[CAUT] Stretch

[David Ilvedson]

I can totally agree with you Fred...



The fleeting tuning is really the crux of it all.   Get the most important thing right...solid unisons...and all will be well.   



I have a great gig with the San Francisco Ballet, during the performance season I'm tuning 1 or 2 pianos each night (5 pm to 7 pm just before the performance).   I am able to hear each day how the tuning stability is from the night before and it's been fabulous.   Yamaha CFIII and C7/ Concert Reserve pianos.  The work setting is totally quiet and dark (except work lights) between 5 pm and 7 pm...everyone eating.   The Opera House is steam heated and obviously very consistent...lighting is high in the air and doesn't effect the instruments...the stage crew are the best...really a  piano technicians dream...



We have our CA State PTG Convention this week and unfortunately I'll have to leave early everyday and miss some classes.   Hope to see some of you there...



David Ilvedson, RPT

Pacifica, CA 94044









Original message

From: "Fred Sturm" 

To: "College and University Technicians" 

Received: 2/5/2007 7:52:34 AM

Subject: Re: [CAUT] Stretch





On Feb 4, 2007, at 8:54 PM, rwest1 at unl.edu wrote:





Conclusion:

All of these aural tests would be possible to calculate, but difficult and time consuming to do, especially for every note of the piano.  Numbers and measuring don't, IMHO, capture the essence of tuning.  ETD's can crunch some numbers, average them out, and give an excellent calculated result, but whether or not those calculations actually fit the piano depends on what you hear.

Hi Richard,



 Listening to all kinds of aural tests gives the illusion (IMO) of fitting a tuning to the piano, note by note, every single one. But, of course, there really isn't enough time to do all the tests, and the results are often contradictory and can lead to more confusion than clarity. In the practical world, all that fussing with getting each beat rate precisely correct tends to lead to spending far too much time and effort on deciding, at the expense of achieving solid and clear unisons throughout. None of that fussiness matters if the unisons aren't utterly clear and solid. To my way of thinking, the major benefit of the ETD is that the average tuner using it spends most of the effort on "accomplishing" the tuning rather than on making countless decisions, resulting in better unisons and stability. 

 Numbers are merely a model of the physical world, the kind of model that is successful in sending rockets to other planets among other feats. Yes, there does need to be a ground control to watch over things, but they would be helpless without those numerical calculations. Granted, with the piano there is a level of complexity with scale breaks and whatnot, but it is not all that complex. Even a reading of pairs of partials of three strings (FAC for SAT) produces a tuning curve that is quite acceptable to most people, and which tends to ace the PTG tuning test (high 90's for most careful tuners). The more sophisticated machines take more into consideration, and give opportunity to customize to the piano or the tuner's style. 

 Can an aural tuner find fault with a tuning produced via calculations of an ETD? Certainly. And it is also true that an aural tuner can find fault with any tuning produced via purely aural means. I, for one, don't find the differences significant. Tunings are fleeting things at the best of times.



Regards,

Fred Sturm

University of New Mexico

fssturm at unm.edu
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