3 ms·

It doesn't really matter what is convenient but what is in tune as perceived by human ear. Pianos are "out of tune" so that they sound well to humans.

recursive 6y ago
There are plenty of people that care about convenience. Pianos are generally tuned to equal temperament. If that's what you're saying sounds good to humans, why bother with all the fancy stuff?
- elihu 6y ago
  Well, just intonation generally sounds better to humans. A person playing violin would tend to naturally migrate to JI voicings of intervals whether they're consciously doing it or not. So, a tool that tells you whether you're "in tune" or not should ideally not tell someone they're out-of-tune when if they play in perfect JI. On the other hand, if the goal is to just be in the general ballpark and accuracy of +/- 15 cents or so is just rounding error, then ET is probably fine. (My own violin skills are pretty rudimentary, so ET would be good enough. But if I were better I'd probably want a JI tuner.)
abhorrence 6y ago
It's more that they're equally out of tune in every key. What actually sounds "best" for a given key (though certainly a little strange and unusual given the pervasiveness of equal temperament) would sound quite out of tune in other keys.
- elihu 6y ago
  With pianos there are actually two things going on. They're tuned approximately to 12-tone equal temperament, but also the octave is stretched due to the inharmonicity inherent in the strings. (In the middle-range the strings are pretty well behaved, but in the high treble they start acting more like metal cylinders than ideal strings, and the bass has wound and double wound strings to similarly mess things up. The result is that the harmonics of piano strings aren't exactly multiples of the fundamental frequency, and so the tuning is stretched so that harmonics of lower notes more closely match the fundamentals of higher notes.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_acoustics#The_Railsback_curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_acoustics#The_Railsback_...

recursive 6y ago

There are plenty of people that care about convenience. Pianos are generally tuned to equal temperament. If that's what you're saying sounds good to humans, why bother with all the fancy stuff?

elihu 6y ago
Well, just intonation generally sounds better to humans. A person playing violin would tend to naturally migrate to JI voicings of intervals whether they're consciously doing it or not. So, a tool that tells you whether you're "in tune" or not should ideally not tell someone they're out-of-tune when if they play in perfect JI. On the other hand, if the goal is to just be in the general ballpark and accuracy of +/- 15 cents or so is just rounding error, then ET is probably fine. (My own violin skills are pretty rudimentary, so ET would be good enough. But if I were better I'd probably want a JI tuner.)

abhorrence 6y ago

It's more that they're equally out of tune in every key. What actually sounds "best" for a given key (though certainly a little strange and unusual given the pervasiveness of equal temperament) would sound quite out of tune in other keys.

elihu 6y ago
With pianos there are actually two things going on. They're tuned approximately to 12-tone equal temperament, but also the octave is stretched due to the inharmonicity inherent in the strings. (In the middle-range the strings are pretty well behaved, but in the high treble they start acting more like metal cylinders than ideal strings, and the bass has wound and double wound strings to similarly mess things up. The result is that the harmonics of piano strings aren't exactly multiples of the fundamental frequency, and so the tuning is stretched so that harmonics of lower notes more closely match the fundamentals of higher notes.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_acoustics#The_Railsback_curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_acoustics#The_Railsback_...