in tune, perfection

[Wimblees@AOL.COM]

In a message dated Sat, 29 Dec 2001  7:27:06 AM Eastern Standard Time, "Dave Nereson" <dnereson@dimensional.com> writes:

, which is why I question some of this hair-splitting over
> a few tenths of a cent, or even a cent or two.  I maintain that the average
> listener just doesn't detect these small differences, especially if the
> piano is not playing solo.  I'm not advocating bad tuning -- just wondering
> how many people even notice that anything sounds "sour" until a unison
> (between two instruments) or even an octave, is beating more than about 1 or
> 2 beats per second.    --David Nereson, RPT, Denver


What people hear right after a piano is tuned is not the problem. A string that is out .05 cents is not going to be heard. A string that is even .2 cents off might not even be heard. But, that is not reason we should try for perfection in our tuning. 

I think we all agree that pianos go out of tune over a period of time for a variety of reasons. So the closer a string is to perfection, the longer it is going to take for anyone to hear that the string is out of tune. Liz Baker, RPT, the St. Louis Symphony tuner, once gave a class on tuning stability. She got out a bulls eye, and used it to show the effect of a three string unsion tuning. The middle of the bulls eye represents a perfectly in tune string. The first ring is a string that is .1 off and the second ring is a string that is .2 off. Even though it is almost impossible to hear that three string unison as being out of tune, with that .2 string closer to "the edge", over a short period of time, it is going to be heard as being out of tune quicker than the string that is in the middle of the bulls eye. 

That is why we need to tune for perfection. Not so that it can be heard now, but so that it can be heard over a longer period of time. 

Wim