Aural versus ETD tuning training

[Bill Ballard]

At 12:21 AM -0700 12/28/02, David Andersen wrote:
>Exactly.  There's always the gifted exception.

At which point , I'll remove the soft leather, eye-friendly cap on 
the point I was making. (My mom always told me to be deferential to 
the venerable.)

One positive instance will disprove a negative, as Jim's student has 
done here. But it takes more than a single positive to establish a 
fact, in fact as many positive instances as it will take to satisfy a 
statistician. For the time being, we've got one shining exception and 
then the Lenny Bruce quip, ".......true more in general than 
specifically".

It is interesting to note that Jim started his student off with aural 
unisons, and after ETD-based progress in octaves and temperaments 
(sufficient to to concert-level work), he then returns his student to 
an aural temperament. Yes, Jim has given us an example of a student 
whose training was evenly balanced between aural and visual 
judgements. But the part of this example which should not be 
overlooked is the teacher of sterling aural skills, coming up in a 
generation before the only ETDs were the Strobo-Conn, and for whom 
aural tuning likely still represents the highest challenge which can 
be put to a tuner.

We can add to this, those tuners on this list who have said that they 
started out tuning with ETDs and later have seen and accepted the 
challenge of aural tuning.

How this list stacks up against all those ETD tuners who, having 
gotten enough of a start to be able to sell tunings, have seen no 
reason to explore what their ears are capable of, is another matter. 
This (probably larger) list would be the electronic-equivalent of 
RicB's "...aural tuners [who] got as far as passing some exam and 
then seemingly put the steam breaks on their learning curves."

Bill Ballard RPT
NH Chapter, P.T.G.

".......true more in general than specifically"
     ...........Lenny Bruce, spoofing a radio discussion of the Hebrew 
roots of Calypso music
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