Kudos on a phenomenal post, Kent. There is so much to be learned as to what is and what isn't. Thank you for taking the time to share the truth as you know it to be. Keith McGavern On Feb 7, 2011, at 10:02 AM, Kent Swafford wrote: > On Feb 6, 2011, at 4:52 PM, Israel Stein wrote: > >> Well, Kent, please do share with us how you would approach a touch up using your ETD when you have 15 minutes until the next "take"... >> >> Israel > > I can only speculate as to the source of your skepticism. > > One possibility is the fact that you use a specific ETD that I determined about a dozen years ago is not the one that is best suited to my needs. > > That said, I reject the notion that the 15 minute touch-up is a special or unusual situation. Take for example the tuning I completed this morning: > > Many tunings are done with an absolute deadline. I strongly suspect that your 15 minute recording studio touch up closely resembles the last 15 minutes of any tuning done on deadline. > > The 1098 I tuned this morning was right at the margin of needing a pitch correction, so the final refinement pass included the possibility that sections of the piano had drifted, just like your recording studio situation. > > As I began the final refinement pass this morning, I checked my watch and noted the time. > > Starting at the lowest bichord, I checked unisons up chromatically, letting the ETD follow along. When I found a unison needing attention, I could mute each string with my finger and determine immediately which string had moved, hen make the needed correction aurally. > > As one goes through the scale, drift is immediately apparent by watching the display; as long as the drift is relatively uniform without sudden changes, the drift may not be particularly audible in aural checks, so there may be no absolute need to retune just to suit the display, nor to (off)set the machine. Fingers can still be used to mute strings of the trichords needing attention, and having noted the general level of drift of previous notes, it is easy to determine which string(s) moved (the most) and make appropriate corrections in the strings that will yield the best temperament. This appears to me to be one of the best reasons for using an ETD because one can easily analyze the mistake before making any "corrections", and help one enhance, not exacerbate, the quality of the temperament when time is so short. > > This morning when I hit the break at the octave 5 action bracket, I came upon a note that was sharp where all the previous section had been slightly on the flat side. The ETD suggested and aural checks confirmed that this note, one of only two or three in the entire scale needed to be completely retuned. > > I finished the refinement pass, played 12ths descending through the scale, 17ths ascending through the scale and some arppeggios to admire my work (to the extent that is possible on a 1098) and pronounced the tuning done 12 minutes after checking my watch. I continued to play checks as I put my stuff away, tuned two more unisons that needed attention, and I put the cabinet back together and closed my case in time to see that 15 minutes had passed. Whew! Made it. > > I profoundly do not care whether you yourself use an ETD in the recording studio, but to suggest that the very presence of an ETD can by itself be somehow "unprofessional", as I understood you to have said, is an unfair and incorrect characterization, in my opinion not in line with the calm and rational analysis that you have brought to so many other issues in our field of endeavor. > > Thanks for reading, > > Kent S > > > > > > >
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC