Unison Flatter than each Individual string?

[Tom Servinsky]

Bill,
Very well stated. It's responses like this which puts springs in my steps.
This list rules!!!
Tom Servinsky
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bill Ballard" <yardbird@pop.vermontel.net>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Friday, August 23, 2002 11:52 PM
Subject: Re: Unison Flatter than each Individual string?


> At 8:24 PM -0700 8/21/02, David Ilvedson wrote:
> >With a tuning fork, the "aural" tuner strikes the fork and roughs in
> >the piano's note to the fork.  Then, for instance,  probably checks
> >with a 10th interval between the piano's F-A and the piano's F and
> >the fork's A. Makes adjustments to the piano's A4 string and with
> >equal beating of these two 10ths', the note is absolutely in tune
> >with the fork.  Is this not archaic?  With a ETD you tune the note
> >until the lights/pattern stops and you have and absolute A440 or
> >whatever pitch you want in a few moments.  Is this ETD tuned note
> >any less of a tuned note?  I got to feel there's a lot of ego
> >involved in tuning aurally with a tuning fork...that and masochism...
>
> I used a ETD this summer and I was grateful for its sharp ear and
> sharper memory. An RCT. But I simply enjoy "rolling out a tuning"
> aurally. And I appreciate an ability to do it, because for me I see
> it as a gift. But this is the new millenium and if one wasn't born
> with, or otherwise developed the ability for aural tuning, one can
> always go out and buy it as a module to insert with all the rest of
> one's native skills. There are plenty of tuners who do a wonderful
> job of taking care of pianos, with plenty of the other skills
> required to be a good piano service person. The particular ability to
> tune aurally may have been one of them in decades past but it no
> longer is.
>
> These pianos are being properly tuned, are they not? Harmony is
> harmony whether a human being laid it out, or a machine ciphered it
> out. (yelling from across the room..."just like the ad said, 'Now YOU
> can tune pianos, while you watch TV' "...Botox injected.)
>
> At 9:42 AM +0200 8/22/02, Richard Brekne wrote:
> >I have gotten into the habit of using intervals to tune stubborn
> >unisons.  Ofte
> >times you can be pretty darn sure of a clean unison only to find it wangs
> >uncomfortably much against a a neighboring 3rd or 4th. I end up just
adjusting
> >the unison til it sounds clean against both. Another advantage of the one
mute
> >approach.
>
> Quite literally, RicB, you're splitting the difference. You know
> where the beat rates of the two conflicting intervals should be and
> you split the error between the two of them, so that each is equally
> near to where it should be. And suddenly, the whole spreadsheet
> changes. <just kidding> .
>
> Virgil Smith made a passing mention of this in his PTJ article,
> sometime in the early 90s' ('91, 92?). This was. He said that when
> you run across an octave which needed to be adjusted (after finishing
> the unison), frequently the error was small enough that all was
> required was to slightly crack the unison (up or down, as needed)
> with a mistuning of one string, and immediately to retune the other
> string(s). Virgil of course never did his closest tuning with
> numbers, and so he never suggested that the amount of correction was
> a rational one. But there is a specific amount for that correction.
>
> About three years into the business, I discovered that the beat rate
> of the complaining octave was the measure of the error, which then
> could be applied to the note needing correction. Play a 3:1 12th, say
> C5 and F3, memorize the spread of the beat rate between them, then on
> the note to be corrected, pull one string harp or flat (as dictated),
> so as to recreate that beat rate. (That's why you memorized it,
> right?) Next, pull up the other strings to complete the unison. The
> offending unison has been moved in the right direction, by the amount
> it was off. (Now, if it's still off the mark, then the amount
> corrected has not reduced the inevitable sag in pitch to a negligible
> amount.)
>
> All I've done is to add a means of measuring the correction needed,
> to what's probably a very common technique of mopping up error in the
> tuning. RicB, Virgil Smith. But I wouldn't want my toolbag to be
> without it.
>
> Now, back to ETDs. They'll tell you which individual notes don't
> match pitch. They haven't a clue as to where all the other notes in
> that field may be. ETDs can't play chords. Human being can.
>
> Bill Ballard RPT
> NH Chapter, P.T.G.
>
> "I gotta go ta woik...."
>      ...........Ian Shoales, Duck's Breath Mystery Theater
> +++++++++++++++++++++