Harpsichord tuning and maintenance
In our living room, we have four keyboard type instruments... my wife is the button presser. Anyway, the harpsichord is more my baby and it is by far and away the largest of the instruments... measuring in over 2 metres in length. However, I love having a bit of tinker on it occasionally... or to use it for rehearsals (I normally play in ensembles with harpsichord)... at least, that is the plan... but between my real music work (violin/viola/damore) and parenting and just normal life... I rarely get to play it. However, on my list of things to be constantly doing (at least once every few days...) is to keep it in tune.
The shifting weather from winter to spring means that the wood has shifted (there is an argument for the metal straitjackets of modern pianos...) , and the instrument is woefully out of tune, and there are keys sticking as the internals have all shifted a few millimetres this way or that way... So, much tuning to do, and also a summer long investigation of the insides to see if I can keep it playable condition.... in time for the shifting of the season! Haha... well, it is the sort of thing that is only a big job if you don't stay on top of it... and being a violinist and not a harpsichordist... I've looked after my violins instead!
So, yesterday... I had meant to try and quickly tune it... roughly a half hour job to do the four sets of strings (each keyboard has a single main set of strings, and there is also an 4 foot (octave higher) and a doubled set linked to the bottom keyboard). I tune to rough Valotti temperament (system of dividing the semitones, and solving the circle of 5th problem) and with a starting pitch of A=415Hz.
However, like all jobs that have been neglected for way too long... I soon found that keys were sticking or that quills were hitting the wrong string... so, I've settled on tuning only the main set of strings for the bottom keyboard to start with (they don't hold pitch at the moment, having been so far out for so long...)... and trying to fix the mechanisms so that quills are hitting the right strings at the right time, and that all the keys are clear of sticking...
This just means that I have to expose the mechanisms... which is an easy thing to do... just lift off the cap, which stops the jacks from jumping clear of their positions...
Now, this was one of the more problematic jacks... it was from the 4 foot on the lower keyboard, and it was hitting the string (which was really out of tune...) whilst the set was supposed to be decoupled from the keyboard. Needless to say, that made it really hard to tune the main string... and so I removed the jack while tuning the main set.
I also tried tinkering around with screw to alter the position of the quill (hopefully moving it a little further from the string, so it wouldn't touch when decoupled). However, this fix wasn't a success... and I think that the entire set of the 4 foot jacks need to be shifted a couple of millimetres to the right... there is a screw mechanism to do this... but I had left my screwdrivers in the attic, and I was too lazy to get them yesterday... However, I am typing this in the attic, so it will be the first thing that I do!... if I remember....
Getting the jack back in is a right pain in the arse... there is that small hole there... and a second hole about 10 centimetres underneath... in pitch darkness. So, you are wiggling it around, trying to find the hole which is pretty much exactly the same size as the wood of the jack that is going down....
At least the main set of strings were tuned... I have to go over them again today to make sure they have held pitch and temperament. But this is the summer project... slowly getting the instrument back into playing order... it works at the moment, but the sticking is getting really annoying!
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Oh, I wanted to hear what it was like tuning, so I went to YouTube and watched it while I went through your post.
Oh, what a painstaking job that is!!!
Yikes. I do love the sound. Have you gotten it together yet?
!tip
Some of the sticking is fixed... It's a slow job, especially if I can't spend a whole complete uninterrupted day on it! Thanks for the bonus!
Aw, no video or recording? Was gonna say that I'd never heard of this instrument before, but then I realized it was a klavecimbel :D
Seems like an awfully finicky thing to tune :P
(upvoted to neutralize the downvote)
Oh, trust me... You don't want to be listening to tuning!
Anyway, with the harpsichord and klavecimbel thing... I had the reverse when I first arrived in Netherlands!
Patience or a patient, completely over my head not understanding anythin except your frustration getting the job done, good luck @bengy
Love the sound of a harpsichord, sure wife will enjoy playing once you have sorted.
Frustration is the word for it... although, more with myself in not keeping it maintained... which has led to a bigger job!
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I cant believe you did this fixing job, at least partly. looks so hard,-- scary!
The tuning is a constant thing... The keys sticking are trickier... A harpsichord player would have kept it in better condition... But it isn't my main instrument, so I neglect it. So things get worse, and the job gets bigger!,
Thanks for this great account on harpsichord tuning! Do you sometimes tune in meantone temperament for Renaissance and early Baroque music?
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I'm not a harpsichordist.... so, this one I leave to the more modern Valotti temperament... however, my keyboard colleagues definitely use meantone when it is required! so, yes... I'm more familiar with it on violin/viola.... but no idea how to tune it on the keyboard!
Meantone has several variations, the most common being 1/4 comma. First, you tune 8 pure major thirds and then temper the rest of the by 1/4 comma. Easier said than done, haha!
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Yeah, that's why I leave it for the real continuo players. I'll stick to what I'm best at! Most of the things that I play at home don't work in meantone, maybe Werckmeister would do... But I'm too lazy to learn!
So cool that you have a harpsichord. I've never played one, but I love harpsichord music. It looks a lot harder to tune than a piano though, and I won't even attempt that. So when are we going to hear you play it?
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Actually, I think it is easier to tune than a piano (much less tension on the strings...)... and only a single string per note, rather than the pairs/triplets of strings for the hammer instruments.
I'm practicing... so I don't make too much of an embarrassment for myself! It's been a couple of decades since I've played a keyboard in public!
This looks way more difficult than tuning a guitar. I have no idea and you are so professional. Indeed, a musician is a musician. 🙂👍👍👍
It's pretty much the same as tuning a guitar... just more strings...
Beautiful, a violinist sounds impressive and rare nowadays. May I ask what your opinion is of the 432Hz frequency that is supposed to be one of harmony while apparently music has been shifter to 440hz somewhere at some point which is not quite so healthy for us. I don't know the details but I heard this once somewhere. Sound vibration is a crucial part of the tradition of mantra meditation and consciousness upliftment and apparently certain frequencies are better than others for that.
The Shuman Resonance is another crucial frequency that the earth and all of us resonate at.
To be honest... I think the 432Hz idea is one of those fads that gain traction on the internet... in the past (and this is only speaking of Western music from 1600s onwards) we've had a range of A pitches ranging from below 392 Hz for the French Baroque to the Choir tones of Central Europe at over 466Hz... and everything in between depending on location and time. Modern day pitch is between 440Hz and 445 Hz depending on location and group... 432Hz sounds more "relaxed"if you are used to 440Hz... but as I tend to play at 415Hz or 430 Hz for most of my work, it sounds less "relaxed" to me! It is really a matter of what you are used to and not at all a universal truth.... it is a sort of subjective thing, where someone can easily use "whoooo" to impress a lay audience.
More important is the idea of temperaments and the solutions to the problem of the circle of fifths (at least in Western Music, other cultures have different solutions and problems). The modern solution is one of equality of tones and keys.... the older eras had very in tune keys and very out of tune keys depending on where you would place the wolf tone... and how you spread it out between the cycle of fifths.
I once went to a spinet recital. It's an 18th Century compact version of a harpsichord with the strings at an angle to the keyboard. The player tuned between each piece. He said, "The inventor was an evil man. Half the time you're tuning and half the time you're playing out of tune."
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Yes... it's a nightmare... and even worse on the stringed instruments, as we have gut strings. Adding an audience makes the air quite warm and humid... which plays havoc with us!