That explains everything, you're a cellist. The only person (that I know of) who I was unable to be satisfy with any type of tuning of his piano was a cellist. In the end he just called the instrument (Steinway B, too) "that diabolical thing", and let it go. David Love www.davidlovepianos.com For me, after such long exposure to intonation learning the cello (from age 10 till I got the masters at age 25) followed by about five years of professional orchestra work, followed by 30+ years of tuning equal temperaments (1978-present) the scale shape of equal temperament over a solid base of cello intonation (which is semi-Pythagoran) is so deeply ingrained that I can't muster the objectivity to evaluate properly the musical consequences of non-equal temperaments. The notes which are close to equal register as pretty okay, and the ones which are further away register as out of tune. Intervals far off equal, either very narrow major thirds or especially screwy fourths and fifths register with me as WRONGO!!! just plain OUT OF TUNE. Fifths and fourths which are pure go down with me just fine after all that cello playing, of course. The influence of cello intonation makes me very picky about which directions off equal I can tolerate. I can manage wider major seconds and major thirds and major sixths quite well. I like skimpy semitones and narrow minor thirds and minor sixths just fine. But wide minor thirds or narrow major thirds drive me batty. You see, this sounds like sleazy cello playing, where the two types of thirds have wandered toward each other, increasing ambiguity. On the contrary, when the difference between major and minor intervals is increased a little past equal temperament, it sounds (one might say) emphatic to me. In a way, it sounds like a higher quality construction, especially combined with pure fifths. It sounds architecturally strong, one might say. For equal temperament, one gets used to the slight blurring of the intervals, just from long exposure. A good stretch in the octaves decreases the sleaziness of the (imperfect) perfect fifths and fourths. Smaller pianos increase the crud and cloud the texture. Clarity, one really likes clarity, and good temperament and stretch increases it a lot. Just my take, not trying to proselytize about it, more like an attempt to explain where I am coming from. Too bad in some ways, when people express rapture about a particular temperament and all I can hear it OUT OF TUNE! -- but that is the way it worked out. Pretty good in others. All those years of work on cello intonation (I was very good at it) gave me an automatic octave stretch which fits a solo piano nearly perfectly with the string sections of a good orchestra. My understanding of wind intonation and how they tune intervals is considerably lacking, especially for the brass. I do know that it is different, and I hear a lot on recordings which I am not very fond of. Pardon the length and the digression ....... Susan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20110128/9cc3a018/attachment.htm>
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC