R Moody asks<
<<I am wondering why SAT III can't tune unisons.
It can, but it depends on what you mean by "tune". It will tune some
unisons to their maximun consonance while placing others in such an attitude
that their composite phase envelope sounds different, ie. unisons require
different tunings to sound the same and the SAT tunes them all alike!
>>Or why everybody prefers to tune unisons by ear rather than by machine even
though using the machine for everything else. <<
'
Not everybody. I have seen techs that used the SAT for all strings in a
piano, and they have long term clienteles that have supported them in a
profitable business for many years. This is evidence of something being done
well enough. Tuning is usually a trade or craft, not art.
However, for the record,(which IS a pun), the smoothest line of unisons I
have been able to get comes from two strings tuned to the machine and the
third one placed by ear. This is an efficient way of evening things up
enough for "Garth and the boys". Even so, on my own recordings, since the
tuning is sorta spotlighted, I tune many of the unisons completely by ear,
(as I originally learned from B. Garlick and was reminded of later by Obi Wan
Kenobi).
>>The unisons I tuned with
TuneLab sounded OK, but I do tune unisons by ear after tuning
everything else with TL, hmmm I wonder why.... >>
The "machine made" unisons are not quite as nice sounding as your crafted
ones. The same can be said of temperaments and stretching, but very few
people out of the professional tuning trade can distinguish the difference
between a machine temperament and an concert level aural one. (at least on
big pianos, on the little ones, the machines haven't a prayer of competing
with an experienced ear).
The machines CAN let a tech record their aural tuning for personal
critique on the piano at a later time, and then the tech can begin refining
that first tuning, over and over, until he/she feels it is perfected. Then
they have a unique product of their own decision making. This gets a lot
closer to art,no?
Regards to all,
Ed Foote RPT
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