---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment List, At the same time that Terry was getting some experience with outdoor concert tuning, I for the first time in about 15 years tuned a piano in a night club for a live Jazz concert. Sometime about the mid 1980's, Jazz clubs died around here and even though there have been some events, most now use electronic keyboards. There are just a few restaurants and hotels where Jazz is played but the days of night clubs where Jazz is featured every night and they have a good piano are gone. They carted a Yamaha C7 up a long flight of stairs (I was told the moving bill alone came to $1400). Mr. James Williams and his quintet from New York City played an evening of traditional Jazz the way they used to do back in the 1960's and 1970's. I arrived just when the group had finished rehearsing and had plenty of time to do a good, solid tuning with the club closed to the public. Since I have a "Master Tuning Record" of a C7 from PTG Exam work, I was able to compare the way the piano's temperament octave was when I got to it to that record and the way I tuned it in EBVT. The piano is a Concert & Artist (C&A) piano from the local Yamaha dealer. I could recognize the tuning. It was done by perhaps the best known C&A tuner in the area who is very well respected and liked. This event gives me the opportunity however, to demonstrate once again what I've been claiming for a long time. It also refutes David Love's claim that most any C&A tuner's work would constitute ET and would not follow any particular pattern of error. In the chart below, the first column under "ET" are the figures for the Exam Master Tuning. The second column under "RW" are the figures for the way the piano was when I got to it. "RW" stands for, "Reverse Well". The "POI" columns are the points off of 100 that the temperament would have scored on a PTG Tuning Exam. A "-" indicates an error to the flat side while a "+" indicates an error to the sharp side. The column under "EBVT" is the way I tuned the piano for the event. As you can see, the RW temperament would have scored a passable 88% but clearly shows irregular 3rds whose wide ones are in exactly the opposite places they would have to be in order to be called a Well Tempered Tuning. My EBVT falls just short of "passing" with a score of 78%. This shows that the EBVT is a little more than just slightly unequal. Although it's deviations from ET are small, they are deliberate which give the piano a decidedly different character from true ET and certainly different from the way a piano would sound when the very common RW errors are made. Note ET RW POI EBVT POI F3 0.8 0.4 1.0 -1 F#3 0.3 0.3 -1.5 G3 1.0 0.5 3.5 +2 G#3 1.2 1.2 2.5 +1 A3 1.7 1.7 0.0 -1 A#3 2.1 0.4 -1 1.5 B3 2.5 1.8 2.5 C4 0.4 -1.8 -1 2.0 +1 C#4 0.4 -0.5 -0.5 D4 0.0 -1.1 0.0 D#4 0.5 -1.1 -1 0.5 E4 0.5 1.4 +1 -2.0 -2 F4 0.5 1.4 +1 1.0 -1 Score: 88% 78% After the concert, I greeted the pianist who was very content and pleased with the way the piano sounded for him. His very first comment was, "It sure sounded a lot cleaner and nicer after you tuned it". One of my local colleagues tried in all sincerity to warn me not to tune the piano the way I did. "They'll notice when it goes back to the store". "The artist will be used to the temperament the way it is because he rehearsed on it that way". "Don't try to change the temperament, just clean up the octaves and unisons". Such advice has been given to me over the years many times over and each time I have rejected it. Particularly notable was the long solo sequence the artist played. It was the Gospel song, "Oh, Happy Day!". It was in the key of C. The relatively pure sounding key of C caused me to visualize a gospel choir singing. As the pianist improvised, he modulated into more remote keys but several times returned "home" to the key of C and let be heard that familiar phrase, "Oh, Happy Day!". The effect of the temperament on the music was unmistakable. I cannot imagine what it would have been like if I had followed the advice (and pressure) given to me. After the concert, I was invited to the private party hosted by the sponsors of the event. Conversation flowed from a very congenial group. There was abundant and delicious hot food of many varieties complimented by a selection of beverages, all served on nice dinner ware. I gave my card to the pianist and asked him to look up my website when he got back to New York so that he could read about what I did that made the piano sound so special. He replied, "I don't need to *read* about it, I *heard* what was going on in there. Thank you for helping me make my music *sound* like music!" (To me, that is the best compliment I could ever get). So, I continue to press onward knowing that my piano tuning designs do work and they work for all kinds of music in all situations. I'll not bend to pressure from people who want me to conform to standards which I know make piano music sound mediocre and uninteresting. I certainly am not concerned whether the people who rented the piano recognize that the way I tuned the piano was not ET. They know that I was hired by the sponsor of the event to tune the piano, not their regular tuner. I have another event scheduled in July where the same holds true. People hire me for the way I make the piano produce music, not because of the politics of ET. Bill Bremmer RPT Madison, Wisconsin <A HREF="http://www.billbremmer.com/">Click here: -=w w w . b i l l b r e m m e r . c o m =-</A> ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/45/77/20/b9/attachment.htm ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment--
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