etd's and ears addendum

[Leslie Bartlett]

I look at tops and bottoms, for consistent "inconsistency".  Then I look for
notes throughout the piano which seem to be way off. Almost every time I
have asked a customer if the former tuner did or did not use a machine I
have been correct.  A fair bit of that is intuitive.    

Avery- sorry to put you on the spot......  but there were some notes in
Avery's tuning which slipped after Olga Kern had bludgeoned the piano for an
hour and a half (no disrespect to her. I was simply amazed at the power with
which she played).  To me the "slippage" had nothing to do with Avery's
skill. It had to do with the fact he is not perfect, and it is impossible to
perfectly account for every tiny bend in wire, tiny differences in tuning
pin torque or flagpoling,  tiny imperfections in the hand/eye/ear
coordination. It is part of being human that we have not reached perfection.
"There is no perfect tuning"- and when the "imperfection" has some regular
patterns to it, it is sometimes possible to deduce the level of the tuner's
skill or whether s/he has used a machine.  These things show up also over
time, or in a big humidity change, and they can be noticed with some
practice, or so I think. I also have tuned for a school district for years
and I try to note my own patterns over time.

My first tuning in Jones Hall here in Houston was as a sub for Jim Kozak,
the resident tuner for the Symphony.  I set up my tunelab tuning, then
played around with what was left of Jim's tuning, then choosing how I would
make settings in Tunelab.  I was greatly surprised that his prior tuning did
not vary from what TuneLab measured more than a couple cents all the way
from bottom to top.  I consider Jim one of those artist-tuners, his aural
tuning impeccable, and on this D, his tuning was so close to the machine's
"requirements" that it was rather stunning.  It was a confirmation of both
the value of the ETD and the aural tuning. (Jim will be doing a class at
National this summer on tuning stability.)

Since I started this thread, I think it might be noted  that I use hearing
aids.  My best and most pressured tunings have come since I started using
them and my willingness to risk the pressure tunings has risen greatly
thanks to very expensive technology.  Hearing is a mysterious thing, made
more so as I have found that I had some impairment.  I always go over the
piano aurally because if it doesn't sound good, even if the machine says
it's perfect, it isn't good.  But I think what I most have appreciated about
the three-tiered visual display of Tunelab is that I believe I can spot even
slight tendencies toward instability which I would never catch with the ear
alone. Because I had not read more than three pages of the PTG preparation
guide for taking the tuning test when I took my test, I somewhat flippantly
say I don't know if I can tune a piano. My record would suggest folks
generally are pleased with my results, but especially when I get to very
good pianos I become painfully aware of many many tiny movements which
affect stability, and as a computer geek friend said after trying to tune
some notes with TL, "This isn't science! It's voodoo."  So, even with an ETD
there seems to be more than what "meets the eye" and even the ear.... Some
of us who do pretty good tunings feel they need the increased information
source offered by the ETD's.
les bartlett
www.bartlettpianoservice.com
-----Original Message-----
From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf
Of Ron Koval
Sent: Friday, February 16, 2007 10:00 PM
To: pianotech at ptg.org
Subject: re: etd's and ears addendum

Richard G wonders:
"I am curious to know..how you can tell what the last tuner did, or how he
tuned his ocataves, etc. unless you came within a few days after his tuning.
If any time has lapsed, how would you know how he tuned it??????"

Obviously I can't know exactly...  Following up on my own tunings over the
years, especially at the school has given me a chance to see what happens to
a tuning over time.  Chicago weather can be brutal to tunings.  Everything
is a pitch-adjustment.  Build it into the fee structure and do some extra
work if the tuning is close to pitch.

Still, when most of the notes of the scale are hanging around the same
amount off, but a few choice notes are 5-10 cents consistantly off from
them.... that gives a good clue.  It's mostly a reflection of the
temperament approach, not so much reflecting the approach to the octaves.  
(though those "screamers" up-top are a give-away to some other problems
going on...)

Ron Koval
Chicagoland

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