Piano Tuning Theory - Inharmonicity [Part 7] I HOWARD PIANO INDUSTRIES
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ส.ค. 2024
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Piano Tuning Theory - Inharmonicity [Part 7] I HOWARD PIANO INDUSTRIES
In piano tuning theory there is something called inharmonicity. This refers to the fact that because of the stiffness of the piano strings that the partials are higher than they relatively should be which causes the need for the octaves to be stretched wider than pure.
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🎥 Video Chapters
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00:00 - Intro
00:14 - Inharmonicity Explanation
00:52 - Partials
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Howard, thanks so much for these videos. I have tuned for years, but there is always something you can learn from someone else's style. I have really enjoyed your videos
Excellent explanation! I've heard many explanations before but never have seen anyone use an actual string to demonstrate the increasing stiffness for the higher partials within that same string. I understood it before, but that part of your demonstration really made it visually clear. Invaluable info for all piano tuners. Great job and keep up the good work!!! I wish I had had access to these videos or something similar when I started out many years before TH-cam!
I just watched from 1 to 7, thanks a a lot for the clear explanations !
Keep them coming :)
I'm taking a 2 year piano tuner course and I've learned tons more from you'r video's than I have in Those 2 years. I can't thank you enough for making these!!!
I'm glad these have been helpful to you. I know there are many ways of learning about how to tune and service pianos, and my hope is that our videos can be of benefit to those in the learning process, which by the way is a lifelong pursuit. I certainly still have much to learn!
The simplicity of which you present these topics is as such that they're easily grasped by the novice.
Thank you for taking the time to make these videos.
Glad it was helpful!
You make the Internet great :)
Excellent explanation. 👍🏻😀🇬🇧
Thank you for this video series. Great explanation, fascinating to get some insights into these topics.
Thank you for your clear explanation! I have watched all the theory part and they have been really helpful.
You are good at explaining what is hard to understand. Thank you! I look forward to more of your videos.
Thanks for watching Zachary. It's good to hear that the videos have been helpful.
Very good explanation. After watching your videos im getting confidence to tune my upright kawai...
Very clear information, thank you!
Best concise explanation I've come across. I am educating myself on piano tuning and, of course, discovered that it is much more complex than I ever imagined. It is a fascinating subject, and your video series is extremely helpful in understanding the complexities involved. Thank you!
Thanks for sharing your comments. Yes, there is a lot more to understanding piano tuning than the average person realizes. There is always more a person can learn no matter how much they know about it. I certainly continue to learn more the longer I do this.
Thank you. Really useful.
Glad it was helpful!
Very good explanation. Thank you for this video Howard
Thanks Steve!
Great explanation, master! Thanks a lot!
You are welcome!
a point that might be missed here is that the stiffness that gives a string its pitch is longitudinal (stretching, tension) stiffness. the stiffness being discussed here is bending stiffness, which is zero in an "ideal" string but increases with thickness. this always introduces an error by introducing an extra force, at the bend in the middle of a standing wave, and also the bend where the string is relatively anchored on the bridge instead of being completely free to point in any direction. the bending (or the thickness) is more prominent on the shorter partials so their pitch increases more than the ideal factor. there is an extra distortion that occurs because the amplitude of a note slightly stretches the string and increases tension, changing the sinusoid shape of the fundamental and pitch of the partials, but that complex interplay isn't relevant to this discussion
Love your videos! (Long post)
very clear and to the point. Hopefully I had one of your video to refer to when one of my plastic mute got stuck inside the rail of hammers. I was unscrewing parts I shouldn't have, to get it. I didn't see the 3 black bolts waiting to be turned by hand. One of the easiest part of the piano to get off . But when I wanted to get it back, oh..oh. I didn't see there was the pedal metal stick bar on the left I had to plug in the whole section, while fitting this into the piano. I was swearing my life to put the bar in while holding the section...... I was lucky enough to have help for this piece, one holding down this pedal bar into the hole the other fitting it all in.. I wonder how to do it all alone?
I had another question.
I bought a 55$ tuning kit on amazon, but the tuning hammer had rust inside of it and broke after 6 hours. So i am looking for the best quality tuning hammer.
Even though it took me about 22 hours tuning my piano, minus the week of reading before starting, its so enjoyable, I think it should be listed as a sport, or a good training at least.
I have an upright k-2.
I see you have an impact hammer and the professional nylon extension hammer. I like the idea of this impact, since the weight is doing a good work depending on the stickness of the pins. I sure did loosen some of my pins on this first tuning. I consider this a bad thing because the piano is probably be less stable and not hold the note for a long time. Although, a good thing for the next tuning, to get the right note with less force back and forth to get the chords to turn. I see one of your tuning with tune lab, your note is so solid, it's right into the target, the grey line is all full and the squares are not moving. I wish that would happen. Had only a few chords reaching this point, about 5 out of 256. The rest is ok, sound is good anyway :)
Well, if youve read to this point thanks in advance. I wish to buy the impact or the pro tuning hammer with 5 degree tips. The impact has a long star knot (tip), around 3"1/2, i read the less long it is, the better, for turning the chord instead of the pin. Is this a problem with the impact?
Id get both if i could, but id start with one.
Thank you!
Ma
Oh! Actually, i asked you to explain about the inharmonicity a few minutes ago. U had already explained about it.
But i still have a question about the way you tune the first string out of three strings for tuning a note. When you tune the first string of three , how can you tune it and apply to it.
I think you listen to harmonics for every note especially, for the first string when you tune pianos.
Actually the string is stiffer for higher and higher partials, but this does not imply that partial are not perfect multiples of the base frequency.
The cause of the stretch is the inharmonicity only, which is a measure of how much the string deviates from an "ideal increased stiffness".
Anyhow, thanks for the very clear and complete videos.
it does indeed imply the partials are not perfect multiples of the fundamental. that's exactly what inharmonicity means
Great series, my mind is a little bit blown about the gradual sharpness up from A4 and flatness down from A4.
Q1: How bad does a piano sound if you tune it to exactly the theoretical frequencies i.e. each octave tuned to 2x the preceding octave?
Q2: How many pianists know this about the piano - do they get involved with shaping the sound, or for the most part leave it to the tuner?
Q3: Why isn't the piano designed to take the inharmonicity into consideration - adjust the string length so you DO tune to exactly to 2x the frequency with each octave.
Q4: What goes on in a pitch raise (like my piano needs!). This question my be hypothetical because I bet you have a video on that.
Thanks!
1. Unmatched partials/harmonics so you hear excessive beating in large intervals and the sound is muddy and not as clear and rich as it should be (lower frequency notes don't trigger the resonance of the upper strings as the frequency of harmonic of the lower frequency string is a bit higher than the pure-tuned frequency of the higher notes)
2. I believe majority of pianists are aware of this at least to some degree (as my wife, a pianist, loves to say "I always knew there is something wrong with the piano tuning!"). Some pianists have their own preferences about which intervals they prefer to sound as clean as possible (it often depends on the repertoire), though each piano has its own optimal style of tuning and the pianist's wishes may go against the laws of physics. Some pianists often argue about the tuning quality with their piano technician due to this misunderstanding. No tuning can be perfect, it's always a compromise.
The problem is especially severe with pianists who have studied on digital pianos which are using samples from the concert grand pianos which have low inharmonicity and which are extremely well tuned before they were sampled.
3. The piano are actually designed by taking this in mind, but they have to work within the physical constraints-you cannot put long strings in a small cabinet, usually they are as long as they can be to fit in a particular piano (though there are some other constraints). To ensure low inharmonicity of the lower bass strings you will end up with several meters long strings-of course such long pianos (concert grands) sound way better but not many people can afford them and have space for them.
4. I would suggest watching videos specifically about the pitch raising as it's not something simple to explain in a comment.
Cheers!
A Very gr
In another video you tuned the whole piano with a computer without taking into account beats or stretching. Should I just use a tuner being a novice or try to tune one octave using beats of the A4? Im confused
when he uses a computer, he's accounting for stretching but it's not obvious. even if your tuner understands stretching, you need expertise to tell your tuner what stretch parameters suit your piano. however ... even with a dumb tuner, for the middle two or three octaves it will be "close enough". and to my ears at least, you can tune the remaining strings by getting them to sound harmonious with the tuned equivalent in a different octave. my two cents: if your piano is badly out of tune, as mine was, you are better to get it roughly in order and stable before you call a professional, because large changes won't hold (although as it turns out, i'm perfectly happy with the result). further, any fool can fix out of tune unison strings, and for the tinnest of ears these are the most noticeable problem
With a simple tuner device only a rough tuning can be performed (and even then a simple piano tuner device provides some degree of stretching-something like -10 cents in the lowest bass notes and +10 cents in the highest notes). Then the technician must fine-tune all the intervals by listening to beats.
The modern way is to use a good smartphone app that can measure the inharmonicity of your piano (you build up its model by playing each note) and the app will calculate the optimal stretched tuning for it. Currently there are several such apps for each platform, they're not cheap starting at around 100 USD for a basic/standard version and going to around 600 USD for a pro version.
Great videos!!! I would have one question: how to you establish the stretch? How would you choose between 6:3s or4:2s, etc? I mean how would you choose what partials to take into account when tuning the octaves?
This will depend on the size and scale of the particular piano. All of this will be detailed in a future video.
+howardpianoind Thank you! :))
+howardpianoind Thank you! :))
thank your explanation! I'm from Asian and not good at English. so I'm not completely understand what you said. Can you explain to me that if we raise a little bit sharp in high treble and flat in low bass. does it have the beat sound when we play octaves or perfect four and fifth?
Hi Quoc,
Basically octaves should be beatless depending on which partials you're listening to and 4ths and 5ths will beat slowly. I hope this helps.
you might want to explain the difference between beatless ( pure ) and slow rolls ( less than one beat per second ) as is the case with octaves and some fifths. Also test intervals like tenths and seventeenths. I was glad to see the ghosting, self explaining physics
so theoretically, IF we had magic piano strings of no thickness (and I guess infinite length), there would be no slight pitch raises among all the partials and we wouldn't have to worry about temperment?
Exactly. This is the limitation of the strings, sadly. The laws of physics sometimes hit us hard.
When tuning the low range so that the partials are more in-tune with the midrange, does this mean that single octaves in the low range, such as E1-E2, should be beating slightly? In my understanding, tuning pure octaves in the low range means that 10ths, 15ths, 17ths, etc. would be out of tune.
Yes, the octaves would need to be beating slightly if you listening to the fundamentals of each of the notes.
Can you make a video were we can hear the strech of the octaves
So its only compared to lower octaves on the piano that a piano string sounds flat, when tuned perfect to tuner? Not compared to the lower octave on another instrument (that doesnt have the problem with stiff string and overtones becoming sharper than fundamental).
Yes, that is correct.
@@howardpianoind Ok, thanks! So to get the piano to work well with other instruments (in a semi-acoustic rock band together with hammond organ etc), i should aim for right between what the tuner says and the 1st overtone of the lower octave?
Where's part 8?
We only have parts one through seven at this point.
@@howardpianoind That's too bad. It was going along so nicely. I hope you resume with it.
I’m hoping to add more videos in the near future.
@@howardpianoind That would be good.
@@howardpianoind please do! You are an excellent explainer. Thank you, from this single video I've understood way more than from many other videos and articles. A good practical example is all what we need sometimes.
Okay. So your sharpening the not to match the overtones? Why doesn't that make the actual tone sharper? This makes no sense to me. I'm just a dumb guitar player. If you sharpen a string, isn't the actual note sharper? If you're chasing overtones it seems like you'd be out of tune in your whole tones.
That's the point, in order to get overtones to match the middle register on a piano you will need to stretch the octaves in the treble sections as well as in the bass sections. If you tune these notes mathematically, they wouldn't sound good.