On 1/28/2011 11:16 AM, Ed Foote wrote: > 4. I use the pitch correction function for anything that is off by 2 > cents or more(why not, it is free to use, easy to apply, and I did > pay for it). I wonder why the fastidious aural tuner concerns > themself with such clinical octaves when changing pitch by a couple > or three of cents. I find that there will be at least half a cent or > more octave discrepancy without the correction dialed in, or do aural > tuners just guess at where the piano will land? Or does anyone pitch > raise the two cents before tuning???? "clinical octaves"? I don't quite get the drift of this. Two or three cents flat or sharp? Quick pass --- slow pass --- look for strays. (Just a few minutes, looking for strays.) > 5. sometimes, but rarely. All the pianos I am around are on wheels....... Moving pianos to get at both keyboards at once -- usually not an issue. Sometimes has been. (the stage behind the pianos is set up for a stage play that evening, not leaving room enough to swing one around; or sometimes, the time factor just doesn't allow for it. Or, two pianos have been set up with an orchestra behind them. And the wheels on the SD-10 I often tune are extremely contrary, with a mind of their own. I move the Steinway instead. Thinking again of your recording comments, I can see that dubbing over the top of existing tracks would call for very exact and precise duplication of the previous tuning. Compared to that, splicing between takes recorded on different days would be far less exacting. (What's a half cent between friends? I defy 99 out of hundred musicians to discern it, or 99 of 100 tuners, for that matter, without mechanical aids.) For you, Ed, an ETD is definitely a professionally required tool. I forgot #6, which would be "active investigation of non-equal temperaments". It seems to me that someone who is deep into historic temperaments might prefer to learn some of them by tuning them from instructions instead of just plugging in numbers. One would experience how they were constructed in a more direct manner, and one might understand their history by tuning them closer to the process those who devised them used. But I can see that having the ETD with a big library of them would facilitate trying out more of them with a lot less investment of time and effort. For me, after such long exposure to intonation learning the cello (from age 10 till I got the masters at age 25) followed by about five years of professional orchestra work, followed by 30+ years of tuning equal temperaments (1978-present) the scale shape of equal temperament over a solid base of cello intonation (which is semi-Pythagoran) is so deeply ingrained that I can't muster the objectivity to evaluate properly the musical consequences of non-equal temperaments. The notes which are close to equal register as pretty okay, and the ones which are further away register as out of tune. Intervals far off equal, either very narrow major thirds or especially screwy fourths and fifths register with me as WRONGO!!! just plain OUT OF TUNE. Fifths and fourths which are pure go down with me just fine after all that cello playing, of course. The influence of cello intonation makes me very picky about which directions off equal I can tolerate. I can manage wider major seconds and major thirds and major sixths quite well. I like skimpy semitones and narrow minor thirds and minor sixths just fine. But wide minor thirds or narrow major thirds drive me batty. You see, this sounds like sleazy cello playing, where the two types of thirds have wandered toward each other, increasing ambiguity. On the contrary, when the difference between major and minor intervals is increased a little past equal temperament, it sounds (one might say) emphatic to me. In a way, it sounds like a higher quality construction, especially combined with pure fifths. It sounds architecturally strong, one might say. For equal temperament, one gets used to the slight blurring of the intervals, just from long exposure. A good stretch in the octaves decreases the sleaziness of the (imperfect) perfect fifths and fourths. Smaller pianos increase the crud and cloud the texture. Clarity, one really likes clarity, and good temperament and stretch increases it a lot. Just my take, not trying to proselytize about it, more like an attempt to explain where I am coming from. Too bad in some ways, when people express rapture about a particular temperament and all I can hear it OUT OF TUNE! -- but that is the way it worked out. Pretty good in others. All those years of work on cello intonation (I was very good at it) gave me an automatic octave stretch which fits a solo piano nearly perfectly with the string sections of a good orchestra. My understanding of wind intonation and how they tune intervals is considerably lacking, especially for the brass. I do know that it is different, and I hear a lot on recordings which I am not very fond of. Pardon the length and the digression ....... Susan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20110128/d65a80ce/attachment-0001.htm>
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