In a message dated 7/6/99 8:18:42 PM Central Daylight Time, you write: << Did the usual, file the hammers, adjust let off and blow, protek the action, teflon the butt leathers, voila, plays great. Unfortuneatley, it's no longer the piano she loved. It seems it has lost it's unique voice that she preferred over any other piano she has heard, the best included. She mentioned today that Liszt 'preferred' his pianos out of tune - found them more inspiring - and it brought to mind a story I heard 30 years ago about an itinerant 'toner' that followed along behind the itinerant tuner. She - that's how the story goes - would slightly detune 1 string of a unison, restoring the charm and strength of voice of the instrument that somehow was lost in the tuning! Has anyone EVER heard of this??? I'm actually thinking of trying it on her; she's crazy enough to love it!!! Christopher Ris PS About 6 months ago I heard a snippet of a piano piece that was prepared like this, but out of tune enough the have that 'honky tonk' sound. >> [and another quote] << In my opinion, a client's satisfaction overrides any consideration we as technicians may have about what constitutes a "proper" tuning. We get to do our work and leave, while they must live with and play what we've left behind. >> I have heard about the idea of mistuning unisons many times but never have heard of a piano technician who recommends it as a way of getting a *better* sound out of the piano. Some other instruments have deliberately "tempered" unisons. In Louisiana, the Cajun accordion has a certain usual tuning but those who play the Zydeco style and come from the same area have what they call a "wet" tuning-deliberately tempered unisons. I have also seen the word "wet" used for describing some of the many variations that electronic keyboards can have. Before I go much further, I should state that normally, you will want to make your unisons as perfectly beatless as you possibly can. They will start failing soon enough, of their own accord. You should consider doing this only as some kind of special effect and only if you are very sure the customer wants it. The idea however, that a piano tuned in a perfectly Equal Temperament (ET) with the very purest sounding octaves and unisons will sound the best is only an opinion. To many, this does sound the best but not to all. I have heard many technicians raise this question and I have also heard musicians say that the piano actually sounds better after the tuning has "ripened" a little. While I do not believe that random errors or a naturally failing tuning will produce a better sound, I do believe that some manipulation of temperament and octaves can produce a sound that is more appealing to most people, technicians and musicians alike, than a theoretically perfect tuning. There is a need to explore the near Equal Temperaments such as the Quasi-Equal Temperaments (Quasi means almost), the Victorians and the milder Well-Temperaments such as the Thomas Young. Also, there is a need to explore what different amounts of stretch in both the midrange and outer octaves will do. There is one anecdote I would like to relate: A client of mine persuaded me to go to a Vietnamese family's home to fix up their Acrosonic. The family was large, several children and very close and loving. They appreciated everything their parents provided for them, no matter how modest it might be. The older girls had learned to play advanced classics in only a matter of months. The piano they had was in very neglected condition, more or less 50 cents low and all completely out of tune. I heard the pieces they were playing and they sounded really bizarre on the out of tune piano. The action had a lot of lost motion and other regulation requirements. I worked a half day, had a fine dinner with them and cleaned it out, tightened the action up, filed and aligned the hammers, regulated and raised pitch to A-440 and tuned in a good solid ET. When all finished, the oldest girl sat down to play and played but a few bars and turned to me with the most disappointed look on her face and said only, OHHHH! Then she said something in Vietnamese to her father. He then said to me, "My daughter say you *ruin* our piano!" My client had been there all along and he recognized that I had taken the piano a long way from a state of disorder to a state of reasonable professional standards. He tried to say that it sounded good to him. I tried to explain that the children were used to the way it was and that the difference was what was shocking to them. I explained that they should give it a few days and they would become used to it and like the piano even more than they had before. He replied to me, "What you say sound very convincing but what my daughter say is what I believe and she say you no good!" They didn't want to pay but I persuaded them to do so any way. My client said later that the girls had decided that the piano was all right, that it now sounded like their teacher's piano. They admitted that they had just needed to get used to the new sound. About a year later, the family got the chance to move to California and did so after selling that piano. Now, this did not dissuade me from persisting in doing quality work and I realize that it was an unusual circumstance. But it was a lesson in the fact that different people do have different tastes. Knowing what you customer wants-and doesn't want is always important. One last comment: The so-called "Honky-tonk" sound is one that is produced by a piano that has gone a long time without adequate (or sometimes no) service. Imagine a piano built in the East and shipped out to a saloon in the wild west. There probably would be no one who could tune or service it. It gets played anyway, developing deep grooves in the hammers, goes very flat, unisons, temperament and octaves are all disorganized and have random amounts of error. Any attempt at duplicating this kind of sound should require alterations of all of these and in no particular consistency. A rather dubious goal, if you ask me. Bill Bremmer RPT Madison, Wisconsin
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