Tuning question for digital pianos

[Bolshevik]

Hi. I'm buying a digital piano soon and I'm very excited. I believe I'm going for the Kawai ES3. But my question is: how does the tuning sound on a digital piano? I have a Yamaha MIDI keyboard in which the tuning is noticably poor, just playing C-major is ample proof. Is this just a quirk of MIDI, that is, its bad tuning? Do digital pianos have better sound systems and thus better tuning? Thanksss.

[xvimbi]

I don't know what you mean by "tuning". However, this seems to me something you can answer yourself if you play around with the candidate digitals.

[faulty_damper]

Digital pianos can't be tuned.  Its pitch is always perfect.  However, some keyboards do allow the change of pitch to other tuning frequencies besides A440 which can allow you to play Baroque music at Baroque pitch.

If by pitch you just mean the timbre of the piano, then no, you can't change that although some digital pianos can give you alternate timbre when you play. For example, it can sound like a accoustic upright or a concert grand with a switch of a button.

[Spatula]

I wonder if a disklaver needs to be tuned (the actual piano)

what does the disklaver do anyway besides acts like a player piano???

[ivoryplayer4him]

I believe to ACTUALLY answer your question.  You will find that different brands and qualities of electric pianos have a different sound to them whether that be tune, timbre, or anything else.  Cheaper pianos are not going to have the great sound that a more expensive onehas (As far as electric ones go)

[alextryan]

Also to refer to your actual question:

Ideally digital pianos should be sampled from a professionally tuned acoustic instrument.  But I wonder if some of the makers just have each key at a certain frequency and give it a "piano sound."  That could mean that some digital keyboards aren't "well-tempered." 

One thing I know about digital instruments is that, among those that are sampled, the quality of sampling varies a lot.  Very often the real instrument is sampled at two or three loudnesses, and all the intervening loudnesses are just variations on the samplings.  The result is an electric-sounding tone.  The better ones will have sampled at maybe dozens of loudnesses, and you can definitely tell. 

I have a Yamaha P200 (now grandfather to the P250) and the tone is likeable, and I haven't noticed any clanging you might expect if it weren't tuned properly across the whole range. 

[Floristan]

I have a Yahama P120.  It defaults to an equal temperament tuning but contains 6 other temperaments (e.g., Kirnberger -- a favorite for Bach).  You can "tune" the keyboard to A435 instead of A440 if you want, or to any other frequency within, I think, about 15 hz of A440.

The P120 has very realistic piano sound if you use headphones (the built in speakers are useless).  The sound is a sampled C7.  

[jr11]

Is this just a quirk of MIDI, that is, its bad tuning? Do digital pianos have better sound systems and thus better tuning? Thanksss.

Are you simply playing a controller keyboard through a computer? If your computer is an older, slower variety there is sometimes a bit of wavering and/or latency with the more notes you play at once. Some computers and software and keyboards don't "talk" to each other very well, so mild incompatibility may be a problem. Also check the modulation control (may be called glide or something) on the keyboard is set to the zero position. Otherwise, what others have stated is true.

[Bob]

I have a digital piano.  I've noticed the tuning sounds funny.  I always thought it was because it had the notes exactly in tune rather than stretched like on acoustics.

I've heard that the tuning is "stretched" on pianos to make them sound in tune to human ears.  I don't know what that means exactly, but thought it was that the further from the center, the more stretched they are -- the higher, the sharper; the lower, the flatter.  Something along those lines.

Is there a piano tuner here who will know about this?

[Floristan]

I was a piano technician for 5 years back in the day, so maybe I can answer this question for you.

First, since digital pianos are reproducing actual sound sampled from acoustic pianos, those sounds should reflect the tuning of the instrument used for the sampling.  So if the acoustic piano used in sampling had stretched octaves in the treble, so would the digital.

A tuning starts by setting the temperament -- which means tuning one or two octaves at the center of the keyboard, then tuning up and down the keyboard in octaves from the temperament to tune the rest of the instrument.  On an equal temperament, every interval has some distortion from pure (ideal being beatless intervals).  In the temperament octave (usually from F3 to F4), fifths are very slightly flat, fourths are a little sharp (more than the fifths are flat), and major thirds have a lot of beating that is supposed to progress smoothly from 7 beats/sec. for the F-A third to 11 beats/sec. for the C#-F third.  That's why playing a major third in the middle of the keyboard will sound like the interval has vibrato.  It's the beats that have been put there on purpose.  In order to achieve nearly perfect fifths and fourths, the thirds and sixths are compromised a lot.

So once the temperament is set, the rest of the piano is tuned to these notes.  E.g., F#4 is tuned to F#3 (an octave lower in the temperament range).  Theoretically octaves are tuned beatless (for reasons of string physics I won't go into here).  However, tuning totally beatless octaves throughout the entire treble doesn't necessarily produce the most musical sound.  And it varies from piano to piano.  In general, very large pianos can be tuned more perfectly than small pianos (there is less string inharmonicity when the strings are longer) -- but even on a 9' piano, beatless octaves will not produce a sound that is pleasing and musical.  Beatless octaves tend to make an instrument sound "dead."

Most tuners stretch their octaves as they move up the treble away from the temperament.  The amount of this stretching is very subtle and slight, amounting to maybe a beat every 2-3 seconds.  Some tuners just build in this stretch, but most rely on checking the octave against other intervals (especially to the third, where the beats are so distinct).  Ultimately the tuner balances octave stretching against the overall sound of the instrument.  The general philosophy is the less stretching, the better, but some stretching is usually needed to prevent the piano from sounding "dead," which is how totally beatless octaves sound. 

Tuning from the temperament octave down into the bass is an entirely different matter.  The farther you go down in the bass, the more the tuner must rely on tuning not just to the second partial (the octave), but also to other, higher partials.  The third partial is an octave plus a fifth and the fourth partial is two octaves.  These partials are relatively easy for most experienced tuners to hear, but some tuners claim to be able to hear through 7 partials.  The reason these higher partials are used is because the tone produced by bass strings is rich and strong in partials, so to get a truly musical tuning, these partials must be taken into account.  So the octaves in the bass are not so much stretched as they are adjusted to produce the most pleasing, resonant tone when played with chords that contain the higher partials in the treble.  So, for example, if you're tuning C2 to C3, you might also play the inverted C major chord, G3-C4-E4 along with the octave and listen to how C2 resonates with C3, G3, and C4.  This is an oversimplification, but basically what tuners do.

Hope this helps!

[Bob]

Cool.  (feels more enlightened)