Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum Do you tune by ear or machine?

I sure will Bill. I'll probably retune the piano tomorrow and use the same custom stretch as I do for the Broadwood Best so I get a good comparison. The stretch I use is called the K3a and can be found in the verituner user forum by another poster. I can tell you right now, I'll never tune to a strict ET again. The upper register intervals beat too fast and the treble and bass are stretched far too much for my liking. I can see now that many good aural tuners never really tune in ET but rather some form of WT. Now that we have very sophisticated machines that measure pitches so accurately, that becomes very clear. The best aural tuners should store their best tunings in an EDT for all of us to use.

I tried to access the Verituner user forum but it only allows Verituner owners. I'm sorry if I gave the impression that I am one but I am not, at least not yet. However, the more I see and hear about it, the more I am leaning in that direction. The inventor was flattering to me in requesting to place the EBVT in its program. It does seem to be the most versatile device on the market.

I have some more temperaments in the works which can only be done with an ETD. However, I have tried first to present ideas which could be done surely and accurately by ear. The Best Broadwood really can't be. Neither can the Coleman temperaments. The possibilities are infinite when an ETD is used. Many combinations of ideas are possible.

Could you please describe the kind of stretch you use so all of us here may be informed?

Bill,

Here's the custom stretch I got from the VT user forum. The Verituner has a setup page under the "style" menu to program the VT which partials to listen for and at which point on the piano to switch to a different set of partial samplings. You can also give multiple set of partials and assign them a percentage of importance. I also set for 0.0% beat rate for the octaves. The default in the VT is 0.33% beats. That's what one would get if you used one of the default stretches (clean, average or expanded). Well, here's the seguence for stretch K3a, all beat rates are set to zero:

A0
10:5 60%
6:3 20%
8:1 20%

A1
6:3 40%
4:1 30%
8:4 30%

A3
4:2 60%
6:3 40%

A4
4:2 60%
6:3 40%

A5
4:1 60%
4:2 20%
3:1 20%

A6
4:1 60%
4:2 20%
3:1 20%

C8
2:1 80%
4:1 20%


Hope that's clear. I did my best with my limited knowledge.

Well Bill, I tuned my piano to your file using the stretch I posted above. The perfect intervals are pure throughout the piano and the double and triple octaves are perfectly in tune. It's the best the piano has ever sounded. The Broadwood Best is very good too, with less stretch in the bass and more stretch in the treble, but your's is a more conservative WT tuning, maybe closer to ET than the Broadwood, but much better than ET. At least on my piano, ET sounds noisy in the upper treble. It's a S&S B which has a little bit of a noisy front duplex, but a WT tuning suits it much better than ET. I'll be using your tuning file for now on.

Wow! I couldn't have paid for better advertising! When you get the time, you may want to read about how I developed the EBVT, the story is on my website, "The Origins of the EBVT". I find it curious that you perceive the EBVT to be milder than the Best Broadwood because clinically, it is stronger. According to Jason Kanter, the range in sizes of Major 3rds of the Best Broadwood is from 6.7 to 17.7. The EBVT ranges 7.9 to 18.8. (In ET, all M3rds are 13.6 cents wide of just intonation).

I can see however that the Best Broadwood C4-E4 M3rd beats at about 4 beats per second and mine beats at 6. When you play a broad C Major chord, however, do you hear that fast, 6 beats per second somehow get "swallowed"? When played as a broad chord, C Major seems to have the quiet stillness of a much stronger temperament such as a 5th Comma Meantone.

I'll bet that the EBVT simply sounds "smoother" than the Best Broadwood. It is the usual way that I tune the piano for virtually all kinds of music. Only when there is a special request for a specific temperament do I use something else. There is a classical music recording using the EBVT now in the works. I have no idea, however ho soon it will be on the market.

Hi Ralph,

Congratulations! Nice sound, isn't it? Those are my stretch numbers, maybe tweaked a little by Jon Page... The Verituner has that ability, to bring out the resonence in your piano, by matching up the octaves in a pleasing manner.

What you are hearing is the careful manipulation of the beat ratios between two intervals sounding at the same time. (The major third and minor third in a triad) This effect is haphazard in many of the historical temperaments, but Bill seems to have found an aural path to this effect. While we've been looking at width of major thirds for quite a while, only recently have a few of us been charting more information on beat ratios. Check out Bob Wendell's syncronous, for full beat syncronicity. Paul Bailey has a few full-strenght options that he uses to rave reviews. My KV series uses the effect in the remote keys to reduce the dissonence normally found there.

Ron Koval

Clically your EBVT is stronger if you go by the numbers. The Best Broadwood seems to "compress" several more intervals than EBVT , which perhaps more stretch in the bass and less in the treble. The result, however, is the opposite. EBVT produces and better and more pleasing, even sound throughout the keyboard. All pianos are different. On mine, the F2 has always been a problem. I have a hard time getting it in tune the F4 and F5. It just sort of fell in place with the EBVT. With the BB and ET, it was too sharp. I always had to correct aurally. The BB puts the C's, F's , and I think the G's sharp by 4-5 cents. That pulled the exteme ends of the scale toward the middle resulting in less stretch in the bass, but also a less conservative or universal sound. That's what I meant by "EBVT beinging more conservative". In other words, it's more useful for a wider range of repertoire.

If one is playing music which stays pretty much in the middle of the keyboard, the BB works extremely well. For later works, the bass just isn't stretch quite enough and the treble is pushed up a bit to compensate, but that can get a little sharp sounding. It also depends on the instrument and the environment of the instrument. In a concert hall, the BB with the sharp treble (C's, F's and G's) could just sound clear and project. In a home, it could be very annoying after awhile.

Now wait just a minute....

Using the Verituner, altering the temperament won't alter the stretch at all. So any temperament used, using the same stye, (K3a) will put the F's in the same relative position to each other. Did you change styles as well between tunings? The octave matching from end to end is a result of custom style development, not custom temperaments.

Ron Koval

I'll have to doulbe check what I did. I may have picked the expanded default stretch instead of the K3a. I can't really remember, now that I think about it.

I think you're right about what you're saying. The relationships between the same notes in different octaves should remain constant regardless of the tuning file used as long as the same style or stretch in selected. I suppose the intervals WITHIN an octave are changed depending on the tunung file. Is that about right?

Ron,

I see your temperament (KV 2.0) is close to ET. The thirds vary from 10.9 to 16.0. I'd call that conservative at least on paper. I have not tried it yet. Do you have any favorite stretchs for a S&S B? Any new temperaments coming out?

The Broadwood B is in fact rather radical by ET standards althought it did not sound that way to me. It's possibly due to the fact that I"m playing Beethoven's 1st sonata and a bunch of bach inventions and partitas. Of course the Beethoven is in F minor with areas in Ab and Db. Still sounded pretty good. Other repertoire may sound different.

Bill, how would you place your EBVT in terms of radical departure from ET as compared to the above two examples?


Ron again,

I posted a question for you in the VT user forum. Sorry, I forgot.

I butchered my earlier post three posts up. The second sentence makes no sense and is flat out wrong. I'm not sure what I was trying to say.

This I know I'm right about, the K3a stretch works great with the EBVT.

The EBVT is not designed to be or sound *radically* different. In fact, most people including technicians don't really notice that a piano tuned in the EBVT is "different", they just notice how good the piano sounds.

It is designed to be as mild of a well temperament as it can be, preserving the charachter, effects or "colors" of each of the 24 major and minor keys and yet be compatible with other fixed pitch instruments, be useful for all kinds of music as ET is supposed to be.

It was designed in 1992 and since that time, I have seen that it is possible to make a milder Victorian and also to make Quasi Equal Temperaments but I still rely on the EBVT to produce the kind of sound that I consider to be ideal under most circumstances.

I agree with what you're saying. If does sound better, but I would not be able to tell the piano wasn't tuned in ET if I didn't know. The Best Broadwood is very good too. Different than EBVT, but I'm still not sure how. It will take some time since I'm not willing to retune the entire piano every other day. Right now I've got it tuned to your file and I'll tweak it here and there to keep it in tune. It has also been raining for 4 straight days and the humidity in my room has gone from 28% to 45%. The piano keeps going sharp, but mainly the right string unison. The left string of the upper tenor and treble holds the pitch, but the right will go sharp. The middle one moves just a hair. The lower tenor section and bass are pretty stable. Strange. Anyway, I have to clean it up almost everyday right now. It's hard to compare tuning files if the unisons aren't right.

A Dampp-Chaser system would help. I've got one on mine and my piano never sounds bad. You bring up one of the greatest impediments to the study of the effects of different temperaments. You can't ever conduct a truly scientifically controlled study. You experiences will almost always be anecdotal.

But I'd surely like to put my idea up against the Best Broadwood and other popular mild Victorian style temperaments like the Moore and Coleman 11 (and/or 16) in a contest like we had back in 1998. I still think I could win it hands down with the way I temper and the way I stretch the octaves. I literally tune the piano to itself.

Bill,

Exactly how do you stretch the octaves? I know it depends on the piano, but do you have a formula that can be input into the VT or other ETD that measures inharmonicity?

I looked up the offset for the EBVT in the VT and saw the range of major 3rds in cents. The Best Broadwood looks a little less severe to me, but works out to a sharper tuning than EBVT especially in the low tenor and bass. Am I missing something?

I make an equal beating compromise between the octave and 5th and when I have tuned enough notes, an equal beating compromise between the double octave and octave and 5th. If I want maximum stretch, I favor a pure 5th and octave and 5th and allow the octave and double octaves to have a slight beat. It's really very simple but all of the ETD's calculate the octaves on an entirely different basis.

That is one of the reasons why I don't use my Accutuner's FAC program. I can use the Accutuner in the program mode and make whatever compromise I want. Now, I think Ron Koval understands what I do and I don't really understand his method of making custom stretch with the Verituner. Maybe he can explain.

I wrote an article long ago called "How to Tune *Tempered* Octaves. It is posted on my website. Here is the link if it will come thru:

http://www.billbremmer.com/TemperedOctaves.htm

Ralph, make sure to compare apples to apples. I think you may have gotten the temperament adjustment, and the style adjustment mixed up during tuning, somehow. Changing a temperament should not effect the amount of stretch set on your piano. You've gotten some good advice on adjusting styles in the Verituner, both here, and on the VT forum. Now you need to just tune and listen, listen, listen to work on matching the machine to your preferences.

When dealing with very mild temperaments, or equal temperaments, it is possible to use the machines to come up with pleasing matching of the octaves and octave + 5ths, as Bill does.

(Think about this part) As you move on to stronger temperaments, the beating of the fifth will influence the width of the octave. The width of octaves will vary on notes close to each other. (tempered octaves)

You will not find a machine that will be able to calculate and set this up for you.... yet.

Machines and aural tuners approach alternate temperament tuning from opposite directions. An aural tuner will work AWAY from a pure interval. That is, find the place where the interval is pure, and then alter it to get the required effect. A machine divides. (they're just fancy calculators...) Give it the width of an octave, and it will split it up into equal temperament. (way oversimplified, here) Once it has that figured out, it then uses offset numbers to get to the requested alternate temperament. Your finished tuning will match the piano only as well as the machine is capable of matching the piano, if you are totally relying on the machine. That's why I continue to recommend the Verituner. For me, it comes down to the quality of the measuring and calculating.

Ron Koval

Congratulation for all these comments. The probleme is only, the most artists cannot hear the different.
First, for nearly each concert, I have to change the piano pitch. Second, in summer, in winter, you come with your tuning fork in the hall, and where is your tuning-fork-pitch?
So I bought my first "machine".

Franz Nistl
Austria

I used to worry about the pitch of my fork, so I bought another one to compare it with. I use steel forks, and they have little variation from time to time, so I am confident that most artists cannot hear any difference. I used to get asked to tune to an organ, which required a big pitch change from season to season, but most organs now are either air conditioned or have constantly heated pipe chambers.

The problem is finding a decent fork. I am fortunate to have bought a heavy steel Deagan early in my career. I guard it constantly. I recently bought the English equivalent, and it is not nearly as good. The harmonics are very prominent on it, making it unpleasant to use.

I was talking to Bobby Hutcherson about Deagan a couple of times recently. He said that many years ago he visited Deagan and saw vibraphone tone bars being tuned. It was done by a blind guy in a room three floors underground. First he would tune the bar to pitch, and then tune its harmonics. Each bar would take a couple of weeks.

The big problem with forks is temperature. My tests show that a steel fork varies about 1 cent for every 7 or 8 degrees F change. If you want half-cent stability then you must maintain 4 degree temperature consistency. Some tuners keep their fork in a shirt pocket so that their body temperature stabilizes the fork.

As for absolute accuracy, even the cheapest fork can be trimmed to absolute accuracy, as shown on my website:

http://www.tunelab-world.com/calforks.html

Robert Scott
Real-Time Specialties