My first tuning attempt

[John M. Formsma]

Then there's the occasional time when the Verituner suddenly jumped 
pitch. Measured with the AccuFork first - about 8¢ flat. Then measured 
with the Verituner - about 12¢ flat. I'm thinking, oh well, maybe the 
battery in the AccuFork is bad. First pass of a pitch raise everything 
was set for normal, starting raising pitch with standard overpull. Go 
back to do the final pass, and the whole piano is now 4-5¢ SHARP, even 
according to the Verituner. Grrrr.....

Yes, yes, I know. It's pretty accurate on pitch raises and calculating 
overpull...when it works. But still, I don't recall ever doing an aural 
pitch raise and having the whole piano end up that sharp everywhere. It 
happened twice...at least I noticed it twice when I thought to check it 
with the AccuFork. On return visits to pianos that I had done last with 
the VT, I'm noticing some at A440 in the winter, when they would 
normally be a few ¢ flat. Maybe it happened quite a few times. Makes you 
wonder.

And I never could get it to do a decent job on most lesser consoles and 
spinets. Too flat in the bass, double octaves beating 1.5 - 2 bps. The 
ear/mind will do good work if we work at training it. I had to work 
harder at getting the VT to make it sound like my ear wanted it. So I 
figured if I was going to have to do aural checks to verify everything 
(every time!), might as well tune the thing by ear!

Caveman John (and loving it - ugh) ;-)

P.S. I'm not mad at anyone who uses an ETD. It just didn't work well for me.


Jon Page wrote:
> I'm with Ron K on this. Let the machine set the pitch and then check.
> In the scheme of things, tuning-wise; the order of importance is unisons,
> octaves, intervals (temperament).  If your unisons and octaves do not
> sound good then it doesn't matter how well you tuned a temperament.
>
> Don't wear you ears down on intervals and octaves, save them for unisons.
> The decibel level produced while tuning one pitch to another is better 
> avoided.
>
> Using an ETD is not like being on auto-pilot. Eye-hand coordination takes
> awareness and then you're right into tuning the unison by ear, not to 
> mention
> octave verification. It's not as though you're plugged into your Ipod 
> playing the
> "Mothers of Invention" while your stopping the lights or spinner, as 
> cool as that would be :-)
>
> Returning to aural tuning is like anything else which you have become 
> out of practice with,
> maybe not as easy as getting back on a bicycle but an ETD is a great 
> stress eliminator;
> and that is worth the minor extra effort to re-hone your 'chops' if 
> need be.
>
> But then some folks are into the whole ethereal event and wouldn't 
> consider a power tool.