Ears vs machines (Was Tuning forks)

[Michel Lachance]

Hi Folks,

I don't want to lauch again the battle about aural tuning against visual 
tuning but just want to throw few things in order to smooth out the sharp 
edges.

I agree about the fact it is very important to try to improve our hearing 
skill and to rely as much as possible to what our ears are telling us.  
However, I think that if it is true that we do not improve our skill in 
using a visual device without listening to what it does, I don't believe 
tuning aurally will necessarily indulge an automatic hearing improvement 
either.

The problem is that when we want to improve our ears, we use the same organ 
to evaluate the improvement.  In other words, the ears are both the judge 
and the apprentice.  It is like being our own master in learning to play 
golf!

For some unknown reasons, some people seem to be specially gifted and are 
able to hear or to perceive better what they listen to than the common 
person.  But everybody can train their ears to achieve a very high level of 
accuracy.  The ear is a very fine instrument and will adapt itself to the 
standard it is accustomed to.  If it is used to hear lousy tuning, it will 
take this kind of tuning as being the true thing, would it be by ear or with 
a machine.

I do not believe that the ear improves constantly just by a simple practice. 
  The ear does need external aid when it is trained to tune pianos.  In the 
aural tuning tradition, these external aids come by means of test intervals. 
  It is by always submitting our ears to the highest standard that we will 
sharpen our hearing, would it be by multiplying the test interval, or by 
using a very good visual tuning device.

When we start learning tuning piano, we are usually very careful about 
testing over and over and our hearing perception make giant leaps at that 
time.  Then, there comes a time where we sort of set our own standard and 
decide that our tuning is good enough.  This a trap I think many tuners, 
including myself, fell into.  We DECIDE that an octave IS in tune because it 
SOUNDS in tune to our ears.  This is the point I think where our 
self-improvement shifts to the neutral gear.

Before using an ETD, I though I was a fairly good tuner, so I was told by 
all my clients.  With my first visual tuning however (with a SAT II), I had 
to admit that I was confronted to a higher standard of accuracy.  It is not 
because the octaves sounded necessarily better with the machine, it is 
rather the overall sound of the piano that strucked me first.  And it is 
this kind of sound I am always looking for now, by all means.

>I don't think that it is an
>accident that most serious artists that perform at our local performance
>venues specifically request aural concert tuning.  I've never had someone
>call and request an ETD tuning, but I've seen numerous times that I was
>called specifically because I won't use an ETD.

I don't think this is a fair argument.  I have met some musicians who had 
their piano tuned by a machine that was either not adequate, or with a 
ready-made tuning that was not well suited for their instrument.  Their 
conclusion was then that ear was better than the machine.  I think that the 
tune-off's few years ago proved at least one thing:  a visual tuning, when 
professionnaly done with the proprer instrument, is just as good as a 
state-of-the-art aural tuning.

With all due respect!  :-)

Michel Lachance, RPT

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