Out of tune(probably an argument, here)

[A440A@aol.com]

Greetings, 
Chuck writes: 
<< it also makes us acutely
aware when "a piano isn't doing what it oughta".  I hear a lot of the latter
on some old jazz recordings especially.  Baffling how some of these kings of
piano artistry and creativity had to suffer this misfortune.  Wonder if
there's any way to digitally clean up the tuning on old recordings... >>

       Maybe, but there will be a change in the message.  To some, it will be 
an improvement, ( to many, nothing would be noticed, either way), to others, 
a loss,.  What that loss means depends on the listener, ("meaning" is a 
product of a message being received, it is NOT a unique property of the message, 
itself). 
    It borders on conumdrum-ness for a tech to be promoting anything other 
than "in tune", but exactly what is "in tune".  Certainly not an equally 
tampered scale!  There, almost everything is out of tune, and through the trick of 
making it all the same, we learn to not listen to the dissonance, (for the 
simple price of foregoing hearing consonance).  Is this same fixation on exactitude 
good for other aspects of music? 
   What am I to make of an artist, (on the Steinway roster) who tells me that 
the piano sounds good when I finish, but better after a day of playing?  I 
checked this piano and the unisons still stopped the lights on the SAT but I 
could hear that they were looser than when I left them.  This artist hears the 
change and likes it!   I still go for as clean a unison as possible, but that is 
just to insure the longevity of the tuning.  
   There are many musical instances where departure from unison is not only 
desired, but actively promoted.  Choirs provide a choral effect simply by the 
slight variations between singers, and an orchestra that had every single 
violin hitting the exact same pitch would be empty sounding, at best.  Blues 
singers and Jazzer crooners, too, bend their pitches against the accompaniment for 
the special effects.  Is that "out of tune" or "expressive"?  
    The musette has unisons out of tune by 20 cents,  the chanterelles on my 
hurdy-gurdy sound dead when exactly alike, but the thing comes alive with 
about 7 cents between them.  Heaven only knows what some accordians are doing, but 
they often sound really good.  
    There is an identifiable sound that comes from an "old out of tune 
upright" that some producers here specifically ask for, (I use a Kirnberger and 
leave the unisons all over the place).  Listen to some of the music of the Doors 
and you will hear a piano that is mind-blowingly "out", but those tracks are 
still selling.  Did the out of tuneness help or hurt?  
    Often, it seems that some of the old jazz artists make use of the out of 
tuneness, driving home a passage with a really wild unison.  More recent usage 
abounds.  If you listen to the track "Flaming Sword"  by Dr. John on his Duke 
Ellington tribute, you will hear a very loosely tuned piano and it sounds 
great.  If it had been perfectly tuned to modern standards, I think the music 
would have suffered.  
      The "sound" of choral unisons is as much a part of the old jazz genre 
as Picasso's cubist angularity is in the art world.  His paintings do not look 
like photographs, if they did, we would have heard little about him since. It 
is because he was abstracting reality that he is so well known. There are many 
artists to look at, so there is a place for this, (I would hate to have 
nothing but cubist art available!!).  I submit that there is a use for a wide range 
of sounds.  As tuners, our goal is to provide the musician with what they 
want, and that exact, standardized, sound has been the most marketable approach.  
However, that doesn't mean it is the only one.  
    There is a wide range of pursuits available to all technicians today, 
whether in regard to temperament or unison, stretch or voicing,  and there are 
customers out there that will pay for any and all of this.  All they need is the 
education necessary for a wider perspective, and that is where the technician 
can begin to shape his/her own individual career.  We only have one trip here 
on Spaceship Earth, and it is up to each of us what that life is to look like 
when it is complete. Before its over, I want to try it ALL!  
Regards,       



Ed Foote RPT 
http://www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/index.html
www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/well_tempered_piano.html