Easy way to upgrade your Kronos piano!

[Pedja]

I easy find pianos with s, danatkorg, but can you please me point me, where I can set the scale to be Equal Tempered (where is this parameter?).
Thanks for all.

[danmusician]

However, it is always possible that a certain scaling matches the taste of one person (e.g. mihmix) better than another - it's a matter of taste, because tuning (especially on a piano) is always a compromise between different targets. For example, a strongly stretched tuning might sound perfect in solo, but it will create an audible detuning between the piano and other instruments in a band or orchestra, which don't need stretching, in the very high and low registers...

Years ago, I had a different tuner come to do the pianos at the school where I teach. He did the baby grand in the auditorium first. When he went across the hall to do the upright in the classroom, I sat down to play the freshly tuned grand. It became pretty apparent to me that D 2 octaves below middle C was out. I waited until he finished the upright and asked him to come check.

He had me play in the key of D and then tuned the low D to my ear. Then he told me to play in Bb and then play the low D. It was awful! This was a great lesson in how the harmonics of a string - especially one shortened and thickened to fit in a baby grand - influence our perception of pitch.

He then told that I must have been a voice or string major in college. (I was voice with a minor in string bass!) He could tell by way I responded to the pitches that I perceived as "in tune." He said that brass and woodwind majors would have responded differently.

As Jens stated, the piano is full of compromise in tuning, a good tuner tunes the instrument for its best sound, not strickly to a predetermined scale. I've always wondered how programmers handle the situation when sampling. Thanks, Dan, for the info.

[bpoodoo]

Yes this is great tip that works well to help transform a thin piano sound into a more full, broader piano sound. The effect can be subtle but effective. You tend to feel it as the ebb and flow of sound in motion more than hear it as a pitch change. Of course too much stretch and it will make the piano sound out of tune.

I think one of the reasons this works is because it gives the frequencies of each note and its harmonics "room to breathe." For example, with equal temperament tuning the 1st harmonic of A4 is the same as the fundamental of A5 (880Hz). Play these notes at the same time and they would both be sharing that frequency (and others) resulting in a thin sound. By offsetting the tuning of those notes by just a few Hz (stretching), you give them a slight frequency separation allowing them to occupy their own discrete frequencies.

The preset Stretch tuning option is available without needing to create your own tuning - easy enough to audition and try it. The preset Stretch tuning option is about +/- 12 cents between the high and low end. If you want to try a more pronounced stretch tuning, you can create a custom All Notes tuning.

You can adjust the tuning by ear. Or you can use a phone/tablet app for spectrum analyzer with peak frequency detector to see the fundamental frequency for each note. I was surprised to see just how many harmonics (and inharmonics) there are. For some notes, the fundamental frequency is not the peak frequency (pitch is a perception).

For Equal Temperament (no stretch), the fundamental frequencies for "A" notes are as follows. This provides a quick check to see whether your piano is already stretched or is tuned to equal temperament.
Note:Freq (Hz)
A0:27.5
A1:55
A2:110
A3:220
A4:440
A5:880
A6:1760
A7:3520