Direct Interval Tuning

[Kent Swafford]

dpitsch wrote:

>I also
>believe that we do a gross mistake in teaching beginner tuners to "buy my 
>ETD,
>it will set a perfect temperament for you".  These fallacies only confuse the
>inexperienced, and create more 'TOONERS" as I have described.

Mr. Pitsch,

I am greatly enjoying the tuning discussions on pianotech right now.

I don't believe that we should be afraid to disagree with each other; 
there is the observation in the science world that the measure of the 
success of one's theories is not the number of other scientists who agree 
with one's theories, but rather the number of scientists working to 
disprove them! (By that criterion, Virgil Smith is surely the most 
successful tuning theorist of all!)

That said, I believe that the state of the art of teaching piano tuning 
theory is a bit more advanced than you are giving it credit for.

I wrote a Journal article now reprinted in the PTG Tuning Exam source 
book on using a VTD to learn aural tuning. I consider the method proven, 
and my belief was reinforced this past Sunday when a member of my 
chapter, who is basically an SAT tuner, passed his tuning exam with a 95% 
temperament score after having using the PTG tuning exam source book as 
his guide in learning aural tuning. An SAT, combined with a careful study 
of aural methods _will_ allow a student to learn how to find the right 
beat speed for the F3-A3 major third, to use your example.

>In suggesting another "tune-off" using a poorly scaled piano, these fallacies
>are exposed to the hilt when trying to use set beat rates or a computated
>temperament that is suited only to pianos which have smooth inharmonicity
>curves.  Hopefully, no hard feelings from Virgil or anyone else.  I 
>appologize if I stepped on toes.

A tune-off on lesser-scaled instruments would be interesting, but I am 
not sure we could agree on what constitutes an optimum tuning for these 
pianos. (I guess there is only one way to find out.  :)

By the way, I believe that RCT would really shine in a tune-off of lesser 
pianos. The Chameleon tuning calculator recognizes some poor scaling and 
makes appropriate allowances.

BTW, the ability to choose the tenor tuning partial, that is either the 
3rd or 4th partial, would also allow RCT to provide superior results on 
some lesser pianos. Using the 3rd partial, for example, allows the 
unpredictable inharmonicity errors of visual tuning to be split between 
the 2:1 and 4:2 octaves, which I believe to be very desirable on some 
pianos.

Also BTW, the graphic custom equalizer function of RCT can make 
additional use of RCT's ability to choose the partials from which to 
tune. Briefly, there are a number of "windows" in the scale in which RCT 
_can_ _directly_ tune various intervals, including the 3:2 5th, the 3:1 
12th, in addition to various octaves (6:3, 4:2, 2:1).

Best wishes.

Kent Swafford