Excellent video! Very interesting use of minor thirds, I don't use them in my preferred sequence. I use major thirds and sixths with fourths and fifths to check and control, and I prefer sixths to be slightly faster than thirds inside. That's really fine temperament by the way, it's very smoothly progressing. As a tuner, it's like candy for my ears, so satisfying! :P
I have been tuning for over 33yrs - l learned the hard way by ear then started using the technology to " assist " me - and they do assist - but ultimately, the ear is the final check for all tunings- interesting video- one of the good ones on UA-cam
Hello, I tuned in to this video, by interest to a tuning of the piano other than the well tempered, and I couldn't figure whether I'm on the right spot for that, or in case you have another video on that subject? Other than the theoretical aspects (very interesting thank you) I'd have appreciated a musical example to also better grasp the impact on the timbre and the general sound dynamic in that supposed particular case. Thanks for your attention, kind regards Erik
This video has given me second thoughts about tuning my newly acquired piano it is in tune with itself but overall about half a semitone flat but I love the colour of it I have turned Pianos in the past with great success but in this case I'm afraid I will lose something I won't be able to get back Hmmmmmm
It's really rather important to ask the rhetorical question "Why am I tuning this piano?" and another rhetorical question "What does equal spacing of notes achieve?". There is another way of tuning pianos that gives "colour" to the "chrom"atic scale, not in octaves but in tenths. Deliberately removing evenness in thirds makes music more interesting and can set many notes on the scale onto many of the harmonics of the lower strings. Increasingly people who have heard such tunings are falling out of love with perfect equal temperament.
ET Is the only way. UT, although interesting, struggles to handle modulations well. I mean it depends. Kirnberger is fine because all the 5ths are pure, and most Major thirds ( some minor thirds that have a natural sequencing of notes: B minor, E minor)
No temperament has all pure 5ths. Oh what a wonderful world that would be if we could fit 12 perfect fifths in 7 octaves! :) Kirnberger III has 5 imperfect fifths, 4 of which are equally narrow, and 7 perfect fiths, 6 of which are in sequence (Db-Ab, Ab-Eb, ..., F-C). Only one of the major thirds is perfect, C-E, two are pythagorean, and there are three pythagorean minor thirds.
I've often found it sad when listening to piano concertos how dead and boring the piano sounds in relation to the rest of the orchestra. Equal temperament is quite dull.
I've found that modulations are especially meaningful in unequal temperaments. When I was younger I didn't see any use in so many tonalities, and truly what meaning is there in whether you write music in F# or in C when it's going to be played on an equal-tempered piano? In ET it only makes sense to think of chromaticism horizontally. For example, if you start a piece in D minor then yes, modulating to F major is meaningful, but it would sound the same if the jump was from G minor to Bb major, C minor to Eb major, etc. With UT, however, there's a tremendous difference between playing in C# or in E. Another example: with Kirnberger III, modulating from F# to C# and modulating from A to E evole completely different feelings, even though these are both one fifths apart.
Great videos! The only thing I question is at 3:10 where you say the F-Ab min 3rd is beating faster than the Ab-C Maj 3rd. I counted with a metronome and it seems the opposite. To my ear the M3 is beating faster than the m3. Did you misspeak, or is my phone doing something funny on me? Which should it be? Thanks Rick! You’re the best!
The major third beating is something noticeable. the speed of the beating should steadily increase as you play progressively higher major thirds. tha'ts one way to know.
Other than being a purist, what reasons are there for not using a tuner to set the temperament in the center octave, and then tune octaves above and below note for note?
I'm not a tuner but surely in this age digital analysis of pitch is capable of determining precise equal intervals. Well designed software appears to be available also to determine and allow for Inharmonicity. I realise the great skill that is required to tune a piano by whatever means you set the pitch to ensure it is as accurate as possible and will hold. However apart from speed and convenience, would you say there is any other reason to tune aurally? @@butlertuningschool
an excellent aural tuner will get a better temperament than even the best current ETD's. However, in a few years I expect the future ETD's to equal the best aural temperament because they will use interactive tuning between all the temperament notes, rather than be forced to fit a pre-determined approximation as which the present ETD's do.
my ears need a tuning. A quick question: I recently bought a C. Bechstein Model 10 upright circa 1910/11. What temperament would this piano be tuned to back then? Thanks.
Not being Mr. Butler, I would caution you in tuning A4 to 440Hz. Back then the international pitch was A-435Hz and equal temperament was never actually used until 1917. We really ruined it by going ET. That is why it was fought for so long. Tuners had their own systems during those yesteryears and the competition created better results than ET. Now they all like to do it the same......boring! Beethoven, Verdi, Debussy, Liszt and others all liked the pitch more like A-432Hz. It breathes life and texture into the music. ET at 440Hz is quite percussive and hard on our nervous system. It has been tested to contract the heart muscles causing excessive cardio stress.
Hey thanks for the video. I notice that when I tune the whole piano to a temperament, that when I'm finished, the middle is already slightly detuned. What is best method to tackle that problem? What is the best to do about this when removing the muting strip and start to tune the other strings? Because it will change pitch again.
This will happen more the piano was out of pitch to begin with. If the piano is close to start with, just a few cents off, this drift is minimal. I like to do a quick pitch raise with an ETD to get the piano close if more than 8 cents off, not worrying about unisons, and then do the fine tuning after. This helps prevent the pitch changing while tuning the fine tuning.
If you have a massively out of tune piano. Tune ~10 cents sharp. Then allow the piano to settle to that tuning for a few days. Come back again and check the tuning. If it's way flat then you must repeat and allow to settle for a couple more days and then you can proceed to proper full tune. Normally if the piano is well maintained you can do the ~ 10 cents sharp for the initial tune and complete the fine tune straight after.
Your bass notes would sound sharp and your treble notes would sound flat and neither would sound good when played together. This happens due to the partials (harmonics of the string) always being sharper than the fundamentals.
if you are playing a busted old piano that hasn't been tuned in years, and is unlikely to get a professional visit, and especially if you never cared or noticed those fine details of interval color that tuners care about [does this third beat faster than that third] then tuning the middle two or three octaves with a simple tuner will sound delightful. the other notes will need to be tuned to sound harmonious with the central keys ... there are various strategies, but pick one or even guess and your piano will be better than you are used to. and you can certainly fiddle with unison strings until they sound right. it's an incremental process fixing a badly out of tune piano, so even if you plan on calling a pro you are better off getting pitch into the ballpark over a period of weeks so the tune you pay for is on a stable piano. it's also possible that as you nudge your piano into life, a bit here a bit there and retighten the thing that was working yesterday, that you incrementally learn more about how real tuning works. with utmost respect to real tuners, the complexity of proper tuning represents an intimidating barrier to DIY, but there is a place for complete idiots working with chromatic tuners and rudimentary grasp of stretch and temper. imo this place is a combination of very poor tune and not caring overly. maybe it also depends on whether you think of tuning as open the piano, do the job and put everything away, or whether you're happy to leave the action exposed for three months and tweak notes and listen to beats when tv gets boring
Nice demonstration but watch out for your explanation! Don't forget that thirds and sixths are called "imperfect consonances" for a reason. So explain to us please what it means to be narrower or wider then a "perfect" major or minor third? Preference to the fifth is indeed good but a wider fifth than yours has a more lush and harmonious "difference tone". The narrower fifth has almost no "difference tone" and becomes more percussive, annoying and less interesting, almost dead sounding in comparison to the wider fifth. By using your narrow fifths you will only succeed in getting a 9ft. piano to sound like a 6ft piano. A big waste of money for the owner: but then he doesn't know better if he watches this video does he?
Perhaps I didn’t explain properly or you misunderstood. The first coincidental partials of the fifths in this video are nearly in unison. How could you make the fifths anymore ‘perfect’?
Thanks, your temperament is excellent & very understandable...I appreciated the effort you went to!
Excellent video! Very interesting use of minor thirds, I don't use them in my preferred sequence. I use major thirds and sixths with fourths and fifths to check and control, and I prefer sixths to be slightly faster than thirds inside. That's really fine temperament by the way, it's very smoothly progressing. As a tuner, it's like candy for my ears, so satisfying! :P
I have been tuning for over 33yrs - l learned the hard way by ear then started using the technology to " assist " me - and they do assist - but ultimately, the ear is the final check for all tunings- interesting video- one of the good ones on UA-cam
And not to forget.......the "consolidation of the notes!(withstanding fortissimo's)
extremely insightful! Myself still a bit of a beginner but your method is stellar. Thanks
Hello,
I tuned in to this video, by interest to a tuning of the piano other than the well tempered, and I couldn't figure whether I'm on the right spot for that, or in case you have another video on that subject? Other than the theoretical aspects (very interesting thank you) I'd have appreciated a musical example to also better grasp the impact on the timbre and the general sound dynamic in that supposed particular case. Thanks for your attention, kind regards
Erik
You have the most "collegiate" tutorials! Thanks! I really want to get into this, but I want to do it right!
This video has given me second thoughts about tuning my newly acquired piano
it is in tune with itself but overall about half a semitone flat
but I love the colour of it
I have turned Pianos in the past with great success but in this case I'm afraid I will lose something I won't be able to get back
Hmmmmmm
I notice that when I'm trying to identify intervals I listen to the beats between the intervals more than the pitch chroma
very helpful video. can you please show the f sharp and b stimming? Please please
Nothing is "perfect" then! This guy is good .Thank you .
Great lesson and conversations amongst purists as well
Hello, excellent video but I have a question: How can I measure the 7 beats per second ? By ear or using any other tool?
"Fits between" means the speed of the beating for an interval fits correctly between adjacent instances of the interval.
It's really rather important to ask the rhetorical question "Why am I tuning this piano?" and another rhetorical question "What does equal spacing of notes achieve?". There is another way of tuning pianos that gives "colour" to the "chrom"atic scale, not in octaves but in tenths. Deliberately removing evenness in thirds makes music more interesting and can set many notes on the scale onto many of the harmonics of the lower strings. Increasingly people who have heard such tunings are falling out of love with perfect equal temperament.
ET Is the only way. UT, although interesting, struggles to handle modulations well. I mean it depends. Kirnberger is fine because all the 5ths are pure, and most Major thirds ( some minor thirds that have a natural sequencing of notes: B minor, E minor)
No temperament has all pure 5ths. Oh what a wonderful world that would be if we could fit 12 perfect fifths in 7 octaves! :)
Kirnberger III has 5 imperfect fifths, 4 of which are equally narrow, and 7 perfect fiths, 6 of which are in sequence (Db-Ab, Ab-Eb, ..., F-C). Only one of the major thirds is perfect, C-E, two are pythagorean, and there are three pythagorean minor thirds.
I've often found it sad when listening to piano concertos how dead and boring the piano sounds in relation to the rest of the orchestra. Equal temperament is quite dull.
I've found that modulations are especially meaningful in unequal temperaments.
When I was younger I didn't see any use in so many tonalities, and truly what meaning is there in whether you write music in F# or in C when it's going to be played on an equal-tempered piano?
In ET it only makes sense to think of chromaticism horizontally. For example,
if you start a piece in D minor then yes, modulating to F major is meaningful, but it would sound the same if the jump was from G minor to Bb major, C minor to Eb major, etc. With UT, however, there's a tremendous difference between playing in C# or in E. Another example: with Kirnberger III, modulating from F# to C# and modulating from A to E evole completely different feelings, even though these are both one fifths apart.
@@luizg8034 Yes - both achieve good character thereby
Great videos! The only thing I question is at 3:10 where you say the F-Ab min 3rd is beating faster than the Ab-C Maj 3rd. I counted with a metronome and it seems the opposite. To my ear the M3 is beating faster than the m3. Did you misspeak, or is my phone doing something funny on me? Which should it be? Thanks Rick! You’re the best!
The F3/Ab3 minor third should be faster than the Ab3/C4 Major third. This proves that the fifth F3/C4 is narrow at the second adjustable partial.
Please talk about degrees of stretch. Keith Jarrett made a local tuner add more stretch. It's a famous story around here.
The major third beating is something noticeable. the speed of the beating should steadily increase as you play progressively higher major thirds. tha'ts one way to know.
Other than being a purist, what reasons are there for not using a tuner to set the temperament in the center octave, and then tune octaves above and below note for note?
No being Mr. Butler, I would say that using a tuner locks one into equal temperament and this is bad for the music.
Using a good electronic tuner to tune the center octave is much more accurate than doing it by ear.
Why do you say that?
I'm not a tuner but surely in this age digital analysis of pitch is capable of determining precise equal intervals. Well designed software appears to be available also to determine and allow for Inharmonicity. I realise the great skill that is required to tune a piano by whatever means you set the pitch to ensure it is as accurate as possible and will hold. However apart from speed and convenience, would you say there is any other reason to tune aurally? @@butlertuningschool
an excellent aural tuner will get a better temperament than even the best current ETD's. However, in a few years I expect the future ETD's to equal the best aural temperament because they will use interactive tuning between all the temperament notes, rather than be forced to fit a pre-determined approximation as which the present ETD's do.
my ears need a tuning. A quick question: I recently bought a C. Bechstein Model 10 upright circa 1910/11. What temperament would this piano be tuned to back then? Thanks.
Not being Mr. Butler, I would caution you in tuning A4 to 440Hz. Back then the international pitch was A-435Hz and equal temperament was never actually used until 1917. We really ruined it by going ET. That is why it was fought for so long. Tuners had their own systems during those yesteryears and the competition created better results than ET. Now they all like to do it the same......boring! Beethoven, Verdi, Debussy, Liszt and others all liked the pitch more like A-432Hz. It breathes life and texture into the music. ET at 440Hz is quite percussive and hard on our nervous system. It has been tested to contract the heart muscles causing excessive cardio stress.
Bechsteins sound wonderful in A440 and they react well to being tuned to Kellner temperament.
Good stuff.... not the conventional method which I like!
got me writing a classical song. Thanks hahaha :-D
Hey thanks for the video. I notice that when I tune the whole piano to a temperament, that when I'm finished, the middle is already slightly detuned. What is best method to tackle that problem? What is the best to do about this when removing the muting strip and start to tune the other strings? Because it will change pitch again.
This will happen more the piano was out of pitch to begin with. If the piano is close to start with, just a few cents off, this drift is minimal. I like to do a quick pitch raise with an ETD to get the piano close if more than 8 cents off, not worrying about unisons, and then do the fine tuning after. This helps prevent the pitch changing while tuning the fine tuning.
If you have a massively out of tune piano. Tune ~10 cents sharp. Then allow the piano to settle to that tuning for a few days. Come back again and check the tuning. If it's way flat then you must repeat and allow to settle for a couple more days and then you can proceed to proper full tune.
Normally if the piano is well maintained you can do the ~ 10 cents sharp for the initial tune and complete the fine tune straight after.
What would happen if I tuned a piano straight to a chromatic tuner, without any temperament?
Your bass notes would sound sharp and your treble notes would sound flat and neither would sound good when played together. This happens due to the partials (harmonics of the string) always being sharper than the fundamentals.
also the middle 4ths, 5ths, thirds and octaves will not be in tune.
yeah, ummm ... don't do that.... it no sound good anymore
if you are playing a busted old piano that hasn't been tuned in years, and is unlikely to get a professional visit, and especially if you never cared or noticed those fine details of interval color that tuners care about [does this third beat faster than that third] then tuning the middle two or three octaves with a simple tuner will sound delightful. the other notes will need to be tuned to sound harmonious with the central keys ... there are various strategies, but pick one or even guess and your piano will be better than you are used to. and you can certainly fiddle with unison strings until they sound right. it's an incremental process fixing a badly out of tune piano, so even if you plan on calling a pro you are better off getting pitch into the ballpark over a period of weeks so the tune you pay for is on a stable piano. it's also possible that as you nudge your piano into life, a bit here a bit there and retighten the thing that was working yesterday, that you incrementally learn more about how real tuning works. with utmost respect to real tuners, the complexity of proper tuning represents an intimidating barrier to DIY, but there is a place for complete idiots working with chromatic tuners and rudimentary grasp of stretch and temper. imo this place is a combination of very poor tune and not caring overly. maybe it also depends on whether you think of tuning as open the piano, do the job and put everything away, or whether you're happy to leave the action exposed for three months and tweak notes and listen to beats when tv gets boring
I would be tuning for days. 😬
A Chromatic Tuner helps
I have no idea what You are talking about! Donna Chassis
umm ?????????????????
Nice demonstration but watch out for your explanation! Don't forget that thirds and sixths are called "imperfect consonances" for a reason. So explain to us please what it means to be narrower or wider then a "perfect" major or minor third? Preference to the fifth is indeed good but a wider fifth than yours has a more lush and harmonious "difference tone". The narrower fifth has almost no "difference tone" and becomes more percussive, annoying and less interesting, almost dead sounding in comparison to the wider fifth. By using your narrow fifths you will only succeed in getting a 9ft. piano to sound like a 6ft piano. A big waste of money for the owner: but then he doesn't know better if he watches this video does he?
Phillip Shearman you're not correct.
Perhaps I didn’t explain properly or you misunderstood. The first coincidental partials of the fifths in this video are nearly in unison. How could you make the fifths anymore ‘perfect’?
It should sound as dull and uninteresting as possible.
Sounds out of tune to me.
very helpful video. can you please show the f sharp and b stimming? Please please