Hi List,
Hi Ed, I can understand where you are coming from, and it is good to be
able to be as tollerant as you are of out-of-tuness. I for one, have to
give you the other side. Before I ever began to study tuning, I played
professionally, jazz and club dates for a number of years before leaving the
business. 99 percent of the pianos I had to play on were vastly out of
tune, and it seemed like many times it was the most exclussive clubs that
were out, and didn't care a ----- about it either.. Then, of course, there
were those pianos that were not regulated, and had broken keys, (My first
gig when I was 13 was played on a piano with 20 keys thaqt worked.) etc.
etc.
For me, I hope I am never asked to put unisons out of tune-no matter how
slightly. Oh yes, if someone wants a 1920's thing, I guess I could do a
quick and dirty job of it. But for one who suffered with bad pianos as long
as I did, I think I would rather not take that particular job than put
unisons slightly out.. I can
agree that there are expressive uses for bending notes, by blues players,
and even those who play string quartets and other chamber music, but I can
see that an out-of-tune unison is expressive;. Learning to tune was like
finding the truth.
Just a few thoughts from the other side of the spectrum.
Vinny
----- Original Message -----
From: "CChristus" <chchristus@earthlink.net>
To: "'Pianotech'" <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Friday, May 07, 2004 8:04 PM
Subject: RE: Out of tune(probably an argument, here)
> Ed,
>
> Enjoyed the depth of your post. This is something you've obviously been
> thinking about for a while.
>
> I hear what you're saying about the extra flavor, if you will, that some
> out-of-tuneness might add to certain genres of musical performance. I can
> understand how old blues might not sound so "blue" with a highly
"tampered"
> tuning, with super-clean unisons, etc.
>
> I wonder how many times, though, that a piano was intentionally mistuned
to
> produce such an effect.
>
> I do know that when I re-listen to a lot of the music that I rocked to in
my
> youth, (rock, jazz, and blues, for example) I have a hard time bearing the
> out-of-tuneness that apparently was more than tolerable then. Now you're
> making me re-think the level of my musical sensibilities as I've
> "progressed" in this trade.
>
> Appreciate the wisdom of your experience, helping us maybe alter our
> perceptions about tuning, or at least music appreciation.
>
> Chuck Christus
>
>
>
> 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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>
>
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