Unisons

[Mark Story]

Tom,

You are so right - good memory.  You may be referring to an article in the
January 1979 Scientific American by Gabriel Weinreich, a physics professor
at University of Michigan.  I seem to recall too that reprints of this
article were available through PTG for a while.  I have my original copy.
The subtitle, states:

 "Most of the notes on a piano are sounded by two or three strings.  The
strings are not tuned to precisely the same frequency, a fact that
contributes in unexpected ways to the tone of the instrument."

 I have as much of a bias towards tuning "pure" unisons as anyone, however
I have never forgotten this article and the conclusions.  I too have had
the experience of trying to deal with an instrument with dead zone.  In my
case it is a S&S 'B' in a performance venue.  Once a year or two ago in
response to the pleadings of on artist, I experimented with "detuning"
unisons in the "zone."  I received an entirely blind (I only told her I
would try something different) and unsolicited comment of approval.  Since
I didn't make this a part of my routine for this piano (it does, after all,
take more work), last week, after tuning it twice in two days without
playing the artist (different) left me a long rambling message about how
she thought the piano sounded dull after the tuning.

If you can find this article, while it's not perfect, by all means check it
out.  It contains some good physics on why we do a lot of things with a
piano to maximize sustain (like scaling the board thicker in the treble) as
well as the tuning effect.

Mark Story, RPT
Eastern Washington University
mstory@ewu.edu

----------
> From: Tom Myler <TomMyler@worldnet.att.net>
> To: pianotech@byu.edu
> Subject: Re: Unisons
> Date: Saturday, May 17, 1997 11:06 AM
> >
> > 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".