Aural tuning is not outdated. Machines are not perfect. Neither are we. The person behind either aural or EDT tunings is the person responsible for the final outcome of that tuning whether or not it is good or bad. Here is a prime example. Last spring, I was sick for a few days. When I returned to work, I discovered that someone at my College called in another tuner in my place. They did not realize that I have the final say of WHO goes in there and that sick or not, I will handle it one way or another. If I am not available, I have given them names of who they can call but, nobody else is allowed in there otherwise without my permission. That is our agreement. The tuner that was called in strictly tunes the whole piano completely by using an EDT, unison's and all. Without it, his aural tunings are just horrible. I do not believe I have ever heard a tuning as bad as this persons tuning 2 days afterward. I had concert tuned this particular piano on the Thursday prior. It would not need much if anything at all, 5 days later. This piano tunes well and holds the tuning well. This person tuned it on the following Tuesday. I had to concert tune it again 2 days later, on Thursday. When I tried it, I thought, what in the heck happened to this piano??? Then, someone I knew walked in and so I asked, who tuned this piano while I was sick, it certainly is not MY tuning!? Oh, so and so was called in. WHAT!?? I took care of it and that won't happen twice. My point is, you should have heard the tuning. It was so badly out of tune, well, there was just no rhyme or reason to it! Octaves were totally randomly out being very sharp and/or very flat. Unisons were not solid at all. Some were so badly knocked out, I could hardly believe it! I had to go over it 2 full times to get it stable and good sounding again. Whenever I encounter a piano that has been tuned by someone that cannot tune or make it stable, it makes it that much more difficult for me to set pins and so that the piano will be stable again. The fact is, we need aural skills. Without aural skills to judge a tuning, how can we personally know if we're right or if we're wrong? We can't. This tuner sure didn't. Jer From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Susan Kline Sent: Sunday, January 30, 2011 3:37 AM To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: Re: [pianotech] Counts ....... On 1/30/2011 12:07 AM, Duaine Hechler wrote: On the other hand, as my suspicion, the more you force an outdated form of tuning like aural tuning, Associate members are going to stay Associates. Aural tuning is for all time. It is so good to know. It feels so right. It sounds so beautiful. If it didn't exist, some people would put away their flashing spinning lights and invent it. The smart ones. Whether anyone stays an Associate, becomes an RPT, or doesn't belong to the PTG at all does not have much cosmic significance, especially long term. You, for instance, would be far better off totally ignoring the test and your status. Stop trying to make everyone say you don't need to learn aural tuning. Just let go of it all, it isn't helping you to fight the obvious over and over again. Just continue learning your trade as best you can. Susan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20110130/bdf3ecab/attachment.htm>
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