[pianotech] [Pianotek] the big discussion

[Dean May]

You are right, Duaine, stability is vitally important. When you are tuning a
piano every 6 or 12 months and it is 10-20 cents out every time, musicality
is not really an issue. You just want it to sound reasonably good and get it
as stable as possible in the allotted time frame.

One thing that helped me become a better aural tuner was to listen to the
intervals as I was machine tuning- especially on a nicer piano. Play the
octave, do a 4th & 5th test. Then every once in awhile, do some chromatic
10ths, 17ths or other tests. You'll start to hear things out of place. Go
back and tweak, fudge what the machine tells you. You have permission.
You've been tuning long enough that you may be surprised at what you hear
and what you can improve. 

Dean

-----Original Message-----
From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf
Of Duaine Hechler
Sent: Monday, January 31, 2011 8:49 PM
To: pianotech at ptg.org
Subject: Re: [pianotech] [Pianotek] the big discussion

AMEN, I couldn't have stated it better myself.

Plus, as I was training - with the Cybertuner - my mentor kept telling me
the most important thing about tuning is - stability (setting the pin, to
the point it don't move after you put it somewhere) and tuning - aurally -
the unisons - meaning, being able to tell when all two or three strings
sound like one.

So - yes - I do have and use some aural tuning skills - specifically enough
to do the unisons.

Duaine

On 01/31/2011 02:44 PM, David Love wrote:
>
> 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 oth