[pianotech] Aurally pure octaves

[William Monroe]

Sure, sure.

I've not met Virgil either.  And, I don't really have firsthand knowledge of
how he describes what he does.  I would certainly never suggest that anyone
not try to describe what they do because it would confuse things.  I think
that idea is central to learning and growth, and conceptually would never
suggest any such thing.  Occasionally, I've run into folks who use a
different verbiage than what is commonly used when they teach, and even less
occasionally, those same folks simply refuse commonly accepted definitions
of the trade.  I believe that type of resistance is troublesome and should
be avoided.  To be clear, not knowing how Virgil teaches, I'm not trying to
draw any specific parallels here.

William R. Monroe


On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 1:19 AM, Richard Brekne <ricb at pianostemmer.no> wrote:

> Hi William.
>
> I understand the resistance to the term Beatless octave to be sure.  As far
> as that goes... I dont really like that term much myself.  I brought it up
> as the term Aurally pure sounds pretty darn close and ..... well.. I suppose
> that like it or not there are lots of folks out there who just plain think
> differently and use a different vocabulary to describe what they mean.  I've
> heard it said recently by someone central to all this that Virgil Smith, tho
> a brilliant tuner... really should not have tried to describe what he was
> doing simply because most folks think in terms of coincident partials, cents
> offsets and the rest and his explanations just confused those. Others seem
> to have responded well to Virgils teachings. I never met him myself.
>
> I like to think in terms of coincident partials because its so darned
> convenient in communicating what I am talking about... but I think we all
> get into some form of aural tweaking beyond just setting coincidents, or at
> least simple pairs of them as Ron Koval pointed out. The Sweet Spot seems to
> work in most everyones vocabulary so I usually use that... but then the term
> Aurally pure comes in... and associations were brought to mind and so I
> thought mention it.
>
> Cheers
> RicB
>
>
>   I think I get your intention, Ric, in suggesting that there exists a
>   "particular location" where the octave is just as clean sounding and
>   round and lovely as it can be.  I simply object to referring to it
>   as a "beatless octave" unless you further define it by its
>   coincident partials.  If you choose not to listen to any particular
>   partial alignment, that's fine, but it still exists.
>
>   I don't know how I'd redefine this octave type/spacing, but I just
>   don't think "beatless octave" is technically accurate or usefully
>   descriptive. Maybe I'm just aging quickly.  |;-]
>
>   William R. Monroe
>
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