Klarinet Archive - Posting 000497.txt from 2000/08

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] Unloading.....
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2000 20:04:26 -0400

I wrote that sometimes when my digital keyboard and my clarinet are not in
tune with each other,
>I hear the illusion that my clarinet is right and the piano is wrong,
>even though I know that digital piano *can't* go out of tune unless
>I deliberately raise or lower the programmable pitch.

Tony Pay wrote,
>>I've noticed that I tend to assign 'rightness' to a piano rather than to
>>myself, even if I suspect the piano may be out of tune, and even on
>>occasions when subsequent investigation shows it indeed to have
>>been out of tune. I suppose that's a psychological effect. Perhaps
>>there's a similar psychological effect in the opposite direction with
>>an obviously 'synthesised' sound.

<snip>

>>Can you perhaps unpack the experience "I hear the illusion that my
>>clarinet is right and the piano is wrong" for us a little more?

I don't *think* I'm reacting to the digital sound per se, though it's hard to
tell. My Yamaha CLP-811 on Piano 1 setting isn't "an obviously 'synthesised'
sound." It sounds to me like a well-made CD recording of a good acoustic
piano.

The intonation discrepancy I notice most often is that my clarinet sounds
either sharp or right to me in the top end of the clarion and the altissimo
when I play the clarinet solo, and the piano sounds right when I play it
solo; but when I play them together by recording the piano and playing the
clarinet with the recording, the piano accompaniment sounds sharp. That
ought to mean that my altissimo is actually flat, since the digital piano
can't slide out of tune.

My first thought was inaccurate playback speed. I tried playing the piano
along with the recording of the piano. Their pitch is the same.

After the series of messages yesterday, I thought maybe the answer lay in the
"stretched" tuning of the high end of the piano. I thought that maybe, since
the treble end of the piano *really is* tuned sharp (to make it sound right
with the bass end of the keyboard as per your comments, Tony), that might
mean I *am* playing my clarinet high tones in tune, even though obviously I
would have to learn to play them sharper to fit with the piano. I refuted
that hypothesis with a simple experiment this morning. I recorded brief bits
of piano accompaniments, along with some long chords to test and manipulate
long tones and some scales for unison and parallel octave testing. When I
added tha clarinet, as long as the two played notes close together in pitch,
if/when I heard a discrepancy, I *did* automatically assume my clarinet was
wrong, because I instinctively pulled (or tried to pull...) the clarinet
intonation into synch with the piano, including when both clarinet and piano
played high in the treble in unison or close harmony.

I only heard the illusion that I was right and the piano was wrong when the
piano and I went our separate ways with the clarinet playing significantly
higher notes, especially when I played the clarinet in altissimo while the
piano played around the *middle* of the keyboard or below. The illusion
appeared when the clarinet and piano were the *farthest apart* from unison,
in other words. This happened when the piano pitch was too low for "stretch"
piano tuning to be a factor. It was a strong impression, because I even felt
it in parallel octaves. An octave that's dissonant usually affects me like
fingernails on a blackboard, but instead of immediately flinching away from
the dissonance and correcting it, for a moment I would mentally "push" at the
piano and want it to move its pitch down while I stubbornly resisted pulling
my pitch up. I had to make a conscious decision to play sharper and the
sharpened clarinet note then sounded wrong even though it was now in synch
with the keyboard. It just sounded like now we were *both* sharp!

One possibility that occurred to me was a phenomenon that happens with pipe
organs. Some ranks of pipes can't be installed near certain other ranks,
because these ranks can pull each other off pitch by interfering with each
other's wavelengths. I wondered if the Clavinova actually pulled the pitch
of my clarinet (but not my saxes or recorders?) down and that I only noticed
it in the altissimo where there are fewer audible low partials to mask the
effect. But if that were happening, I should be able to eliminate the effect
by playing the recording of the piano in one room while playing the clarinet
in another room. I tried it. It doesn't work.

Another possibility is that the discrepancy is altogether illusory, and that
I'm *not* really playing flat. I haven't checked that one yet. I don't have
one of those electronic needle tuner thingumabobs. It may be that both the
piano and I are in tune when I think we're not, but that years of listening
to soloists on CD and to my husband practicing the violin every day and
playing chamber music on weekends have skewed my pitch perception. Maybe now
a solo only sounds in tune for me when it's sharp relative to the
accompaniment. Like most violinists with more experience playing solo and
chamber music than orchestral music, my husband aggressively reaches for
"brilliance" that makes him stand out above everybody else, especially at the
top of a phrase. In practice, that means he plays as sharp as he has to in
order to hold the high ground at all times. As a kid, playing the clarinet
in band and orchestra, I learned to blend, blend, blend, but maybe "stretch"
tuning is contagious and I'm starting to catch it, so that now when I
actually do blend, I think I'm flat.

I do hear the wind instrument as the one that's off-pitch when I hear a
descrepancy (either way) between my piano and my recorders or saxes. The
clarinet was my first wind instrument. The Conn Director intermediate
clarinet I played from age 9 to 19, then picked up again as an adult until I
finally retired it for a better quality clarinet two years ago, has wide
twelfths. The chalumeau is close to on pitch (with A=440) and the clarion is
sharp. It's possible that in my zeal to overcome that built-in problem, I
overcompensated and taught myself to flatten the upper end *too much*, even
though I've kept on imagining it (or anticipating it) as too sharp. I have
relative pitch, not fixed pitch. I easily adapt to different tuning systems.
Maybe, while training my ear to adapt to Equal Temperament, Mean Tone,
Werkmeister and jazz, I also trained myself from childhood to accept "Lelia's
Clarinet" as a temperament.

Then too, Tony, your psychological effects may differ from mine because
you're a professional playing in public, while I'm an amateur playing alone
in the attic. (A bigger factor is that you play far better than I do and no
doubt have a much better ear than mine, but I'm considering psychological
factors that can influence *perception* of pitch -- aside from the objective
reality.) When you perceive an intonation disagreement, it's always your
problem, even when it isn't your fault. No matter who's really off-pitch,
you must either compensate or persuade your fellow musicians to adjust, to
correct anything that you wouldn't want the public to hear. That's an
incentive to stay honest with yourself and to make sure you hear what's
really there. But since I know I *won't* have to prove myself in public, I
have at least as strong an incentive to wander in the opposite direction of
wishful thinking -- to avoid work while comfortably deluding myself that I
play as well as I wish I played. When I'm only imagining a piano
accompaniment, naturally I don't imagine that we sound like a train wreck, so
probably I accept whatever I play as the correct pitch and conveniently
imagine the piano matching it. Then I get a nasty surprise when the real
piano won't bend its pitch to my fantasy.

At the same time, I don't share your sensible inclination to accept the
intonation of a piano (since there's not much you can do about it at the last
minute before you have to play with it). I've played on so many disgraceful
piano-shaped objects that regardless of what I consciously *think* about a
particular piano (even if I *know* that it's new, or recently tuned, or
digital), the subconscious lizard-brain, a stubborn pessimist, squats there
in the base of my skull and glumly, independently *expects* to hear some
clanking relic. The lizard-brain takes a long time to admit that the ears
have identified something better. For instance, when I'm tired or
distracted, I "hear" the lowest F# on my piano as a faint, unmusical thud,
before the keyboard pleasantly surprises me by producing the actual note.
The expected thud is the key bottoming out without moving a hammer to strike
the strings, because for several years, I played the wretched remains of a
1922 upright on which that hammer was missing. Although I sold that wreck to
starving students fifteen years ago, the phantom thud lingers, an
astonishingly persistent, almost hallucinatory memory. Yet when I practiced
on that piano, I "heard" the missing note so clearly that its absence didn't
bother me much! Why did the note wait to disappear until *after* I got rid
of the piano?!

Lelia
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I'm out of my mind, but feel free to leave a message.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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