[pianotech] Aurally pure octaves

[Richard Brekne]

Hi William.

I understand the resistance to the term Beatless octave to be sure.  As 
far as that goes... I dont really like that term much myself.  I brought 
it up as the term Aurally pure sounds pretty darn close and ..... well.. 
I suppose that like it or not there are lots of folks out there who just 
plain think differently and use a different vocabulary to describe what 
they mean.  I've heard it said recently by someone central to all this 
that Virgil Smith, tho a brilliant tuner... really should not have tried 
to describe what he was doing simply because most folks think in terms 
of coincident partials, cents offsets and the rest and his explanations 
just confused those. Others seem to have responded well to Virgils 
teachings. I never met him myself.

I like to think in terms of coincident partials because its so darned 
convenient in communicating what I am talking about... but I think we 
all get into some form of aural tweaking beyond just setting 
coincidents, or at least simple pairs of them as Ron Koval pointed out. 
The Sweet Spot seems to work in most everyones vocabulary so I usually 
use that... but then the term Aurally pure comes in... and associations 
were brought to mind and so I thought mention it.

Cheers
RicB


    I think I get your intention, Ric, in suggesting that there exists a
    "particular location" where the octave is just as clean sounding and
    round and lovely as it can be.  I simply object to referring to it
    as a "beatless octave" unless you further define it by its
    coincident partials.  If you choose not to listen to any particular
    partial alignment, that's fine, but it still exists.

    I don't know how I'd redefine this octave type/spacing, but I just
    don't think "beatless octave" is technically accurate or usefully
    descriptive. Maybe I'm just aging quickly.  |;-]

    William R. Monroe