I would like to thank the many members of the list who responded to the recent posts on tuning. If anyone has been offended with what I wrote, especially Virgil Smith, please accept my sincere apologies. Some members of the list were kind enough to let me know that ETD or VTD have gotten soooo gooood, that recently students have been passing the PTG tuning exam using them. Thank you, but this has been happening for decades. Is this a good thing to be happening? Perhaps not, maybe so. We all have stood upon the shoulders of tuners who have gone before us. And I personally believe there is much that remains to be discovered, both aurally and visually. I do not think we are at the end of research & development as far as VTD goes. Kind of like, the more you know, the more you realize what you don't know ... Jim Coleman gave a very good history (June 8th) on ETD that does not need to be added to. But there were simultaneous developments happening in the aural tuning department. As the visual aides got better, sort of a synergy effect happened. Some of you newer technicians may not know this side of the story. In the 1970's when the SOT was the hottest ETD available, we heard the words "contiguous intervals" being used more and more. Granted, at least one tuner wrote about using aural contiguous interval checks at least as far back as the 1950's. Even before that perhaps. But as the accuracy of the ETD improved, we began to realize that contiguous interval checks were more and more important. Some of us were not happy with the 0.5 cent accuracy of the SOT, so we modified them during the late 1970's, trying to get the accuracy down to 0.1 cent. We were getting closer to what aural tuners' limits are. By 1978 many tuners had agreed upon one thing, that the temperament octave could, and should, be divided into contiguous major thirds, each having the same cent spread. Aurally it worked better, changes in the temperament could be made with only four notes having been tuned. A far cry from the old circle of fifths temperament! ETD were getting close to being able to set this augmented triad by measuring equal amount of cents. Now we had a way both aurally and visually to give the correct beat rates to each temperament we tuned, whether it be a spinet or concert grand, poorly scaled or not. By the time the first SAT reached the market, around 1980, numerous temperament systems using contiguous intervals both aurally and visually had been designed. We started learning phrases like "Direct Interval Tuning", "Octave Division Temperaments", 2:1 versus 4:2 and 6:3 octaves. You won't find those phrases in Braid White's book! As the accuracy of the ETD improved, in many respects, so did aural tuning. We could tune by machine, then listen and check by ear. Or we could tune aurally, then double check our work visually. Students learned faster. Pros could record an aural concert tuning for duplication at a later date. Pitch raising became easier. Tuning forks became passe. Many of us shortened the time it took to tune a piano. The Certified Tuning Examination was born. And so on ... Now we are in the 1990's, with improvements in VTD coming more frequently. Has aural tuning become a dinosauer? We continue to advance electronically with our tuning aides, but can you still tune a piano if your ETD or VTD goes dead? How does a tuner know when the machine is malfunctioning? Does your ETD pick up the wrong partial in the bass, and you end up tuning the note a third lower than it should be? Can you achieve the same accuracy both aurally & visually? Do you know when your machine is listening to the correct partial(s)? How often are the notes checked aurally? Does your machine read that an octave in the high treble is in tune but your ear tells you it is not? Ever move your VTD around and get different readings? Which reading is the correct one? Do you force your machine's temperament upon a piano whether it works or not? Are you listening to the feedback the piano gives and tune each and every note customized to the piano, the very best it can be? How about a piano where A-440 is dead on, but the other notes are way flat? Don't be surprised that your violin teacher has a tuning hammer and keeps A-440 in tune. Or maybe the last tuner set all of his A's OK, but was so far off on his temperament some fifths were beating wide instead of narrow. If you only measured the A's on this piano, what a shock when you begin to tune! And which is better, to measure all of the A's or all of the C's to calculate out "the best" tuning? Interesting, questions, and more questions ...
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