of their advice was given any consideration either.

Nor have any of the warnings about the dire consequences of what would surely happen if one dared to take such a foolish risk. I just brush such comments away as if they were dust.

The reason is because I do have a long history of experience with this topic and I happen to know what I am talking about. 9 out of 10 aural tunings performed up until perhaps 1990 to 2000 but surely even a large percentage of them even today are not ET at all but a backwards version of a Well Temperament. If all of the dire consequences of straying just one iota from the almighty ET were true, then those very consequences would have happened to 9 out of 10 people who ever tried to tune a piano. Obviously, they did not.

Yes, a key signature is important. It is chosen for a reason. Music is meant to be performed in the key in which it was written. We had a very long discussion about that "Going Home" melody. I discussed it with a very fine piano technician who is also a professor of piano performance.

Our conclusion was that it is a C Major type melody and must have originally been composed on a piano in a Well Temperament in that key. However, it was transcribed and transposed for wind instruments as part of a symphony. Wind instruments happen to intone better in the flat keys than the sharp keys. (Strings are the opposite). Wind instruments do not have the same requirement for temperament as the piano does, nor the need to stretch the octaves. Both wind and string players of high caliber often comment about their inability to resolve completely their intonation with a piano tuned in ET and for good reason: it fights them every step of the way.

I am also a vocalist and have studied voice for some 35 years. Of course, vocal material sometimes needs to be transposed to suit a vocalist's range. If the material being studied is from the 17th or 18th Centuries, ET was NEVER the temperament used at the time that music was written. NEVER!

So, to play that music on a modern piano in ET is automatically altering it from the way it was intended to sound. Yes, if you play music that is drastically altered from the way it was intended to sound and move it up or down a half step or an augmented 4th or any other random interval, it will still sound just as drastically altered by the same amount. Therefore, the supposed advantage of ET.

Complete freedom to modulate, complete freedom to transpose and complete freedom to have all music in a Major key sound as if it were in A Major, no matter which key it is in and all music in a minor key to sound like it is in C minor, no matter which key it is in. Complete freedom to modulate for no reason at all and to have no distinction and to experience no tension and relief because of the modulation. Every valley is exalted and the rough places made plain. All music is put on tranquilizers.

Editions of vocal music do NOT come in increments of a half step and certainly do not have editions transposed up or down and augmented 4th. The transpositions are to keys with at least similar tone color, not to keys which would be expected to be inappropriate. You need to understand what Well Temperament actually is to know what I mean by this.

Music is intended to have some kind of emotion from tranquility to rage. From solemnity to depression. ET robs virtually all music of some of the extremes it was meant to have. That cannot be disputed. It does. If that is the way you prefer to hear the music, with all the edges rounded off, then you are entitled to your opinion and preference. But don't tell me that I have to give all of my clients what your preferences are. I prefer to find out what my clients want to hear and provide it.

The fact is that we did try that "Going Home" melody in both C Major and D-flat Major on a piano tuned in the EBVT III (with, I might add, very highly stretched octaves). When it was played in D-flat Major, nobody had a fit. Nobody tore their hair out. Nobody's skin crawled. Nobody's blood curdled. Nobody put their foot down. Nobody got angry about it. The cast iron frame did not rupture. The bridges didn't split. The soundboard didn't crack. The strings didn't break. Nobody was sued. Nobody lost their job. Nobody was blacklisted. Nobody came to the conclusion that we then had to tune every piano in ET so that there would be no distinction between C Major and D-flat Major.

If we had then tuned the piano in ET, it would not have meant that suddenly the music sounded "right" in C Major. It would have changed it and not for the better. If we had done that and then played it in D-flat Major, it would have sounded the same as it did in C Major, not right, altered from the way it should sound but just a half step higher.

The way it was, in the EBVT III, the melody played in D-flat Major did not sound unpleasant nor was it unusable in any way. It just did not have the sonority that it should have.

You don't get something for nothing. To put all music on the modern piano in ET, you lose something by doing that. If you make every octave on the piano sound completely pure, then octave-fifths, double octaves and triple octaves will be narrow. The high end of the piano will sound flat and the low end will sound sharp.

If you stretch the central octaves of the piano so that all of the 5ths sound pure, you will make all harmony sound tart, like a balloon that has been filled to the point where it will burst. You may gain one kind of brilliance and clarity in one context but in other contexts, you will create a very unsatisfactory sound.

No matter what you do, the ultimate tuning for any piano must be some kind of compromise or another. Perhaps the best kind of compromise is a very complex set of compromises which defies a simple explanation and certainly defies any seemingly logical mathematical solution.

Here is that "Going Home" melody played the way I tuned the piano that day. Those of us who were there, all professional musicians and piano technicians enjoyed it that way. I don't expect everyone to agree. I would expect some people to say they don't like it and they would never tune a piano that way. However, I am not going to change what I do based upon what any technician on this forum may say. I go by the response of my clients. I give them what appeals to them and they pay me to come back and do it for them time and again.

"Going Home" melody played in the EBVT III on a Mason & Hamlin RBB:
https://www.box.com/shared/on0hs9rhcv

Mwm,

I'm afraid you're getting way ahead of your knowledge and experience. With no more to go on but a single anecdotal experience, your advice to a technician regarding whether or not to use a non-equal temperament was "Don't do it!"

I hope you don't mind if I don't personally take your advice since I have been doing just that for the past 24 years and have made my living as a professional piano technician doing what you say in effect, wouldn't work, couldn't work and shouldn't be tried. You're not the first to blurt out such advice. Thousands have preceded you. None of their advice was given any consideration either.

Nor have any of the warnings about the dire consequences of what would surely happen if one dared to take such a foolish risk. I just brush such comments away as if they were dust.

The reason is because I do have a long history of experience with this topic and I happen to know what I am talking about. 9 out of 10 aural tunings performed up until perhaps 1990 to 2000 but surely even a large percentage of them even today are not ET at all but a backwards version of a Well Temperament. If all of the dire consequences of straying just one iota from the almighty ET were true, then those very consequences would have happened to 9 out of 10 people who ever tried to tune a piano. Obviously, they did not.

Yes, a key signature is important. It is chosen for a reason. Music is meant to be performed in the key in which it was written. We had a very long discussion about that "Going Home" melody. I discussed it with a very fine piano technician who is also a professor of piano performance.

Our conclusion was that it is a C Major type melody and must have originally been composed on a piano in a Well Temperament in that key. However, it was transcribed and transposed for wind instruments as part of a symphony. Wind instruments happen to intone better in the flat keys than the sharp keys. (Strings are the opposite). Wind instruments do not have the same requirement for temperament as the piano does, nor the need to stretch the octaves. Both wind and string players of high caliber often comment about their inability to resolve completely their intonation with a piano tuned in ET and for good reason: it fights them every step of the way.

I am also a vocalist and have studied voice for some 35 years. Of course, vocal material sometimes needs to be transposed to suit a vocalist's range. If the material being studied is from the 17th or 18th Centuries, ET was NEVER the temperament used at the time that music was written. NEVER!

So, to play that music on a modern piano in ET is automatically altering it from the way it was intended to sound. Yes, if you play music that is drastically altered from the way it was intended to sound and move it up or down a half step or an augmented 4th or any other random interval, it will still sound just as drastically altered by the same amount. Therefore, the supposed advantage of ET.

Complete freedom to modulate, complete freedom to transpose and complete freedom to have all music in a Major key sound as if it were in A Major, no matter which key it is in and all music in a minor key to sound like it is in C minor, no matter which key it is in. Complete freedom to modulate for no reason at all and to have no distinction and to experience no tension and relief because of the modulation. Every valley is exalted and the rough places made plain. All music is put on tranquilizers.

Editions of vocal music do NOT come in increments of a half step and certainly do not have editions transposed up or down and augmented 4th. The transpositions are to keys with at least similar tone color, not to keys which would be expected to be inappropriate. You need to understand what Well Temperament actually is to know what I mean by this.

Music is intended to have some kind of emotion from tranquility to rage. From solemnity to depression. ET robs virtually all music of some of the extremes it was meant to have. That cannot be disputed. It does. If that is the way you prefer to hear the music, with all the edges rounded off, then you are entitled to your opinion and preference. But don't tell me that I have to give all of my clients what your preferences are. I prefer to find out what my clients want to hear and provide it.

The fact is that we did try that "Going Home" melody in both C Major and D-flat Major on a piano tuned in the EBVT III (with, I might add, very highly stretched octaves). When it was played in D-flat Major, nobody had a fit. Nobody tore their hair out. Nobody's skin crawled. Nobody's blood curdled. Nobody put their foot down. Nobody got angry about it. The cast iron frame did not rupture. The bridges didn't split. The soundboard didn't crack. The strings didn't break. Nobody was sued. Nobody lost their job. Nobody was blacklisted. Nobody came to the conclusion that we then had to tune every piano in ET so that there would be no distinction between C Major and D-flat Major.

If we had then tuned the piano in ET, it would not have meant that suddenly the music sounded "right" in C Major. It would have changed it and not for the better. If we had done that and then played it in D-flat Major, it would have sounded the same as it did in C Major, not right, altered from the way it should sound but just a half step higher.

The way it was, in the EBVT III, the melody played in D-flat Major did not sound unpleasant nor was it unusable in any way. It just did not have the sonority that it should have.

You don't get something for nothing. To put all music on the modern piano in ET, you lose something by doing that. If you make every octave on the piano sound completely pure, then octave-fifths, double octaves and triple octaves will be narrow. The high end of the piano will sound flat and the low end will sound sharp.

If you stretch the central octaves of the piano so that all of the 5ths sound pure, you will make all harmony sound tart, like a balloon that has been filled to the point where it will burst. You may gain one kind of brilliance and clarity in one context but in other contexts, you will create a very unsatisfactory sound.

No matter what you do, the ultimate tuning for any piano must be some kind of compromise or another. Perhaps the best kind of compromise is a very complex set of compromises which defies a simple explanation and certainly defies any seemingly logical mathematical solution.

Here is that "Going Home" melody played the way I tuned the piano that day. Those of us who were there, all professional musicians and piano technicians enjoyed it that way. I don't expect everyone to agree. I would expect some people to say they don't like it and they would never tune a piano that way. However, I am not going to change what I do based upon what any technician on this forum may say. I go by the response of my clients. I give them what appeals to them and they pay me to come back and do it for them time and again.

"Going Home" melody played in the EBVT III on a Mason & Hamlin RBB:
https://www.box.com/shared/on0hs9rhcv

Just a follow up:
The decision was made by the client to only use ET.

Oh sure. I think of this as analogous to the currently used term, "Low Information" voter. "You wouldn't want one of those Mean tone tunings, would you? Isn't Well-tempered tuning the same as ET? It says so in several books I have read. Oh, it isn't? You mean it's unequal?" Then a gripping fear of howling wolves and blood curdling dissonances sets in. "No, I think I would only want ET so I can play in all the keys, besides, one of my students has perfect pitch, so an unequal temperament would drive him crazy."

I have heard all of this many times over and from many different people. This is how people are kept from knowing the enjoyment of how music was actually meant to be heard. The ironic part about it is that so many people who believed for their entire lives that what they were hearing as ET was in fact a backwards version of a WT.

In any case, I wouldn't worry too much about the choice from a voice teacher who has a piano which is so substandard. Keep the other options in mind for the times when choices really do matter.

I hadn't thought of the necessity for transposition and equivalent harmonization. I'm not even going with a QE... I'm going with ET.

This is massively presumptuous! How do you know she made the decision through ignorance? Especially as Joe said previously



Which suggests the decision was a collaboration, not a default.

This is massively presumptuous! How do you know she made the decision through ignorance?

This is massively presumptuous! How do you know she made the decision through ignorance? Especially as Joe said previously



Which suggests the decision was a collaboration, not a default.

Oh, you're right! I forgot the most classic quote of them all: "Wouldn't an unequal temperament tend to throw the singers off?

In this particular case, using a small piano, whether you tune the fundamentals electronically and let the inharmonics fall where they may, or tune the inharmonics the usual way and let the fundamentals fall where they may, won't you end up with many of the attributes of a mIld UT anyway? At least in the lower half of this spinet.

Once it is accepted that a true ET is a distant, if not unobtainable goal, a tuner with even only a very basic understanding of UT's and experience of spinets should have no trouble constructing a presentable mild UT out of the anomalies that are Inherent in spinets anyway.

It might prove to be just about as truly equal as a typical Winter spinet can hope to be tuned.

Being an insomniac, I woke up thinking about this issue of how much of problem tuning in an mild alternative temperament would really cause.

The largest offset for EBVT3 is at C with a difference of 3.8 cents. Most of the offsets are around or less that 1 cent. http://www.billbremmer.com/ebvt/ebvt_iii.jpg

The theoretical frequency for C4 is 261.63 Hz. The theoretical frequency for C#4 is 277.18 HZ. http://www.phy.mtu.edu/~suits/notefreqs.html This is a difference (rounded up) of about 16 Hz. This is close enough for this discussion.

There are 100 cents per half-step (as we all know ) So, at C4 to C#4 there are 100 cents to 16 Hz, or 16 Hz divided up by 100 cents. I suspect there would have to be a greater difference between ET and EBVT3 to cause a significant beat when a singer is singing unisons with the piano... especially when you consider that the lower on the keyboard you go, the less of a difference in Hz there will be in each half-step. Of course, the higher you go, the more Hz per cent.

These offsets do affect the harmonization of the keyboard, especially the RBIs (which is, after all, the whole point of using them). But, are they really that significant when the keyboard is being used for voice? Especially when you consider the various octave stretching style variations between tuners.

I am referring to the very mild UTs here, not the strong ones.

In this particular case, using a small piano, whether you tune the fundamentals electronically and let the inharmonics fall where they may, or tune the inharmonics the usual way and let the fundamentals fall where they may, won't you end up with many of the attributes of a mIld UT anyway? At least in the lower half of this spinet.

Once it is accepted that a true ET is a distant, if not unobtainable goal, a tuner with even only a very basic understanding of UT's and experience of spinets should have no trouble constructing a presentable mild UT out of the anomalies that are Inherent in spinets anyway.

It might prove to be just about as truly equal as a typical Winter spinet can hope to be tuned.

Hi Bill,

I don't mind at all if you don't take my advice. It is my belief that all people, technicians and non-technicians should have the benefit of divergent points of view. Some of those points of view may be based on ignorance, and some are based on experience. I generally agree with just about everything you wrote above. I have spent 40 years working and performing in early music performance practice, so I know about UT, WT, and ET. However, my application of UT and WT has, until now, been limited to instruments whose minimal or non-existent inharmonicity did not get in the way of the approach to tuning the instrument. Now that I have the time and inclination to work with my own piano, I want to explore all these divergent points of view.

Nevertheless, unlike the harpsichord, on which it is difficult to do a convincing performance of a concerto by Ravel or Rachmaninoff, the piano is called upon to play everything from parallel organum to prepared piano works and beyond. Ultimately, the music must come from the performer. Another thread on PW had a video of Valentina Lisitsa playing an out of tune upright at a tube in London. Not bad music making. You can make Bach musical on the kazoo if a musician is playing it. My point is, as a performer, I don't think much about the tuning or temperament of the instrument when performing. I don't think much about the tuning or temperament when I listen to the piano, only the music. I have listened to many of the variant tunings posted here and I think, this was nice, that was nice, but the music or lack of music always gets in the way of actually hearing the temperament. I never, ever want to reach the point that the sound of the tuning gets in the way of my enjoyment of the music.

Yes, I agree that ET, or what passes for ET, could be construed as lacking colour. Does that mean that Yousuf Karsh's black and white portraits are any less poignant for not having colour? I don't think so. The emotion comes from the performer, not the tuner.