Getting irritated by out of tune pitches...

[Derek]

Okay, I don't mean a REALLY out of tune piano, I mean one or two tones here and there that are ever so slightly out of tune. Non-musicians can't hear these.  It isn't just e-flat now, I'm "seeing" other out of tune pitches on my piano really clearly and....well it does irritate me but I am trying to not allow myself to get excessively obsessed with or angry over it as that will probably only make it worse...

Has anyone else out there experienced this..?

[Derek]

you people all suck 

[kriskicksass]

I get migranes when I listen to my school's orchestra play because of all the diminished seconds I'm hearing.  On the piano it's not quite as bad because it's an isolated pitch rather than a dissonant interval all over the harmonies. Listening to a lot of Stravinsky helped reduce this, also.

[quantum]

Yes I notice those.  It's what prompted me to learn about piano tuning.  But then again such inconsistencies may be inherent in a recently tuned piano due to minute blemishes in the strings, capo, hammers, etc. 

[quasimodo]

I have a F which is annoying me quite a bit these last days. You can hear it on my Arietta, LOL.

[firebolt145]

Watching American Idol can give me migraines.

I broke a string last week and got it fixed a couple days ago. Now it's out of tune (as expected) and it is a little annoying, though it doesn't make me mad.

[superstition2]

I have a digital piano that irritates me because of the way notes decay flat.

[Derek]

I never thought I WOULD get mad about this sort of thing. I'm usually very level headed. However, I've made a ton of recordings since October and have been enjoying listening to my own recordings hundreds of times over and over again since then---and never noticed it til the last week and a half---it was just alarming at first. I reacted angrily at first but now I am just accepting the fact that I can hear these things...and focusing on the positive things that will come of it...not letting it bother me


I'm absolutely convinced, incidentally, that the reason I focused on pitch suddenly was due to putting this large piece of cardboard over the keyboard so I couldn't see it for the sake of learning to sight read better.  I didn't do that more than a couple of times but I've amassed so much latent experience with pitch that it was kind of "uncovered" just by that one time.  These things correlate perfectly with the amount of time that has elapsed so I'm convinced that is what caused it.  I think it will be worth becoming sensitive to pitch though because there's such a vast amount of amazing piano literature out there I'd love to just be able to browse fluently some day.  I want to be able to read music like words off of a page and I will not stop till I reach that goal!

The above, it just occurred to me, may seem odd to some readers---pitch seems to be vital to my own ability to read well, I don't know why this is the case...

[bella musica]

*Tears hair out*  It's even worse if you have perfect pitch! 

I was listening to Barenboim's recording of the Mozart Sonata in A minor (I think K 310).  There are a lot of repeated E's (2nd one above middle C, don't remember the proper way to write it), and by the end of the piece, the E key was distinctly going flat.

[timothy42b]

So is your pitch sense relative to equal temperament, or one of the historical temperaments?

If your piano is retuned to one of the variations of mean tone, just, or well, does it bother you or please you? 

[Derek]

My piano, to my knowledge, is just being tuned to the standard equal temperment scheme like any modern piano...

I honestly don't think I have perfect pitch...just "better" pitch than I did before. That is, if I hear a pitch, I can now remember it minutes later...and if I hear it enough times, like the one bad note on my piano, I can probably remember it permanently. So...eventually it would appear I will be able to sing any of the 12 tones on command...  I don't care to be able to do this honestly,  it just appears to be happening given how I have trained myself thus far and how I am now choosing to train myself in sight reading...

[timothy42b]

My piano, to my knowledge, is just being tuned to the standard equal temperment scheme like any modern piano...

Let me improve your knowledge slightly. 

Your piano is not tuned to equal temperament.  It is tuned away from equal temperament in the hope that it will sound closer to equal temperament, because of inharmonicity.

When you play a note on any instrument, not only the fundamental but a series of upper harmonics sounds at the same time.  On some instruments, such as wind instruments, these are forced to be in a simple mathematical relationship.  On piano that is not true, because a string has both tension and stiffness.  So the mathematical relationship is not simple and the overtones are not mathematically related.  If you tune the fundamental of each note to equal temperament, the overtones will make it sound out of tune.  A compromise stretched tuning is done.