Greetings, Ron writes: > While I'm a far cry from being an expert tuner, what > feeble results I do produce come from my own talents, ears, brains, and > hands. They almost certainly aren't the best of all possible tunings >under the circumstances, but the process of creating and constructing these > flawed little works is, for me, what makes it tolerable to go out there > and do it day after day. Hmm, well, if aural tuning satisfies an individual's motivational needs, there is nothing wrong with doing it that way. However, in my case, even after the best tuning education on the planet and then 16 aural years in a very demanding environment, a SAT made me a better tuner after just a very short time. In my case, I am not psychologically equipped to tune anything but the "best possible tuning under the circumstances",(probably a little obsessive/compulsive aspect there!). I have developed a clientele that pays far above the going rate for the security, (recording session are way too expe nsive to stop and wait for a note or octave to be fixed), so I have to do what produces the best tuning, and I have found that my ears combined with a machine is the way to do that. If someone wants to make the point that a superior tuning can be had with ears alone, as opposed to ears and a machine, I certainly need to hear their results before I believe it, and I ain't heard it yet. It is interesting that Virgil Smith, (whose work, by any of our standards, represents an ultimate aural tuning) produces a tuning that is equivalent to a machine tuning from Jim Coleman. If whole roomfuls of piano techs are evenly divided on which of these two approaches are are better, are the differences any more than academic?? I think not. So, a valid decision to forego a machine may be made for reasons other than the results, but don't tell me that one or another is superior. And for all of those techs who don't think their aural tuning is quite up to Virgil's level, you must decide for yourself if the additional quality found with a machine is worth the change. >Eventually, I'll give up and either buy (or write) >an ETD, or quit tuning altogether. For now, it's me, my fork, and my stone > age methods. Cool, Ron. Life is short. Regards, Ed Foote RPT
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