Aural versus ETD tuning training

[David Love]

We're all trying to do work that's better than the guy next to us.  Sad
truth is, many people don't know unless you tell 'em.  So, keep telling 'em.
Might work.

David Love


----- Original Message -----
From: "David Andersen" <bigda@gte.net>
To: "Pianotech" <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: December 28, 2002 8:18 PM
Subject: Re: Aural versus ETD tuning training


>
>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
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