Music, mathematics, philosophy and tuning:
Harmonic theory pages
|
See also, on piano tuning
on
falseness and paradigms for
the nature of piano tuning
why are pianos tuned to Equal Temperament
what makes a piano string vibrate ?
what is the theory of piano tuning ?
the place of piano tuning theory
for piano tuners
The piano tuner-technicians' area
|
See also, on music and mathematics
music, mathematics and philosophy
background to the musical scale
natural correspondence and esoteric symbolism
on music, mathematics and tuning
on scales, tone, pitch (and piano tuning) with interactive media |
|
Piano tuning - the essential idea Brian Capleton PhD (Lecturer in Piano Technology, Royal National College)
Updated 27th May 2007 © copyright Brian Capleton 2006, 2007
Page 1
A good deal of nonsense and misunderstanding surrounds the subject of piano tuning. It is nearly always "described" by presenting technical theory (always about "beats").
This practice is for the most part, misleading for the average enquirer. The theory presented is invariably just reiterated nineteenth century acoustics, based solely on nineteenth century theory of string behaviour, complete with its nineteenth century limitations. It does not really describe the work of a master tuner at all, and leads most enquirers into believing that piano tuning is just about applying things called "beat rates".
There is nothing wrong with talking theory, of course. As it happens, it is one of the things I myself specialise in. But anything, however complex, can be communicated effectively from the top down, without the enquirer having to work up through all the complication and theory, first. If you are enquiring about piano tuning then it is especially unfortunate if all that complication and theory you are studying turns out to be just a very crude and inadequate model for the thing you are trying to understand.
Of course, it is also true that piano tuning is not just a question of tuning strings "up to the right pitch", or there would be no need for this page in the first place. So putting first things first: piano tuning is not just about tuning strings "up to the right pitch".
|