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If one's is accustomed to listening those pieces on pianos tuned to equal temperament, then listening the same pieces on a piano tuned to an unequal temperament might not be pleasing. Or it might be pleasing. It is just a personal thing.
IMO, this ProArte temperament does not sound good enough that I would like to tune a piano using it. In places it even sounds weird, e.g. the beginning of Tchaikovsky Nocturne.
Every temperament on a piano is equally a compromise. The 12 tones of the scale can never be represented correctly in relationship to every other note. This ‘out of tuneness’ must be put somewhere in the temperament, and it is never less out of tune than another temperament, it’s just put somewhere else in proportionally different degrees.
So the video is misleading in suggesting that equal temperament is somehow more of a compromise. It’s just a different compromise. Now whether that compromise is better or worse is the actual issue.
I only listened to Clair de lune. I know nothing about ProArte but the piano sounded good to me. It would have been a lot more useful if it were on the same piano though with the same recording techniques.
It's a bit heavy on the hyperbole, and the admonishment of how I must listen to the examples are... a bit much...
The insinuation that a tuner "isn't listening" when they are setting an equal temperament suggests the text wasn't written by a professional technician or pianist.
I love that it's asking us to just listen to the recording while it's constantly shooting opinions at us on the screen.
The ET performance of the Debussy is definitely professional level playing, but the performance is sort of perfunctory, and you can hear the player make little effort to do anything all that special.
The UT performance of the Debussy is done on a different piano, and the pianist is treating the interpretation (especially the timing and phrasing) differently, right from the start. If you really wanted to make a fair comparison, use a Disklavier, Spririo, QRS, or PianoDisc recording of the same piano where it's literally impossible to change anything about the playback.
"The Equal Temperament Poison of wow, wow, wow". Gosh, I guess I should have my tuning clients sign some sort of waiver, and I need to be indemnified against any retribution from my audiences!
Both tunings sound fine for this piece. I made it to 7:50 before I shut it down, just after the part where A440 is described as a manufacturer conspiracy.
I'm wondering why so many in the UT crowd feel the need to "prove" everyone wrong as a justification. They need to hire a marketing consultant, because insulting people, right out of the gate, does little to make them want to hear more of what you want to say.
1) The mention of Rudolf Steiner's opinion about 432Hz. What's that got to do with anything, really, and what's his opinion on anything worth, really? Rudolf Steiner liking something is enough to put me off it.
2) Saying that this tuning promotes "a more bell-like tone". What an insult to a piano to say it sounds like bells. I wouldn't want any tuning that made a piano sound like bells. The highest compliment you could pay a bell is to say it sounds like a piano.
3) This 'false dichotomy' of saying that ET is "false" and the other system "genuine".
4) The generally didactic tone, and the constant feeding of opinion masquerading as fact, in the text while the music is playing - trying to tell you what to hear.
The "ProArte" tuning doesn't sound at all objectionable to me, but to me the opinionated way it is presented in the video does it a considerable disservice.
Here we go down the rabbit hole. This is the Maria Renold "pure fifths" tuning which ultimately leads us to the holiest of all holies: "A=423Hz." If you believe Rudolf Steiner was the ultimate thinker of the 20th century, climb on board, there's plenty more here to believe. If only Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann and Brahms had had this tuning to work with, imagine what great music they would have composed!
Ed Sutton, RPT Just an old retired piano tuner! Durham NC USA
Ironically, one justification I have heard for A432 is that it puts middle C at 256Hz, so that the fundamental frequency of all C's are integral powers of 2. This is purported to convey some metaphysical power to the music based on the vibrations of the universe.
By my calculation, there is a small problem with that theory. A is 9 semitones above C. This would mean that, in A432, middle C would have a fundamental frequency of 432/2^(9/12) = 432/2^(.75) = 256.8687368405878 Hz. I guess the universe vibrates at the wrong frequency.
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I found this Masters Thesis by a Finnish student. https://jyx.jyu.fi/bitstream/handle/123456789/52642/URN:NBN:fi:jyu-201701051074.pdf?sequence=1
The Abstract says
Quote
A listening experiment was arranged to evaluate perceptual preferences between two musical tuning systems: twelve-tone equal temperament (i.e. the current international standard) and twelve fifth-tones tuning. The latter being a system that, according to its author Maria Renold, provides a more accurate and aurally genuine reproduction of musical harmonics. Hence, it is considered a superior tuning method compared to the equal temperament tuning. 34 participants (mainly experienced musicians) evaluated realistic musical stimuli consisting of intervals, chords and simple musical sequences using a grand piano timbre. Results showed that the standard twelve-tone equal temperament system was found overall more in-tune, with ca. 68% of the participants preferred it over the twelve fifth-tones tuning. This is considered to be most likely due to enculturation affects, i.e. people have preferred the tonality that is more familiar to them. No evidence for the supposed aural genuineness of the Renold’s tuning systems was found. Instead, it may be concluded that intonation preferences in perceptual context are subject to high amounts of individual variation and clear definition of tonality preferences is often a difficult task.
What an insult to a piano to say it sounds like bells. I wouldn't want any tuning that made a piano sound like bells. The highest compliment you could pay a bell is to say it sounds like a piano.
Quote of the week!! I couldn't have said it better.
I first tried to tune my piano by using pure fourths and fifths. (I didn't know about Pythagoras's comma, I only knew about the circle of fifths). When I got enough notes tuned to form a triad, I immediately noticed it didn't sound right. The next day I went to the library and "discovered" Pythagoras's comma and that instruments of fixed pitch needed tempering. That is what led me to become a piano tuner.
But the fact that I knew pure intervals produced "wrong" sounding chords I believe is a bit more than cultural learning. I had never heard a piano tuned before I tried it. We only got our piano tuned once and it was while I was at school and I only returned as the man finished. (The tuner was known as the "Flying Dutchman" for some reason so I never found out what his real name was.)
UT's have always sounded wrong to me and ET sounds correct.
In a seemingly infinite universe-infinite human creativity is-seemingly possible. According to NASA, 93% of the earth like planets possible in the known universe have yet to be formed. Contact: toneman1@me.com
What an insult to a piano to say it sounds like bells. I wouldn't want any tuning that made a piano sound like bells. The highest compliment you could pay a bell is to say it sounds like a piano.
Quote of the week!! I couldn't have said it better.
Thank you - I have my moments! (Blushes, shuffles feet, looks shyly up from eyes modestly downcast....)
But the fact that I knew pure intervals produced "wrong" sounding chords I believe is a bit more than cultural learning. I had never heard a piano tuned before I tried it. .......
UT's have always sounded wrong to me and ET sounds correct.
Yes, interesting thought, about the cultural learning thing. I have not, to be honest, read the full Thesis of the Finnish Masters student; just the abstract where he states that a big majority preferred ET. I must investigate the Thesis more fully.
From the late 1960s, Wendy Carlos had big successes (first as Walter Carlos) with "Switched -on Bach" and several following albums. It was the first properly musical use of Moog Synthesisers. Painstakingly compiled, they offered versions of Bach with a degree of humour, but with musical integrity and with superb clarity of part. In 2000, Wendy Carlos released an album called Switched-on Bach 2000, in which she modified frequencies to make some intervals much purer, without compromising others. I have to say that although I can of course hear the smoothness in some chords which she speaks about, overall, I don't really like the effect, and prefer the older ET albums. Is it a cultural thing? I don't know.
We do build up a certain subconscious "expectation" of sounds. In the 1970s I bought a Withdrawn cassette tape from the local library, of Wilhelm Kempff playing his own transcriptions of Bach and Gluck. It had been withdrawn because in a few places the tape had got stretched, and the pitch wobbled. THe playing was so good that I played and played that tape. Eventually the tape broke inside the cassette, and as I recall, it wasn't a cassette with screws, that you could readily open and repair. I had played it so much, that I expected and anticipated the 'pitch-bend' effect in all the stretched places.
Ever after, even unto this day, when I hear other renditions of the same pieces, I mentally expect the pitch bend in the appropriate places! A Conditioned Reflex, I guess.
I am sure that UT temperaments are interesting, and they are not intrinsically evil (which some seem to claim for ET!). But top concert pianists - arguably the highest exponents of piano art - are not generally clamouring for them.
From the late 1960s, Wendy Carlos had big successes (first as Walter Carlos) with "Switched -on Bach" and several following albums. It was the first properly musical use of Moog Synthesisers. Painstakingly compiled, they offered versions of Bach with a degree of humour, but with musical integrity and with superb clarity of part.
Yes! I remember "Switched On Bach"! I thought it was very cool. Synthesizers were in their infancy as I recall so the sound was far out man! Or as we said back then, groovy
From the late 1960s, Wendy Carlos had big successes (first as Walter Carlos) with "Switched -on Bach" and several following albums. It was the first properly musical use of Moog Synthesisers. Painstakingly compiled, they offered versions of Bach with a degree of humour, but with musical integrity and with superb clarity of part.
Yes! I remember "Switched On Bach"! I thought it was very cool. Synthesizers were in their infancy as I recall so the sound was far out man! Or as we said back then, groovy
There was a beautiful CD box set re-issue of all the 60s and 70s albums, with a thick explanatory booklet, and some previously unreleased tracks showing earlier versions, with explanations why they weren't used. I had to order it from the USA as it wasn't available in the UK. I'm glad I got it - I see on Amazon that it's $300 pre-owned!
Digital keyboards are excellent platforms for exploring unequal temperaments. Not only can you change temperaments quickly without concern for introducing tuning instability in an acoustic instrument, but you can root the temperament on the key of a piece, which for many pieces leads to less drift away from the tonal center of the temperament.
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Digital keyboards are excellent platforms for exploring unequal temperaments. Not only can you change temperaments quickly without concern for introducing tuning instability in an acoustic instrument, but you can root the temperament on the key of a piece, which for many pieces leads to less drift away from the tonal center of the temperament.
