I think I would put stability a shade above "musical quality" however that's defined. If it doesn't stay put it doesn't much matter what you deliver. But that's really a separate issue. The real issue to me boils down to this. I don't think that it's a comparison between the tuning of a *highly skilled* aural tuner and an end user (let's put all the other etd benefits aside for the moment). And It's not necessarily about the highly skilled aural tuner who has decided to employ the use of an etd for various reasons. The issue, as I've mentioned, is for the person who is deciding how to approach this task with respect to their customers. So, if you define "highly skilled", by the Virgil Smith standard (and of course there are others who meet this standard as well), most aural tuners, especially newer ones, are not highly skilled. Many, in fact-even RPTs, may never be. That isn't to say they didn't pass the RPT test but the skill level varies, if we're being honest. I would guess the average pass rate of the RPT exam is about 85% (don't know for sure) and there are many associate members who wouldn't yet pass or haven't passed at 80%. Some of these are plying their trade as aural tuners, or being encouraged to because of what is (erroneously) believed to be a lack of "musical quality" of an etd tuning. But for arguments sake let's say that aural tuners perform on average around 85% in terms of accuracy as measured by the RPT test. And let's further assume that this has to do with temperament/octave setting and that both etd and aural tuners in this comparison tune stable and solid unisons. Using an etd that same aural tuner can hit the target spot on as dictated by the etd, if they were using one. So I'm a customer and my "tuner" comes to me and says, "I can tune your piano aurally and I'm an RPT but I usually hit the RPT standard at about 85% pass rate. If I tune it with this etd I can hit the standard at very near 100% though the tuning will be a computer generated tuning based on its reading of your piano and not a custom tuning curve as I see fit. Now I prefer to tune aurally because it gives me more personal satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment but you're the customer. What would you like me to do?" Well, I can tell you what I would say as the customer. So the question is, what obligation do we have to our customers to deliver the highest quality tuning we are capable of? We are, after all, charging them good money to do a professional job. Is our first obligation to ourselves to work in the way that gives us the most personal satisfaction? Or is it to work in the way that delivers consistently from the first tuning of the day to the last one the highest quality product day in and day out, from the most god awful spinet to the highest quality grand. If the primary obligation is to ourselves then I say have at it however you want. However, if our first obligation is to our customers then I think it best to realistically and honestly assess what it is you can and do deliver and make the appropriate choice with your customers in mind. If that means an etd and you wish to continue to hone your aural skills to raise them to a level that is on par I would be the first to encourage that. But insisting on tuning aurally when you know you can deliver on average a superior product in a different way is arguably selfish and irresponsible. BTW temperament tuning was not the basis of my platform. However if you value an accurate and equal temperament, you won't aurally beat a machine's ability to divide an octave into 12 equal parts, in fact, rarely will you equal it. David Love www.davidlovepianos.com From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Susan Kline Sent: Monday, January 31, 2011 11:56 AM To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: Re: [pianotech] the big discussion We were talking about the tuning contest, and David Love was pointing out that many aural tuners in daily work probably didn't reach nearly to Virgil's standards, as least, that's how I read it. He seemed to be saying that the real contest in ordinary daily work on low quality pianos with time limitations was between an AVERAGE RPT aural tuner and an unaltered out-of-the-box ETD tuning, and that's where the rubber met the road, for tunings as actually done in the field. Here is what he said: <<Something else to consider is that Virgil is a very highly skilled aural tuner, arguably more highly skilled than most. So with your average pass the exam at 85% RPT, how would they compare with an out of the box tuning from an etd--let's assume solid unisons on both. Then you should ask how many aural tuners actually apply the rigorous aural checks at each tuning (especially the fourth or fifth one of the day on the little upright that also needed a 50 cent pitch correction) to insure that they achieve a finely honed temperament octave and a uniform and balanced stretch. Then, I think, we have our real comparison where the rubber actually meets the road.>> And I was pointing out that the only truly valid criteria for evaluating actual tunings in the field were the musical results, as experienced by pianists and listeners. You could (and no doubt many will) argue that a tuning which tests better on an ETD will be more musical as well. I'm not so sure this is universally true in all conditions. It just seemed to me that we shouldn't lose sight of the real aim of our work, whatever the tools used. He does talk about the need for an exact temperament octave and a balanced stretch, which surely are desirable, and he suggests we consider solid unisons a given; so he has mentioned some musical qualities. Just how exact a temperament needs to be to give a musically excellent result seems a pretty shaky platform, to me. They can vary a great deal, and people often like them better than exactly equal. On consideration, I'd say that our #1 task is to get as musical a result as possible, but a close second is stability when the piano is subjected to its expected use. Susan On 1/31/2011 11:26 AM, Mr. Mac's wrote: -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20110131/8ab7580c/attachment.htm>
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