Good post. I was using OnlyPure this morning. No file or setup needed, other than setting the pitch. Sure it was different from a stand-alone touch-up, but my point would be that I took advantage of that and used every available second to tune. You said, "Drawing from my past experience with ETD, you'd probably tune so the spinner (or functional equivalent thereof) would be as "off" as its neighbors. Which is essentially what an aural tuner would do." Yes. My point exactly. Yup, I touch up aurally regularly, but I don't consider it the superior method -- and the machine is never far away and gets pulled into service if it seems like it would help. 8^) Kent S On Feb 7, 2011, at 1:56 PM, John Formsma wrote: > On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 10:02 AM, Kent Swafford <kswafford at gmail.com> wrote: > > > 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. > > > And you were using which one? OnlyPure or RCT? > > > > 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. > > > Maybe I'm misreading this, but it seems that this is a slightly different situation than what Israel meant. It appears that you were already seated at the piano, had completed the first pass, and were going back over it to refine. > > That 15 minutes is different than having 15 minutes to get in and get out. Viz., > You already had the tuning file open and had just used it > The piano case was already open > Your tools were already out and available > Though I don't have to do any recording tuning or concert touch-up work, I can envision that a 15-minute touch-up might involve only 10 minutes of "intimate" time with the piano. I would imagine: > Arriving and having to extricate tuning gear, including the ETD opened to your saved file, mutes, and lever (maybe you could already have these in hand) > Opening the piano case > Assessing where the worst offenders are, and dealing with them first. > > > 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, > > Conceded, but in 15 minutes can one even be concerned with "relatively uniform" drift? That's what we'd have to do aurally. I would think the only reasonable expectation in a touch-up is dealing with individual strings and/or notes that have drifted. > > > 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. > > > I guess maybe it depends on how fast aural tuners can interpret the aural checks they hear. When I'm in "fast and furious" mode, I can hear faster than I could play and look at an ETD. I think that's what Israel meant (although certainly not trying to put words in his virtual mouth). > > > And it seems that if you're not correcting for drift, you're sort of guesstimating how to make your ETD "corrections" (since no offset was selected). Drawing from my past experience with ETD, you'd probably tune so the spinner (or functional equivalent thereof) would be as "off" as its neighbors. Which is essentially what an aural tuner would do. > > > > 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. > > Temperament would be last on my list of things to correct or enhance. > > For myself, I would find it easier to do aurally what you mentioned, starting from the center: 17ths up and down, P12s up and down. That way, you've assessed the worst offenders and deal with them. > > Not really arguing due to my lack of experience in recording and/or concert touch-up sessions. But I have had to work really fast. And I did have one experience with a tuning that someone else did that had drifted during the recording session (It was over two days, and there had been no touch-ups at all). I certainly wouldn't have had access to his ETD file, so I assessed it aurally, and made slight changes to make it better. The musicians were happy. And I thought it was pretty darn cool to be able to walk in with no batteries required ... and fix it. Well, "fix" is all relative, since I couldn't retune the whole thing (what it really needed ... but they were in session already). Make better is all I could do. But it surely felt good to do it. <G> > > -- > JF -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20110207/1cf4de40/attachment.htm>
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