Difficulty Hearing Beats While Setting Temperament

[Susan Kline]

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Hello, Robert

You don't say what kind of piano.

Two things you can try: (1) move your head around. Sometimes a beat can be 
heard clearly in one place, but another place nearby it is almost 
indistinguishable.

(2) In case you're tuning a console -- check to be sure that the dampers 
are completely clearing the strings in the tenor. Sometimes split wedge 
felt goes too far past the strings, and drags on the middle string even 
when the key is all the way down.

Otherwise -- practice, practice.

Susan Kline

At 05:42 PM 8/6/2005 -0400, you wrote:
>I have been trying to set the temperament on my piano and am having 
>trouble hearing the correct beat rates of the intervals. The problem is 
>that the beats are so weak they are hardly perceptible. I have strip muted 
>the piano and was able to tune A49 on the piano to the A440 tuning fork by 
>comparing the beat rate of the note and the fork with F21. I am now trying 
>to tune the other notes within the temperament octave and get the beat 
>rates of the F-A, A-C#, C#-F and F-A to gradually increase from 7 bps to 
>14 bps, but they are very difficult to hear. What can be done to hear the 
>beats more clearly? I have been studying tuning for several months now, 
>but the beats of the intervals are still difficult to hear. I don't have 
>much trouble with unisons as I can hear the beats more distinctly, and the 
>improvement in the quality of the note when I reach the pure state is very 
>noticeable.
>
>I have an SAT III tuning device that enables me to tune the piano very 
>well, and to check my aural tuning, but I want to be able to tune the 
>piano completely by ear so that I can eventually pass the PTG 
>examinations. Thank you for your help.
>
>Robert Finley

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