Klarinet Archive - Posting 000382.txt from 2000/08

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] Unloading.....
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2000 10:26:02 -0400

Bill Hausmann wrote,
>Once the overtones exceed the range of human
>hearing and the fundamental is all that is heard at significant levels to
>matter, a clarinet sounds like a piccolo, or piccolo trumpet, or violin,
>etc. -- in essence, the tone approaches a sine wave to the ear. At lower
>pitches, where the overtones are better heard, the differences become
>clearer. The distinct tonal qualities of individual instruments become
>more apparent, and the tones more "interesting."

My childhood piano tuner told me that's why full-sized pianos have three
strings for each treble note and only two for each bass note. The strings
are not tuned precisely alike. Traditional piano tuners who tune by ear
naturally produce these small differences, but people who use electronic
devices for tuning will deliberately tune the strings very slightly out of
phase in order to produce this richer voice with more overtones. (My piano
tuner, then in his seventies, would have nothing to do with the electronic
devices coming on the market in the 1960s. He set middle C with a C tuning
fork and did everything else by ear from there. Now I use a digital
"toaster" piano, mea maxima culpa. If my piano tuner were still alive, he'd
die.) The little bit of "beat" between the strings gives an impression
similar to a slight vibrato. Adding the third string in the treble gives
those notes a fuller resonance, so that the sound quality matches the bass
end. Some of the cheapest small spinets from the 1940s through 1970s sound so
tinny because the worst of those "living room decorations" have only two
strings for each treble note and one for each bass note. The tinniness
sounds much worse in the treble, as if the felts on the hammers were old and
packed down.

Those compact piano-shaped objects almost always sound flat in the treble to
me, too, even when an electronic device shows the note is properly tuned.
I've always wondered why. Anyone know?

I won't take offense if the answer is, "Your ears are weird...." ;-)

Lelia

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