Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum So in tune that it sounds terrible

The piano is a musical instrument. Tune it so it sounds musical and forget the math, theoretical essoterica, and illusionary perfection.

+1. You, my friend, get the cigar!

+1

There is a variation of tuning on guitars and the term "slack tuning", used loosely,lowers the pitch a half step and many famous songs are played this way. Two that come right to mind are Patience by GNR and Round N Round by Ratt. Maybe not the best song examples for this forum but they come right top mind.

The reason I state this is the Beatles purposely altered standard tunings and threw some notes out of tune from the rest for the purpose of the song but also played others in perfect tune.

If one uses Tunlabs or similar device to tune the pitch and the unisons, I could see the problem you mention as the tuning becomes machine perfect and not ear perfect. Not to mention, I don't even see how a Tunelab tuning could be good strictly using the software. One is then adding a via to the ear. That being the graphical interface through the eyes.

I think a concert pianist would like his piano to be tuned ET and unisons sounding perfectly together for the ear.

This is my experience as well.

I like the sound of a piano perfectly tuned in inharmonicity balanced ET. I am also not bothered by a tuning that was once like that but is now a few weeks old. The first case above sounds stunningly in tune. The second case sounds solidly in tune. I don't sense much of a musical difference between them. They both work well.

I hear some piano recordings where the tuning is stunningly perfect and others where it is out of tune noticeably. Still in both these cases the musicianship and dynamics of the instrument trump the musical significance of the tuning.

SOME Pianos are... Some tuners are, others do their best and sometime it is not much.

But as long as you can learn something, you are not finished

Nice nursery sceance BTW I would not expect better ...

I think I would have said, "it is like an organ with speakers instead of pipes.

You may not be thinking correctly. One cannot assume what concert pianists would like unless you are a concert pianist. The preferences are as varied as there are tuning temperaments.

In my thirteen years tuning pianos for the Seattle Symphony-not one single pianist requested anything other than a solid, stable tuned, voiced, and regulated piano. In my sixteen years as head technician at the Seattle Steinway dealership- not one pianist requested anything other than the scenario my first sentence described.
Certainly there are pianist's interested by alternative tunings-but one CAN safely assume that unless they make the effort to establish the tuning specifications in advance of the event-solid, inharmonicity corrected equal temperament, with perfect as possible unisons is what they expect.

Mr. McMorrow,

That seems to be the American viewpoint of "take what I give you and be happy." Some top level pianists might accept that attitude, while others do not. On the whole, I find more flexibility when working with European tuners.

Ever tune for Peter Serkin or his father?

To make an assumption about what concert pianists would prefer is very different than accepting what they are given.

Excellent point. Could it be that, when, on tour, many pianists are willing to accept whatever is given them, especially for concerto work, just to get it over with. That is not to say the don't give their all to the music, just that the tuning is not foremost on their mind.

I think that it is far more likely that they do not know the difference. I never hear of a pianist complaining that the temperament that another instrument that they are playing with is different, and yet it always is. People judge tuning by intervals, not by temperament. Equal temperament is a good compromise.

All temperaments are a compromise. Intervals are what define a temperament, and the quality of the tuning is then assessed from that given compromise.

A highly skilled pianist can certainly hear the difference between an ET or a UT. We may not be able to name the temperament, but we sure can hear it!

In general, I agree with BDB and Marty. I play on many different UTs and quasi-ETs, but I couldn't name them if I heard them, or even if on comparison, if one was UT and the other ET when playing the same piece of music. Testing the piano for intervals, of course, is an easy way to tell what is what.

True of the concert pianists who have performed here as well - at least those whom I have knowledge of. In fact, very few made any requests at all, and if so it usually had to do with voicing to their particular taste. Only twice was I asked for a different pitch: once, at A441 and the other, to pull down to A435. The A441 request was for either a Steinway D or Baldwin SD10, which I accommodated. The A435 request was for an old Yamaha C, for a chamber program, which I refused to do.

There are some that are fairly close. But there are some I can pretty much guarantee you could pick out after you've played on an instrument tuned that way.... even with some of the milder UTs.

For instance, tune a piano in the Hummel(sp?) "the Viennese" and try to play some darkest, most brooding Romantic music you know on it. Once you have had that experience, I guarantee you will be able to tell if a temperament is "the Viennese" or a close relative in the future.
(Edit: I'm sorry it took so long for me to do this edit. I had work to go to. I do not promise that playing this type of music on a piano tuned in the Viennese temperament will be a positive experience, only that it will be a memorable experience.)

Tune a piano in Moscow's EBPT of 1895 and then play it. In the future, though you may not know for certain that is is specifically the EBPT just by playing, you will at least be able to pick out that the temperament belongs to the Pythagorean family of temperaments.

Wells can be more challenging because there are so many and they can vary so much in strength.

C'mon Marty, where in the world have you been able to breeze into any concert of recital hall and demand the piano be retuned to a different temperament?

While i don't name drop, I have tuned for many of the same pianists whose name gets dropped on the cause of UT's. They never ask for unusual temperaments. Most of the time I'm tuning at another venue by the time they come to rehearse. We rarely meet them unless they're so damn nervous they run their practice time into our tuning slot.

I have read newspaper articles about them in reference to some temperament or other. There always seems to be some pushy tuner mentioned in the same article. Have you noticed? .....Wanna buy a bridge?.

If you really wanted an unusual temperament for a concert you would have to go through the hall management. They have experience of all sorts of loony requests (it is loony to them). Often it is pitch change that is requested, never temperament and I get asked about the feasibility sometimes if they seem willing to pay for the extra tunings. They always forget the cost of retunings back to normal afterwards.

Don't forget the audience and other musicians involved.

Compared to the thousands, if not millions attending concerts all over the world tonight and every night of the year and the thousands of musicians involved. On this forum there are approx. 6 advocates of UT.

Welcome to the real world.