The Piano Sound Is A Moving Target

[@8891randy]

You have to watch this several times. It’s the best explanation of why we need to tune unisons as perfectly as possible- how it affects the tone. The second example in the video has a sound that would make me think the string wasn’t seated properly or the hammer needs to be filed. But that’s not it - it’s the response of the partials behaving from the result of a less than perfect unison. The kind of unison you would get when tuning by ear.

[@rickclark1372]

This is outstanding work. The most comprehensive objectively measured description of what is happening with pitch following the note strike that has ever been published/reported I believe.

[@barrybraksick5504]

Hi Steven, saw your pianoworld post. Very interesting comparison. There is a technique called the "phase vocoder" that builds on the STFT which can produce the kind of frequency and amplitude analysis you're talking about here. I first encountered it many ears ago in the book "Digital Audio Signal Processing: An Anthology" by John Strawn, but I'm sure there are other explainers online now.

[@PianoSens-ey8jb]

I am familiar with the phase vocoder. I use a different approach to get ultra fine grain frequency estimate between FFT bins that is better in this application. Thanks for the reference.

[@lingerlights]

Interesting