At the Albuquerque convention, summer '95, when I was completing training for CTE, the general consensus among the examiners (Mitch Kiel, Jack Stebbins, Teri Meredyth, Michael Travis, et al) seemed to be that the wording of the exam specifications was loose enough not to require strict 2:1 octaves in octave 7. The "Tuning Exam Instructions" say, "Do not stretch the high treble more than is necessary to get good, clean sounding octaves all the way to the top." I believe an earlier version said "2:1 octaves" in so many words, but this was dropped in 1987. The consensus seemed to be that a compromise between 2:1 octaves with 8ve 6 and 4:1 double octaves with 8ve 5 was what examiners should aim for in a master tuning. For my own two cents worth, I'll comment that a six cent margin of error will generally pass most notes that are tuned as 4:1 octaves, even if the master tuning had 2:1 octaves. You might get counted off for the top few notes, but it is only a one point error (per 6 cents) anyway. My advice is just to follow the instructions. Using the ETA, averaging between the displays when you play the 8ve and the double 8ve below will probably work to get a high score. I'm not sure that the FAC tuning would lose more than 4 or 5 points up there, if the "c number" is accurate (as long as you don't increase the numbers as I've been advising in a series of posts). By the way, I have known others who overcompensated flattening the top octave and failed as a result. As an examiner, my general attitude in making aural verifications is that smoothness and consistency are more important than precise width of the 8ve, within reasonable limits, since instructions for verification of errors require that we judge each note in the context of the whole tuning. I guess this discussion really belongs on the PTG-L if it goes any further. Regards, Fred Sturm Albuquerque
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