Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum help needed--recording an aural tuning with an accutuner!

i am trying to record an aural tuning with an accutuner, and i am getting hung up on one step of the process.

does anyone here have experience recording aural tunings with this particular machine?

can you explain to me how you store the pitch of the partial for A0 (i'm using A2) and then go on to record the fundamental?

the directions in the manual seem explicit, but in practice they are quite ambiguous. neither my visitng tuner (who is strictly an aural tuner) nor i can figure it out.

the directions say as follows:

4. to set the partial, press the TUNE button and set the display for the NOTE and OCTAVE of the desired partial... [no problem]

5. now measure the pitch of the partial on the piano by playing the note and using MEASURE and/or CENTS to stop the lights. [am i playing the note A0 or the note A2?]

6. pressing the MEMORY button will show you the NOTE and OCTAVE on the keyboard that you want to store along with the PAGE number you have chosen. pressing the TUNE button will display the partial of the note you are about to store and the CENTS deviation for this partial. [this worked OK when i took the measure of the partial in step 5.]

7. switch to MEMORY mode to correct the NOTE or OCTAVE to be tuned. [no problem]

8. switch back to TUNE mode (by pressing the TUNE button) if you want to modify the partial setting. [ok, no problem]

9. when the settings are all correct, store the tuning for this note by holding down the SHIFT key then pressing and releasing STO-MEM.

ok, now the problem happens. i've stored the reading of A2, and it steps up next to A#2. and there is no indication of how i record the pitch of A0.

i need more explicit directions!

i've tried calling the number for sanderson accutuner and left a message. they are evidently closed for the weekend and my tuner leaves for new york, with the accutuner, tomorrow afternoon.

anyone who can clarify this in time gets a prize! seriously!

many thanks in advance.

The beauty of the Accu-tuner (compared to the other ETDs) is its simplicity of operation.

I don't know whether you realize that when you are tuning A0 the Accu-tuner is listening to the partial at A2. It is also storing this at position A0 in the memory page devoted to the tuning. You do not record the fundamental of a note when recording a tuning (except perhaps A4). Since you are tuning to the partial, the fundamental frequency is irrelevant. This point goes to the heart of the theory of tuning. (Don't feel badly if this point has escaped you; many of us tuners don't understand the theory in all its depth. It is far from a simple matter, despite its straightforward appearance.)

That understood, you are following the instructions properly. When you push the MEM button, the Accu-Tuner displays the note you are tuning. When you push the TUNE button, the Accu-Tuner displays the partial at A2 which it is reading.

You can toggle back and forth between these displays by alternately pushing the MEM and TUNE buttons.

thanks for answering, mike.

we were finally able to get through to paul sanderson and he walked me through it. the problem was that i was reading the manual too literally, and when it said to record the "note" or partial, i could not tell if they meant put my finger on the key for A0 or for A2.

once that was cleared up, we were able to go ahead with recording.

i've received PMs suggesting i also try tunelab, so i think i may try that on my own after my tuner friend has left, if i have time before heading out of town for a while.

thanks for explaining the role of the partials so clearly. there is so much to learn!

"does anyone here have experience recording aural tunings with this particular machine?

can you explain to me how you store the pitch of the partial for A0 (i'm using A2) and then go on to record the fundamental?"

Well, storing aural tunings is the ONLY way I use that machine. May I ask why you are doing this?

Normally, the Accutuner will store information in the low bass on the 6th partial. So, A0 would be read and stored on E3. Yes, it is confusing at first and none of the numbers will seem rational. But you absolutely cannot expect the device to read and store anything that low on it's fundamental. It won't even register. The device responds best to frequencies somewhere in the middle.

I use the PTG Exam Program partial selection which I find to be ideal. From A0 to B2, it reads on the 6th partial. The 3rd, 4th and 5th octaves are all read on Octave 5. The 6th and 7th octaves are read on the fundamental.

The FAC program reads mostly on the 4th partial which is really annoying and unrealistic. That's why I never use it. Too inaccurate.

WHY are you doing this?

hi, bill,

i'm doing it because of friend of mine who is a gifted aural tuner, and visiting my neighborhood for the first time in a few years, made me the gift of my own personal tuning, one he crafted just for me and my piano. we want to save it in hopes that my regular tech will be able to duplicate it.

we tried using E3 as the partial for A0, however, we got much better readings using A2. (my regular tech, who does use the accutuner, told us that would be the best partial on my piano, and he seems to have been correct.)

paul sanderson said it really doesn't matter which partial we use, to use whatever gives us the best reading, so that's what we did.

we switched the partial to octave five beginning with c4, and then switched to the fundamental beginning with c5 and stayed with that to the top.

it probably wasn't optimal since neither of us has ever used the machine before, but we did the best we could. i sure wish i'd known this was your specialty because i would have been on the phone to you in a heartbeat!

we did get some good advice from my regular tech about how to read the lights and produce a consistent tone for the reading. we'll find out how well it worked for our purposes in a few months when he tries to duplicate the tuning.

here's a question for you, bill: how likely are we to get all the nuances of the aural tuning when we use the machine to put the tuning back on in a few months? we think the wild card may be the unisons, that the choices an aural tuner would make for tuning the unisons might be different than the ones the machine would make.

what do you think?

thanks for responding!

Cio che lo stolto fa in fine, il savio fa in principio.

This whole project has a wonderful assbackwardsness to it!

and that is supposed to mean?

this is an experiment, and one i am thoroughly enjoying. the piano is glorious tonight!

pique,

whatever Casalborgone's statement was about, it will definately sound funny to most technicians that you speculate about the way the unisons were tuned by your gifted tuner. The most useless knownledge is when people think they know something about a certain topic and in fact don't know anything. Whoever speculates about the way unisons are tuned doesn't know anything about piano tunings. Unisons always have to be beatless, although I have heard that some people are suposed to prefer a honky-tonk sound (with slight beats in the unisons) which to me sounds hard to believe and I'd refuse to tune a piano this way. So piqué I hope your unisons are beatless and it should be clear by know that this will not be the wildcard when trying to restore that special tuning.

You probably made some people laugh when you wrote your comment about unisons, but since you seem to be interested in the technical aspects of the piano, may I suggest you start reading some books and understanding some theory? This would help you to gain some knownledge which you already think you have but have proven to not have. Maybe you mixed up the various options of stretching octaves or even using a different temperament with tuning a unison, where the only option is to get it as beatless as possible (with very few exceptions, for instance when the sustain in the highest treble would be too short you might try giving one string a very slight beat so that it is hardly noticable).

The book by Arthur Reblitz "Piano Servicing, Tuning & Rebuilding" has often been recommended and I think it is a good book to start in order to get some real knownledge.

As for your question: Yes, it will be possible to restore that special tuning if you recorded it correctly. Every tuner who knows how to handle this machine can do it.

Best regards,
Jens

This point interests me. I've been tuning my own pianos regularly for three years now and last week on my tuning of the concert grand I spent perhaps more time in that top group of undamped strings setting as perfect of unisons as I have ever done in that difficult region, getting so close that 2nd partials would actually register slightly with Tunelab on all but the highest eight or so. This seemed to greatly improve the balance of those top notes to the rest of the piano in a way I'd always wanted and improved sustain a fair amount as well allowing the string tone to overcome what can too easily become a percussive "plink" in that top 6 or 8 notes. So that experience convinced me that great care in that region can do wonders.

If one were seeking to improve sustain that last bit further as you suggested with setting one string offset further, how much further would you go with the one string? (If this is even measureable such that you might give a figure and not just do it by ear). I might want to try this technique on the top 4 notes where sustain falls off just a little abruptly.

(Otherwise, regardless of temperament, anything except perfect unisons sounds absolutely awful to me.)

once again i am overcome with amazement of the sheer arrogance of some on this particular list. i'm not the one tuning this piano or who needs to know how to tune a unison. the person who did tune it has forgotten more than some of you ever knew. if the techs here think as you describe, jens, then they are so knee-jerk in their smugness they've missed the possibility that there could be more going on here than meets the eye. they've lost their capacity for curiosity, and hence they've lost their capacity to learn.

there is more to tuning unisons, for the aural tuner who tuned my piano, than making them beatless.

i think i have really just been wasting my time here. i regret coming to this group with any questions or interest. i find much more useful and authoritative information in RL, with technicians who are kind, generous, and gracious in their dealings with pianists, rather than arrogant.

With all due respect, pique, I think your posts contain more than a small amount of arrogance. This is the arrogance of asking people here what purports to be a simple technical question and at the same not being perfectly honest with them. For my part, and perhaps for others, one can feel quite that one has been taken advantage of.

Whatever secrets underlie your tuning project are your own business, but they seem to me to resonate with some fundamental misunderstandings about the theory and practice of piano tuning.

For example I find it difficult to believe that a "gifted" tuner, whatever his or her method for tuning, would not understand very thoroughly the theory of partials. Thus the initial difficulty you described in understanding and following the instructions for using the Accu-tuner seems incredible. As I mentioned before, the Accu-tuner is very easy-to-use and its functions should be transparent to anyone with experience tuning pianos.

I also wonder how it could be that your regular, perhaps only "competent" tuner could not explain to you, and take a great deal of pride and pleasure in pointing out the issues regarding tuning unisons by ear. Certainly this is something your "gifted" tuner could very quickly demonstrate to you in the process of tuning your piano.

There is certainly more to your tale than you seem to be willing or able to reveal. But your tale doesn't cohere, so I wonder just what it is you want to deceive us about, and why.

Hmmm, I'll not comment on Mike's point of view although I do find it interesting. I tuned entirely by ear from 1969 (proud "graduate" of the American School of Piano Tuning) to 1991 when I was compelled to buy an Accu-Tuner because without owning one, I could not learn to efficiently and properly operate it well enough to sever as one of PTG's Tuning Examiners.

It was very difficult and foreign to me. I essentially have the same problem now trying to learn the TuneLab program. To answer your question about whether the Accu-Tuner will be able to reproduce your favorite tuner's tuning accurately, well, "yes, but no, it all depends" is the answer.

There are several different issues. There are two ways, well maybe even three ways of recording a pitch. One is to find the "prompt" sound, that is what it detects immediately upon striking the key, the other is to find where it settles in and a third might be somewhere in between. Another issue is about whether you record the pitch of the whole unison or just the center string. It does make a difference.

Then, it depends on how well the subsequent tuner makes the piano "hold on" to the program. In the end, you have to be able to play each key and have the pattern be still and if that isn't happening, the piano isn't "holding on" to the program. I have my own way of dealing with all of these issues and because I always do things a certain way, the results always come out the way I expect. I'm not at all sure I could just give my Accu-Tuner to another tuner, have him/her use one of my programs and expect the piano to sound like I had tuned it. Some similarity, I suppose but not really the same.

That's one reason why I have never trusted the use of those "correction figures" in tuning a nonequal temperament using the Accu-Tuner's FAC program or a similar program with any other device. Oh, you'll get something different by using them all right but is it really what is intended? I wouldn't bet two cents on it.

Bill's point about which point in the Accu-tuner display rotation is the target is very apt.

You can't really talk about piano tuning usefully without having done it.

For instance I, with some experience tuning, am aware of the issue regarding the Accu-tuner display vs time. I have discussed this issue with other tuners, but I have what I would call a less sophisticated perspective than Bill has. I think that Bill's articulation of this issue is a gift (among many he has generously given here) and something I will want to think about.

Certainly Bill is one of the most thoughtful and accomplished tuners there are, and we are lucky he hangs around here.

With regard to the pique predicament, I wondered, but did not think to ask until just now, why her two tuners could not simply get together and talk about, and work on, a "perfect" tuning for her piano. Actually, they would not even have to meet one another, because if one is following the other, and both are aural tuners exclusively, they should get a good idea of each other's methods simply by listening to the piano.

bill, thanks for coming back to answer my questions. much appreciated. you are getting right to the heart of what we have been wondering about.


as i think some famous cartoon character used to say, 'veeery interesting... but stupid.' in my wildest imagination i cannot fathom what such a deception that mike imagines could be. guess i'm just not experienced enough in piano technology to understand.


then you do understand the challenges my tuner faced when confronted with trying to use an accutuner for the first time. he's been an aural tuner for 25 or 30 years. he doesn't "get" the accutuner. in frustration, he asked me to figure it out! the manual appears to be very clear and straightforward, but i find it ambiguous. i know what partials are, but i couldn't tell from the instructions if i was supposed to play the partial or the fundamental. neither could the tech who was with me.


here's what we did: we recorded the tone that came just after the initial attack. we recorded just the center string of the unisons, the others were damped off.

however, later on, i recorded the whole piano again on my laptop, using the basic sound recording software that came with it, and the built in mic. this was so that possibly in future i could record it onto tunelab. in that recording, i recorded the whole of the unisons, nothing was damped off. i don't know which method is preferred, but the second time around i didn't have a choice as my friend was on his way back home, and i didn't want to try damping the strings myself.

this makes perfect sense to me and is exactly what we were wondering. the second tech may have a different touch or interpret the lights slightly differently.

if i am with the second tech, having witnessed how the first tech recorded, and actually having been the one depressing the keys and noting their volume and at what point we were choosing to register the lights (right after the initial attack), i imagine it will help to make his reproduction of it more consistent if i show him what we did. is that right?

anyway, i appreciate any further insight you can share. and may i contact you by phone or email?

ChickGrand,

I wouldn't want to think about the "beating unisons" as a method to improve the sustain in the high treble when there is already a good sustain and I have never tried it in such a situation. But there are some pianos which have such a clean sound in the high treble, that when all 3 strings of a unison are perfectly in tune the tone sounds very clean but dies out too quickly. In that situation I might give one of the strings a slight beat, so that the tone doesn't die out so fast. I can't tell you any numbers, although I use TuneLab as well. But I always tune the unisons by ear and therefore make the corrections in the highest treble by ear as well, if necessary.

I think you can just use trial and error to see if it gives you an improvement or not. If it is interesting for you I can make measurements next time I come across such a situation.

Best regards,
Jens

Thanks Jens. That's as I would expect. My sustain in the high treble is good with very clean unisons now with only the slightest bit of decrease in sustain in the top 3-4 where I might want to try that technique. Sounds to me like a sort of fudge factor to add just a little to those few notes that may need the illusion of the texture of a mild beat to mimic what our ears hear as changing texture of sustain from attack to decay. The only one I'd say is clearly not at least in a rather log line in those last few is actually C8 which I don't much care about, but I'll try this technique by ear on the last couple to see if I like the effect. I wouldn't want to use such a technique where sustain is actually good because then the duration of sustain would last long enough for the beating to be apparent as just that. But in those last 3-4, it might be just what I want to really polish that top octave which is otherwise quite good. So I do appreciate the mention and explanation.

piqué,

I've re-read your answer to my first post on this topic. I hope you didn't mean me, when you wrote:

"once again i am overcome with amazement of the sheer arrogance of some on this particular list."

I just wanted to suggest you get some more technical background before you make statements like this:

"there is more to tuning unisons, for the aural tuner who tuned my piano, than making them beatless."

Basically your statement is not true. A unison will always have to be beatless, there is no room for modifying anything within a unison. Actually it is a reason to call a tuner if there are (noticeable) beats in a unison. Some strings have false beats so that the tuner needs to make compromises but don't call this a special way of tuning unisons because the goal will always be to get a unison to sound as clear as possible.

Maybe your tuner told you something about his special way of unison-tuning. If he did, he didn't tell you the truth or you didn't understand that he had to make compromises due to false beats in the strings or other reasons. But this wouldn't qualify as a special way of tuning unisons, because there's no such thing.

Basically I appreciate your effort to keep your piano in tune, I wish that every piano owner would do this. As I said earlier it is a good thing to have some technical background when discussing technical questions. If you don't have, you won't understand some arguments or make wrong conclusions. Piano tuning is an art, that's for sure, but it is also about physics. Most, if not all aspects of piano tuning can be described and explored by physical laws. That won't change anything, it would still be an art. Just because you have found a gifted tuner it doesn't mean he really knows (technically) what he does (and is able to explain what he does). He might give you some esoteric explanations which may be right or may be wrong from another perspective. I just want to make sure that you don't state things as facts (in a forum which is read by many people in the world) which most technicians will not agree upon (most of all: tuning unisons to somewhat else than beatless).

"i think i have really just been wasting my time here. i regret coming to this group with any questions or interest. i find much more useful and authoritative information in RL, with technicians who are kind, generous, and gracious in their dealings with pianists, rather than arrogant."

Well, I doubt you wasted your time. In a way the piano is something (maybe even) magic to all of us. What I dislike about your statements in general is that you use the word arrogant or arrogance quite often. You think you found techs in real life beeing more kind, generous and gracious, but what do you think are the techs here in this forum that answer your questions? They are kind and generous. They don't get any money for what they do, their motivation is intrinsic, they want to share their knownledge and maybe ask a question once in a while. I would call this generous. I'm reading here quite a lot and post only seldom since I post only when I have something to say, but I always make it clear that I'm thankful when I recceive useful information.

So, maybe a little bit more modesty, piqué?

Best regards,
Jens

that's it, i'm through with being patronized and treated with disrespect.

those of you here who actually carefully read my questions, answered the actual questions i asked, and responded in a thoughtful and respectful way: thank you, you have my deep appreciation.

Pique said


"the person who did tune it has forgotten more than some of you ever knew. "


Maybe not entirely arrogant, BUT CERTAINLY PRESUMPTUOUS. This statement then becomes arrogant because you now presume to know not only everything your two tuners know, but know what anybody has who tunes pianos knows.

i presume to know everything my two tuners know? say what!? where did you get that one?

this is my last post in this forum.