The "Entropy" Piano Tuning program was mentioned on the MMD a while
ago [191112 MMDigest], asking if anyone had tried it and what they
thought about it.  I downloaded the program [191118 MMDigest] but did
not get to use it until today.  I printed the manual and read about
it and got familiar with the basics.

The basic process involves recording each note on the piano and then
doing some sort of mysterious calculation that purports to produce
a tuning that "minimizes entropy".  Sounded like bull to me -- how
could a rather simple calculation make a piano sound better?

Computer tuning programs attempt to minimize the effects of
inharmonicity, et cetera.  Aural tuners use their vast experience
and musicality to make the piano sound its best and they can really
do this.  I can tune my piano with one of the few tuning programs that
I own and can get decent results, but never as good as a professional
ear tuning -- until now, that is.

I am not a professional tuner by any stretch of the imagination.
I live far from town and to get a tuner here (there is a great one
about two hours away) is difficult and expensive so my idea was to
tune my piano often, but not necessarily well, as it would be in better
tune more of the time than sounding great for a week and then awful
for the rest of the year or six months.  So today I did the recording
and calculation and tuned the piano today.

The "Entropy" program is quite easy to use but does take a little
getting used to.  There are two different indicators of tuning.  One
is a stroboscope display that shows the fundamental and partials as
moving stripes. The other is a peak meter that shows the fundamental
(as well as minor peaks for the partials) with reference to the
target frequency.  Neither of these displays can be used to just set
the tuning to a mark.

It takes a little (very little) experience to learn what the indicators
mean and how to use them to get a good tuning.  I am such a terrible
piano tuner that I use the program to tune each string in a note and
then listen to beating as a check, which is not the usual way to tune
the unisons.  It is slow but works for me.

Of course the bottom line is, what does the piano sound like after
using "Entropy".  The answer is that it is amazing.  I first listened
to a few pieces that I knew were pretty good and at first thought that
the tuning was too technical -- without soul, dry, maybe perfect, but
not musical.  Then I listened to a few other great pieces and also
maybe got used to something I had not heard before.

I finally listened to something I had heard many times before and which
is one of my favorites.  This is the Bach Goldberg Variations played by
Glen Gould, as realized by Zenph Studios and played on the Stahnke LX
system.

I felt like I had never really heard it before.  The piano and all its
peculiarities (or most of them, since this is a one-hundred-years old
piano) receded into the background and all I heard was the fantastic
performance.  Whatever this program does, it really does seem to
minimize chaos in the piano.

When listening to a piano I am easily put off by distracting oddities.
I am not musically sophisticated enough to be able to identify what
these oddities are, I'm just distracted by them.  Whatever "Entropy"
does, it reduces these annoyances (that are artifacts of tuning) to
a degree that I have never experienced before.

I recommend that anyone who tunes their own piano give this a try and
I'm anxious to hear what they think.

Spencer Chase
Garberville, California
spencer@spencerserolls.com.geentroep [delete ".geentroep" to reply]

 [ "Entropy Piano Tuner" free download at http://piano-tuner.org/  
 [ -- Robbie