Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum Is cancellation caused by too precise tuning ?

That is correct

Peter Grey Piano Doctor

I am comparing the meter reactions on the fast and slow settings. The slow setting give a better hint at other vibrations that might affect the result . Is there a list of sound effects from out of tune piano notes that tuners use to communicate with each other ? Descriptive words or phrases . Overtones is a technical word . I don`t mean ones like that .To me the galloping horses effect tells me maybe 3 strings are out of tune . I think I am safe asking a question like that . Is it safe to say that comrade ?

I have no idea what you are talking about.

That question is why I ended with "comrade". You give the forum a sort of East Germany Stasi feeling .

Jt2nd you are out of order with your last post.
In fact you have made multiple post "laying down the law" and insinuating that you can't understand anyone not holding your views. As an example look at your posts about the function of tapes.
You have also displayed a stunning lack of knowledge and understanding of how pianos and tuning work.
This section of the forum is populated by experienced and working technicians.
Amateurs should be polite in their requests for free access to skills which should really cost you fees.

I hope you reconsider your attitude and apologise.

Just to put this post in context, when I first joined I posted in a high handed manner. This was pointed out to me and luckily I realised that this forum tries to remain friendly. I apologised and was accepted.

NW . I do apologise. Some parts of the forum are more robust and you are right to bring me back in line . My vague questions must seem annoying . Total lack of knowledge is what I was trying to overcome . Please accept my full apology .

Good man. Welcome back.

👍

Peter Grey Piano Doctor

For PWGrey I made a big effort to follow your string tuning sequence . For the middle octave and lower notes it made a big improvement in tone . I think you would class this piano as one of the least cooperative ones .I got mixed up on some stubborn notes in octave 5 .Just 2 or 3 of them with the odd sticky pins . This morning I wondered if the final touches on a string should be matched with the other two .Just in case any tension relief on string 2 might be different to 1 and 3 . One of the concert tuners here mentioned the gentle tug to make the final finish on a note. That gentle tug (at 90 degrees to the pin rotation plane ) must be a microscopic change in the pin shape . But is it a thing that lasts a long time ?
Octave 5 matching the other octaves--Too sharp or too flat vibrations is like a pack of dogs barking on either side to keep me in the range .

Yes, the gentle tug is microscopic. You have it.

Peter Grey Piano Doctor

Up till now I have been using a Korg Orchestral tuner .That sounds like a bad habit if I can estimate some reactions here .But I was only using the meter needle . This week I began using the sound generator which speeds up everything . The beats between string and meter sound are more precise than lazy needle movements .
I had to change the rechargeable batteries and while they charged I checked the manual for the unused purpose of the section for an external microphone. Then I noticed the needle calibration section . If the meter has been tilted in use it is good to recalibrate . There is a tiny screw inside the battery compartment.My small phillips did not seem to fit. So I dug out my watch repair screwdrivers and used a magnifier with a diode light .
The screw is not a normal cross head job . It has a square looking slot . The watch screw driver was able to turn the screw . After fitting the batteries again the instructions needed careful deciphering . Mainly the meter should be switched off. Then a Note Button is pressed before switching back on. If the needle is calibrated it should settle dead centre. But it will stay where it is until the meter is switched off and on again.
I wasted a quarter hour after my first attempt to check calibration and the needle was showing 20 cents low when the sound generator was on the correct frequency .
The instructions should be more specific and Korg should supply a proper screwdriver to fit the unusual screw .
Is that why some tuners have a negative attitude to the Korg Tuner ? Tuning with the sound is much more effective for me . I hope the mention of the meter is not intensely annoying to the practised professionals . Do all electronic meters need calibrating ?

No, it's because such a tuner is not designed for instruments, such as the piano, with inharmonicity. It just cannot give you appropriate results, no matter how carefully you look at the needle or listen to the sounds it makes.

The sound on the Korg is designed for pianos as the soft sound setting makes it easy to hear beats as you tune single strings . The volume level does not interfere with the note played but the beats are very clear . The loud level is a good quick way to double check the final note . The electronic tone will be much more stable than needle springs etc but if they are calibrated there is no problem . Checking the octaves with the Korg works well too .
Do more elaborate specific piano tuners use a sound facility ? Or are they silent ?

Better to comment on tuners you have used yourself . That would be more valid .

According to the ot-120 users manual, there is no compensation for inharmonicity. This is because bowed instruments and blown instruments do not exhibit inharmonicity and therefore require no calculation.

Your piano exhibits significant inharmonicity, which is calculated and used by all electronic piano tuning devices to create a unique Railsback curve for your piano.

Aural tuners naturally adjust for the piano's inharmonicity.

Another quick point which may have been already addressed.

Strings in close proximately, both physically and in frequency, when vibrating, tend to mode lock. That is, even when they are not exactly at the same pitch will quickly and precisely lock onto the same pitch. This can have an advantage as indicated by others here of reducing the huge loss of power in the initial strike impulse into the soundboard, allowing for more energy to be dissipated over a longer time, improving sustain.

There should (must? /will probably ?) be some estimate of a pianos inharmonicity built into the Korg . Has anyone written to Korg asking about this ? They would be able to give a definite answer .If the inharmonicity was completely ignored by Korg (for some reason that seems to be the collective verdict ) . how would octaves sound? The current model tunes octaves 5 and 6 with the sound feature and the octaves sound just right . There is no clash with lower octaves. What am I missing? It would be no use agreeing with everyone if I did not understand what you are saying . Do octaves have anything to do with inharmonicity ? If you play every C note along the keyboard should they all sound like C ? Top to bottom . A good basic question .

Here's a simplistic explanation of what we are talking about and a simple experiment.
If you play A440 the harmonic contained in it for the next octave does not vibrate at the theoretical mathematical rate of 880. This is because strings have stiffness etc....you can find more in books about it....It turns out that harmonic is 880 plus a tiny bit. As we in the west sacrifice everything for beatless octaves (remember I'm being simplistic here) the note for A880 needs to vibrate at 880 plus a tiny bit, maybe a cent or two depending on the charachteristic of that particular piano design. This shifts more as you go up the octaves. Rather like archery. Aiming at the bullseye. A tiny error of aim, say a couple of mm at the unreleased arrow tip will result in a miss of many cm at the target.
So try this.
Set your machine to listen to A880 but play the note A440. See where the needle sits. It may not be absolutely on the perfect mark. You could then try noting exactly where it is and tune the note 880 to that place.
Unfortunately, the human ear cannot accurately pitch to one cent in isolation which is why we use beats to achieve this level of accuracy. So playing several A notes in a row and noting that they all sound like A will not give accuracy which will cope with complex mixtures of notes.

I hope that helps give you a picture of the beginnings of the complexities involved in producing a lovely tuning.

This IS a good basic question.

The reality is that, for most pianos tuned by professionals and competent amateurs, the Cs, when played from C1 up to C8 and the sustain pedal used, will all sound C-like.

These octaves are not tuned, however, the way a pipe organ octave is tuned or a violinist playing an octave is tuned. Those octaves are tuned beat-less. Since there is no inharmonicity, all the partials are precisely in tune - that is, if I tuned a 200Hz note to a 100Hz note, the partials of each note would be precisely 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600 and so on for the 100Hz note and 200, 400, 600, 800 for the 200Hz note. THIS IS NOT THE CASE WITH A PIANO.

Here is some data from my own piano tuned (2014-05-28) with excellent sounding octaves. I show some of the partials so you can see the inharmonicity and the octave widths.

A0 26.974/53.919/81.064/108.173/135.371/162.856
A1 54.517/109.187/163.889/218.756
A2 109.588/219.397
A3 219.300/439.246
A4 439.720

As you can see, beat-less octaves are not possible on the piano. The tuner must decide, by listening to the various partial combinations and their amplitudes, which set of beating partials is least annoying. A tuner may choose to tune 6:3, or a 6:3/4:2 combo, or even 8:4 in the low bass and 2:1 in the high treble.

As I said - 'A good question.' The answer is not simple. There is much, much more that could be said.

I should also say that an aural tuner is not saying to herself - 'I think I'll tune half a 4:2 and half 6:3 partial set on this note.' A tuner tunes by ear. Tuners can record a fabulous tuning of a specific piano on their ET and then use the ET to consistently produce that same tuning, within reason. This is a wonderful time saver.

Incidentally, the frequencies I show in the above examples are derived from a DFFT programme I use for audio analysis.

Thanks for the background . I should have compared the Korg to a bus and a Professional`s Tuner to a taxi . The taxi will take you to your doorstep and the Korg "bus" will drop you a few streets away . Then I have to do the extra bit myself . It`s clearer on the lowest section that the meter is just getting the note in the ballpark area . To me the hardest part is coping with very varied pin reactions to the tuning lever . A fair scattering of tight pins mixed up with smooth pins just adds another level of complication .
Is the idea of recording the inharmonicity electronically an efficient way to tune? Can you record that when the piano is out of tune