I have stayed out of this argument. BUT Wim, back in the days when you, I, Liz Baker , and Ron Berry spent 3+ hours on preparing the master tuning for the test piano at Principia it amazed me that there is no end to how much can be done to tweak a tuning. There is always something that can stand correction or something. It may be that one person can get a extremely accurate tuning with the aural route, BUT we are not in the business to do extreme, concert quality perfect tunings on most of the pianos we tune. Our job is to make the piano sound as good as it can sound in a reasonable amount of time at a reasonable price. Most of the tunings most of us perform are on mediocre pianos that do not get tuned often enough to be able to hold a concert type tuning that well. The deciding thing to me is to be able to do a credible tuning, repeatable each time I tune the same piano. To me that means using my SAT . It does not mean that the tuning could not be tweaked to be more exact, but, I am not in the business of performing concert level tunings on the clienteles home pianos that I service. With the SAT, as with other ETD's, there are no 'off days" Nit picking on every tuning a person does creates burn out. I tuned 18 years aurally before beginning with Sanderson's wonders and I am in my 50th year of piano tuning this June. Life is too short to be that nit picky. James James Grebe Est. 1962 Piano Tuner-Technician Creator of Custom Caster Cups Creator of Fine Writing Instruments Piano benches Theatre and Theatre Organ Historian www.grebepiano.com 1526 Raspberry Lane Arnold, MO 63010 (314) 608-4137 ----- Original Message ----- From: <tnrwim at aol.com> To: <pianotech at ptg.org> Sent: Wednesday, February 02, 2011 5:49 PM Subject: Re: [pianotech] 4ths 5ths Allow me to make one final comment on this thread. There are three different levels of tuners. There are those who tune aurally, but are not able to pass the tuning exam, which requires very aural basic tuning skills. These tuners are convinced that the tuning test is flawed, but are happy to tune at their level. They make enough money from their customers, and do not see need to try to improve their tuning skills. Then there are those tuners who use an ETD, and are satisfied with the results they get. They do not see a need to try to improve on it. They think the tuning exam is not necessary because they know, in their heart, that the ETD gives them the best tuning that can possibly be gotten out of the piano. Most of their customers are happy with their results, and they do not see the need to try to improve on their tuning skills. And then there are those tuners who are able to listen to the results of an ETD, and not only can hear the minor flaws it produces, but can do something about it. These are the tuners who are willing to spend the extra time and effort to correct the minor flaws, and do the best tuning that instrument can produce, not necessarily because their customer demands it, but for their own satisfaction, which is why they became an RPT in the first place. Wim. -----Original Message----- From: Paul T Williams <pwilliams4 at unlnotes.unl.edu> To: pianotech <pianotech at ptg.org> Sent: Wed, Feb 2, 2011 11:52 am Subject: Re: [pianotech] 4ths 5ths Susan, unfortunately, you're preaching to a wall. Quit feeding the cat. If you feed a stray cat, he'll come back again and again. Please just call it quits with this guy. You and he are never to agree, and that's that. Let's all just let this go and go back to our lives and tuning the way we see fit. The eternal argument isn't just between you two (and a some on Wim), and keeps creeping up every 6 months or so and then we're all back to the "circle the wagons", here comes the enemy thing. The strange, but funny thing is, 99% of the home-owned piano people would ever know what method is better, can't hear the difference, or care: Only the most professional pianists and other master musicians will be able to tell; AND, the beauty of the tuning is in the master of the hammer skills and ears to hear; not the devices he/she uses to get it there. Some aural tuners are awesome, some ETD tuners are awesome. I will give you this, however, Susan; You have to use your ears and intuition, period! Merely looking at a machine will never make a great tuner. JMHO. There again, another can of worms that must be used for fishing, not arguing. Nothing you, I, or anybody on this list is going to change the way Duiane or any other is going to do "their" thing. It's too bad to not be open minded, but those with a barred door can not open it. Let's please drop this thing! Thank you. Still aural, with an occasional ETD helper... JUST TO HELP! Paul From: Susan Kline <skline at peak.org> To: pianotech at ptg.org Date: 02/02/2011 11:54 AM Subject: Re: [pianotech] 4ths 5ths On 2/1/2011 11:30 PM, Duaine Hechler wrote: You are being the most boisterous against ETD usage. I'm being the most boisterous in favor of aural tuning. What you take as dissing ETDs in general are my attempts to explain why I (not anyone else, _I_) don't want to use one. My problem with you isn't that you use an ETD. It's that you seem to hate anyone who uses aural tuning instead of one. Also, I believe the many experts here, most of whom use ETDs every day, when they say it can't stand alone. Now, these ears of yours ... It's not a physical problem, obviously. It's a strain on your patience and concentration, because the beats are hard for you to hear. This happens to some people, especially when they are beginning. The trick is to find out WHERE (at what pitch) you should be listening for the beats. They are higher partials, not the fundamental. You obviously can hear them somewhat, or you couldn't tune unisons and octaves. If you set up an interval, and want to hear the beats, start with thirds in the middle register, which are going not too slow, not too fast. Mute off the two notes so each is a single string. Start tuning one of the notes, till you get a good, prominent beat. Some of the beats for major thirds are so prominent they practically knock your socks off! That should give you an idea of the pitch at which the beat is occurring. You can hum it. If I were there I could hum it at you. wow - wow - wow - wow etc. Once you figure out which pitch to listen at, the whole thing should ease up and not be such a big problem. You can gradually listen to faster beats and to slower ones. You have noticed that when you hear a fifth or a fourth, it has a curl to it? It's like a vowel sound. You can vocalize the vowel sound and then get it to go the speed you want as you tune the note. This kind of slow-beating interval is highly useful to evaluate how even your temperament is. It can be a vocal thing, like oooaaaawwwwuuuu. For unisons, also, vocalizing helps. You want to get long open vowels, like ah or oh, instead of eeeee or diphthongs, like eeeeyyaaaa. Don't worry about beats per second. Theoretically it's good information, but most of the determinations you need are relative instead of numerical. It's good to have a rhythmic memory of how fast the F-A at the start of the temperament sequence goes. Then one tunes the octave F, and fiddles the C# in between so that the three thirds progress. None of that takes counting against a stopwatch, or anything. And there are four notes of the scale in pretty good places. Heck, it's a start. Just master that and you should feel an awful lot more confidence and comfort. Listening for fourths should stop being an ordeal by the Inquisition.
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