On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 4:23 PM, David Love <davidlovepianos at comcast.net>wrote: > Yes I do know that and it illustrates my point. Many (not all) have > suggested that the use of an etd is a substitute for hearing. That spurious > argument is that the use of technology necessarily endangers our pre > technological abilities. Especially in this case since virtually everyone > who uses etds tunes 2/3’s of the piano aurally (the unisons). People seem > to forget that. Your cautionary tale is fine but to some degree it > presupposes the loss of skills from a former age. That’s not necessarily > the case was my point and the comingling of the ideas, etd use and loss of > the ability to hear, is by many being treated as a foregone conclusion. > I’m sure people are tiring of this discussion but what I am tired of is the > repeated tendency of some (not all) to keep suggesting that etd tuning is > non-musical and necessarily implies a loss of a certain skill set or the > inability to develop one. I’ve heard plenty of aural tunings that were > worse than non musical, simply out of tune. > Thought I'd also pound a little on this dead horse. My experience was that continual, repeated use of the Verituner led to a gradual loss of aural tuning skills. And at our chapter's 2010 Christmas dinner, one of our members said the same thing (his was a SAT). For me, I lost a huge amount of confidence and speed. An aural tuner needs both. Same with adding and subtracting. When I was in school, I could add and subtract a lot better on paper (and in my head) than I can now. Years of continual use of a calculator eroded that ability. Two years ago, I had the opportunity to participate in a master tuning for PTG tuning exams. There were a 2-3 tuners who mostly used ETDs (the main CTE was one of them), and a couple of us aural tuners. The other aural tuner (also a CTE) had very sharp ears, objecting to very small things that the ETD tuners made no objection to. After his catching these small things, the others all agreed with him. Anecdotal? Yes, of course. But constant use sharpens tuning ability, IMO. And primarily unison tuning (as with an ETD) does not lend itself to listening as precisely to other things as as a very skilled aural tuner would. At least that's my experience. -- JF -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20110131/30e95f58/attachment.htm>
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