Les Noces

[Richard Brekne]

Jim Kinnear wrote:

> Hi Folks
> Something that has always puzzled me . .
> You refer to "question: How would you tune these pianos to each other? "
>
> Isn't an A440 an A440 no matter what piano it is played on, and isn't the
> interval, or distance between any two notes the same on any piano, no matter
> what it's manufacture. . . .
>
> Have I been missing the boat for 20 years . . .??

Grin.. tell you what Jim. Next time you get a chance take two grands of
different size and makes and give them your best machine / ear / ear assisted
machine / whatever tuning. Then give them the old critical ear listen too.

You will probably like most of what you hear in the middle of both pianos... or
perhaps find it relativly easy to adjust them to fit each other... but outside
of say F3 - A5 you will probably begin to notice that an interval is indeed not
just an interval.

This will lead you right into the whole puzzle of inharmonicity and related
stuff in a sense you perhaps havent thought about before... and its a great and
fascinating puzzle at that.

I just had a Yamaha C3 and a short Schimmel to put together a couple weeks back.
The last (top) octave was difficult at best, and the highest 4 or 5 notes were
simply hopeless. It was either one or both sounding wrong by themselves, or bad
together... couldnt have it good both ways.  Voicing down the Schimmel might
have helped the picture a bit perhaps... but that wasnt a desireable from other
standpoints.



--
Richard Brekne
RPT, N.P.T.F.
Bergen, Norway
mailto:rbrekne@broadpark.no
http://home.broadpark.no/~rbrekne/ricmain.html