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bloke wrote:bloke "This advice won't necessarily work very well at all with *organ* accompaniment."

In some ways organ is easier to play with, but also more unforgiving. In most cases it can't do crescendos. But the problem rather is, that it has a sustain superior to that of most wind players. It doesn't fall off in pitch at the end of any note or phrase.

Klaus

Bloke is (as usual) right. I remember in college a kid freaking out when he put a digital piano to a tuner and found the lower octave registering very flat. Stretch tuning is a mixed blessing - it makes the piano sound "full" but does make tuning to it more interesting. I always get a kick out of an orchestra playing with a piano that tunes to the oboe first. I would love to see a piano tech under the lid ten minutes before a concert fiddling with wrenches trying to match the oboe.
Seriously, my advice is to not even worry about the tuner - tune to the piano and listen to the piano. This worked wonders when I was learning the idiosyncrasies of my Cerveny F that did NOT have "point and shoot" intonation, but could be played in tune.
One of my accomp... accompi... pianists at Lee U had a master's from Eastman, and he told me this trick he did up there for the final tuning - very lightly press and hold the tuning note on the piano; enough to raise the damper not not strike the strings. Then, have the soloist sound their tuning note. If it matches, the string will vibrate sympathetically.

Our Bloke has brought up a most interesting topic: the stretching of octaves in piano tuning. The reason this is done is complex. it is because the overtones from a struck piano string are sharp relative to the fundamental. As a struck piano string vibrates back and forth, it stretches at the peaks of its vibration. It is this stretching of the string that essentially "tunes" the string sharper twice per vibration. The result is that octaves sound out of tune even when the fundamental frequencies of the strings are in the strict 2:1 ratios of perfect octaves.

This sharpening of overtones varies with how hard the notes are struck: louder makes for sharper overtones. A sustained note, as it fades, will have its overtones pull more and more into tune. Also, pianos vary considerable in how much octave stretching is needed to make them sound good. A friend has a Steinway upright that sounds good with no octave stretching at all.

I have a cheap synthesizer at home that does a decent job of emulating notes on a piano. However, it is in exact (equal temperament) tune. Thus, large chords that include octaves sound terrible.

All of this leads up to thinking of piano tuning as an art. A good piano tuner will match the tuning to both the piano and the kind of music to be played. It's all a compromise, and the best compromises are a great art.

Tuba players can do a couple of things when planning to play with a piano. One thing is to make sure the piano part is not heavy in the bass range both for tuning reasons and so the piano doesn't compete with the tuba and cause muddiness. Another thing is to take an electronic tuner to the piano that's going to be used (or use your ears), and figure out what kind of tuba tuning compromise will be best for the performance. Of course, playing with a recently-tuned piano (say, within the past decade) is a pleasure not all of us get to have.

Cheers,
Allen

tubashaman wrote:Or if your an undergraduate tubashaman, you play flat......

Tubaing's Signature wrote:Low Brass: Where the self esteem is as low as the notes.

MartyNeilan wrote:I always get a kick out of an orchestra playing with a piano that tunes to the oboe first.

Whichever you tune to, piano or oboe, it's your ears that do the tuning once you start playing.
The initial tune is to "perhaps" get you in the ballpark.

There are so many variables, pitch, even/just temperament, temperature, with/without piano and stretch or s-t-r-e-t-c-h, with/without percussive instruments (when was the last time that you heard a marimba or bells with stretch tuning?), pitch practice at time of inception, sadistically high tuned strings, etc, etc... that anyone relying a single pitch would last just about as long as they deserved to.

But bloke has a very valid point: if your chops don't tune on the fly to your ears, where should a student start for best advantage?

Bloke is absolutely right. And if the piano has not been maintained properly, it will be even flatter than he suggests. I've often told undergraduate recitalists "when in doubt, pull out".

Paul Scott wrote: I've often told undergraduate recitalists "when in doubt, pull out".

Just wondering Paul....is this advice for their tuba or other "aspects" of their life?

Rob "thinking this advice could do wonders for many things in the world..."

The theory is great. The physics that explain why the overtones of a piano string are sharp to the fundamental, and therefore why the bass of a piano is tuned down and the treble stretched up, are probably beyond the bandwidth of this thread, along with the psycho-acoustic reasons as well. Also, I love to eat up anything that has to do with "why," and this is a great example. I have enjoyed reading this thread to my own edification. Thanks.

But as I get older, I find I have to temper my fascination with theory with the slam-the-door-in-my-face practicalities.

When a tubist plays with a piano, doesn't the tubist tune to the piano at 2nd line Bb, which takes care of most of these issues? I do, whether with piano, bass guitar, tuba, or any other low range instrument. Then the rest of these issues tend to take care of themselves automatically.

iiipopes wrote:Then the rest of these issues tend to take care of themselves automatically.

That has been my experience. Taking this a small step further: Having done some decades of church music where piano and organ play together, my observation has been that the human brain interprets what is heard as in tune rather than as a stretch piano and a non-stretch organ.

The shaman jurors didn't display any admirable combination of musical ears and personal integrity. The equal temperament and the stretched octaves are musically sufficiently bad all by themselves, but when not even these compromises have been carried out well or have been further compromised by banging around, then the basis for evaluating any student’s ability for playing in good pitch simply isn't there.

As for hearing pitches being down to one cent off, then much depends on the circumstances. Between instruments with varying complex sounds and maybe even applying vibrato such small interval may be tough to determine. However I had an experience of hearing a maybe even smaller interval.

Once as the manager of a local rock festival we (my fellow manger, former student, and present friend Thomas and I) wanted to open the second day with a kids’ event in the afternoon. We found people willing to arrange and help out with the dance formations on the lawn, but all of the musicians were too fixated on their own acts to volunteer for the band. So we made up our own with a few more friends and me as the only wind player on sousaphone and euph.

We had only one rehearsal. I know that part of the game with a 12-string guitar is about the tuning being slightly off, but the guitarist drove me crazy while tuning with an electronic needle tuner. I maintained that his two upper E strings weren’t in tune with each other. He fiddled a bit more with the tuning and then said that they now were in tune at the equivalent of A=440. My reply was that he maybe found so, but then one string had pointed the needle ever so slightly to the left of the mark, and the other string had pointed the same amount to the right of the mark. He wondered highly, that I was true, but how would I know, as I couldn't se the tuner’s display.

I wouldn't have been able to hear this small interval while the band played. Yet small intervals do matter.

It is clearly possible to hear whether a player knows how to handle leading notes and how to place a third in a major chord which shall remain stable like a final chord. Actually these two tasks take the opposite directions pitchwise.

Klaus

No one can hear a 1 cent discrepancy...come on, it's 1/100 of a half-step. I'm very confident there's a study out there somewhere documenting just how small (in cents) a pitch difference that trained musicians can identify.

Thanks, bloke, for the lively thread. I will try pulling out a bit when I start rehearsing my new sonata with piano. I'll shoot you a PM to let you know if I "feel" any difference.

Todd S. Malicoate wrote:No one can hear a 1 cent discrepancy

Not by itself, perhaps, by with another of the same note you can hear the beats easily, which is what Klaus was describing...

windshieldbug wrote:Not by itself, perhaps, by with another of the same note you can hear the beats easily, which is what Klaus was describing...

I would posit that no one can accurately "pick out" the difference between two perfectly unison notes and two notes tuned 1 cent apart in a scientific test.

The beats certainly wouldn't be "easy" to hear at only 1 cent...maybe you're not aware of how small a difference that is?

Anyone have two of the old "Strobocons" to facilitate a test?

EDIT: Sorry if that came out "smarmy"...I appreciate the interesting discussion.

Todd S. Malicoate wrote:

windshieldbug wrote:Not by itself, perhaps, by with another of the same note you can hear the beats easily, which is what Klaus was describing...

I would posit that no one can accurately "pick out" the difference between two perfectly unison notes and two notes tuned 1 cent apart in a scientific test.

I worked in electronic music while I was in school (and yes, that was back in the Moog days). Since the oscillators were not static, we used a frequency counter to get them "close".

Now I realize that the frequency value of cents changes per note/range, but you could hear quite minuscule differences between "unison" notes (the sawtooth wave form being the most obvious, but that's also the one that's closest to a brass sound).

True, that was at perhaps 30' surrounded by quad Altec-Lansing Voice-of-the-Theaters, but I doubt if a Strobo-Conn could tell you the difference between two simultaneously played notes.

It makes no difference anyway; the proof is in what the musician can hear, and their ability to adjust it on the fly to be synchronous. No one will care how good your ears are, to what level of cents you can distinguish, if you can't make the required adjustment. And if you can, no one will care how big or small the required distance is.

As my report told, the hearing situation was very special, and it is no coincidence that I remember this one out of all the many pitch situations I have been through.

Many people say they can hear beats, when pitches don't match. I can hear them, but they are not my main tool. I listen for the matching of overtones. A not too worn E string out of steel has a very pure sound, which translates to lack of fuzzy overtones. Each of the two E strings sounded very pure on their own, but when sounded together there was this fuzz entering the picture. As told I never would have been able to pick out that pitch difference in an ensemble situation or between two different instruments or if vibrato had been applied.

I don't remember whether it was Rubinstein or Horowitz who wanted that little fuzz between the pitch of the three strings of each note in the upper half of a piano. That great player wanted life to the sound. In fact that slight fuzz is part of the human touch to music. If you hear a very pure soprano voice you know that the singer is very young. We associate maturity in singers with some degree of fuzz.

If you want to carry out your pitch increment test with electronically generated sine tones, you will get the result you predict, as there are NO (later edition) overtones to create the fuzz I heard in that very special situation.

As for bloke’s original advise it couldn’t surprise me, as it is old experience that bass lines shall of course be in tune, but that if off then rather flat than sharp. A sharp bass will be perceived aggressive or the rest of the of the ensemble will be perceived dull.

Klaus, who also finds this discussion interesting, but some brasses are calling for my attention right now

Years ago I stopped trying to tune the E string of a bass guitar open, and always tune it on the 12th fret harmonic, because it's easier to hear and the overtones, being inherently sharp as discussed earlier, line up better with the rest of the instrument.

I never try to get my Rickenbacker 12 string in "perfect" tune. It defeats the purpose. Now, I don't leave it as wide as a "honky-tonk" piano, which in some cases is purposely de-tuned to get as much whang as possible, but the whole purpose of the additional six strings is for body and depth, same function as a celeste stop on an organ, and so to get it too perfect defeats the purpose, and it stops sounding like a twelve string and more like simply a double-tracked single guitar.

I remember taking the standardized battery of musical aptitude tests in 5th grade, with reel-to-reel played on an old industrial/school grade Wollensack player (the ones that 3M had made to play their Scotch brand recording tape). Supposedly, the pitch difference got down to 4 cents on the comparison tones and the questions were whether the second tone was higher or lower. I remember it was funny that I could hear the tape player (probably playing at 7 1/2 ips, although it could have been at 3 3/4, but that would have been awfully slow for "critical" listening) occasionally wobble the tones slightly, my introduction to those old analog tape terms, "wow" and "flutter," and when I turned my head one way or another the timbre could sound different coming off a different wall of the room, whether the all glass window to the outside or the cinder block room divider walls. But I got them all correct, way beyond anything that could be written off to guessing or random statistical variance. So I have documentary proof that, at least at one time, I could hear at least 4 cents difference, and possibly finer, as I was compensating for the slight change in pitch as the plastic tape spool rotated.

Allen wrote:Our Bloke has brought up a most interesting topic: the stretching of octaves in piano tuning. The reason this is done is complex. it is because the overtones from a struck piano string are sharp relative to the fundamental. As a struck piano string vibrates back and forth, it stretches at the peaks of its vibration. It is this stretching of the string that essentially "tunes" the string sharper twice per vibration. The result is that octaves sound out of tune even when the fundamental frequencies of the strings are in the strict 2:1 ratios of perfect octaves.

Every wind player with a smattering of knowledge about the physics of musical instruments should read (and understand) the above paragraph...several times, if necessary.

It describes perhaps the most accessible *physical* system that doesn't behave exactly like the simplified mathematical model everyone learns in the beginning. This model is a wonderful starting point - but you see it raised to the level of an Eastern Religion at times - and it's almost never exactly correct for an actual, physical musical instrument!

It's relatively easy to explain WHY the model is not quite correct for pianos (see above!). Trying to do the same for tubas (undoing all of the already learned assumptions and replacing them with the truth) is much, much, much more difficult and time consuming. All I'll say is "what you may think of as the 'natural' harmonic sequence is, in fact, an engineered, sophisticated, artificial creation designed to match the model." The model does a bad job of explaining the instrument. The model does not describe an original proto-tuba; instead, the tuba has to be carefully designed to come close to matching the model!