Coleman vs Coleman Tuneoff

[David ilvedson]

Jim,

Unfortunately I wasn't at the Cal Convention this year, but I 
have got to ask what you played?  I would think you would have 
to play a number of pieces in different keys to get a real 
judgement from those poor defenseless tuners.  Did you play a 
piece in the best sounding key for the Moore tuning?  

David Ilvedson, RPT




> Date:          Tue, 16 Feb 1999 16:32:37 -0700 (MST)
> From:          "Jim Coleman, Sr." <pianotoo@imap2.asu.edu>
> Subject:       Coleman vs Coleman Tuneoff
> To:            pianotech@ptg.org
> Reply-to:      pianotech@ptg.org

> I thought there may be some who would be interested in the latest Tuneoff.
> 
> At the California State Conference Feb 12-14, I taught a class on Advanced
> Tuning. At the beginning of each class I presented two identical pianos
> which had just been tuned in different temperaments. One was just a standard
> SAT FAC tuning which incidentally is a very good tuning on a Yamaha C3. The 
> other tuning was the Moore 18th Century Well Temperament which had some 
> notes tuned 2.5 and 3.0 cents off from equal temperament.
> 
> After playing identical selections on the two pianos, I asked the class
> which piano they thought was the one with the "funny" tuning (actually, I
> used the words Moore Well tempered tuning). In the Friday class, the voting 
> was fairly even. 54% thought the FAC tuning was the Well Tempered Tuning and
> only 46% guessed correctly. In the Sunday afternoon class, 80% thought that
> the FAC Tuning was the Well Tempered Tuning. I next asked which piano they
> liked best as far as tuning was concerned. It was almost unanimously decided
> in favor of the Well Tempered Tuning. All of the voting was done without the
> audience really knowing which piano had which tuning.
> 
> I asked for a show of hands as to how many in the audience were musicians.
> My estimate was at about 95%. I confessed my ulterior motive for doing this
> kind of demonstration. In 1977 Dr. Sanderson and I were asked by the then
> President Don Morton to develop a standardized Tuning test for the Guild. 
> We adjusted our scoring procedures so that 80% of the then RTT members would
> pass at the 80% score. Being a perfectionist as I am in some areas, I began
> pushing for tighter scoring in the Temperament area. We later adopted a 
> multiplier system such that the total error points would be multiplied by
> 2.5 and then subtracted from 100% to give the final Temperament Score. 
> We have used this tighter scoring procedure for almost 20 years now. The 
> question in my mind is: "Have we tightened our scoring to satisfy the
> elitests? Are we now just 'gilding the Lily'? If an audience of piano 
> technicians who are also musicians cannot tell the difference between
> equal temperament and a mild historical temperament, are we on an ego trip?
> Are we setting standards to protect our little clique? Are our standards set
> to protect the public from shoddy work? Which is it?"
> 
> I asked for a show of hands in the advanced tuning class for those who think
> we have elevated our temperament standards too high. The voting was almost
> unanimous. I mentioned that I had talked to some very well respected tuners
> who also agreed with me that we are guilding the lily. I do believe that
> we should keep the 1 cent tolerance for scoring the points in the mid-range
> and temperament section, but that we should relax the conversion 
> multipliers. I further believe that we should add some questions in our
> written test to include various test intervals to be used in making 
> decisions as to whether an interval is too wide or too narrow. With this
> covered in the written test, we can save time during the tuning test scoring
> by eliminating much of the hesitancy on the part of the examinee in
> aurally verifying his penalty points. I do still believe that Equal 
> Temperament should be our testing standard, but that we have just
> made it more difficult for associate members to upgrade because of our
> arbitrarily tightened standards.
> 
> This is the third year in which I have conducted this type of test in my
> classes. The results have been even more demonstrative in other classes. At
> the Arizona Conference this year and at the Calif. State Conf. last year,
> almost the entire audience guessed wrong when asked to identify the piano
> which had the Well temperament.
> 
> My question to this group is: Do you feel that our temperament standards 
> are a little too high? I would like some feedback. I am not promoting
> Historical or hysterical tunings. In all of the classes where I have done
> this type of test, it was conceded that both tunings were good tunings.
> 
> Have I opened a "can or worms" or what?
> 
> Jim Coleman, Sr.
> 
> 
> 
David Ilvedson, RPT
Pacifica, CA
ilvey@jps.net