Piano tone and piano tuning

M

monotonic

The Living Force
There are an enormous number of pianos out there and each one can be tuned in many different ways. Often I feel like the way a piano is tuned does not do service to the music being played on it. The art of tuning them well seems like a rare skill, and under-utilized by composers and orchestras.

There are some "next generation" pianos that have been developed, the Boganyi and the Stuart & Sons pianos aim to improve on the existing art in their own ways. Personally I think the Boganyi piano has a more classical and nuanced sound whereas the Stuart & Sons piano is somewhat experimental, providing a large range and control over a very precise and consistent sound - almost electronic.

Still, you probably really don't know what a given piano can do until it has been tuned by a master. At that point you hope that the piano will keep it's tune over time and in different conditions. It is common for pianos to go out of tune during relocation where humidity and vibration can cause materials to change shape or slip. I've heard stories of performances that moved their pianos with them to many different locations that suffered problems because the piano wasn't retuned each time. The tuning of a piano needs to be extremely precise to achieve a consistent sound.

I bring this up now because I found an example where the piano is contributing a lot to the final result of the music. What do you think? The video is here:

https://www.facebook.com/ScienceSprituelle/videos/1664318653783370/
 
monotonic said:
I bring this up now because I found an example where the piano is contributing a lot to the final result of the music. What do you think? The video is here:

https://www.facebook.com/ScienceSprituelle/videos/1664318653783370/
Click to expand...

Warning for arachnophobics like me: Video contains dancing spider in front of mirror! But well, I had myself under control and it was actually cute. :)

It was a nice piano example. Do you know which temperament was used?
 
Slightly of topic, but for those who are a little interested by music theory, here's an interesting little explanation of the piano tuning:
_https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Hqm0dYKUx4
Fortunately, the human ear (brain, mind) knows how to approximate relative pitches.


Data said:
Warning for arachnophobics like me: Video contains dancing spider in front of mirror! But well, I had myself under control and it was actually cute. :)
Click to expand...

Spiders are cute only on a computer screen ;)
 
I don't know anything about the piano unfortunately. Details like that are probably rarely mentioned. I wish I at least knew what the name or performance was.

Yeah, I watched the spider the first time, then forgot about it after watching the video just for the music several times.
 
Data said:
monotonic said:
I bring this up now because I found an example where the piano is contributing a lot to the final result of the music. What do you think? The video is here:

https://www.facebook.com/ScienceSprituelle/videos/1664318653783370/
Click to expand...

Warning for arachnophobics like me: Video contains dancing spider in front of mirror! But well, I had myself under control and it was actually cute. :)

It was a nice piano example. Do you know which temperament was used?
Click to expand...

Hi data. It sounds like equal temperament. I don't know of any contemporary players/recording artists who use just intonation on pianos (or other keyboard instruments for that matter), as that would limit the keys to be played in to one or two, maaaaybe three. :)

Kris
 
The sound of that piano has a lot to do with the harmonics of the lower notes, regardless of tuning. If you listen closely you can hear the low note harmonics in harmony with the middle and higher notes. What stood out to me was the clarity and strength of the harmonics. This isn't necessarily desirable but for this performance it was effective. I think in many cases you wouldn't want such strong harmonics because they would not mix musically with the notes of the other hand.

I don't know to what extent harmonics can be tuned in or tuned out of a piano, but I suppose it makes sense if performers are afraid to deviate from the "one size fits all" setup since pianos are so expensive.
 
My digital piano (it has recorded sound samples from a real concert piano) supports different temperaments. I played a bit with Pythagorean tuning which has perfect fifths, and it sounds awesome for those intervals that are "perfect". It is also interesting that there is no entirely "perfect" temperament, there are always imperfections and tradeoffs. One should select the temperament depending on the piece of music that is played for best results.
 
My experience with tuning is with guitars, but I know that piano tuners use tuning forks to tune the appropriate strings.
The video points out that the twelfth root of two is the spacing between semitones that is used, there being twelve spaces in the octave. This is also used in guitars.
Anyway, the tuning relies specifically on the ear of the tuning person to pick the discord between the tuning fork and the note being played, so there may be discrepancies depending on who is doing the job.

As an aside, I have used frequency generators to generate a note, and compared this accurate note with the note being played by the instrument, with an oscilloscope; with one note on the X-axis and one note on the Y-axis of the oscilloscope - which produces a Lissajous' pattern on the oscilloscope.
I must say that this is an excellent way of tuning, as you can get fractions of a cycle in tuning. ( if the Lissajous pattern tumbles once per second you are one Hertz out..)
You can also get multiple harmonics accurately tuned using this technique.

As for dancing spiders, that was an interesting display by the animal, but I would be wary with it, we have similar spiders in my country known as 'white-tail spiders' which carry a bacterial infection which causes skin necrosis which is really serious.
 
Data said:
My digital piano (it has recorded sound samples from a real concert piano) supports different temperaments. I played a bit with Pythagorean tuning which has perfect fifths, and it sounds awesome for those intervals that are "perfect". It is also interesting that there is no entirely "perfect" temperament, there are always imperfections and tradeoffs. One should select the temperament depending on the piece of music that is played for best results.
Click to expand...

Yes, and this limitation is more present with instruments which has fixed tuning, like piano. When you listen choir or string section, there's more flexibility with the tuning of the intervals, where your musical ear has more freedom to adjust the intonation. That's why in a cappella music the intervals sound often better/clearer imo, because the intervals have more space to "flow", probably according to just intonation. On the other hand it's much harder to control the pitch while singing than when playing piano.

Even if the music is performed in equal temperament, there's still room for alternation. For example, so called "blue notes" in blues music, e.g a flatted fifth interval, are microintervals which can't fully be expressed with our notation and tuning system. This means that the interval is found somewhere between a perfect fifth and flatted fifth, and musician has to use his/her ears to find the "correct" pitch, which depends much on the context of music. This can be accomplished even with some fixed instruments like guitar, because you can bend the notes.

Another example is enharmonic (identical) notes: notes F# and Gb are technically same notes, but if the melody is ascending, e.g. E-F#-G (in key of G), the pitch of F# is little bit higher than Gb in descending melody Ab-Gb-F (in key of Db). This is because F# in the key of G is leading tone which "gravitates" upwards into tonic G, and Gb in the key of Db is suspended tone which "gravitates" downwards into major third F. It's more natural for vocalists to sing these intervals in this way, even if there would be equally tuned instruments present.

I guess my point is that inside any temperament the intonation is always alive and flowing, unless the music is totally digital. Same thing applies to rhythm: rhythm of music is similarly fluent, where the real duration and dynamics of notes aren't mathematically identical with the notation, unless, again, the music is totally digital.
 
Seppo Ilmarinen said:
Data said:
My digital piano (it has recorded sound samples from a real concert piano) supports different temperaments. I played a bit with Pythagorean tuning which has perfect fifths, and it sounds awesome for those intervals that are "perfect". It is also interesting that there is no entirely "perfect" temperament, there are always imperfections and tradeoffs. One should select the temperament depending on the piece of music that is played for best results.
Click to expand...

Yes, and this limitation is more present with instruments which has fixed tuning, like piano. When you listen choir or string section, there's more flexibility with the tuning of the intervals, where your musical ear has more freedom to adjust the intonation. That's why in a cappella music the intervals sound often better/clearer imo, because the intervals have more space to "flow", probably according to just intonation. On the other hand it's much harder to control the pitch while singing than when playing piano.
Click to expand...

This is one of the secrets why some choirs and ensembles (like the King's Singers) sound better than others – they don't rely on the piano to check the pitch and intervals, instead they use their ears! And when the pitches are tuned very carefully, the resulting sound - in best cases - is almost magical.

I've worked as a coach for many choirs, and it's amazing how little understanding choir conductors have about this issue. They "grind in" the passages for each voice section playing along with the piano, never checking the true intonation, never tuning the chords properly. One rule of thumb, especially with early polyphonic vocal music, like Palestrina, is how the major third in the chord should be tuned slightly downwards, and the minor third slightly upwards. And, a good example of good understanding of this are the professional Barbershop-ensembles. To get that Barbershop-sound, with the higher harmonics, you must tune the pitches very carefully.

Here are a couple of examples:

Palestrina; The Tallis Scholars:

King's Singers; Danny Boy:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Trending content

Back
Top Bottom