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Herein lies the problem for me as a pianist and would be tuner. Many posters imply (and I agree) that each piano asks to be tuned in a particular way each time it is tuned. That would imply a single unique un-equal, non-named Temperament. But, it would also appear that one can set a named Temperament of choice in the middle register, and then listen to the piano for the required stretch in the remainder. Am I missing something here?

What the numbers tell you is that you can tune a piano in many ways. Some will be better than others but there is no indication that any single temperament or tuning is best. Quite the contrary.

Many of the pianos I tune have been tuned only a matter of hours before by me or one of my colleagues and the implied terms of our jobs are equal temperemt within specific pitch parameters. All this is decided by musicians, conductors, soloists, producers, chief concert techs. It would be incredibly arrogant of me to go against these decisions no matter how clever I think I am. It is simply not my decision to make.
If the piano meets these parameters, I am quite at liberty to walk away having done nothing. This, however is rarely the case, there is always some slight drift.

Yes, the piano dictates to us all quite precisely the way the treble lines up and I and my colleagues are in agreement and accept each others work as it stands. We are, however, completely at liberty to subtly change the character of the piano by the way we choose to tune the area we call the "long steels", (the octave below the temperament octave). Without getting pretentious about this, a quick glance at the programme or listening to the player if they are still playing when I arrive will give a hint but I am tuning according to the program, not what the piano is "telling me". That would be almost like saying I do what the voices in my head are telling me.
The long steels are the most flexible part of the piano and are the first notes to drift so they always need some attention anyway.

Having said that, the way the covered strings are tune depends on how they were wound so it could be said the piano is telling me but it is really the string winder that is dictating the parameters and, depending how old the piano is, quite possibly from beyond the grave!!!

As someone in these pages said a couple of years ago, don't anthropomorphise pianos, they hate it when you do that.

Ian,

All three are non-ET. I am not sure of the exact names of the temperaments on the 'M's,' but the 'C' is EBVT-III. The big differences I hear are the ways the temperament scales evolve as they expand from the temperament octave on each piano. My conjecture is that is where "listening to the piano" comes into play. I have my 'C' tuned with the temperament octave set from A-4 rather than middle C. That makes a huge difference, and is really evident in the voice of the larger piano.

I have wondered, though never tried, if there would be a difference if the temperament octave were centered on A-3 rather than A-4? Maybe some of our esteemed professionals could venture an opinion?

BTW - All three of my pianos are tuned to A-442.

It's a bit disturbing with people talking about just intonation, that nobody mentions the commas. The pythagorean comma, and the syntotic comma, being the driving force between finding suitable keyboard temperaments. Those are the source of the need to compromise intervals. Just the fact that twelve times 3/2 is not the same as seven times two is problematic.

Edit: 3/2 to the twelfth is not the same as two to the seventh. Thanks, BDB. Also, my last sentence was nonsense anyway.

Should be 3/2 to the 12th is not 2 to the 7th.

Greetings,
If the difference is huge, it must be easy to describe is some detail. What is the difference that that different temperament octaves make?
Regards,

Hi Ed,

Words still become a problem with sonic descriptions. From your past postings, I understand that you appreciate the 'color' of different keys which develop from non-ET tunings. Imagine the colorations of the different keys with C as the center of the temperament octave. C-Major is the 'still' key. Now shift those same offsets centered from A. Suddenly C-Major is a very different beast.

Orchestra musicians are totally focused on A being the center of the universe. It's the string thing. Just conjecture, but could Well Temperament, if we even know what it really is, be thought of as coming from A rather than C? Familiar key color is drastically changed. Some good, some bad, but all different to the ear.

I didn't hear these things until I requested that the temperament be centered from A on one of my pianos. Needless to say, this was new to my tuner also, and he really tried to talk me out of it. As a reference, he used the A-442 tuning fork that I keep in my flute case. The results were very audible.

Since then, I have performed the Beethoven Concerto No. 4 (G-Major) in Prague and the tuner also tempered from A. Unlike the rushed rehearsal/performance schedule in the US, in Eastern and Northern Europe, you actually have the chance to work with and get to know the tuners. This tuner indicated that with a Wind Ensemble, he sets the temperament from Bb.

You might give it a try and find out the differences that you hear as you play in different keys. It becomes a very different world in the Chopin Etudes and the WTC.

Marty,
Regarding the temperament centre choice, my reading of history seems to indicate that C has been the centre for most UTs and WTs, hence the preponderance of music written in keys closely related to C (G, D, Am ). If they had been centred on A, the majority of works would have been written in A, E, B and F#m.

You raise an interesting point. I will ask the tuner for Tafelmusik, who tunes Valotti, what centre he uses. The orchestra tunes on A, but the continuo strings tune each string to the corresponding organ or harpsichord note.

When I get up the courage to change my piano from quasi-ET to a well, I will centre it on C.

Mwm,

The preponderance of compositions in the keys you list is the ease of performance, rather than tuning temperament. It's where beginning students start, and for the overwhelming majority of pianists, it is still the comfort zone. G-Maj. and F-Maj. are the second easiest keys and they are pretty far from C.

I mean, ya know, who wants to bother to comprehend double sharps and flats and play those key signatures with lots of stuff that looks scary anyway. Then there is the problem of starting a scale on a black key! Egad-fingering! It's just plain easier for all but advanced players.

The whole temperament thing leads one to become a mindless mass of quivering gelatin with the realization that D#-Major should sound different from Eb-Major. But, alas, the best that can be done is a non-equal temperament. ET sucks the life out of what little remains.

Do you have any sources citing the references to C as the historical temperament center? I would love to do further reading.

Cheers,

I find C# major to be the key that fits most easily under my hands. I love improvising in it. But reading it is a nightmare!

If you check rollingball.com, for example, most of the temperaments except ET show minimal temperament of intervals in keys near C and highest temperament in the keys near F# . It implies that C is the base for historic temperaments. All other historical documents I have read which give instructions on tuning use C as the starting point.

It doesn't get any more subjective than this.

Most of us are taught first piano lessons in C major; accordingly, it becomes an auto-basis for sensing flat and sharp. Setting my ET to the C fork seemed like a natural - and it worked quite well - later extending to "between the breaks" - but C always remained the basis.

Just look at an UT and it will be readily apparent that the vast majority are centred on C.
Modern instructions for constructing a temperament only start on A because that is the note used for specifying pitch. They may start on A but are tonally centred mostly on C.

Well, well, Reverse Well! I have been quite busy recently and had seen this topic but not had time to jump in. So, I am glad someone else gratuitously made the very first comment I might have. Most (9 in 10 at the least) aural tunings which one would swear on a stack of Bibles, a couple of Korans and a Torah to boot to be ET are in fact, Reverse Well!

I certainly did skip through all of the numbers postings because they mean nothing to me either. Surely, I recognize tuning program numeric data but all of the theoretical numbers are just that, numbers. What matters is what the piano is actually tuned to!

I find it an especially opportune time to say that what I have said all along is no joke. It is the unfortunate reality. I received an urgent call yesterday to tune a Steinway Model D for a concert today. (Sunday Concert Tuning!) The usual aural tuner not being available for a very regularly tuned instrument. What did I find? You guessed it, Reverse Well!

I temper that remark by saying that at least, this time, it was not a very blatant example of it, perhaps Victorian Reverse Well if there could be such a thing but I have often been quite surprised at how really Reverse some of the Reverse Well temperaments I have encountered could be!

And they were all deemed to be, believed to be, meant to be attempted to be, sworn to be, foot stomping madly proclaimed to be and paid for to be ET!

The reason why? One sole publication: Piano and Allied Arts by William Braide White. It should really be entitled, "A Recipe for Reverse Well" because that is what it truly is and has become. Surely not for every last piano technician, no.

The most enlightened of these found information elsewhere that facilitated the supplementary knowledge required to actually tune some semblance of ET but for most, the truncated instructions found on a couple of pages in the middle of the book were all that were ever studied or retained.

What is most important about that book was not what was in in it but what it deliberately left out! That was the infinitely large gap between 1/4 Comma Meantone (which was basically laughed at as being thoroughly useless) and the supposed ideal of the glorious ET! Complete freedom of modulation! AH! Each pitch unequivocally equidistant from the other! AH! The "Final Solution" AH!

Forget that all 16th Century music to the present is basically tonal. We need atonality! (So that maybe somebody might come along and play some kind of weird, atonal music and we would never hear it whenever they modulated). All key signatures should sound equal! We need to be able to play in ALL the keys, not just some! (And to do that, we must destroy all semblance of key color). A neutral palette. AH! One where all expression is either louder faster or slower and softer but NEVER from key signature!

The unfortunate result is that from the single minded, heck bent orientation to complete equality of temperament, the favoring and desire for a pure fifth has prevailed. Since that pure fifth cannot exist entirely throughout the circle of fifths, it is placed on the OPPOSITE side of the circle of fifths from where it had been in all Well Tempered Tunings!

Most piano technicians today have no knowledge whatsoever about what a Well Tempered Tuning really is. All they know is that they would never do that. Unfortunately what they also don't know is that in the quest for a purer sounding fifth, they inevitably create the unintended and unrecognized MONSTER known as Reverse Well!

Reverse Well is tuned in homes, churches, schools, piano dealerships and concert halls everywhere. It has been throughout the entire 20th Century. People have grown up with pianos tuned in Reverse Well! Not just in certain places but everywhere! They have become accustomed to a kind of atonality imposed by reverse tonality. Everything sounds out of tune and that is the norm! In recent years, it is only the ETD that has curtailed that trend.

We can go back to William Braid White and thank him for at least one thing, his suggestion that we all buy a Strobe Tuner! Since very few people could ever really tune a true ET following his instructions, the Strobe Tuner might be the best we could actually do!

Thankfully, it took the work of the late Dr. Al Sanderson (a Harvard University Scientist) in compilation with a man who actually understood aural tuning, Mr. Bill Garlick, RPT (former instructor at the North Bennett Street School of Piano Technology and subsequently as the Education Director at the Steinway Factory in New York) to actually facilitate the tuning of ET with the use of an ETD so that the majority of people who tune pianos could actually produce a temperament that is not in fact, Reverse Well!

Recently (in the past few weeks), I have been dismayed to read on the PTG Tuning Examiner exclusive blog about examiners not being able to find other RPT's who know the most basic of ET tuning checks! All otherwise well qualified technicians have abandoned aural tuning altogether and forgotten any aural tuning checks for ET they may have once known and practiced!

It all boils down to a definition of ET that does not match the science of it it any way, shape or form! All of the theoretical numbers produced on previous pages here are candles in the wind! They bear no relationship whatsoever to what piano technicians actually do on a day to day basis, not even to what the best of us do when we perform our finest work!

That is not to say that theoretical calculations are useless, it is only to say that when it comes down to it as a practical matter they will be completely ignored!

For a period of about 20 years, I refused entirely to tune any piano in ET! If ET had really and truly been a requirement, I would have either been out of business very shortly or forced to change course. What I found instead was that the majority of my clients found a Well Tempered Tuning to be more musically satisfying. That extended to professional artists and concert stages as well.

Today, I believe that any piano technician should have a versatile and adaptable set of skills and techniques to be able to respond to any request or demand from a client. I truly believe in the power of Cycle of 5ths based temperament. There is no doubt about that in my mind. I worked for many years to perfect a system that worked and could be easily replicated. I have many enthusiasts and followers of that system.

Whether anyone uses the Well Temperament system I developed or not, is not my primary concern. There are many Well Temperaments, Meantone and Modified Meantone temperaments available. The temperament I am most well known for was designed mostly for ease of replication but as it turns out, the Equal Beating properties it has have their own specific benefits. I also use other temperaments when I sense the need for them. I respond as well for specific requests for a specific temperament.

To say that one will use only one method, one temperament, one amount of octave stretch on EVERY piano, regardless of circumstances to me is self-limiting to the point of being self destructive! Pianos are by their very nature different, one from another. The way in which they are used and enjoyed is also different from one circumstance to another.

It simply does not make sense to impose a "one size fits all" policy on each of them. It makes far less sense to impose a misguided attempt at ET that results in Reverse Well on any of them!

It seems odd that someone would spend 1300 words writing about something that most of his customers apparently cannot differentiate.

There are so many other things that go wrong with pianos. It seems a shame to waste so much energy on temperament, which is no more than a preference.

Based on C

That said older music I (mean before Internet) is played with A=415 Hz , half a tone lower.

Phew ! I did not realize, the situation begins to be severe .

An interesting movie could be done "a journey in the head of the piano tuner" !!! (really ! no joking, that would be an instructive document for apprentice, some may understand it may be necessary to know about some music to be a piano tuner)

your phrasing made me smile right !

Am I missing something? G and F are as close to C as one can get.

We perform French Baroque music at A=392 Hz.