> >The Tuneoffs were meaningless in almost every sense as they revealed at >their very best the limitations of our tuning awareness's at the time. >They say nothing about what is possible to discern, only what was >discernable at the present level of tuning awareness. Instead of being >the stimulus to find out more about what we can accomplish with tunings, >these have only served as some justification for using ETD's. Don't know if they were meaningless, but certainly they were not conclusive. I have heard Virgil Smith say that he does his worst tunings at conventions. > >Arguments like the "obscurity of our work" or that "nobody can tell the >difference anyways" dont hold any water at all in my book. These are >excuses at best and just plain wrong at worst. I absolutely agree: 1. it sells out doing your best, giving you a rationalization for and a reason to be mediocre. 2. it sells out the intelligence and perception of the human race. Cynical, and ultimately immoral, or at the least amoral. > I find for example that >just about every pianist reacts to the difference between a standard ETD >ET and a Perfect 12ths priority ET. The difference between the two is >slight when measured, yet the affects created when playing are quite >noticibly different. My whole business---literally---is built on people perceiving the difference between my tuning (and regulating and voicing) and someone else's. At the dealer I work for 1 day a week, my work makes people write checks. They come in one week, play a piano, pass on it, then come back the next week, after I've spent a day with the piano, and write a check for many tens of thousands of dollars for that same piano. And they're not all pros, to be sure. Just people who are trusting their ears and hands. > >Seems to me that we should get beyond the arguments about what ETD's are >good for (as their strengths and weaknesses should be really quite >obvious at this point) and start looking at how we can use them to take >us places "tuningwise" we have not gone before. To assume there are no >such places seems silly to my mind. > >Cheers and cheers right back to ya, ya scandahoovian monkey! > >RicB David A
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