[pianotech] Q & A Roundtable

[Ron Nossaman]

On 1/29/2011 1:00 PM, Kent Swafford wrote:
> I am guilty as charged in taking taking well over an hour for many
> tunings, but, gee, I thought I had good reason...  8^)

So have I, for what I thought was a good reason too.


> The faster beating a unison is, the quicker you should be able to
> hear the beats.
>
> The closer a unison is to "in tune" the longer you must listen to
> hear the (slower) beats.
>
> So deciding how long to listen to a unison (and how long the tuning
> takes) may just be a matter of deciding how finely one wishes to
> tune.

Actually, no. It's not necessary to listen to an entire beat cycle to 
hear a beat. You can hear the divergence from clean immediately, in the 
attack. When you tune that divergence away, you can listen for a very 
long time and not get a beat.

I read about a clock maker who noticed that the pendulums of all the 
clocks on the same wall, all with the same internal works, tended to 
synchronize with one another while the one on another wall didn't. 
Strings in a unison do that too. They'll sound a eeeoooowwwwwwwwwwwwww 
and converge without ever completing or repeating a beat cycle. Tune in 
the attack until that eeeooowwwww doesn't start at all, and the unison 
is clean - verifiable by listening for as long as necessary.

Look, I didn't offer this observation in the first place to get into a 
mine is shinier than yours fight with anyone. I offered it as a means to 
help someone who asked, how to speed up their tuning somewhat. A number 
of people have tried it, and found that it works for them as it does for 
me. Take it or leave it.
Ron N