Aural versus ETD tuning training

[David Andersen]

>
>The Tuneoffs were meaningless in almost every sense as they revealed at
>their very best the limitations of our tuning awareness's at the time.
>They say nothing about what is possible to discern, only what was
>discernable at the present level of tuning awareness. Instead of being
>the stimulus to find out more about what we can accomplish with tunings,
>these have only served as some justification for using ETD's. 
Don't know if they were meaningless, but certainly they were not 
conclusive.  I have heard Virgil Smith say that he does his worst tunings 
at conventions.
>
>Arguments like the "obscurity of our work" or that "nobody can tell the
>difference anyways" dont hold any water at all in my book. These are
>excuses at best and just plain wrong at worst.
I absolutely agree:
1. it sells out doing your best, giving you a rationalization for and a 
reason to be mediocre.
2. it sells out the intelligence and perception of the human race.  
Cynical, and ultimately immoral, or at the least amoral.
> I find for example that
>just about every pianist reacts to the difference between a standard ETD
>ET and a Perfect 12ths priority ET. The difference between the two is
>slight when measured, yet the affects created when playing are quite
>noticibly different. 
My whole business---literally---is built on people perceiving the 
difference between my tuning (and regulating and voicing) and someone 
else's. At the dealer I work for 1 day a week, my work makes people write 
checks.  They come in one week, play a piano, pass on it, then come back 
the next week, after I've spent a day with the piano, and write a check 
for many tens of thousands of dollars for that same piano. And they're 
not all pros, to be sure.  Just people who are trusting their ears and 
hands.
>
>Seems to me that we should get beyond the arguments about what ETD's are
>good for (as their strengths and weaknesses should be really quite
>obvious at this point) and start looking at how we can use them to take
>us places "tuningwise" we have not gone before. To assume there are no
>such places seems silly to my mind. 
>
>Cheers
and cheers right back to ya, ya scandahoovian monkey!
>
>RicB

David A