Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum Do we hear 'in tune' intervals by size or beats?

Yes. I too remember the days of the sharp lead trumpet, sharp piccolo, sharp fiddles, sopranos that can't hear the accompanying unit anyway.
Indeed, we speak of those things with disdain. In my days we were beginning to recognise how unnecessary it all was and coined the phrase, better to be sharp than out of tune.

We might be happy that finally, something is being done about it, well, at least here over the past 20-30 years. Do we realise that while we disdain their sharpness, they also disdain sharp piano trebles. What was once taboo is now being openly discussed at the point of creation.

We are all, particularly since the digital age where a retake is not complicated nor expensive, musicians, who were once worked to death with minimum rehearsals are now being respected and given the chance to hear their work and re- record. Piano tuners, too can hone the piano during rehearsal takes. (I remember the tapes running during the whole session and if the first take was good enough, that was it. There was a fen minute long march, at the end of which I played the last notE and it wasn't the prettiest note I ever played. It was something only another trumpet player would notice but they used just the last four measures at the end of the 11 o'clock news every night and I was teased mercilessly about it until they re-recorded it and I was on that session too so I was, even then, given a re-take but it was ten months later.

The last 15-20 years have been glorious for musicians and piano tuners for simply being paid to get things right. Lot of tune and attend recording sessions lasting days. Those days are passing, I sense, with the recent world finance mismanagement. It's beginning to affect the recording industry but I can look back and forward and say I am not part of the problem, I am part of the cure.

How do we all stand. Are we part of the problem or are we part of the cure? There's no fence to sit on.

Sorry, I don't recognise the problem. Do stretched octaves cause physical pain or something?

About the above tunings, to my ear the first is just plain bad tuning, the second seems to me to be particularly flat in the some of the treble octaves, and the third example is glorious.

I agree with the shooter, not my favourite pianist for Debussy.

Thanks Bill for the recording. I really like the gentle shimmering quality of Db.

Yes.

Actually, this thread deserves more than that......some random thoughts. ...

This phenomenon is an example of how notes can be as much as forty cents sharp without being heard as beats.

The saxophone clip a few posts ago is unevenly and excruciatingly sharp without being heard as beats except here and there. I don't know what it was supposed to be a shining example of.

Do we get used to hearing excessive sharpness as "in tune"? I was once sent out to a brand new piano because the owners claimed it smelled bad. As I walked up to the door there was this pervading smell of cheap floral deodorant which was overpowering inside the house. I lifted the lid of the piano and was relieved by that wonderful smell of a new piano that lifts my spirits every time I walk into a piano store first thing in the morning. To them, it was not nice compared to the cheap smell they had got used to. Is it a similar phenomenon to getting used to excessive stretch? I suspect it is. (now why did my autocorrect change stretch to stench?

It is painful to listen to trebles that are tuned by melodic estimation of octaves and arpeggios. . Always, some notes are excruciating sharp (sometimes flat) by ten or more beats. I pointed this out to a tuner I employed and he genuinely couldn't hear what to me was so ugly. I continued to employ him because he was otherwise a really good tuner. Eventually he began to recognise the problem. There's a Grieg concerto on uTube that opens with one of those sharp octaves. A German recording. Those guys are supposedly trained to the nth degree and still it happens. It is entirely possible for a tuner to be part of the problem and not know it.

There is much more to tuning octaves than melodic considerations. The clean, non wobbly attack of an octave for contemporary music. I tuned a Hamburg D using clean octaves on Tuesday. The piano has phenomenal depth of tone but was on a marble floor in cathedral acoustics for a contemporary music concert. That afternoon, the same piano was used for a rehearsal of the "trout" 5tet with musicians who can be relied on to report the least trace of flatness...... Not a murmer from them. Of course, the basics of a tuning have to be extremely accurately laid so that all other intervals would work throughout the piano. It slows down the wobbling of temperament. Another advantage.

There is a way of introducing wider octaves while keeping the illusion of clean octaves. It involves tuning from a completed unison. This was taught to me at Blüthners and was the subject of a lunch discussion with Virgil Smith some years ago. I mentioned it here once but it was ridiculed by some idiot who was at one time, intent on demonising every word I wrote on this forum. Fortunately, people change.

One of my colleagues has the cleanest top octave I ever heard. All the 17ths are an easily distinguishable ripple. I don't get the logic of this tradition of tuning the top octaves even sharper. They're already a quarter tone sharP with a capital P as this autocorrect would have it.

I must thank those who question the importance of this phenomenon. It's of no consequence to me whether or not it is of any consequence to others. It is of consequence to me in my work. Your comments prove the existence of this phenomenon to those tuners and musicians who only have a fuzzy grasp of it all.

Is it the fuzzy grasp that caused the "findings" of the scientific community to tell the tuners that they were tuning sharp? Did this get interpreted as we have to tune sharp? It's all a fuzzy notion among more people than I thought. People who I thought should have a solid grasp of the subject matter turn out not to, judging by the questions they ask and the crass judgements they make.

So I'm becoming a bit if a geek about this. Who else would reference 2-3 etd's while tuning by ear in order to examine the extent of the phenomena in different instruments? I freely admit to it.

Consider this, which is the most readily heard in a sensibly tone regulated piano.., the eighth partial of D4 or the second partial of D6??. (experienced tuners will know why I picked D7 for this example). Even anETD gives me a mere questioning glance even when it is set to the frequency of the eighth partial. That's all I'm going to say. I know some thinkin' an listenin' tuners reading this will know what I'm getting at.

I get the chance to spend more than thirty hours on just one basic tuning on some of the finest pianos in the world. Perhaps I've nothing better to do.

Every time I refine the tuning on one of these 9', I have a totally fresh ear, having not had to spend time on the basic grunt work tuning.bits amazing how ear tiring that can be. I take only a short time so I can't get stale. I look forward to each one. How can fine work be expected after an hour of doing the grunt work? Our employers know this.

If this sounds elitist, so be it. except that thirty five years ago, in addition to his concert rental stock, I daily tuned two or three examples of one model of Wurlitzer spinet from a domestic rental stock of well over a hundred of them. I became the same way about those Wurlitzer spinets.
I also used to have private clients who called me when they were good n ready. Their pianos rarely needed more than the same kind of simple refinement every few months or few years. Pianos left to float a little above pitch will amost never need a complete pitch raise. Working smart let's me fulfill all my obligations to one of my contracts in just a couple of hours a few mornings a week.

I only say this because there was a thread called "why bother" and tuners freely admitted to not taking care of the details. I work the same hours as the cleaners who sometimes ask if the pianos need that much attention. I simply ask how much more work would it be if the public rooms were not cleaned for a couple of days.
A hairdresser friend of mine surprised me when he told me of his regular early morning clientele of salesmen who had a professional haircut every working day!!!

It is by taking care of the details that the work becomes easy.

rxd - Thanks for your post. I enjoy reading about the experiences of professional tuners that are posted here. You are indeed fortunate to be able to refine tunings as opposed to always having to create tunings.

In defence of Joshua Redman, and I may well be wrong, I think he deliberately plays the passage you mentioned for effect - to create pain/uneasiness in the listener's ear. He seems to use pitch bending as a creative tool, as he also plays 'in tune' at what seems to be appropriate times. I say this as a classical musician who likes jazz, so not a well substantiated opinion.

Of course. Jazz musicians use quarter tones, play notes off the ET, or anyT path on purpose, etc., for effect.

I haven't listened to the recording you are talking about, but uninformed opinion of another professional musician's purposefull choice of intonation or any other effect, is not rare.

The thing that is rare is the comment "he is doing something new and unheard of before, but I am not a costumed to it yet". They get more "he (she) sucks".

Story:
My high school music teacher friend was driving with his music department head. He had Charlie Parker playing. Her comment: "That sounds like crap to me". Remember, this is the Head of the Music Department!

I am very grateful to Joshua Redman. I was part of a consortium promoting several Jazz concerts. This was in my playing days which encompassed many forms of jazz. He filled 2000+ seats twice for us. This was before his first downbeat album of the year. His rise was meteoric.

Yes the deliberate flat and bent notes are obvious as is the repetition of a phrase, getting it more in tune with each repetition. A neat trick if it was intentional. I also recognise the extra purely emotional "excitement" from being sharp.
" Better sharp than out of tune" we used to joke.

Having doubled on saxophone, I also know the vagaries of tenor sax intonation , particularly in the high register. My hero worship is not as forgiving as most. He was much more in tune when I heard him live. At least the first show.

Hi Prout,

Thank you for your reply. As usual, some questions arise.

You say: .."...to my ear the first is just plain bad tuning..", would you say that you can/should acclimate to that tuning?



To my ear, the tuning in Kees' post sounds like a very bad tuning, if not worse. Even knowing that it is an attempt to a historical tuning does not help, it still sounds very bad.

As in your case, perhaps, I do not need "beats"; although to different individual level of accuracy, many musicians I have met and I simply hear that something... it is not 'in tune', that it is flat or sharp, that a note belongs to a different "pitch family", sounding foreign to the harmonic and melodic order.

Yes, you can always add some sort of 'rational', that is the 'effect'..., that is 'emotions'..., but (in a classical environment) only to a certain extent. You should see what happens in La Scala, when a singer offers a 'special' effect, a vast part of the audience there can 'hear' a lot.

I had found a very nice violin artist from the east, I will try to find it again on YT.

Regards, a.c.
.

Good morning rxd. I will defer to your judgement, based on your experience, regarding Joshua's intonation. I just finished a performance where the violinist played consistently sharp in the first half of the first movement, then calmed down and played 'in tune'. I can imagine the frustration of doubling where both instruments have inherently different pitch scaling even though both are based on ET.

Buongiorno Alfredo,

I think we will just have to agree that each of us can enjoy a different approach to tuning that seems 'in tune' to us. A 'well tuned' ET sounds fine to me, just not as interesting as a 'well tuned' UT. The key difference for me is that I expect to hear a progressive increase in tension or scintillation in the sound as the key in which the work is composed or to which it is modulating moves further away from C.

I am not sure what would constitute a tuning (not considering poor unisons, or octaves as in the case of the harp example) that would be clearly out of tune for both of us, except perhaps RW.

In answer to the original question: Both. Good tuning is more than just "hearing" beats.

"Both" is what I am now learning, much to my dismay. I dislike that I now hear the piano 'tuneness' more than the music. I am trying to disassociate the tuning from the music, but it is hard to do.

Hi rxd,

You wrote: ..."Do we get used to hearing excessive sharpness as "in tune"? I was once sent out to a brand new piano because the owners claimed it smelled bad. As I walked up to the door there was this pervading smell of cheap floral deodorant which was overpowering inside the house. I lifted the lid of the piano and was relieved by that wonderful smell of a new piano that lifts my spirits every time I walk into a piano store first thing in the morning. To them, it was not nice compared to the cheap smell they had got used to. Is it a similar phenomenon to getting used to excessive stretch? I suspect it is. (now why did my autocorrect change stretch to stench?"...

Hmmm..., I would try to make a distinction: there might be those who end up getting used to 'excessive sharpness', and those who wont. I tend to believe that some of us (amongst musicians and tuners) have a very demanding 'ear', others (passing through different levels) simply do not. Perhaps the latter do not even condider that as an issue.

..."It is painful to listen to trebles that are tuned by melodic estimation of octaves and arpeggios. . Always, some notes are excruciating sharp (sometimes flat) by ten or more beats. I pointed this out to a tuner I employed and he genuinely couldn't hear what to me was so ugly. I continued to employ him because he was otherwise a really good tuner. Eventually he began to recognise the problem. There's a Grieg concerto on uTube that opens with one of those sharp octaves. A German recording. Those guys are supposedly trained to the nth degree and still it happens. It is entirely possible for a tuner to be part of the problem and not know it."...

Yes, I understand that for you this is a recurrent issue: too many pianos are tuned too sharp in the treble, but I am not sure we can solve that issue only with words... That is why I am suggesting a 'beat' reference standard in the other thread.

..."There is much more to tuning octaves than melodic considerations. The clean, non wobbly attack of an octave for contemporary music. I tuned a Hamburg D using clean octaves on Tuesday. The piano has phenomenal depth of tone but was on a marble floor in cathedral acoustics for a contemporary music concert. That afternoon, the same piano was used for a rehearsal of the "trout" 5tet with musicians who can be relied on to report the least trace of flatness...... Not a murmer from them. Of course, the basics of a tuning have to be extremely accurately laid so that all other intervals would work throughout the piano. It slows down the wobbling of temperament. Another advantage."...

What do you mean by "the wobbling of temperament"?

..."There is a way of introducing wider octaves while keeping the illusion of clean octaves. It involves tuning from a completed unison. This was taught to me at Blüthners and was the subject of a lunch discussion with Virgil Smith some years ago."...

Well, that is certainly a method that works well for you, though I think that 'methods' should be discussed on the basis of actual results.

..."I mentioned it here once but it was ridiculed by some idiot who was at one time, intent on demonising every word I wrote on this forum. Fortunately, people change."...

What is the point of insulting partecipants, why do you write those lines, lack of arguments? I do not understand.

Hmmm... Why am I the only one to complain? I do not understand.

..."One of my colleagues has the cleanest top octave I ever heard. All the 17ths are an easily distinguishable ripple. I don't get the logic of this tradition of tuning the top octaves even sharper. They're already a quarter tone sharP with a capital P as this autocorrect would have it."...

Yes, BTW, were you saying that a piano can only sound sharp, because of iH?

In general I would agree with you, there is no reason for tuning the trebles sharp... mind you, nor flat.

..."I must thank those who question the importance of this phenomenon. It's of no consequence to me whether or not it is of any consequence to others. It is of consequence to me in my work. Your comments prove the existence of this phenomenon to those tuners and musicians who only have a fuzzy grasp of it all."...

Here in London, as it was in Italy, I find pianos that are sharp and/or flat, no surprise at all.

..."Is it the fuzzy grasp that caused the "findings" of the scientific community to tell the tuners that they were tuning sharp? Did this get interpreted as we have to tune sharp? It's all a fuzzy notion among more people than I thought. People who I thought should have a solid grasp of the subject matter turn out not to, judging by the questions they ask and the crass judgements they make."...

Well, now you know.

I think we have well gone off Topic... To All, have a nice Sunday.

Regards, a.c.
.

Hi Prout,

You wrote: ..."...The key difference for me is that I expect to hear a progressive increase in tension or scintillation in the sound as the key in which the work is composed or to which it is modulating moves further away from C."...

So, what is it for you? Expecting a certain intonation or being acclimated to a certain tuning?

..."I am not sure what would constitute a tuning (not considering poor unisons, or octaves as in the case of the harp example) that would be clearly out of tune for both of us, except perhaps RW."...

To me, it is not clear why you should not be able to acclimate to 'out of tune' tunings. On the other hand, I believe we both would be able to recognize a wonderful tuning.

Welcome to The Club
Sounds like you have "The Right Stuff."

It is not an "attempt". It is the tuning the piece was written for, which was the (known) standard of the time. You will find it on thousands of CD's of kbd music of this period.

I believe if you would buy Sweelincks's book, and play this in 1/4' meantone on a harpsichord every day for a week, you will start liking it. If you then go back to ET you will dislike that. Until you reacclimatize to it again.

Kees

Kees,

I am not sure the recipe you propose can represent the solution in my case, although I would like to think so.

Many customers (dayly players) know their piano sounds weird, and yet they wait for months, perhaps for a few years before they call a piano tuner. Why don't they (re)start liking their out of tune piano, in a lapse of time that is much much wider than a week? Why don't they acclimatize to it? Should they read a book? These customers themselves tell you that the piano is 'quite' out of tune, and perhaps the reason why they had to wait so long will follow.

Hmmm... Your theory would be simpler... which is something I like. Parallel, I tend to believe that some of us are able to sense better where the spot is. You would make it a question of habit or exposure, and perhaps 'historical' awareness; I would think it is 'predisposition', it is 'musical ear' and hearing, where some do better than others.

These two 'explainations' would not be exclusive, in case there isn't any predisposition (is this word correct?), it may well happen what you picture.

Regards, a.c.

P.S.: Please note, I would never ask my customers to acclimatize.

I see some hyperbole being written here. A quarter tone sharp would mean 50 cents. Here are the figures from a Master Tuning Record of a Yamaha G7 for the 7th octave where the octaves are required to be tuned as a 2:1 type. That means, of course that the fundamental of the note in the 7th octave must be in a beatless unison with the 2nd partial of the corresponding note in the 6th octave.

The only reason that the figures seem to take such a quantum leap is that the 2nd partial of the notes in the 6th octave is many times over more inharmonic than any of the notes in the 3rd and 4th octave. I know that to be true from studying scale design.

Most musicians and piano technicians would consider the following to sound way too flat:

C7: 8.1
C#7: 9.0
D7: 9.4
D#7: 13.3
E7: 16.4
F7: 19.2
F#7: 16.4
G7: 21.8
G#7: 26.2
A7: 26.9
A#7: 33.7
B7: 30.4
C8: 35.0 (extrapolated because C8 is not tested on the exam)

The above is far short of "already a quarter tone sharp".

While I do not want to diminish the wisdom that comes from experience, I also know of the tendency to exaggerate. The fact is that no matter what one does with the 7th octave, it will be "out of tune" with something below it, in the most literal sense of "of of tune". In the above example, those pitches will be perfectly in tune with the notes which are an octave below it, yes.

However, I have often seen the tendency of a piano technician to only please him or herself while banging on octaves and making them sound as pure as gold but ignoring entirely the fact that the note being tuned is out of tune with each and every note related to it, the lower one goes, the worse out of tune it is!

To me, that is no different from what John Travis identified as the "tendency to err towards the just 5th". In one's zeal to conquer the Pythagorean Comma, one ends up instead creating Reverse Well. Tuning "pure" octaves does very much the same dishonor to the piano and all music to be played upon it. The octave-fifth is out of tune, the double octave is more out of tune, the double octave-fifth even more and the triple octave beating quite badly and quite narrow.

The Grieg A-minor concerto is a great example to hold up as to how well or how badly a piano can sound under the spotlight. When someone says that there is some German recording on You Tube that is too sharp, wouldn't it be a good idea to post a link to that to exemplify it? Wouldn't it also be a good idea to show a link to what is considered a good example? The excuse of "I don't listen to recorded music" coming from the same person who says in another post that he gets paid to listen to recorded music just does not compute!

There are dozens of examples of Grieg's A minor piano concerto on You Tube. Some are so bad that I would not want anyone to bother with them. I never heard any that sounded like they may be in Reverse Well, by the way, but I also only listened to just a little of the opening phrases, not enough to expose that if it happened to be the case.

Unfortunately, I see RXD trying to lead us down the path to what Lawrence Welk preferred, "straight to the strobe". All theoretical frequencies for ET across the board. Only then, when we finally find that holy grail will all music sound "in tune", as far as he is concerned. It will only sound in tune then because nothing will be in tune with anything but it will all be equally out of tune with everything! The final solution as Isaac Isakoff put it. Destroy it all by making one smooth slurry out of it!

All music of any type or style from any era all being funneled into that one, singular idea of what would solve everything! Then slam your fist down upon it and stomp your boot into its face! "You want to see a a vision of the future, Winston? Imagine a boot stepping on a face forever!" (George Orwell: 1984)

The only "music" we would ever hear would be sanctioned and "pitch corrected" with software that would remove any natural "impurities" from it. There would only be one Major and one minor key. Modulations would be meaningless. Eventually, the piano itself would be phased out as being obsolete because it cannot, in fact, conform to the New World Order of music as seen by people like Isaac Isacoff and apparently, RXD, the nameless and faceless "Big Brother" of piano tuning.

You do not know RXD. You do not know who he is or what he looks like. He will never produce an example of his own work but he will always tell you that whatever you do does not meet his standards. He is above questioning and answers to no one but tells everyone what is right and what is wrong. He will not even stoop to providing a link to what he considers to be good but he will condemn everything there is.

He will not say which CD to buy or video to watch that has the ideal sound on it that he writes about so frequently but he is unquestionably in charge of all that is produced to which he approves. All of what is good and standard. All of which has been arrived at by consensus over so many decades.

With that in mind, I made several selections from You Tube of the Grieg A minor concerto, none of which I found totally pleasing but some better than others but all having a different quality. If every piano technician is tuning pianos the same way, there could not be this much difference from one recording to the next, so it obviously does mean that we all approach the art of piano tuning in a slightly different manner.

In this German recording of the Grieg, A minor concerto from 1972, the pitch seems quite high but the piano sounds flat. The recording techniques are poor compared to what we have today but disregarding that, I think this piano sounds sick!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dj-NlCR5Qkg

In this version, the piano sounds a bit sharp but not overly so. The voicing is just so bright.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1aigWuBlgg

Here, is more of the same very bright voicing but really getting up there on the sharpness!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF0WaXEf0xM

In this 1975 London Philharmonic recording with Arthur Rubenstein, I more or less expected a dull sounding piano and poor recording but the piano sounded amazingly good. I just felt that Rubenstein was too sluggish.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFPNtudd-Ro

I found this more recent recording with Evgeny Kissin to have the overall best piano sound and the overall orchestra recorded sound to be good too but not the best I have heard.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lO-H37t1fQQ

One must also bear in mind the question of the Original Poster when contemplating why instrumentalists such as violinists seem to creep sharper the higher they go on the fingerboard. There does remain the enigmatic desire of the ear to hear the higher pitches much sharper than they should theoretically be.

In that respect, no one could ever tune the high treble of a piano sharp enough! This description that I have seen written of "bleating octaves" is new to me. I have never seen nor heard of that description before. "Bleating", as I understand the word, is the sound that a sheep makes and therefore can in no way imaginable to me be equated to any sound that a piano could ever make.

I suppose that what has meant to be said was "beating octaves" and that, I would understand. However, one must also be aware that the sustain in the high treble is quite short (and the reason there are no dampers there). No slightly wide octave can really be considered to be so intolerably out of tune when the sustain of such an octave when played in an isolated context is so restrictively short!

Consider the usual context of nearly any music that may be played in that range (the opening phrases of the Grieg, A minor concerto is a good example). The wider octave "sparkles" while the "pure" one sounds dull or flat. Perhaps not to everyone, to be sure. Perhaps not to a person who has become overly obsessed with how that octave should sound and can hear any beat whatsoever in an octave and find it to be intolerable. But I dare say, not to the general public and not to the artists who perform that music.

When an artist plays that A6-A7 octave, he/she wants and needs to hear the highest degree of brilliance possible, not the complete and total absence of any beat that cannot be heard by most people anyway (including the artist) but would inevitably conflict with octave-fifth, double octaves, double octave-fifths and triple octaves below it if those combinations of intervals were played.

So, in this instance, I am afraid I would have to agree more with Jeff and Alfredo although I do not understand very completely what either one has to say about it. What I do know is that they are after a more complete blending of the inharmonicity problem rather than the intense focus upon the purity of a single octave, wherever it may be on the piano, at the expense of all other intervals.

I would even go so far as to agree with what I saw BDB say one time that he could make single, double and triple octaves all sound in tune. That is, on the surface, impossible but as he often does in his own way, say it rather bluntly that just because you don't know how to do it does not mean that it cannot be done.

It is all a matter of artful compromise that make each interval combination seem to be virtually beatless. It is was truly great concert technicians and teachers like Jim Coleman, Sr. and Virgil Smith taught. Consider the whole sound, not focus on making one aspect of it be seemingly perfect at the expense of all others.

One point I would have to admit would be that if RXD took the PTG tuning exam, he would pass the High Treble portion of it with a perfect score!