Ah hell there Ron... you just put down one of those posts that shows the true potential of this list. Excellent contribution I gotta say...in every single way. This is one I'd just love to sit over a couple beers / coffees / whathave yous in some appropriate sitting room somewhere and delve into with you for an hour or so... or at least until we reach burn out as such topics inevitably lead to after yielding a time of discussional enjoyment. I think I will just throw in a couple thoughts, qualifiers if you will into all this. You border nearly all the way in this post on philosophical grounds that go to the core of what music / art is. I think we all agree immediately that a machine of any sort has no creative ability in itself. At very best any machine can do only what its program directs it to do. Anything done WITH the machine that exceeds or diverges from that programing has directly to do with the will of the user. And THAT is where the dividing line between creativity with ETD's and simple going through the motions with less then stellar results. (Again... I'm refering to high level tunings here... and in that regard even the closest attention to the dial without any ear involved is less then the best we can do IMHO) You refer to the general level of aural tuning improving with the advent of machines. I dont know of any data to support that claim in general, but I do know that use of the ETD has most certainly vastly improved my own tunings. Not the use per se... but the fact that I also dig into the woodwork of the machine, how it does what it does... how it relates to what my ear is trying to accomplish... tuning theory as it were. With greater understanding come greater ability to execute with precision. And the ETD does have precision degrees for specific target frequencies the ear can not achieve... because the ear doesnt work that way. But one CAN utilize this capability of the ETD to help the ear zoom even closer in on what the ear targets, even tho the kind of target is quite different. What is a great tuning ? I suppose everyone has an answer... but mine is simply worded. The measure of a great tuning is how well the tuner accomplished a very conscious and clearly understood tuning goal.... what he/she set out to do. So I agree with very much of what I understand you to say. But the bottom line with me will never be a machine when it comes to any form of art. It will always be the intellect behind the machine. Tuning in itself is every bit as much of the making music concept you sketch below. And in the end it deserves every bit as much of our personal hands on attention as voicing, regulation, or any of the rest of it. In as much as any particular usage of an ETD shortens the path to that end, or even lengthens the end itself, raises the standard as it were.... then their useage is positive. But if / when they achieve an end in the other direction... then they are counter-productive. I agree that no-one gives a hoot how beauty can be achieved. And I'll even go with you a ways down the road that says computer generated art can be beautiful. But only to a point and with quite a few qualifiers. The main one being that the machine has no creative thought process. What it does is either random by programming purpose... or specific by same. Art by nature is in essence a three fold intellectual experience of either creative endeavour, appreciation, the process of communication between these two... or some combination of these three. Any art generated by a machine is only art because of the ability of a human to find some appreciation of the result. And that is a severe limitation really to the scope of art in general. Teaching yes.... Again... we have no studies to show one way or the other what is the most effective way of teaching. And I dont mean aural vs ETD assisted alone. There are just too many unknowns to draw too many conclusions on the subject matter. And why should their be ?... We are after all a very small part of the world with little or virtually no resources to study such things. We see some potential value in this and that approach.... and observe casually this or that result.... but all this is far from conclusive. There is no Suziki method for violin comparative in our trade.... not yet anyways. Great post you wrote Ron. I really do love it when people put out as your post below shows you do. Cheers RicB So all this talk got me to thinkin'... This tuning process becomes a self-reinforced feedback loop. We create something using a specific series of checks. Then to test the result, we use the same series of checks... The variable in the equation is - the tech. Now there are techs happy with this aural approach, or that aural approach, tunelab, Korg, Strobe, RCT, SAT and Verituner - all which can produce different final results, all proven and checked by the specific tech in question. The clients too, get trained to expect a certain sound preferred by their tech. Add to that the preferred differences between ET and the whole gamut of alternate temperament views .... Remember the whole arguement that most aural techs aren't able to tune anything BUT a mild reverse well temperament? (I'd have to agree to finding many, many examples of that around here.) So... What makes a great tuning? We can't seem to agree on octaves. There's the direct reference folks, the slightly expanded folks, the pure fifths, or octave fifths... beat, or dead on. Is there such a thing as beatless? Even the unison. Dead on, or ever so slightly off to bring more life to the note? I'm not sure David still quite "gets" the direction of my path... (I have the utmost respect for your work. We've never met, yet I "feel" your warm soul through this connection.) "I would never denigrate your skills or the skills of anybody who uses the ETD as a powerful tool and as an ADJUNCT to their ears, their body, their intuition." Close, but not quite... "NONE OF US GIVE A HOOT HOW THE BEAUTY HAPPENS, JUST THAT IT HAPPENS. CAPISCE?" There ya' go... Here's where I take a sharp turn different than many and believe that a machine calculation is capable of producing a beautiful tuning. It's an "ends justify the means" approach that has been argued over in the past. Is someone just "following the lights" still a piano tuner? I'd like to "raise the bar" again. Aural approaches to tuning have made great strides (in consistency)in response to the development of the machines. I like to search for the methods to give even beginning tuners the ablility to bring MUSIC to the instrument. Yes, MUSIC. Shorten the tuning learning curve to focus on voicing, actionwork and other approaches written here on the list. There shouldn't be an excuse for random temperament errors multiplied through a tuning to end up with many of the wild bass and treble tunings I've heard. "Hazing" new recruits with aural training simply isn't a valad reason. Are we there yet? Close, so, so close... Ron Koval Chicagoland
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