<HTML>In a message dated 1/17/03 4:33:33 PM Central Standard Time, ilvey@sbcglobal.net writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">List, The SF Ballet is going to do a ballet based on a Scott Joplin piece and they want a honky tonk sound.  I've looked in Schaff and they have a device but it doesn't cover the bass notes.  Question:  has anyone tried this and are the bass notes a problem for the honky tonk sound, i.e. with the angle of the strings etc?  This may be all I can get?  They have new Yamahas and I'm not poking any tacks in the hammers...;-] Any ideas... David I. </BLOCKQUOTE> Actually yes and I am sincere.  This is a place where you can use temperament to achieve an effect and not harm the piano. I must say that I agree with those who say that Joplin's music deserves to be heard on a properly tuned and prepared piano.  The so-called, "Honky Tonk" sound is really one that is associated with a badly worn, unserviced and severely out of tune piano.  The typical upright piano in a saloon in the old west probably never got serviced after leaving the factory.  Here in the upper midwest, many a prairie home had one of those kinds of pianos which often went years without any service. The effects of off pitch and distorted tunings, deeply grooved hammers and clatter from loose flanges coupled with a *particular style of music* which was current and popular at the time has created this undeserved, incorrect but widely held notion that the music and the unserviced condition of the piano somehow go together.  There should be a way to satisfy this desire for an alternative and obviously altered sound without doing any damage or making any alterations to the piano whatsoever. What I suggest is that the most brightly voiced piano be chosen.  Then, a deliberately non standard way to tune the piano be explored and decided upon.  Many people will suggest using regular ET but deliberately and haphazardly mistuning the unisons.  I have often heard this done.  Electronic Keyboards often have a "Honky Tonk" button where this is a good description of what is offered. But depending upon what key or keys this music is in, I think you can get an effect that will create a representatively correct impression by tuning one of the very old, classic ways to tune the piano, either 1/4 Comma Meantone or Pythagorean.  Either of these is remote enough from ET to create a noticeable catchy effect but yet not be so nonstandard as to be offensive. The reason I believe it to be a good representation is that the original tuning presumed to be ET or a close approximation of it will have morphed into something else entirely over time.  Choosing a *destination* at the other end of the spectrum of tuning practice allows you as an artist to feed the desire to hear some kind of altered sound.  You can make that effect even more powerful than if you really created the proper substandard conditions, just as an "Elvis" impersonator might look more like the typical idea of what Elvis looked like than some real film of him.  The "off" sound is in the "haphazard" way the intervals will sound to the listener who is used to hearing ET. One consideration I have seen mentioned is that tuning either of these is a severe enough departure from standard that doing it in itself is damaging.  I think that is not true.  It depends upon the circumstances.  Where I live, even concert instruments can go 25 cents sharp or flat over the course of a year.  Changing a piano from ET to Meantone or Pythagorean would not be any more upsetting than having to tune a piano which is seasonably all off pitch with itself. You perhaps would not want to used your best and most stable piano.  But it must and should be understood that if there is a requirement to return the piano to ET after the event, extra work will be involved to do so.  No "damage", just a requirement for more work to restabilize the piano. Bill Bremmer RPT Madison, Wisconsin <A HREF="http://www.billbremmer.com/">Click here: -=w w w . b i l l b r e m m e r . c o m =-</A></HTML>