[pianotech] 4ths 5ths

[Susan Kline]

On 2/1/2011 11:30 PM, Duaine Hechler wrote:
> You are being the most boisterous against ETD usage.

I'm being the most boisterous in favor of aural tuning.

What you take as dissing ETDs in general are my attempts
to explain why I (not anyone else, _I_) don't want to use
one.

My problem with you isn't that you use an ETD. It's that
you seem to hate anyone who uses aural tuning instead of
one.

Also, I believe the many experts here, most of whom use
ETDs every day, when they say it can't stand alone.

Now, these ears of yours ... It's not a physical problem,
obviously. It's a strain on your patience and concentration,
because the beats are hard for you to hear. This happens to
some people, especially when they are beginning. The trick
is to find out WHERE (at what pitch) you should be
listening for the beats.

They are higher partials, not the fundamental. You obviously
can hear them somewhat, or you couldn't tune unisons and
octaves.

If you set up an interval, and want to hear the beats, start
with thirds in the middle register, which are going not too
slow, not too fast. Mute off the two notes so each is a single
string. Start tuning one of the notes, till you get a good,
prominent beat. Some of the beats for major thirds are so
prominent they practically knock your socks off! That should
give you an idea of the pitch at which the beat is occurring.
You can hum it. If I were there I could hum it at you.
wow - wow - wow - wow etc.

Once you figure out which pitch to listen at, the whole thing
should ease up and not be such a big problem. You can gradually
listen to faster beats and to slower ones.

You have noticed that when you hear a fifth or a fourth, it
has a curl to it? It's like a vowel sound. You can vocalize
the vowel sound and then get it to go the speed you want as
you tune the note. This kind of slow-beating interval is
highly useful to evaluate how even your temperament is. It
can be a vocal thing, like oooaaaawwwwuuuu. For unisons, also,
vocalizing helps. You want to get long open vowels, like ah
or oh, instead of eeeee or diphthongs, like eeeeyyaaaa.

Don't worry about beats per second. Theoretically it's good
information, but most of the determinations you need are relative
instead of numerical. It's good to have a rhythmic memory of
how fast the F-A at the start of the temperament sequence goes.
Then one tunes the octave F, and fiddles the C# in between so
that the three thirds progress. None of that takes counting
against a stopwatch, or anything. And there are four notes of
the scale in pretty good places.

Heck, it's a start. Just master that and you should feel an
awful lot more confidence and comfort. Listening for fourths
should stop being an ordeal by the Inquisition.

Susan
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