37 steps---delayed response

[Israel Stein]

At 07:44 AM 2/7/2008, Roger Jolly wrote:

>Hi Israel,
>                  On the subject of springs. One of the most common 
> causes of unstable regulation, is the friction in the spring grub 
> slot.   I can't count the number of times that cleaning the spring 
> tips and lubricating the slots, has changed the regulation 
> dramatically.   Some times for the better, and some times it will 
> make the springs kick like a mule.  The more I think about it, the 
> more I realize that I either service the springs, or ball park 
> adjust them first, or very early in the regulation process.
>This action will also change let off, and most other regulation 
>parameters.  In extreme cases, ( 1920's Steinway's with Tallow in 
>the grub slot)  you will find that you will need to change the dip 
>(after touch) after you clean the slot and tips.
>
>Regards Roger

Yes, cleaning those spring slots is another issue. On some older 
Steinways I found that cleaning that slot and getting the gunk off 
the spring is all it took to get the spring tension close to where it 
needed to be. Regulating with all that goop in there just makes no 
sense at all.

But this brings me to another one of those problems that I have with 
how regulation is presented conceptually - and this is not meant to 
criticize  anything you wrote or said, Roger, but your post is just a 
convenient starting point for some thinking out loud...

The way I see it, cleaning spring slots, and tightening screws, and 
lubricating the jacks and the knuckles, and correcting action center 
friction, and easing keys and similar stuff is something that one 
would do before one actually begins regulating an action. I see all 
this more as "cleaning-repair" than" than "regulating". Which may be 
a matter of semantics more than anything else - but sometimes 
semantics can make all the difference in the world when trying to 
teach a craft. Maybe lumping several procedures that are 
fundamentally different in nature and require different approaches 
and different mindsets under the rubric "Regulation" is a cause of 
confusion for students.

It seems to me that conceptualizing "Regulation" as a unitary process 
is a major obstacle to students' understanding clearly what is going 
on and what it is that they are trying to accomplish at a given stage 
of regulation. After all, when we teach tuning we divide the process 
into several components - temperament, octaves, unisons - and develop 
skills within each and then put it all together. But with regulation 
we do the exact opposite - we teach the whole damned process as a 
unit and then leave it up to the student to extract the underlying 
concepts. Some teachers try to get into those concepts along the way 
- but then the students often end up with information overload and 
come out with some preposterous misunderstandings. Perhaps it's time 
to rethink how we conceptualize "Regulation" - present it as several 
distinct stages and develop a thorough understanding of what goes on 
within each before putting it all together - rather than throwing it 
all at the students at once as "X steps" and expecting them to make 
sense of it. And I - and some others I know - have actually been 
working on schemes of how to do just that - and trying them out in 
lass settings...

Best regards...

Israel Stein