An unloved flashy looking piano in a showroom turned out to have been bought for Michael Jackson. It seemed the ideal instrument on which to test High Definition tuning. Do you think it sounds better as a result?
It's an interesting illustration of the truism "it takes all sorts to make the world interesting." Equal temperament has robbed us of a certain amount of beauty because it rejects this obvious truth in its relentless pursuit of uniformity. Thank you for sharing this.
Wow, David, this is amazing. The piano that started as a beer wagon Holstein becomes a thoroughbred champion. Wonderful! After high-definition tuning the pianos positively invited us to come in and be part of the music.
equal temperament just makes the harmonic relationship between intervals muddy or it makes the pitches of the interval at odds with one another ever so slightly, making the music sound a tad bit rough and not as smooth as it shouls sound.
Yes - very much so. The sound of the modern piano is always moving and never finds peace. It cannot express but as soon as we tune it well it can reach the stillness of the sublime. Here's a piece that we think we know . . . ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-p7AoF3zvcaI.html but perhaps after a time you might fall into a trance watching over the mirror-smooth lake with birds soaring over head and leaves rustling at the shore.
Did you mention that german engineers designed pianos so that the hammer strikes at 7th so to dampen the 7th harmonic? Yes, modern instruments are made to sound acceptable in an equal-temp. But I wonder how the digital samplings of concert grands are made to sound so well, though it is easy to detect that they are digital sounds (even in recordings - NB *that* is not easy, I should add).
It's the 5th harmonic which became prominent after the 1870s and was exploited in Equal Temperament to give that shimmer that we expect from a big brand piano. Before then, it was the 3rd harmonic which was the prominent sound.
Yes - these effects are achievable to varying extents using the perfect-fifth family of unequal temperaments on the spectrum from Young and Vallotti with 6 perfect fifths, Kellner and Kirnberger III with 7 perfect fifths and Werkmeister III at the extreme end with 8 perfect fifths. This tuning is based on Kellner with a particular personal twist which I've found usually gives me good results and I recently did a Steinway C using Kirnberger III which for many would be too strong but which the owner likes.
Well of course songs that were written for a different tuning system are going to sound better when tuned closer to that system assuming that is what you're going for. Although the "hotel foyer music" did feel like it had more depth when played in the high definition temperament and now I can't help but notice this dissonant harmonic in equal temperament. Also I just want to say your playing wasn't terrible at all, keep practicing!!
Well, as if there weren't 6 or 7 dimensions of piano maintenance and playing beyond just the choice of tuning/temperament - yes, if you play badly on a badly regulated instrument, it won't sound good regardless of the tuning. Then you change the tuning and suddenly the player becomes much more able to control fingers and pedals. What a coincidence, eh? The Beethoven supposed 'Ordinary' tuning is marred by bad execution - the fifths or octaves for Ab-Eb are out. We can't tell what sounds 'better' without equal care and effort being applied to both. And I agree that the few bars (too few ..) of Schubert Ab major Impromptu expose the slightly too-wide Ab-C major third.
Well of course criticism is accepted but it's not wholly to be objective from an armchair perspective. Yes what a coincidence, I play badly ordinarily tuned and perhaps less badly with my special tuning. That's not deliberate - it's a reaction to my wanting to achieve effect and get the sound I want and the tuning helps me to do just that. The sustain pedal can be used for infinite sustain because the tuning is "clean" and thereby allow the piano to enter dreamstate. This can be demonstrated with Chopin's Raindrop prelude which can be played not as hail hitting a tin roof but drizzle coming out of the mist being unable to determine between sea and sky at Valdemossa on the north coast of Mallorca. The wider Ab-C would be played more gently by a player more experienced in the tuning. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-F2WYs7WPWSc.html may be of interest further to this video. For Beethoven try ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-wjPDefnPQNU.html and ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-GXZxR0AaXAA.html
It's the use of an unequal temperament combined with a technique I've developed to get similar results across many different instruments reliably and to maximise resonance likewise. I've been able to visually demonstrate using the Pleyel Chromatic harp as a model for the piano ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-F2WYs7WPWSc.html
Thank you very much! I am really fascinated by unequal temperament, mostly thanks to you. Even though I am a violinist (and only 16), my dream is to one day own a piano tuned to some sort of unequal temperament with each key having its own character. Do you have any recommendations for good books or resources to research about unequal temperament or in particular Kellner tuning which is harder to find on the internet.
Hm, I'm guessing that the unequal temperament tuning of the Fazioli piano in this video recorded by David in Cannes accounts for a good measure of the attractiveness of the first piece for me: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-mnTDkj5dYYc.html. Completely apart from the skill of the pianist, that piano sounds wonderful. (Reveal: musically untrained listener, daily singer, age 78.)
Yes - that Haydn on the Fazioli sound clean, and the contrast going into the minor enhanced. In standard tuning the major third is slightly discordant and grates with the natural 5th harmonic of the sound of the instrument. My tuning reduces the effect of the 5th harmonic and promotes the 3rd harmonic. By doing this where the major third of the scale is pure it enhances the sound of the instrument and resonates and where the major third is on edge, it doesn't resonate so much and becomes separate from the harmonic sound rather than near-enough to interfere. This is why the instrument tuned as I do sounds cleaner.
@@unequally-tempered Thank you, David. I will be passing along the links to these videos to my piano-enthusiast friends and acquaintances. Too bad that many of them are stuck with digital! Nevertheless, the effect is so profound (to my ears) and important that the videos cry to be shared.
No matter the tuning formula, the plastic horror would best serve humanity by being sent as base material to a toothbrush factory in the Amazon rain forests.
