Unisons

[Tom Myler]

> At times, I hear a thread about making unisons less than perfect to give
> more sustain, body, color etc.  I have been a piano tech for 24 years
> and I have never done a unison I thought was TOO clean.  I have never
> tried to make anything but as precise a unison as I could.  I have also
> never heard anyone else's unison that was too clean.
>
> Where did this idea come from?  It seems totally foreign to me.  If
> clean is good, then there is no such thing as "too clean."  Right?!?!
> David M. Porritt, RPT
> Meadows School of the Arts
> Southern Methodist University
> Dallas, Texas
> _______________________________________________


I seem to remember reading somewhere (how's THAT for a disclaimer)  that
listeners in double-blind tests do in  fact prefer the sound of a tuning
with VERY SLIGHTLY "mis-tuned" unisons.   The important point to keep in
mind was that   the amount of mis-tuning was tiny, so small that only a
very critical ear would notice, and only upon careful listening.

Two first hand observations, for what they're worth:

1)  I always strive for the cleanest possible unisons.   Every so often,
while listening to a tuning I've just finished,  one unison will stand out,
sounding VERY slightly dull or lifeless, and I find that the particular
unison has been tuned absolutely dead-on perfect (even though I thought I'd
achieved that with all of them).   I mis-tune and re-tune the unison, and
it blends right in with the others.  This doesn't happen very often, but I
have noticed it.


2)  I once found myself tuning a poorly rebuilt Steinway M.    I can't
recall any specifics about it, except that this piano apparently had
soundboard and/or bridge problems.  There was a half-octave or so that
sounded weak, with poor tone, sustain, and it wasn't a hammer/voicing
problem.    For whatever reasons, C6 was as dead as it could be, and I
found that deliberately tuning that unison very dirty (by our standards)
effected an improvement.    It didn't sound "good", but definitely sounded
"less horrible".

Be that as it may,  I would swear that the tunings which most impress me
will have (among other things) crystal clear unisons.


Myler, Tom

"Perhaps the greatest wisdom is the knowledge
of one's own ignorance"

                                 John Steinbeck