“Whaaat? I thought my unisons were supposed to be as pure as possible?“

Yes. That is the idea. But if you are really good at tuning unisons, they may be TOO pure!

What do I mean? Let me tell you a story.

After I had been tuning for about four years, I got a few calls.

“There’s something wrong with the tone on my piano”

“There’s no tone on my piano”

“You suck!”

One lady, a piano teacher at a school, had a Yamaha U1 in her room, and said there was no tone in the piano.

I’m scratching my head trying to figure out what she’s talking about when I notice, “Hey, this unison is pure, but it kinda dies out quickly.”

Then I remembered Professor Gabriel Weinreich’s work on unison sustain where he found detuned unisons lasting longer. So I tried it.

I detuned the unison ever so slightly, and voila! The unison tone blossomed!

I have since learned that this is called a “Blooming Unison”.

The teacher was happy and I learned something.

But I was still confused. “What the heck was going on!”

Turns out that when your unisons are really good, you can have what scientists call “Destructive Interference”.

In simple terms, your unisons are TOO pure!

Watch this video as it describes what Destructive Interference is and how you can fix it; how you can get tone back into your unisons if they are “too pure”.

If you want to learn about this and other techniques that will Super-Charge your aural tunings, check out the Go A.P.E. Aural Piano Tuning System.

“I will never, ever go back to tuning that old way again. It sucks!”
– Mark Cerisano, RPT, B.Sc.(Mech.Eng.), Dip.Ed.