On 11/3/2010 6:15 PM, William Truitt wrote: > I can do a single pass tuning in about 50 minutes, a double pass in an hour > or less. Yup, or 40 minutes, and an hour or less, depending on the venue. > Ron is dead on the money here. What Ron is talking about here is the > precision of a craftsman with no wasted motion, nothing extraneous. Sort of, but it's not all that exalted a thing. It's more getting straight to the process, with as little wandering through the weeds as possible. It's neither exclusive of mere mortals, magic, nor available from Ronco if you call now. It's just focus and action. >It only > takes about half a second to hear what you need once you have advanced your > procedure to the point that you can function doing this. You have stopped > thinking at this point, it goes straight from your ear to your hand.. It > becomes a very pure concentration. You're still thinking, because you have to adjust continually depending on what you feel and hear, but your focus is on what's happening in the sound rather than on some memorized "hammer technique". You're right that it's more adaptive reaction than intellectualizing, but you're still processing. The difference, I think, is that now you're looking at the right thing at the right time while you do it. > An excellent way to bring your tuning towards this method is pitch raising. > If say it takes you 35 minutes to pitch raise, then set a goal of getting it > done in 30 minutes on the next one. After a while drop it down to 25 > minutes, then 20, as far down as you can reasonably go. This kind of > listening and hand technique will develop as a byproduct. You will become a > better and more efficient tuner. I hear this a lot, but never found it all that helpful for tuning. I still take nearly a half hour for a pitch raise. For tuning, I advise people to THROW a tuning (not a pitch raise, a tuning) on a piano. Don't get lost in the details, just rapid fire stroke and tune. Go through as quickly as you can, preferably more quickly than you can. Leave stuff you'd rather not. Then do it again, same thing. Third time, you won't likely find much of anything you'd change even when you felt you were leaving worlds of details unattended through both the first, and second passes. I've seen people go from 2+ hours, to one in a couple of weeks doing this, with no clear idea of how they got there. It's not magic, it's just a matter of spending the time where it will do the most good. A change of focus and contrast. > Even when I am doing concert tuning, I find that my tunings get less precise > when I slow down too much. If I am setting my best temperament, I still > find that I get a better one when I race around the temperament 3 times fast > than once or twice slowly. I quite agree. Ron N
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