tone and taste: was Fw: pianotech-digest V2001 #309

[Yardarm103669107@AOL.COM]

Dale, David, all:
This is one the most wonderfully subjective areas in our technology, both in 
perception and language. Since all of the work in our shop is by contract, we 
spend a good bit of time with clients at the end of a restoration fine 
voicing and regulating. When I first tell a client that they will be expected 
to be involved in this, the typical reaction (99% of the time) is "Oh, I 
don't know anything about that" or some such response. But after I show them 
what they can actually hear, by comparing and contrasting varying voices and 
timbres, all of them realize that they can hear differences, and become much 
more involved in the process of final voicing. The difficulty is, of course, 
that each person has their own subjective language for describing their 
perception of voice, and the joy of it is to work with them to clarify their 
language until we can actually talk with eachother by blending understandings 
of language application. I almost never use judgement words; this gets in the 
way. I try to use descriptive language. Actually, I try not to talk very much 
at all in this process. But what a kick to work with people this way! The 
underlying requirement, of course, is voice-able hammers and regulation in 
order. But it is possible to establish a "mid-range" of voice from which to 
start--neither too bright nor too round, etc. Then it's up to them. What fun.
PR-J