Coleman vs Coleman Tuneoff

[Jim Coleman, Sr.]

Hi Roger:

You asked now often I have "cheated" on the hammerline. Answer: very often.
A dropped hammerline is the greatest cause for no aftertouch. I must confess
that a few times I have "cheated" on letoff, but mostly to disempower a
banger or string breaker.

At the present time, we do not have any test for voicing. In giving the
test, we try to use pianos with a bare minimum of false beats in order to
give the examinee a fighting chance. Most of the remedies for false beats
are merely temporary unless dealt with in the rebuilding process.

Jim Coleman, Sr.


On Tue, 16 Feb 1999, Roger Jolly wrote:

> Hi Jim,
>            A well written, thought provoking post. Loosen the standards on
> temperament, but tighten the standards on false beat elimination and
> voicing.  These two items mentioned, has a big effect on tuning, and
> ultimately the musicality of the instrument.
> Also some cause and effect test in the practical regulation part of the
> test. As an expert tech, how many times have you cheated on a hammer line
> to get after touch? 20mins  and the piano feels a lot better, vs a complete
> regulation. 
> Regards Roger
> 
> 
> 
> At 04:32 PM 16/02/99 -0700, you wrote:
> >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.
> > 
> Roger Jolly
> Baldwin Yamaha Piano Centre
> Saskatoon and Regina
> Saskatchewan, Canada.
> 306-665-0213
> Fax 652-0505
>