List -- I wrote to Jim Coleman for his account of the famed tuning contest between him and Virgil Smith. For the record: Hi Jason: Since 1961 I have been teaching Visual Tuning as well as Aural Tuning at all but about 6 Conventions plus many regional seminars. I began tuning in around 1941 Aurally, then using the first visual tuning devices since 1948 (The StroboConn). During Convetion teaching, I have alway related Visual tuning to Aural tuning. My dear Friend Virgil Smith have been arguing for 30 years about where beats come from. I can appreciate his views of the importance of hearing the whole tone, but the beats which we listen to come from distinct partial coincidences. Yes there are more than on set of coincident partials, but it is the lowest set to which we normally listen. The year that the RCT program came out, I challenged Virgil to a "shoot out at the OK Coral" (The Tuneoff at Safir's Kawai dealership in Chicago). We arrived in the morning and we took turns tuning two fairly equal 6'8 Kawai grands. An audience of around 70 technicians from Ill, Wis and IN appeared before noon and registered their vote as to which piano sounded best in tune to them. They did not know who tuned which piano (a legitmate blind test). I had predicted that there would not be a dime's worth of differnce between the tunings. The score was approx. 52 to 48 in my favor where I had used the RCT and the SAT II. (hey, I cheated - I also used ears. I'm sorry, I just caint hep it). I had only had the RCT for about a week and was not very good at using it yet, but it was the main reference. After lunch, we switched position of the two pianos on stage and each of us tuned the piano which had previously been tuned by the other. This time the Audience pretty well knew who tuned which piano. The voting however came out pretty much the same. Virgil and I are still good friends. A couple of months later Virgil challenged me to a rematch in Orlando, FL in the summer. There we had two Steinway 7' pianos. Virgil had his piano in his teaching room for several days. He went first using 1 1/2 hours. I elected to tune mine with the visual tuning device in 45 minutes in order to have 45 minutes left for voting and evaluation. Several people did not vote because they could not tell the difference. The voting percentages turned out to be pretty much the same, BUT in Virgil's favor. BTW, I thought Virgil's piano sounded better than mine. But again, it just shows that there is not much difference between good aural tuning and good Visual tuning. However, there is a world of difference between beginning aural tuning and beginning Visual tuning. The Visual tuner will win every time. I would like to see the same type of class presented in each Convention. Some careful rules should be setup. 1) identical pianos. 2) double blind testing where only the organizer knows who tuned which piano. 3) The position of the pianos should be switched for the second round, due to acoustic variations. 4) During evaluations, the pianos should be played by a Piano Disc, DiskKlavier, or other suitable player to eliminate personal preference. Perhaps one of the Player companies could provide the identical pianos with with short samples in various key tonalities (this might also be good for comparing historical and equal temperament tunings). There could be competitions setup in each region where the two winners of the highest percentages would compete in the finals at a Convention. Of course, it could turnout that both winners of the regionals would be Visual tuners or vice/versa. It would still be a valid test. Many strictly aural tuners think that aural tuning is the only way to go. On the other hand, it may prove my theory that there is not that much difference. All the years I tuned on the road for the Baldwin Piano Company, I tuned strictly aurally, even for two piano concerts. Jason, you have my permission to use this email in its entirety. It should provoke some interesting comments. Jim Coleman, Sr. | || ||| || ||| || ||| || ||| || ||| || ||| || ||| jason's cell 425 830 1561 http://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonkanter | || ||| || ||| || ||| || ||| || ||| || ||| || ||| -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech_ptg.org/attachments/20081221/e277d51a/attachment.html>
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