[pianotech] ETD tuning during temperature changes

[David Love]

Not exactly. If the lights come on after you've tuned a section and the piano drifts flat then the notes you tune subsequent to that will not drift (having already drifted) and may not be consonant with the previously tuned notes. You'll have to make some compensation.
David Love
www.davidlovepianos.com
(sent from bb)

-----Original Message-----
From: John Ross <jrpiano at eastlink.ca>
Sender: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org
Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2011 12:32:29 
To: <pianotech at ptg.org>
Reply-To: pianotech at ptg.org
Subject: Re: [pianotech] ETD tuning during temperature changes

When using a machine, you are using the same standard across the piano, so any movement of an area is of no consequence.
If doing a pitch raise aurally, when you go to use a note previously tuned, it will have changed, from where you had originally put it. So your reference is now off.
With the machine doing a pitch raise, your reference is the same.
Am I missing something here?
Oh yes and for those that do a pitch raise for 2 cents off, (which is ridiculous) how do you do it aurally with any accuracy?
John Ross
Windsor, Nova Scotia.
On 2011-01-27, at 10:08 AM, John Formsma wrote:

> Interesting discussions currently going on about ETDs and aural tuning. I'll not wade into those waters again ... at least this time. <G>
> 
> However, I have been curious about how ETD tuners deal with pitch changes that happen with temperature changes. A good aural tuner automatically deals with pitch changes in previously tuned sections when the temperature varies. We are rather forced to, because we must refer back to previously tuned sections as our "source" notes. I can hear how previously tuned sections have changed, particularly at the tenor and first soprano breaks. And I know it's not lever technique or the "usual" changes that happen.
> 
> In the following kind of scenario, what do you do?
> 
> Warm air blows across a piano for 10 minutes from the heater vent. (Or the stage lights come on 15 minutes into your tuning.) This means what you've just tuned previously will go flat from where it was. 
> 
> With aural tuning, you have a sort of self-correction. Your "target" will be a bit flat because your "source" was (e.g., tuning F5 from F4). When the warm air stops blowing, everything will rise slightly in pitch, and things migrate back to "right."
> 
> What about ETD tuning? An ETD knows nothing about pitch changing back and forth from temperature variations. All it knows is that the note you're currently tuning isn't "right" according to its programming. It has no way to know if, in the past minutes, a string has just dropped 4 cents because of heat. All it can do is display where it "ought" to be. So in the above instance, when warm air has lowered F4 by a couple or more cents, and you're at F5, it wants to put it at the "proper" pitch.  When the warm air stops blowing, F5 will now become sharper than it should be, unless the tuner has been monitoring and compensating based on what has already been tuned.  At least that's what I suppose. 
> 
> So how about it, ETD users?  What do you do?
> 
> It has been about 4 years since my last ETD use. I had tuned well aurally for some years prior to that. But, frankly, with the Verituner, I watched the screen, and didn't pay much attention to what had already been tuned. If a change in temperature happened, well, there was still work ahead, so I plugged away with watching and tuning unisons as I went, paying no mind to previously tuned sections. (Shame on me, yes; happens to others, probably.)
> 
> Do you ETD users notice these changes? And, if so, how do you compensate for it? Do you play octave combinations below the note being tuned to see what's going on below it? Do you alter the tuning program with an offset of some kind? If you offset, how does the program keep up with various offsets? Say, if the heater stops blowing, do you then reconfigure the offset?
> 
> -- 
> JF


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