David Andersen's whole-note tuning

[Bob Hull]

>The different way of listening is that you 
> don't consciously focus on individual partials.  You listen to all the 
> partials blending  together, and try to focus on the natural beat. 

To say "focus on the natural beat" does not provide us with any criteria for decisions and actions in tuning.
There are so many sounds occurring when we play each note that discernment is required.   We are not tyring to make each note sound "the best we can".  We are executing a series of delicate compromises.  
When someone talks about listening to the "whole sound like the pianist hears", I think this can be misleading information.  This may lead someone to always seek to tune by adjusting the interval to compensate for the loudest sounding partial because it it the  one that makes the biggest impression on your ears.     However, adjusting the interval width according to the wrong partial will result in the interval being too wide or too narrow.  I'm sure more detail is provided by David Anderson, Virgil Smith et al when they give their classes.  

When your ears become trained and experienced for what you need to listen for, it can become a rather "natural" or "habitual" thing to hear a certain partial as the "loudest sounding" one and then make decisions about how you are going to adjust a note based upon that aural information.  In that case the term "natural beat" makes sense, but to a new tuner, this language fails to communicate the necessary information.  

P.S.  I had the nicest customer today who had made a list of all of the notes that sounded out of tune to her.  I guess she thought I might not know which ones were out. 

Bob Hull




----- Original Message ----
From: Ron Nossaman <rnossaman at cox.net>
To: Pianotech List <pianotech at ptg.org>
Sent: Saturday, December 1, 2007 8:24:49 PM
Subject: Re: David Andersen's whole-note tuning



I must admit this has always baffled me. Is it possible to do 
this any other way? The beats heard *are* natural, aren't 
they? How does one listen to a specific partial, excluding 
everything else? Is this a fundamental [sic] duh, or am I on 
the wrong planet - again. I still don't get it. Who's tuning 
by unnatural beats, and how can we stop them?


> It would probably be helpful to read Virgil's book.  I was fortunate to 
> have attended his class two different times.  But I've not yet purchased 
> his book.

I've read his journal article, and attended one class, and 
it's still a well - yea - and(?) thing. Somewhat short of 
helpful. Either it's a natural job for Obvious Man, or I'm 
hopelessly deluded (a possibility not remotely out of the 
question).

Ron N


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