[CAUT] ghost tuning

Sloane, Benjamin (sloaneba) sloaneba at ucmail.uc.edu
Wed May 6 06:47:33 PDT 2009


   Hello Wim,
   It would be easier to address your question more directly if you told us what kind of piano you are tuning, i.e., if we were all sitting in front of the same piano.
   For the most part, I would have to answer generally that you should be ghost tuning the whole piano, not just the bass. Though Visual Aid programming starts 2:1 octaves a lot sooner than this, only at C# 7 do you begin to tune octaves without a partial represented by a string above it in the typical 88 note piano. The distribution of octaves I have experienced with visual aids, in my opinion, will work, if you only tune certain spinets.
   The distribution of octaves depends on a lot of things, most of all, what you think is right. Nobody can tell you what octaves to ghost in the bass, because the scaling in every piano is different, and everyone has their own convictions about this. Unless you use an ETD, that is. Since the recent epidemic in ETD addiction however, many tuners are now clueless about this. They never aural tune enough to have an opinion in the first place. I've aural tuned enough to be genuinely offended, even shocked, by the type of octaves more transparent visual aids tell me it is programmed to set in the sundry regions of the piano.
   Being passionate about temperament and the distribution of octaves is something that by in large, piano technicians scoff at as a neglect of more important aspects of the field-leave it to the visual aid programmers-so much so that we have developed a reductionist dialectic about tuning. Instead of figuring out correct temperament in parley, the whole argument is: "ETD vs. aural!" when all the ETD does is a tuning based on aural determinations that in themselves may or may not be right. We also harbor the presumption that is what ETD programmers intended. I don't get the impression that all ETD programmers themselves even meant for this to happen, either, and it is clear to me that some are meant to educate the user much as help him or her tune.

-          Ben


From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of wimblees at aol.com
Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2009 11:37 PM
To: caut at ptg.org
Subject: Re: [CAUT] ghost tuning

David

Please explain a little more. What am I listening for when I hold down the two bass notes, and what interval are you using? If I hold down C1 & C2, what other note should I play, and what should I hear?
Wim

-----Original Message-----
From: David Love <davidlovepianos at comcast.net>
To: caut at ptg.org
Sent: Tue, 5 May 2009 5:11 pm
Subject: Re: [CAUT] ghost tuning
Hold down two bass notes (an octave apart) and strike the note the corresponds to the coincident harmonic that you want to use as the test partial.

David Love
www.davidlovepianos.com<http://www.davidlovepianos.com/>

From: caut-bounces at ptg.org<mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org> [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org<mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org?>] On Behalf Of wimblees at aol.com<mailto:wimblees at aol.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2009 6:55 PM
To: caut at ptg.org<mailto:caut at ptg.org>
Subject: [CAUT] ghost tuning

Some time ago a tuner told me about ghost tuning the bass. I tried it a couple of times, but I've not used it for a long time, and forgot how it's done. From what I remember, you hold down a bass note, and listen to a partial an octave and third up, or the other way around. Does anyone know about this?
Wim

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