My customer and piano teacher Jennifer C. from London Kensington asks:
How can I improve the tuning with key-weighting on my Yamaha C3?
Answer:
Dear Jennifer,
This blog post is intended to suggest a possibly lesser known “aid” for tuning the entire piano. Not included in this discussion are such basics as temperament, tuning checks to use, methods of tuning and electronic instruments if one is used. This article will focus on “fine tuning” a piano that is already at the A440 pitch level and in fairly good, even tensions in all sections. While tuning certain pianos, particularly the older uprights, all of us have encountered certain strings, usually the longer tenor ones, that suddenly start to ring or sound while tuning due to sympathetic vibration. It was exactly this situation that prompted further study and the exploration of these “open” strings as an aid in aural tuning. It was further noted that the more in phase the octave being tuned, the louder and clearer the sing-through sound created by sympathetic vibration.
This blog post assumes that the reader also understands at least some of the physical characteristics of vibrating piano strings, their modes, partials and inharmonicities. The principal of weighting keys is to deliberately raise the damper, freeing the string to sound sympathetically as related intervals are being tuned. The louder and clearer the sound of the weighted-open note, the better in tune the interval being tuned. This is the main principle of the system. Primary intervals used in key-weight tuning are the octave, fifth, octave fifth and the double octave fifth. We hope to stimulate enough reader interest for many to actually experiment with the use of key-weighted open sounding strings in tuning.
One very discriminate college piano teacher once remarked, “I am more interested in the fifth being in tune than the simple octave.” Of course, what she was favouring was...
Read more at:
https://www.professionalpianotunerlondon.co.uk/post/key-weighting-and-tuning
No comments:
Post a Comment