Tuba Tuners

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MartyNeilan
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Post by MartyNeilan »

schlepporello wrote:I don't know if our tuner's licensed or not, but it wouldn't surprise me if he wasn't.
Just an inside joke, Schlepp, don't take it to heart. Seriously, though, the next time you have your Korg tuner there put it on the piano. After hitting a few notes in the middle to get a "baseline" work your way down and see how the tuba range notes sit. If your minister of music gives you a hard time, print out the previous post to show him that you are not yet crazy (despite your best intentions.)
I wish you the best in your endeavors; the highest calling for a musician is playing for the Lord.
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ken k
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Post by ken k »

MartyNeilan wrote:
schlepporello wrote: The problem is that our minister of music keeps telling me that I'm playing to sharp ...
My church has the piano tuned regularly...
One possible problem could be "stretch tuning". Many pianos are stretch tuned. The upper octaves are progressively sharper, and the lower octaves are progressively flatter. Even many of the better electric keyboards use this on their piano sounds. So, if your church's piano tuner has an overly aggressive stretch curve (is he licensed???), you could be in fact playing the correct pitch (or at least reasonably close) and still be noticeably sharper that the intentionally flat tuned lower octaves of the piano! :shock:
On the chart below, the most aggressive curve goes as much as 30 cents flat on the bottom of the keyboard! :evil:
I ran into this problem once myself, when I couldn't match an electric keyboard playing with our band on tour. The keyboardist didnt't believe me, so when we put a tuner to it he saw how flat it got while still being in tune in the middle. Switching to a synth patch (think vintage DX7 but less cheesey) was our quick fix - the pitch stayed consistent from top to bottom; only the piano patches were stretched.
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I have never heard of this. why would they do that?

ken k
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iiipopes
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Post by iiipopes »

It would take a very thick treatise on psychoacoustics to explain all the reasons why. The bottom line is that for some reason, the ear hears octaves differently than the true pitches, and wants a sharper tone on top to be sensed as the octave rather than the actual mathematically double the frequency. To some people with no musical training, a pitch up to 1 1/2 times the true octave is what is perceived as "twice as high," rather than the true octave.
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adam0408
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Post by adam0408 »

As far as tuners go, I have a boss tu-12H (I think thats the model) which works very well for both bass and tuba applications. Its a little big, but it has a real meter with a needle which was a big selling point for it in my book.

I have used sabine tuners and I can't say I cared for them at all. The one I had was absolutely the worst tuner I have ever seen or used. That may have had to do with the fact that it was cheap and crappy though.
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Post by Allen »

Stretch tuning for pianos:

Although some people do not perceive octaves accurately, that is not the main reason ocatves are stretched on pianos. The principal reason is that the overtones from a struck piano string are sharp compared to the harmonic series. The overtones are sharpest when a note is struck loudly, and as the note decays, the overtones gradually come down to agree with the harmonic series.

This leaves a quandry for piano tuners. If the piano is tuned with all of its notes exactly in conformance with equal temperament, and octaves in an exact 2:1 frequency ratio, octaves will sound flat, as the fundamental frequencies of octaves will clash with the overtones. The solution is a compromise tuning. With octaves stretched a bit, there will be less clash between overtones and octaves.

The trouble arises when the piano is used with other instruments. Most orchestral instruments (and pipe organs) have most of their overtones in decent agreement with the harmonic series.

The best thing to do is to find a piano tuner who knows the difference between tuning a piano as a solo instrument, and tuning a piano to be used with other instruments. You need a different tuning compromise, with at least a lot less stretching of octaves. Indeed, I have encountered pianos that can sound good when no octave stretching is done.

I hope you can arouse interest in the topic of tunings and temperaments. It is a wonderful (but alas rare) pleasure to listen to musicians who take tuning seriously.

Cheers,
Allen
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iiipopes
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Post by iiipopes »

Yes, I had forgotten about that as well - when the string vibrates over the bridge, the actual speaking length of the top of the string is different for the fundamental than for the overtones, which "see" a slightly shorter string length at the innermost point of the bridge. Shorter = higher pitch. It's a similar reason guitars have offset bridges to intonate the strings, to account for the string stretch as the string gets larger in diameter. The rough rule of thumb for setting up a guitar before fine tuning is to back the bridge off the amount of the string thickness, or slightly more if the action is medium to high.
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MartyNeilan
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Post by MartyNeilan »

Allen wrote:The best thing to do is to find a piano tuner who knows the difference between tuning a piano as a solo instrument, and tuning a piano to be used with other instruments. You need a different tuning compromise, with at least a lot less stretching of octaves.
BINGO!
Great advice, Allen! :)
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