quote:

Originally posted by Daniel:
The ancients considered stringed instruments superior to wind. (Not at all sure they were talking about the human voice). So, I think they would have considered a piano as akin to a harp. Not sure how or if this relates to the quote.

This is really interesting Daniel. Do you have any good links on this subject? I'm most interested in reading why they thought this.

quote:

Originally posted by Axtremus:
Which would you rather listen to while lying sick in bed:

Bagpipes vs. Banjo

Bagpipes. Any day. The best remedy for a banjo is a pair of wire cutters.

quote:

I would think, given today's techniques, one could devise a decent study to see if pure intervals have greater healing power than impure ones.

i'm not sure how one would construct such a study, since by its very nature this is a subjective experience.

when marc came out to visit me in mt a few years ago we did try this experiment: he spent a week tuning my piano several times a day, refining and refining and refining the tuning using pure octaves and his own sensibility to create what he calls "vibrational coherence."

he and i were deeply interested to know how other people would experience this, because we didn't know--was this just our own sensibility? or was there something objective and universal about it? would other people hear what we hear?

so we threw a party at my house. we invited everyone i knew in town who had musical training, but also other people who have none. and they were all invited to invite anyone they thought might be interested. this ended up including a tenor from berlin and a pianist and violinist from russia. the pianist from russia could not tear herself away from the piano. the tenor said to marc, "thank you for ruining for me every piano i will ever hear for the rest of my life." they ended up spending the next day rehearsing at my house to prepare for a concert.

but we also had my husband there, who cannot hear without hearing aids.

it seemed to us that everyone there responded to the piano in the same way, whether they could hear well or not, or whether they had musical training or not. they all had the same look of wonder and illumination and awe on their faces. one of my friends asked marc, "what exactly is this we are hearing?"

vibrational coherence, he said.

i don't think pianos, as a general rule, are able to attain this sound. it is achieved by a sleight of hand by an extraordinarily gifted tuner.

however, a really great string quartet can certainly achieve it. strings are not constrained in the way a piano is--you must know this, bernard, from playing both the 'cello and the piano.

is it healing? how would you measure that?

i can tell you that when my beloved dog was dying of bone cancer, i played that piano for him all day long every day and he lay underneath the piano on his big orthopedic bed and looked up an me from under the keyboard with a look of bliss on his face. it seemed to me that was the only thing i could do for him that lessened his suffering.

and it certainly *feels* healing.

as for the organ--i honestly have no idea of what to make of that.

and bagpipes or banjo? are those my only two choices? kill me now.

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it is achieved by a sleight of hand by an extraordinarily gifted tuner.

Plus hours of tuning refinement over a long, but highly condensed period of time on a very high quality piano.

Pique, your description made me wonder how good a mid-tier piano, like my Yamaha C2, could sound after the same kind of concentrated tuning activity. I will probably never know because I don’t have access to a piano tech like that, nor the kind of relationship with a tech who I could get to tune my piano like Marc did yours, i.e., multiple times over the course of a few days. But it would certainly be fun to find out!

quote:

Originally posted by ShiroKuro:

quote:

it is achieved by a sleight of hand by an extraordinarily gifted tuner.

Plus hours of tuning refinement over a long, but highly condensed period of time on a very high quality piano.

Pique, your description made me wonder how good a mid-tier piano, like my Yamaha C2, could sound after the same kind of concentrated tuning activity. I will probably never know because I don’t have access to a piano tech like that, nor the kind of relationship with a tech who I could get to tune my piano like Marc did yours, i.e., multiple times over the course of a few days. But it would certainly be fun to find out!

Yes, most of us tune with time constraints - it becomes "zone tuning", deciding what is the margin for error for this particular piano based on the budget/time set by the owner. Even small shifts in pitch set up stress instabilities in the whole system that additional tuning passes can even out, which usually also means a more stable tuning.

So yes, you would certainly notice a super-tuning on your Yamaha that goes well beyond the PTG tuning test of getting within 1 cent before points are deducted. There are many techs that proudly claim superiority by earning a registered piano tech status yet only passed with 80% ... Plenty of those placing sub-standard tunings out in the field!

Bernard, I don't but I'll look for some and post them if I find them.

Yes, they definitely had a two tier hierarchal belief system about stringed and wind instruments.

Actually, I'd like to know more about this myself.

So does this (Ron’s and pique’s posts) also explain why repeated tunings, say at 5-month intervals, can make a piano sound better over time? Even though the tuning shifts between visits.

I have never purchased a new piano. All of the acoustic pianos I’ve had have been used, some more neglected than others.

Pianos I’ve owned are, uprights: Yamaha U1, Baldwin Hamilton, Petrof 115, and now Yamaha C2 grand. Each of these pianos developed better sound over the years that I owned them. I had my C2 regulated and voiced, and I had the tuner doing some light voicing on the U1, but nothing else besides tuning, and the other uprights I only had tuned.

But I always have my pianos tuned on a short cycle (usually every 5 months). I always thought that was good because the piano sounds better that way, but is it the case that it’s actually helping the piano come into its full potential?

And if so, maybe a shorter cycle would be even better?

I don't know about a 5 month schedule. I work in Chicago where there are significant seasonal shifts, which complicate the matter. I have noted that some of the pianos at the U. that I tune almost monthly are easier to touch up.

I've read from other techs that rotate (symphony work) that they often will try to tune the exact same way so that the pianos 'like' to go back to that tuning every time.

It used to be that in Chicago, 12 month tunings would have me tuning at just about the same humidity level as the last year. Now it is much more random...

Re seasonal shifts, yes, my five- month schedule kind of doesn't fit squarely with the seasonal changes. We'll see how things go in the new house, which seems to be a "tighter" house than any other I've ever lived in. I also have a dampp chaser now as well.

quote:

I've read from other techs that rotate (symphony work) that they often will try to tune the exact same way so that the pianos 'like' to go back to that tuning every time.

Maybe this is what I've been noticing with each of my pianos, that the tuner gets the piano to a certain state and then, unlike when the piano was neglected by a previous owner, it's easier to keep it there with the slightly more frequent tunings.

Or could it be that each subsequent tuning is a little better than the last, since the piano becomes increasingly stable over time?

Get the tuning stable with more frequent tunings, and then keep it stable by controlling the room environment.

years after that week with marc, my piano was still in tune. i even had a tech from billings come over and he refused to tune it. said there was nothing for him to do.

of course, that wasn't strictly true. the unisons certainly could have been touched up. but for the purposes of what that tech does, he was correct.