[CAUT] Tuning--again

[Richard Brekne]

Hi Ed... LOVED that closing line...:):) 

I run into the same kind of thing with Tunelab, and had similar 
experiences with Cybertuner.  You can move your hand held or laptop 
around sometimes and get radically different readings for pitch / 
inharmonicity  measurements. I generally look for a reading that looks 
rather bonkers and discard it unless it just keeps coming back no matter 
what I do.

Over to something a bit off this tangent and more back to the original 
string coupling bit... was working on a D today that I see quite a bit. 
About 10 years old and has had some awfully aggressive string seating 
work done on it at some time in the past and has from about C5 to C6 a 
series of really untunable notes.  No real false beating ...at least not 
those classic false beats that have a distinct period... but lots of 
wavering.  Got the impression that I was looking at a kind of unison 
para-inharmonicity problem.  There isa kind of side ways wavering/ 
flimmering to the pitch of the unisons and no steady period to any of 
it. Didnt have time to check it out thoroughly and its the first time 
this thought has gelled in my thinking so I'll look closer next time... 
but I wouldnt be a bit surprised to find that the partials of each of 
the three strings don't match very well. It was clear that whatever the 
falseness was... it was happening at pitches a couple 3-4 partials above 
the fundamental. I'll try measuring this on Wednesday when I go out 
there again. Got to wondering tho that assuming you have this kind of 
situation.... how does that affect string coupling... and what 
possibilities get scrunched when it comes to coloring unisons in the 
manner we've been tossing around ?

Cheers
RicB


    Fred and Richard-

    An interesting experiment is to measure the pitch of a tuning fork
    several times, or to measure it several times as the tone decays.
    Using Cybertuner's Pianalyzer function I often get variations of as
    much as 0.6 cents. Sometimes I get 3 or 4 identical readings in
    succession, then a very different reading.

    Perhaps this is an artifact of Cybertuner, but I think more likely
    we have to admit that big things (multi-molectular things, like
    tuning forks and pianos) don't take their Hertz as seriously as we do.

    [Besides collecting tuning forks, I have tried experiments in close
    calibration, for demonstration and ear-training. Sometimes we just
    can't help ourselves...]

    I think that optimal professional piano service involves a very
    carefully informed sense of what appropriate degree of accuracy we
    are capable of delivering in a particular situation. We should be
    attempting the very best possible, and not attempting what is
    impossible unless we're on our own time. Defining the
    appropriate/optimal/possible is a life's work.

    "A piano technician makes more moral decisions in 20 minutes than a
    preacher makes in a week." Wish I knew who said that.

    Ed S.