[pianotech] Respect

[Ron Koval]

Ah Susan, you finally got me to post on this topic...

"The unadorned ETD tuning is not going to achieve quality"

Ok, that's just ignorance.  
(lack of knowledge or experience with the topic at hand - not much I can do about that)

But this is the interesting bit you wrote that brings something actually new on the topic:

"Older piano recordings, done in the 1930's or 1940's never exhibit these tuning problems,
even when one can hear that the temperaments are sometimes not conventionally equal.
The stretches are beautiful, and the unisons and voicing are usually superb. There is 
warmth to the sound, there is a glow which can be heard, even through the primitive
recording techniques. Primitive in some ways, but they capture some beautiful aspects
of piano sound which often are lacking in later eras."

Has anyone considered the influence that ETDs have had on aural tuning of the late 20th and 
early 21st century?  You mention the possibility of the tonal aspect of the temperament, as 
opposed to the atonal goal of ET.  (That's another topic for another time, perhaps)  My current
theory is that by using the rapidly beating intervals, aural technique has developed to mimic
the single-partial approach to tuning that can the machine temperaments so smoothly progressive.

 To accept the beauty of those early recordings, with varying temperaments brings the question why it 
is so important to then learn aural temperament setting?  Sure it is a quaint skill... no maybe noble 
skill to develop, but if differences in that temperament still can be expanded to a beautiful tuning,
then why continue to suggest that only by learning to set that temperament aurally can we achieve quality?

The expansion of the temperament to the rest of the piano I think is a crucial part of tuning.  Yet the 
aural skills needed for that are the far more common skills that all musicians already have.  I believe
that it is the slower beating intervals that lead the way to this goal...

Ron Koval
chicagoland