[CAUT] Tuning a Steinway D and a Bosendorfer Imperial together

[Kent Swafford]

Your way is perfectly good.

It seems to me that the choice of which notes of the chord of nature  
to use might be affected by our stretch  preferences for the high  
treble. You leave out the note coincident at its 2nd partial, which  
would suggest you might want a bit more stretch than might be  
suggested by the presence of the C6 when checking C7. Absolutely. The  
C6, after all, would tend to suggest a lower C7.

My normal use of the chord of nature stops at the 6th partial and is  
the result of using notes that fit easily under the hands at the  
keyboard:

To check C7: Left hand F4, G#4(Ab4), C5, F5; right hand C6 and C7.

Others advocate going farther -- 7th, 8th, 9th. I myself can't see  
using the 7th since it is so far removed from the equal tempered  
scale. But I use the 5th which is also relatively far removed. A case  
could be made for using neither the 3rd nor the 7th.

Of particular use (although it doesn't fit under the hands so well)  
might be a construction of 8th, 6th, 4th, 3rd, 2nd which would use:

To check C7: left hand C4, F4, C5; right hand F5 and C6; sustain chord  
with damper pedal and play C7.


Kent


On Sep 27, 2008, at 7:37 PM, Mark Schecter wrote:

> I'm interested in the way you played the chord of nature. Your left  
> hand played the Fm chord in root position from F3 to F4, and the  
> right hand played C5 followed by C6. That's a new way (for me) of  
> thinking of the chord of nature (see below). I see that the left- 
> hand chord notes all contain the C6, but I'm not sure what the C5's  
> role is (OK, its 2nd partial is C6, is that all?). Could you explain?
>
> Just for clarity, the way I have thought of it is (and BTW thanks, I  
> got the general idea from you!): play the Fm chord in 2nd inversion,  
> from C4 to C5, then, after the coincident partials have emerged and  
> hopefully converged, follow with C7, which should match the ghost  
> note projected by the sounding 4-note chord. The magic of it for me  
> is that the convergence produces a tone of audible amplitude at C7,  
> making it easier to judge whether C7's fundamental is in good  
> relationship to the 4th and 5th octave. Since this gets us up into  
> the 7th octave, which is the area most in need of validation, it  
> seems slightly more useful. Comments?