Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum What's the deal deal with '3 part tuning' in TuneLab?

It simply doesn't work for me, the tuning result sounds completely 'Off' all over.

Procedure:

New tuning, adjust the existing A4 to with the slider and then take measurement of the piano's inharmonicity all the way from C1 to C6 and G1 to G6.

Pianos tried with this so far:

* Bösendorfer 280
* Blüthner 238
* Bechstein 218 (Model IV)
* Steinway B
* Streicher 265 (1878)
* Erard 260 (1903)

As soon as I disable 3 part tuning in the tuning curve setting and go through the whole piano, the results are completely different and the resulting curve as measured with PianoMeter is clean, temperature in the center section sounds really equal and the gradual stretch in both directions sound organic.

Have I overlooked something?

This is TuneLab 2.6 on an Android device.

"Off" meaning...much too much expansion? Just guessing...I'm analog all the way.

Peter Grey Piano Doctor

When I was first introduced to tuning aid machines, the state of the art tech was this.



Gave it a spin (pun intended), said no thanks, I like the free built-in ear/brain tool I'm learning to use, never looked back.

(I did occasionally use a $20 Korg tuner for weird pitched stuff and/or roughing it in fast.)

I have both tune lab and pianometer(just the plus version). I prefer the latter. Much nicer interface.

-chris

Try the bass at 3:1 12ths
Mid 4:2
and Treble 2:1

I had thought that Robert Scott might chime in here, but since he hasn't I'll give it a try.

These are the settings I use for the 3-Part Tuning Setup: Bass 8:4 octaves, Middle 3:1 12ths, Middle at: A3-E5, Treble 3:1 12ths. The"Middle at" setting is not terribly important Robert has said, so I don't usually change that, but you could certainly try changing it and see if that helps.
I like to use the Pure 12ths temperament like Tunic OnlyPure (which I also own and use) does and these settings will do that.

One thing I've done recently is not taken any readings above C5. Any higher than that and it can really mess up the tuning curve. Be sure to take a look at the Tuning Curve page when you've made changes to see how smooth or not smooth the curve is. The more you look at it with different pianos the more you get a sense of what normal is for that style of piano.

I've found the results from the 3-Part tuning to be really great, so I hope you won't give up on it and hope that this helped.

Also - I like to use the Auto Partial Selection for the bass, BUT be sure to change it with each new tuning.

In my opinion, a very sensible instruction. https://my.ptg.org/communities/comm...2-a628-bd7c7d770cbf&tab=digestviewer

You have not said what interval settings you have to 3-part tuning. You might have accidentally set them in a very unusual way. Others have already made some reasonable suggestions that suit their preferences. Or you could just return to the defaults of 8:4 for the bass, 4:2 for the middle, and 4:1 for the treble.

The current settings for the not so nice 3 part tuning on the Steinway B are set to Bass Interval 6:3, Middle Interval 8:4 (A3-A4) and Treble Interval set to 3:1 - looks like this is the main culprit.

My private reference piano is this old Steinway B and I like the 2 part tuning as a result of 4:1 Bass and 6:3 Treble very much:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1p5AixvnxvvM_J8j7p2Cmyiv4DsJk4dvH/view?usp=sharing

I now checked some of the things I did, so thanks to everyone who shared his advice and experience.

First, I will take the defaults (Just checked and those are the defaults anyway, so didn't change anything there accidentally) as you've stated them and then see, where this takes me.

I will then experiment with a different three part tuning and change the middle interval from E3-B4, edit measure sequence to A0, C1-6 and F#1-6 and measure inharmonicity at all break points in addition to that. We'll see where that takes me. Will first do this on the Steinway this week and probably on the 260 Erard next week which needs tuning anyway.

Edit: The one referenced article with detailed explanation mentions this: "Change the Middle interval to start on the lowest of the plain wire strings of this piano." The lowest unwound string on a Steinway B is F2, so I can't set it as prescribed.

The setting of the location of the middle interval has a very small impact on the resulting tuning. If the middle interval is set to be a 4:2 octave beginning at G2 that means G2-G3 will try to be a perfect 4:2 octave. But if we look one note down from there at F#2, the tuning for that note will be calculated to be about 90% of the way between being a perfect 8:4 octave with F#1 and a 4:2 octave with F#3, which is still very close to being a 4:2 octave. Going down to F2 we find the balance to be 82% for the 4:2 octave above and 18% for the 8:4 octave below. When we finally get down to A1 we will have a 100% 8:4 octave with A0. The transition between the middle interval and the bass interval takes place gradually, not suddenly. The difference between starting the middle interval at F2 and starting it at G2 is in all practicality unmeasurable.