Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum Re-stringing, when should it be done?

I can understand where you are coming from. I am sure the folks on here would not mind this post continuing in the direction of tuning etc. My original question had to do with strings, but since I found out that these were not that old, I am fine with that. One caveat....I don't know if these treble strings are of good quality, or that they are the correct diameter for this piano. That is a subject for the future when I have a pro-tech come take a look at the piano and compare it to an original string scale.

I am not a pro-tuner as you may know. My interest in tuning came out of the need to constantly tune my main piano, an M&H BB. It has 2 player systems, an Ampico and LX. You can imagine how quickly it drifts after playing concert-level piano rolls and the same type of music on the LX.

An explanation as to what you heard on the 2 recordings above...Back when I started using ETD's in 2004, my frist ETD did not function like the ETD's we have today. It had a pre-set selection of stretches that were derived from aural tunings. The stretches were all based on using just the fundamental of each string/note to determine the stretch. The inventor also believed it was imparitve that the tuning curve be as smooth as possible. The 2 recordings above were made using this ETD. I had not used it for years, and wanted to see how it performed compared to the modern ETD's I have.

I should not be surprised that both you, Olek and Roy heard the issues with this ETD. I am impressed. Olek, the fact that you mentioned that it sounded like it was on a different piano was correct. There is also the possibility that some of the low bass strings have issues. I used a tuning that was made for smaller pianos. Obviously it was not that good. When the tuning was fresh, it sounded pretty good to my ear, but I am not a pro-tuner. The ETD is going back in it's case. Incidently, the piano used for that stretch was a Hale upright, according to the manual.,,,,Ahemmm,,,,,,,

As a side note, Jerry Groot had pointed out to me back in 2005, that an ETD that cannot measure anything is not going to give the best result.

So with that in mind, I re-tuned the piano yesterday using a modern ETD. Let me know what you think about this,,,,same piece, "It Had to be You". It does sound better to my ears. Btw, when I was re-tuning, many notes were way sharp, 3-5 cents...that being said, and the fact that I have been changing tunings over the last month, the stability is not that great. The piece below was the first one I recorded after doing 2 passes. After the first pass, when I wen tback to check it, many notes had gone sharp, which I know happens in situations like mine. The 2nd pass was much better, but it still is not stable. Once I settle on the ideal stretch, will stick with that, and that should help the stability.

I recorded a few rolls after this one, inc a slower semi-classical piece. However, they are not of "broadcast" quality. If you would like to hear them, let me know and I will post them.

"It Had to be You" https://www.box.com/s/bv9tgklkd2uikzks6f1m

Hi I did not really listen to the tuning as I listened to the music.
I find that, despite a limited dynamic range provided by the hammers (if those are the ones I think off they mature a little but still are in a relatively small range, unless the piano dictates that)

Well wanted to say you obtain pleasing unison with some sort of construction, it makes the piano musically enjoyeable and certainly nice to play also.

They may be can be "opened" a little more ( reinforcing the decay, as said Glen recently) but possibly the instrument will not have much gain, its character seem to ask for that sort of silky tone. (may be slightly more pressed hammers would help)

As I am always emitting reserves on tuning and particularly on unison (I regret but I cant refrain that does not give enough body to tone, that is pleasing to be able to say elsewhere.

The tuning sound medium and quiet probably a little "generic" (could have a more strong harmonic behavior I believe that you will perceive that yourself with time, when tuning unison and trying to get more power the justness at the octave and probably more, is automatically corrected). But you may forget the ETD at that time, using it only to check consonance may be if it helps , when you are unsure.

I suspect you keep an eye on the ETD while tuning the unison, this only disturbs a little in my opinion, the "dive" in the piano tone is not as organic !

Greetings

You know, I doubt that this ETD was able to listen to the basses, check the notice the cut of the frequencies must be somewhere in the top of the bass region.

In fact the inventor was not totally wrong about smoothness, but his device should be able to "hear" the final result of the 3 or 2 strings together, and determine which pitch impression it provides. I believe that this process is not really possible with electronics, due to fluctuations in time, to differences in stabilization time between bass and treble , between pianos.

The mathematical model may be very difficult to define.

I would more easily believe in an ETD that can signal the phase and power peaks in unison that some that can hear the pitch of unison, including the partials mix and all..)

Oh well, sorry for the OT, but its your topic, for once

Hi Olek, appreciate your feedback.

That is correct, this ETD cannot measure anything to do with computing a tuning. It only has 8 preset tunings/stretches for various types of pianos. The inventor was a mechanical engineer and had an avid interest in piano tuning. I am not sure if he is still alive.

I actually did a posting about this ETD back in 2006...reading what I wrote back then is somewhat humorous...I was pretty strong in my opinion that this ETD was the best....;)

Below is an excerpt from a paper he wrote back in 2001. It's a bit of a long read but interesting.
At the end of the article, I posted the 2nd roll I recorded with the modern ETD...it was not as bad as I had originally thought, although I do hear some drift.


[/i]Piano Tuning Basics

"The modern piano is an amazing device with a very long history of empirical development. That it works at all is astonishing considering the fact that every note on every piano ever built is defective in peculiar ways that are antagonistic to commonly held ideas of musical excellence. The complex sound that is produced by freely vibrating strings is always laced with partial tones that are generally unpredictable and nearly always SHARP. This effect is maximized in the modern piano with its very hard steel strings under great tension. The amazing thing is that a good piano has a wonderful sound that enthralls and captivates those who listen closely and learn to love the sounds that only a fine piano can produce. However, some excellent musicians have become aware of the "defects" and are unable to accept them as the principal charm of the tonal sound quality.

There is no freely vibrating string that has perfectly harmonic higher partial tones. This is true of all forms of fretted instruments as well as harpsichords and other baroque instruments with plucked or hammered strings. The effect is all due to the physics of tensioned strings. It reaches its apex in the modern piano.

These "sharp partials" produce great anguish in both artists and their technicians who are required to tune the piano. One artist has commented that he never gets to practice on a a piano that is tuned properly as it must be for a concert performance. These partial tones create a set of "beats" as various tones combine with a variety of slowly changing patters of sound interference. There is no way that two strings can be "tuned" to eliminate all audible beats. In fact, a single string can produce these beats in a piano tone! Yes, it is possible that some single strings on a piano will have beats that most probably cannot be totally removed.

The source of this "trouble" is the way the string is terminated in the bridge. The stiff steel string "snakes" by steel pins driven in the bridge to form the coupling to the sound board. (Without this, the piano would not make much of a sound!) In vibrational theory this is called the impedance of the termination. This impedance is dependent on the direction of string vibration. When the hammer hits the string you would expect that the vibration would be vertical. however, close examination shows that the actual vibration is in all directions perpendicular to the string direction. When these vibrations reflect from the bridge pin, the string appears to be very slightly shorter in the vertical as compared to the horizontal direction. This difference in length causes the string to simultaneously vibrate at two (or more) slightly different frequencies, thus creating "beating"

It is no wonder at all that tuning the piano to a satisfactory artistic quality sound is a daunting task. One tuner who has great experience has said that he had tuned about 1000 pianos before he felt able to produce a professional result. This is a direct result of the very complex combination of tones produced by the strange partial tones from every string. Learning to hear these obscure beats is truly an art on a par with learning to play.

All of this is made even more complex by the introduction of the Equally Tempered Scale. In the baroque era of music it was paramount in importance to adjust the scale to relate directly to the character of the musical composition. It was highly desired that the sound have a "bright" and "clear" quality in one key and have a "dark" and "obscure" sound in another. Thus the composer had some control on the objectives of his composition. There were literally hundreds of designs for tuning. However each tuning was suitable for music in only a very few keys. As the composition of music progressed it became obvious that some compromise was needed to divorce the tuning of the instrument from the composer's selection of the key for his work. Consequently about the same time of Bach, the thrust of keyboard tuning moved to a compromise in the E.T. scale.

Equal Temperament is very democratic: all musical compositions in any arbitrary key signature sound equally BAD. There are very real and obvious troubles with the major and minor thirds. They have impressive beating effects that are very disturbing to anyone who has heard the purity of any chordal structure tuned in the long accepted JUST intonation where the objective is to eliminate all beating sounds. In equal tempering all pairs of notes with intervals of a third have beats at their primary "fundamental" frequency. It is important that adjacent pairs of thirds have their beats adjusted to uniformly increase as they are played chromatically up the scale. But, in contrast, the fifths (or fourths) will sound very nearly pure (primary fundamental tones).

These concepts have very little to do with the strange beats caused by the wild partial tones. Altogether a different concept is needed to deal with this defect. Consequently the gradual development of the "Stretched Scale". It was only a few years ago that this effect was unknown outside the close community of piano tuners. A critical investigation of the physics of actual artistic practice in tuning pianos revealed that the nearly eight octaves produced by the keyboard were tuned in a totally different way from that expected in other kinds of musical instruments.

The existence of the "sharp" partial tones caused the artist and his tuner to gradually lower the pitch of the notes below middle C (or A) and gradually increase the frequency of notes in the upper half of the keyboard. Otherwise there is a very serious musical problem: the notes outside the middle do not sound like they are part of the harmony created in the center of the keyboard. This is a direct result of the evaluation of the "total" sound of the note, including all the partials, by the human ear. The ear hears everything at once and makes a judgement on the totally harmonic "picture". If you play a triad in the center of the keyboard and then add a fundamental note in other octaves, the ear will judge the added note to be "tuned" if it is in agreement with the total sound of the one cluster in the central triad. For instance, a major chord on A-220 demands that the A-110, A-55 or A-27.5, be significantly flattened to sound like a part of the chord. Likewise, a single fundamental note at A-880 or A-1760 will sound dramatically FLAT if it is not tuned to a much higher pitch than expected. This whole effect is the essential reason that the modern piano must have "stretched" tuning.

But, exactly how much stretch? There is no "exact" answer. Every professional tuner has a different concept and result. The issue is significantly confused by the very partial tones that are the only clue to the art of tuning by ear. When aural tuning is limited to the comparison of only two notes at a time, there are some very real problems in judgement. The temperament is set in the middle octave and then the tuning is extended to upper and lower octaves. This actually increased individual tuning errors as they compound as the "beat" method "leapfrogs" to the remote ends of the keyboard.
Measurements on actual tunings show clearly that the errors become larger and more random as tuning extends away from the center of the keyboard. There is a real conflict in tuning concepts between the required beats of the thirds and the elimination of beats in the octaves. It is no wonder that learning to tune by ear alone is an art that develops only after many years of experience and serving as apprentice to a master tuner. [/b]

The design objective of the (my ETD) for keyboards was based on empirical research and historical data from several sources. The empirical research was done with a concert artist/professor and his personal aural tuner/technician. This research was confirmed by interviews with professional tuners in many different areas. The foundation of this investigation was to determine the values of the fundamental pitch of each note on the piano from tunings that were typical of pianos suitable for the performing artist. Published literature and tunings provided by major piano manufacturers were included in the study. Many measurements were made on a variety of pianos in use at the University of _________. The net result was seven different data bases that relate both the kind of piano structure and the type of music to be performed.

There is a significant difference in the tuning requirements for a piano to be used in solo performances and that for a small chamber group. In the concert solo artist tuning, the piano must have brilliance in the top octaves and a full deep sounding bass support. The listener is usually at some distance in an auditorium. The chamber music situation is vastly different. The piano must be integrated into an ensemble and blend with the sound of other instruments. In addition the tuning for small pianos in homes or churches must overcome the loss of quality with small frames and short strings. These observations lead to a totally confusing set of parameters confronting the tuning specification. One result of our research was that a qualified professional tuner was not so much influenced by the different pianos, but by this concept of the musical/artistic total sound. Individual and peculiar defects of each piano were subdued to the overall musical character of the whole instrument. Thus the (my ETD) approach is to select a particular "stretch" curve suitable for the size and quality of the piano and for it's intended use. When the fundamental pitch of each string is matched to a suitable curve, the partial tones are reduced in their diversionary contribution to the tuning adjustments.[/b]

Consequently, the (my ETD) Method includes seven different selections for the essential piano size, quality, and stretch curves. Each note on the piano for each tuning is stored on a memory chip. Direct matching of the fundamental tone to the master tuning does not require any comparison between two notes. The result is a very smooth curve of stretch over the entire keyboard. The instruction book for the tuner gives more description of each tuning and a complete listing of the data base for detailed examination. If some occasion develops such that a special curve is needed, it can be easily accomplished by using the variable frequency adjustment and the CENTS digital indicator. However, it is very likely that one of the seven tunings will be found satisfactory."

July, 2001 [i]



Here is the 2nd roll I recorded with this new tuning using a modern ETD.

"Bye Bye Pretty Baby" Played by Pauline Alpert Duo Art piano roll. https://www.box.com/s/dgacmnsiy3nf01azoug2

Hello, thanks a lot for the job on the wav file, it is cleaner (and edited, I am lazy with those things I do not master well !)

About the second roll, indeed the tonality is different but I feel the tuning is older. is it the case ? If so (a day or so assuming your pin setting is not yet "concert style") you may try to stabilize better your tuning, tuning pin and strings. Try the terrible method proposed by our colleague who plays a maximum notes on whites and sharps with his 2 forearms, move the strings and soundboard to the max before deciding the tuning is set.

But I suggest you can "build" more that medium region tone wise. If you obtain the tone less straightened it will possibly sound more defined, and possibly it will be more stable.

Once you separate the top of the spectra in tone, the attack begins to "build" , in my opinion.
The cleaner tone allow to perceive it well, physically under the fingers, that is a quality of the tone that can be noticed.

You may be tuning "too much" the unison. If at some point you stop "listening" and you try to feel the quality of the attack, as a pianist, you will notice a slight delay between immediate crash and the tone thickening, the moment "tuned" (specrtra wise) is the moment where the tone begin to stabilize. if you try to tune all at the same time it makes a sort of fight of frequencies that seem to rob much energy. The unison is really "educated" and separated in parts.

Then, you can have all energy pushing toward fundamental and left the partials moan a little (they always do in that case even if it is not immediately apparent) this makes a thick slightly damped attack and reduce the dynamics.
Or you can try to "comb the spectra" and reinforce it, incidentally it creates more sympathetic rings from the high strings (and others).
This is how a crisp attack is obtained, by the participation of other notes, for a good part (IMO).

Now, depending of the iH, the balance between fundamental and other partials may vary, allowing a more or less enlarging of the attack. It could be a good exercise to tune unison with the pedal engaged a little. it is somewhat boring, but you can perceive the top spectra way better and the stabilization of the wire is better , try it you may be surprised to obtain a better result than you think (it cut all the harshness of the attack so you are not temped to tune it)

Greetings

Glad to help.

Yes, stability is still an issue for me. For this time, the piano was so sharp from the tuning I did with the older ETD, I did not drop the pitch below, then back up to the right spot, that did not help the stability. Next time I tune it, will do that. I usually do the hard blows to the string, not sure about using my forearm strength...:)

When I do my unisons by ear, I try to get the beats out of the strings, and I listen for the decay, or however long the sound sustains, that there is no beat in that sustain/decay. Sometimes that is not possible to due to false beats, and sometimes I can tune out the false beats so they are less of a problem.

Interesting idea about slightly using the pedal...will try that. Thanks for your ideas!

With the 2 forearms one for sharps and one for white notes, push the sustain pedal and make an horrible noise by "playing" one another repeatedly ("clusters" ) !

Certainly it may check the stability !

Tuning from above is always difficult, you can massage a little the back scale before, but it is necessary to tune from below generally speaking.