Piano with tuning forks instead of strings

December 30, 2021 7:24 AM

The idea is to have a piano which won't go out of tune. Mattias Krantz is humble and persistent and has a fair amount of money to throw at the problem. I thought the big challenge would be the price of the tuning forks. It's a problem, but little did I know. It all seemed like a good idea at the time.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz (38 comments total)

It's great to watch something where I know a *lot* about like half of the process (the drilling, machining, mounting) and absolutely *nothing* about the other half (how do piano work?). It's a murder mystery where I watch the crime on video... but am pretty sure it isn't a crime at all because pianos are NEAT and COMPLICATED. :)
posted by introp at 8:12 AM on December 30, 2021 [3 favorites]

This is beautiful and tragic. The pain in his voice "I'm an engineer!"
posted by deadaluspark at 8:13 AM on December 30, 2021 [5 favorites]

As the offspring of a piano tech and a player-piano tech (yep, they exist) I started watching this video from a place of nearly cosmic horror, but I’ve come around to the opinion that Matthias is a good (albeit very weird) egg and my parents would probably trade me for him without a second thought.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 8:14 AM on December 30, 2021 [29 favorites]

"I called my piano dealer and told him I'd be there in 10 minutes."

"He asked me if I wanted to jump into the van because he had a surprise waiting for me inside."

Dude. You know how this sounds, don't you?
posted by adamrice at 8:30 AM on December 30, 2021 [5 favorites]

This was amazingly heartening in its way. All the missteps! The false starts! The bad ideas that seemed perfectly sensible at the time! As someone who engages in (far less complicated!) projects of various sorts, I felt every setback he encountered viscerally. There were moments there where I was like, I don't know how he hasn't just started openly weeping at this point, as he then proceeds to carry on with tears in his eyes. (Or maybe that's just me who does that!) In any case, it helps me feel like, okay, it's not just me whose process goes like this.
posted by fikri at 8:33 AM on December 30, 2021 [2 favorites]

I'll admit this went in the opposite direction from what I expected. I thought he was going to replace the strings and have the hammers strike the forks.
posted by jedicus at 8:33 AM on December 30, 2021 [16 favorites]

This is of course tilting at windmills, because the piano is always an out-of-tune instrument: even "in-tune" pianos lack consistency because even-tempered intonation--12 equal semitones/half-steps per octave (within each doubling of frequency)--is out-of-tune to begin with, since an octave isn't quite big enough to fit all the half-steps we want to put in that box. (Pianos are tuned with tremendous fudge factors, such that the top and bottom octaves are about 33 cents [1/3 of semitone] away from the mean of the middle octaves, meaning that the bottom octave is tuned quite flat and the top tuned quite sharp, relative to the middle.)

So no piano is ever in tune, it's an instrument that cannot physically be made to actually be "in tune" in our pitch system--it's only ever a decent compromise. He could just use a digital piano, not only do those never lose tuning, they are completely malleable w/r/t whatever tuning system one wants to use, 12-tet or pure or whatever. But that wouldn't be nearly as much fun as what he did, admittedly.
posted by LooseFilter at 8:39 AM on December 30, 2021 [12 favorites]

I'm still not sure if I'm going to make it through the whole thing without skipping ahead, but "I spent one percent of a whole day learning about tuning forks" is a good joke.
posted by fedward at 8:40 AM on December 30, 2021 [5 favorites]

Sort of a reverse engineered celeste with some questionable assumptions...
posted by jim in austin at 8:42 AM on December 30, 2021 [2 favorites]

A rhodes electric piano has metal tines that are hit with hammers, and they're tuned. by filing the tones down, or adding solder to them; so I wonder if his tuning forks could be tuned the same way when they wear down.
posted by jonathanhughes at 8:53 AM on December 30, 2021 [5 favorites]

I was also surprised that he replaced the hammers instead of the strings... If the strings are out of tune, don't you just end up with two out of phase vibrations?
posted by kaibutsu at 8:54 AM on December 30, 2021 [3 favorites]

Metafilter: watching videos from a place of nearly cosmic horror
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:12 AM on December 30, 2021 [6 favorites]

A rhodes electric piano has metal tines that are hit with hammers, and they're tuned by filing the tones down, or adding solder to them

Slight correction: each tine has a little coil of wire that can be slid up or down to adjust the tuning.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:16 AM on December 30, 2021 [6 favorites]

Music boxes also often have metal tines that make the tones and you can tune them by filing off a little metal. I learned this from The Repair Shop.
posted by freecellwizard at 9:20 AM on December 30, 2021 [2 favorites]

I figured there was probably already an instrument that made sound by striking a tuning fork with a felt hammer and it turns out such a thing was more or less concurrently developed in both France (Victor Mustel's Typophone, which mostly seems to have been a development step before the Celesta*) and Ireland (the Dulcitone). Using the tuning fork as the hammer does seem like a uniquely bad idea.

*Today I also learned that even in the weird world of 19th Century musical instruments people can get fighty about other people being wrong on the internet. "Unfortunately, there are many misleading and incorrect representations of the celesta instrument, its history and its action mechanism in music literature. Even the so-called classical reference works are often incorrect." The Schiedmayer web site includes receipts (viz. the original patent) to give credit to Victor Mustel and not his son Auguste, but other sources claim that Auguste actually patented it (even though it's Victor's name on the patent). In conclusion: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
posted by fedward at 9:26 AM on December 30, 2021 [5 favorites]

I saw a video semi-recently which shows the innards of a few electric pianos, if that's what you're after:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rK8FhHt0iO4

Rhodes section starts at 1:36
posted by RobotHero at 9:45 AM on December 30, 2021 [2 favorites]

The little pianos kids play with are usually metal rods cut to length to vibrate at the right frequency, like a tuning fork.
posted by AzraelBrown at 9:49 AM on December 30, 2021 [4 favorites]

I've seen tuning forks w/ adjustable dampers on them before.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 9:55 AM on December 30, 2021

Dude. You know how this sounds, don't you?

Hard to imagine someone in 2021 falling for the ol' white van with guys saying the piano factory loaded an excess Bösendorfer and you can have it for cheap RIGHT NOW, but, you never know.
posted by thelonius at 10:20 AM on December 30, 2021 [6 favorites]

I have just started this but am already enjoying his style of humor. "I spent 1% of a whole day learning about tuning forks just so I could tell you guys about them."

I want to know: why five pianos? Why are five pianos better than one? I shall keep watching.
posted by Well I never at 10:37 AM on December 30, 2021

The little pianos kids play with are usually metal rods cut to length to vibrate at the right frequency, like a tuning fork.

I saw one at a friend's house the other day and as they had some sticks around I proceeded to make some sounds on it by banging the rods instead of pressing the keys. Much more fun to play xylophone/marimba style than as a piano.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 10:39 AM on December 30, 2021

I thought he could have spent time and money just learning to bend a square piece of aluminum himself and save all of that internet shopping. For re-tuning as it were, you can just move bits down/up and make a few new ones. Also wondering if the shape of the piano and the general acoustic things of some strings are longer than others sorta messes up the sound when all the sound things are roughly the same size and only at the top. That's gonna mess with resonance a good bit.Over/under engineered.

Appreciate the idea though.
posted by zengargoyle at 10:43 AM on December 30, 2021

"But that's when I actually came up with an idea that was good!"

He is very charming.
posted by Well I never at 10:51 AM on December 30, 2021

the ol' white van with guys saying the piano factory loaded an excess Bösendorfer

It's better than the guy who wants to open his big trenchcoat to show you a couple of Steinways that fell off the back of the truck.
posted by straight at 10:51 AM on December 30, 2021 [3 favorites]

Explain.

What is making the noise? The strings or the tuning fork or both? If the piano never goes out of tune then I assume it's the tuning forks (or maybe the tuning forks are forcing the strings to vibrate at the same frequency, so it's both).

It seems that one key difference is the damping only affects the strings, not the fork. Is that right?

This is rather awesome, and I admire this guy's perseverance. I also agree with the person at the beginning of the video who suggested he needed a girlfriend.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 12:05 PM on December 30, 2021

"Slight correction: each tine has a little coil of wire that can be slid up or down to adjust the tuning."

Interesting! I know I've read about people tuning a Rhodes may adding a little blob of solder to the tine and then filing it down. I wonder if that was just for certain models that maybe didn't have the coil of wire.
posted by jonathanhughes at 12:05 PM on December 30, 2021

As far as I know they all originally came with the little coils. But there are so many Rhodes pianos that are in various states of disrepair (no doubt including missing coils that slid off and got lost at some point) that it wouldn't surprise me to learn that folks are cobbling DIY fixes together to keep them running. Replacement parts are generally available, for a price of course, but a blob of solder is cheap and easy...
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:28 PM on December 30, 2021

The Wurlitzer piano and the Hohner Pianets might be tunable by removing/adding solder to their reeds, both of which function a little more like a kalimba than the Rhodes system, which features a more complex vibrating contraption. Similarly, free reed wind instruments such as accordions and harmonicas are tuned by altering the mass of the reeds.

This guy's been turning up in my youtube feed for a while with his goofy piano tricks and schtick. Niche humor/subject matter, I guess.
posted by 2N2222 at 12:34 PM on December 30, 2021 [2 favorites]

What is making the noise? The strings or the tuning fork or both? If the piano never goes out of tune then I assume it's the tuning forks (or maybe the tuning forks are forcing the strings to vibrate at the same frequency, so it's both).

In his hacked instrument, the strings and the tuning forks both make noise. There's no damping on the tuning forks so they'll ring even after the string dampers return to position. There's nothing to keep the strings from going out of tune, though, and if anything the forks will add distortion in the form of audible beats (here's an article about piano tuning that explains beats; and here's a video demonstrating the effect). And at the end of the video he realizes that the forks will be subject to wear that will eventually drive them out of tune.

Also I must issue a belated correction to my earlier comment: the Dulcitone was developed in Scotland, not Ireland. I actually noticed this error and then FAILED TO CORRECT IT before posting, so I guess my regular morning dose of coffee needs to be bigger. I regret the error.
posted by fedward at 12:47 PM on December 30, 2021 [3 favorites]

I saw a video semi-recently which shows the innards of a few electric pianos, if that's what you're after:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rK8FhHt0iO4

Cool stuff! I had never actually seen the inside of a Mellotron. It’s a miracle they worked at all.
posted by Devils Rancher at 2:21 PM on December 30, 2021 [1 favorite]

What's heartening is that it's a failure. A good spirited, amusing failure that I could absolutely see myself trying. I just haven't videotaped it.
posted by From Bklyn at 2:36 PM on December 30, 2021

This reminds me of one of my favorite Mefi Music posts: Strange and Beautiful on an out of tune piano
posted by cozenedindigo at 5:28 PM on December 30, 2021 [1 favorite]

it sounds like a harpsichord.
posted by lapolla at 6:44 PM on December 30, 2021

I love that he suggests heating the piano at one point.
posted by Zumbador at 10:22 AM on December 31, 2021 [2 favorites]

25:17....Now, let's actually play something [Ed: finally]

[So] I've created a piano that, once it gets out of tune, you can't [get it back in tune].

[Ed: Um..huh?]
posted by mule98J at 11:41 AM on December 31, 2021 [1 favorite]

@mule98J: Right before he said it can't get back in tune, he said when he was first getting the tuning forks ready, shaving them down was super easy (too easy!) to do. So as he plays, more of the tuning fork would erode and there is really no way to "unerode" them, and thus the piano would slowly, tragically remain forever out of tune.

I thought someone mentioned just changing out the tuning forks as each wears, but I can't find the comment now. If you did it that way, you keep the used ones and use them to replace other forks as needed.
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 2:13 PM on December 31, 2021

As far as “untuneable”: He is right that you make a tuning fork’s pitch go sharp by filing material away from the ends. But you can also make your tuning fork’s pitch go flat by filing material away from its “crotch.” Making the rods shorter makes them stiffer; making their attachments to the base thinner makes them floppier again.

You do have to be a little careful to preserve the magic tuning-fork shape which cancels out the lower harmonics, so that you get that nearly-sine-wave sound from them. But I’m not sure his milled-block forks have this property in the first place: his tuner shows a Fourier transform of the sound waves, and the lower harmonics all seem to be pretty prominent. I think you get the pure-tone effect from a bent rod with a circular cross-section.

If a person were interested in fabricating a few hundred tuning forks, the bent-rod design might also be less expensive than the milled-block design, just due to the amount of metal that would be thrown away. His inexpensive tuning forks (at $4 each before he drove up his own price, and delivered out of tune) were probably made on contract in a machine shop that already has a computer-controlled mill, where it’s cheaper to use that tool than to invest in developing a precision rod-bending process.

But it’s been fifteen years since I read a half-page article about this in Physics Today, so don’t trust me much.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 5:42 AM on January 1, 2022 [2 favorites]

I mean... sure, but now it's not a piano any more.
posted by dmd at 4:31 PM on January 1, 2022