[pianotech] Aurally pure octaves

[Richard Brekne]

Yes... excellently stated David !

I think this hits on several central points in the many debates 
surrounding ETD vs aural tunings, ETD devices in general, and for that 
matter stretch discussions. Ron N question how on could not listen to 
everything at once when aurally tuning.... yet those who learn to tune 
listening to exact coincident pairs, using specific tests to accent 
these... ghosting techniques and the like learn at first to do exactly 
that.  And this is very close to what single partials ETD's do as well.  
They judge the inharmonicity to be sure, and then use one or another 
stretch algorithm to align partials pairs to a certain predetermined 
width. But they are always "listening" to one simple frequency at a 
time. And both methods actually result in a quite ok tuning... 

Still as David point out and as we've talked about many times in both 
styles... there is a refinement process after getting this basic tuning 
done... that second pass where you begin listening to more then just how 
well any set of partials pairs or any other kind of <<rules>> are 
followed. You listen to how well these things have stayed where you put 
them, and how well they actually work on the piano... adjusting / 
tweaking as needed.

I think that folks who follow Virgils reasoning simply develop a method 
of going right to this step... simply by passing (to a very large degree 
at least) that initial alignment of the tuning. They take it for given 
that these partials pairs will be in place as needed anyways as a result 
of getting the more holistic sense of in-tuneness right from the get go.

Cheers
RicB


    Or factored out.  I think we forget that when we were learning all
    this it took great effort to hear "through" all the noise and focus
    our attention where we needed to.  At a certain point in our skill
    development we became able to switch our attention around at will. 
    We can be aware of other things without being distracted from the
    task at hand.  Much like being in a room with multiple
    conversations, you can only really hear what one person is saying
    even though you hear everyone else talking.  That being said, there
    is also a sense of whole tone listening that we also develop such as
    learning to tune unisons "dead".  You're not really listening for
    beats or any particular partials then but rather the general
    character when one of the two strings disappears and they sound like
    one.  In short we engage in different types of listening depending
    on what we are trying to accomplish and the circumstances we find
    ourselves in with different pianos and varying quality or clarity. 
    That is what really defines our particular skill.  

    David Love
    www.davidlovepianos.com