Many years ago, when teaching a hand's on training seminar (RPotter), Jim Coleman, Sr. was also there instructing. One day, everyone was going to lunch and neither Jim or I were very hungry. There was an event taking place on campus (I was the college tech) and the "D" in the chapel needed tuning. I thought this would be the perfect time to sit and watch Jim tune. Instead, he say's, "Hey, why don't we take the SAT over and tune?". On our walk over, Jim was describing to me how he, his dad and his brother would tune the same piano at the same time, on the same bench no less. The story was hysterical. His dad would tune the center section, his brother the bass and Jim the treble. If I recall correctly, I think Jim said that, "Once Dad got the temperament finished, my brother and I would start on our sections as dad pulled in the unisons in his". Oh, how I want to hear that tuning!....LOL. Once at the piano, Jim turns on his machine, pushes some buttons, grabs a rubber mute, plays the note and pushes some more buttons. You must reallize, I had never "machine tuned" so I found all this a bit fascinating. It appeared he chose some "random" notes and fiddled with his machine a bit more for each note he chose. Then he said, "Ah, good to go". Jim then strip muted the whole piano. If memory serves, he began by tuning individual strings, stopping lights, or slowing them as I could tell, then went through some checks aurally. Once the temperament section was complete, he moved down the bass. He told me once the center strings were tuned, I should pull in the unisons. Sure, why not? If the piano sounded like crap, I could always retune it. I mean, I've tuned that piano who knows how many times aurally. Long story short, Jim and I finished tuning in about an hour. That piano sounded so sweet. The octaves had "breath" to them, the 10ths & 17ths shimmered. I was simply amazed. Jim say's, "Well, that was a thousand dollars worth of fun, huh?" I love that man. Think of the brilliant minds who have come together, spent countless hours researching, examining, quantifying, recording, analyzing, then inventing such tools. We know more about tuning today than ever before in history as a result of their work and willingness to share. This current discussion seems to negate the benefits of countless articles, classes and science for our industry. Using well engineered tools aids in reaching our goals. Choosing not to use them is one's perogative. To suggest that the tools aren't viable is absurd. Equally, to suggest one can simply "stop" the lights and have a great tuning is also foolish. Using aural skills combined with the technology can and will produce magnificent tunings. It isn't the pots or pans, its the Chef. Dave Swartz, RPT Cory Products www.corycare.com Susan - I have utmost respect for your point of view and your ability to tactfully present your ideas, but I must take exception to this statement. I believe that the level of tuning attainable using a high quality ETD is remarkable. Granted you need to master hammer technique, but to flatly say that a quality tuning is not possible without understanding aural tuning flies in the face of reality. The Veritune machine that I use performs calculations for each piano that I tune that are far above what I could ever achieve aurally. To begin with, it's measuring the vibration rate of each and every one of the first eight partials of each string up to 100th of a cent. It then matches those partials against the partials of the others strings and uses logarithms to find the "sweet spot" where each string should be set. To top that off, the machine records all of this date, so that the next time the piano is tuned, it has the information at its fingertips, so to speak. Could I do all those calculations and keep track of it all in my head? I would be as likely to be able to recite pi out to 1000 places backwards from memory! It just isn't going to happen! I set the temperament of the piano using my Veritune machine, and tune the unisons by ear to the temperament string. Being able to tune a piano completely by ear, while a great talent to have, is not a prerequisite to being able to do a great job of tuning. Please don't misunderstand me on this, Susan. An aural tuning done well is a beautiful thing - the tuner is an artist and the piano is her canvas. What you do is an art form of the highest level. But give those of us who use an ETD to tune the benefit of your respect. I believe, after all, that simple respect is all that Duaine is looking for here. Chuck P.S. Saying all of that, I would also say that if one is going to use an ETD to tune, it needs to be top-of-the-line equipment. Going to Radio Shack and buying a $20 guitar tuner isn't going to cut it. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20110129/7a0c36df/attachment.htm>
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