Gina Carter writes; >On the unisions part of the exam, we examiners first listen. If each and >every note sounds clean and clear why is it necessary to go back and double >check at least 3 of them with the Accutuner? The last time this happened I >asked the CTE why and he said it was a requirement of the exam. > Hi Gina; I was surprised to hear you say that so I checked the CTE manual. The section on the Unison Test does *not* specify measuring 3 notes, nor does it say that any minimum number of notes must be checked with a tuning device, (at least in my copy.) It does specify, and it is my practice in giving the test to first check all the unisons aurally. If any one of the three examiners questions any unison _then_ we check it with the SAT. I will normally like to measure at least one unison just for the benefit of a CTE in training or an RPT not familiar with the test, but I don't believe its required. As to the what partial the examinee should tune too, I agree with Jim Bryant, just tune the unison clean sounding and you will earn a high score. If the unison sounds real clean the examiner would probably not even need to check with the machine. I've never seen a case where the unison sounded clean but the machine said it was more than 0.9 cents off (1.0 cents is one point off your score). Technically we do measure the 4th partial in the 3rd octave, and the 2nd partial in the 4th octave though, but clean sounding unisons are far more important than partials matching! (Uh-oh I think I'm starting to sound like Virgil Smith! <G>) -Dean Reyburn
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