It's wonderful to find someone else promoting good tuning. This sort of tuning works well in all keys and does not detract from later music. Wonderful explanation and recording.
Thanks a lot! This is a great lesson! I tuned a piano in this way. Every one at home heard the difference))) music became alive even on my old USSR's piano.
I play synthesizers, and there is constant intonation that has to be done to get the correct sound for the music being played. It has helped tremendously with my piano tuning skills, but where piano is different is the the tuning of each individual note in relation to its neighboring notes. I usually ask my clients which key they prefer to play in, and what style they enjoy the most, or even ask them to play an original. Then I will tune to their needs, and compromise some beats in the unused pentatonic scale, but ensure those notes are still relatable. typically people like the key of C, so all the black keys will be adjusted to allow for a really tasty key of C. What ends up happening, is that no mater what the Key is, the piano will return a very original color for that key. For my piano, it gives me many more options stylistically when writing music, and my clients love the sound too. Best advice is that once you understand the rules of thumb, dont be afraid to break them! better to really feel out the piano itself, the room it sits in, and their generated overtones. As a pipe organ player once told me, the whole room is the instrument!
Thanks for posting the entire process. I'm about to start my first complete piano tuning after a several weeks of reading, listening and planning. Your video (as well as books by Fischer, Bradley and Reblitz) has been the most helpful that I've seen. And your piano sounds good to me. I've seen a few videos that purport to teach a temperament, but some of the results have been very unpleasant to my ears!
yeah! that's it! the relationship between notes and chords is the problem I can't resolve so well..and he nicely described that! ..great stuff to favorite :)
I'm just now learning about tuning. Is this a single-string piano? I was under the impression that the middle section of the piano has 3 strings for each pitch which would mean you have to get all 3 strings in tune for each note.
Thanks! Great article for Clavier Companion, too. Just curious--aren't there 3 strings per note in this range even in a 19th centure piano? Had you previously muted the other 2?
What would you then have tuned the B to? would it be tuned off the E? And is it necessary to make the E-B fiftht a little "wider" as the leading tone in C?
Trevor, that was a very informative demonstration. Thank you. I have a question. I read somewhere years ago that virtually all musical compositions were in the keys of C, E or G in the classical period. The reason they say is because well tempered temperament had its limitations so composers steered clear of these keys. When equal temperament came about, suddenly works could be composed in the other keys ( i. e.. A, B, D,F). Is this why equal temperament came to be standard we have today? If not, why did we feel the need to go the route of equal temperament? As they say, if it isn't broke, don't fix it.
I used a Carey Beebe formula for one historical temperament Kirnberger 3 . His method is to tune the intervals like 5ths but not using beats for counting .Most of his intervals are simply clean ,which is less complicated for a novice . It worked better than my Korg orchestral tuner . One naughty idea I have lurking is "If Bach wanted to show any key can sound good why did he use sharps and flats or even double sharps .Was he cheating?" A silly nonsense question for light amusement only .
Not quite right about the beating of the beginning C-E interval as far as your statement and demonstration about the beat rates in equal temperament. They'd be about 4 beats a second and not faster.
This is nicely demonstrated, but on pianos, intervals tend to be less tempered naturally, due to the way the partials are "pulling" the spectra high. Also the beating is not really even in time, due to reinforcement again with partials, the speed of 3ds cannot be ascertain really, it can be compared, yes, but measured, not really, approximated at best. In the end this is a puzzle with different rules, and that differs from piano to piano
i read that very wide thirds was the main problem that composers had historically with ET as well as the lack of difference between the different keys which made the tone and colour a bit monotonous. i know that in ET the fifths are tempered by a 12th of the comma (so that 12 fifths is equal to 7 octaves) but why does this necessitate such a wide third?
Matteo Russo in order to get a third to be pure, it's composite fifths (that is to say the fifths that lie between the notes making up the third on the circle of fifths) would have to be much narrower then they are in ET.
We aren't really... there are infinitely many divisions of the octave in the same way that there are infinitely many harmonics of a fundamental. it's just most humans don't like the sound of the harmonics past 13 (16th harmonic is really noticeably flat for modern musicians), so we have stopped at 12 :)
MrHestichs Imagine a circle of fifths. You might think that because since you can start at C, go around the entire wheel and end up at C, then 12 fifths would fit perfectly into an octave. Except they don't. Going up by a ratio of 3/2 (a perfect fifth) 12 times doesn't land you at exactly the same pitch class as the note you started with. The idea with temperament is to compromise some of the fifths from being pure in order to get them to fit into an octave perfectly. Nowadays, the discrepancy is reconciled by narrowing each of the fifths equally, but historically, other unequal methods were used that resulted in different key signatures having more distinct moods.
