out of tune honky piano

[Carl Teplitski]

Some years ago, when I didn't think I was as good a tuner as now, I
had occasion to tune for an English lady in our town. Her piano sounded
very much like the ones we hear in the old English movies,( in taverns).
Well, in my opinion ,this piano was very badly out of tune, so I proceeded
to tune, and thought I had done quite a good job, especially the unisons.
Invited her to play and expected some kind of compliment. What I got was a ,
" you've taken all the tone out of the piano." !!!  It took some fancy talking to
get her to understand that what I had done was what she had called me to do.
Guess she was so used to hearing all those beats, that being close to tune,
sounded anemic, or lifeless to her. Her son , who played the violin, came in and
thought it sounded OK, so I suggested they play together, and low and behold,
she now thought it sounded quite nice. I guess there was enough out of tuneness
from the violin to satisfy her need for honky type sound, but I don't think I ever
tuned for her again. I often wondered if she was happy with the piano, or what.
I think the piano hadn't been tuned for maybe 10 years, before me, cause I raised
pitch, before tuning. I'm sure the piano sounded better with time.( as it went out ).

Carl







A440A@aol.com wrote:

> 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
>
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