----- Original Message ----- From: "D.L. Bullock" <dlbullock@att.net> To: "PTG" <pianotech@ptg.org> Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 2004 9:47 PM Subject: Honky Tonk Tuning > I have had customers call me after buying a new piano. They said the tuner > from the piano store had just tuned it and he ruined the sound of the piano. > In the store it sounded just like Aunt Maudie's piano, but now it sounds > dead. I went and found a perfectly tuned spinet. I tuned one string to > celeste with the other two strings and the customer was ecstatically happy. > I collected my check and left with another happy customer. Everytime > thereafter, I would tune that piano straight and then celeste it, leaving a > loyal happy customer. > > Come on guys. Well, Kernberger, Mean. GET REAL. > > What you want for a so-called Honky Tonk tuning is a simple celeste tuning. . . . . . . > D.L. Bullock St. Louis > www.thepianoworld.com > Yet a real celeste is a sort of mini-upright "piano" that has tone bars like a "xylophone", rather than strings. And each note is only one tone bar -- there's no possibility for out-of-tune unisons because there ARE no unisons. And really, since "xylo" is Greek for wood, a xylophone has wooden tone bars, like the marimba, and what has traditionally been called a "xylophone" is really a "metalophone," like the vibraphone, but more primitive and without the resonating tubes and vibrato. Some enlightened elementary school music teachers make this distinction nowdays and label the instruments accordingly. I don't understand the connection between "celeste" and "honky-tonk" or why the meaning of 'celeste' (Italian: celesta) would be different when applied to organ stops. --David Nereson, RPT
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