etd's and ears addendum

[RicB]

Hi Les

I just gotta say it.  This, Rons post, and some of the other bits 
written this time around is some of the best stuff I've ever seen on 
this list on the general subject matter.  Excellent reading !

Cheers
RicB


    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