Classical stretch country

[A440A@aol.com]

 Greetings all;

Ralph writes,
> At the risk of being the first cold blanket, I
>found the bass really too wide for my taste. The rest of the piano,
>though, boasted almost pure 5ths all the way up with good triple octaves
>and single octaves that were certainly not objectionable. Probably i
>could have programmed the F for a better bass.  My candid opinion,
>though, was that i know i could have been a whole lot happier with an
>aural tuning had i left myself more time.

It is interesting to see who will accept what.
      I can state for a fact,  that the additional stretch, ( beating octaves
for the sake of pure fifths), will not work in a country music recording
environment.  The bass players go nuts!!!  I tried this and it cost me
another tuning on the spot.  Ensemble playing also just doesn't seem to gel,
intonation-wise, with this much stretch.  As opposed to additional
"richness",  I hear it as a loss of foundation when the 6:3 octave is still
beating, for the sake of fifths.
   Perhaps the solo piano will benefit from this, but then, I think it may
depend on what kind of music that is being played.     Jazz?  I suppose so;.
 I have been asked in the past by jazz musicians to make the top end "hot".
and it seemed that there was no limit to how far I could sharpen the upper
two octaves.  My personal feeling is that the additional stretch is of
limited use.  I have not tried this on anything smaller than a Steinway L, so
I cannot address the utility of the pure fifths on small pianos.
   However,  we have to consider the primacy of the fifth in determing the
value of making them pure.  The thirds operate in acoustical opposition to
fifths, so if the music is heavily dependant on the thirds,  this pure fifth
approach will place the harmonic cost in a very sensitive area.
    Examination of the use of various sizes of thirds and fifths can be done
with the well-temperaments and the music that was composed on them.   Some
musical architecture  is predicated on the pure third, hence, the destruction
of the octave for the sake of the fifth is, IMHO, counter-productive.
    As always, we tend to compare much of what we evaluate on the example of
our mentors and teachers, so, for what it is worth, I will quote Bill
Garlick, circa 1976.
        " As you go up from the temperament octave,  the fourths will begin
to show increasing amounts of beating, but the fifths should not exhibit any
more beating than they do in the middle of the piano.   As you tune the last
octave, which needs no compromise for notes above it, there should be a
feeling of "lift", a sense that the pitch is "going somewhere".

      My own personal feeling is that the double octave should stay as clean
as possible, the loss of pure triple octaves seems to be of small importance,
the straight program from the SAT  seems to do this well on the larger
pianos.
     The optimum stretch for the bass??   I think that this depends on the
piano itself.  A brassy set of hammers might sound better if the fundamentals
are spread a little in favor of the higher partials, but on a more "mellow"
or softer voiced instrument, which is producing a lot of fundamental,  the
strength of the 4:2 relationship  is more important.

Ok, that is more than 2 cents worth, but that is what my ears  and customers
are telling me.

Regards,
Ed Foote
Precision Piano Works
Nashville, Tn