Hi Israel, I've been avoiding most of this tuning style discussion
because of the strident tone but this is something that is really
interesting. I do not use an ETD at all at intermission because it's
simply not as fast as aurally checking the unisons, plucking as Susan
said, and then octaves. Recording sessions are a little different, there
time is a bit more flexible and the pitch is critical for splicing in
fixes possibly days later. I find there the etd with a stored tuning for
that piano is the way to go, it shouldnt drift off pitch the way concert
halls do, the studio is a very stable environment, and it's not hard to
run through the scale and correct anything thats drifting. The very
first recording session I tuned for was with Lambert Orkis, Schubert on
a fortepiano, long before I had an etd, and I sweated bullets through
the whole thing, it was in a church at night, over several days, and the
humidity and temperature were not nearly as stable as I would have
liked. An etd would have made things a lot easier. One time at a
harpsichord session though, the performer had asked specifically for
Valotti only to discover that the F# major chord one piece revolved
around was overly exposed and too far out for his comfort. I had to redo
the temperament on the fly and that would have been impossible if I had
been machine dependent. I'd love to hear how different people deal with
these situations...
--Dave
New Orleans
On 2/4/11 5:56 PM, Israel Stein wrote:
> Susan and all,
>
> This issue is even more critical at recording sessions, where the
> tuner is typically asked to "check and fix up the piano" during
> breaks.....This is where you have to trust your ear 100% - an ETD is
> worse than useless, it could get you in real trouble...
>
--
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