Interspersed comments On 1/31/2011 5:38 PM, David Love wrote: > No, I have not bought into the tuning test as the ultimate reality for > tuning quality. Please don't be insulting, I'd like to think it's > beneath you. Strange that you thought it an insult (which I didn't intend), yet you harped on the test standards and percentage of the test standards as the sole criterion of tuning quality, in your examples. > I bring up the PTG tuning test because we hold that as a standard by > which we measure some level of aural skill and base the highest level > of classification we have on passing that test. Yes, and that, I believe, should give us pause. Note that the test was set up because only technically measurable numbers can be graded consistently and fairly. I see the problem with setting up any other kind of test, because any other standards are vague and non-reproducible; yet the danger of the present situation is that since the test contains measurable numbers, people start to think that the measurements are the only important things in tuning. > If it has no meaning in terms of quality or if tuning quality is > simply a matter of personal taste then why bother to try and set a > standard? The whole reason for the test is to provide a professional credential. The aim, therefore, is probably to provide an aid in marketing our skills to the general public (at which it largely fails), or to give us status with each other, which seems to have caught on like like a house afire. > Anybody could simply argue that their own tunings are quite musical. They could try. For the general public, and the arrays of old uprights, consoles, and spinets, non-conventional but pleasing tunings would fly (possibly do fly -- we don't know everything going on out there). For professional musicians, standards for equal temperament, pitch accuracy, and something resembling normal stretch are in place. That eternally cited test does at least get people into the normal specs for what is acceptable to musicians and academics. That is, it provides what people expect, and then, with luck, we provide something with a little more enhancement than just "all right," still within normal limits. > Your other recent comment about the unimportance of temperament > accuracy also flies in the face of this standard. I mentioned that because of the considerable popularity of historical and/or non-equal temperaments. Obviously a lot of the musical public feel that strict equal temperament is not crucial for their own musical enjoyment. I have always used ET, myself. I feel that very minor discrepancies of equal temperament are probably not noticed by most musicians. > If such variation in temperament tuning is common and to you > acceptable, then why is that the most critically judged part and, in > fact, the part that prevents most people from attempting or passing > the test to begin with. I think this is because it can be strictly graded, using digital measurements. Variety in temperaments seems to constitute a sub-culture of piano technology now. It includes those who provide the non-equal temperaments straight from their ETDs. However, it would be quite a nightmare trying to evaluate mastery of them and to determine a standard for tuning them which people would have to attain. ET is much easier to grade, and accepted by musicians, so ET is on the test. For the test to act as a gate between status levels, it has to be at least reasonably hard. There would be no point in a slack sort of test which 99% of applicants could easily pass. So they set it up to be possible, but challenging. I was challenged by it, for that matter, but got through on my first try, but not with a score I was proud of. > Perhaps a note to the examining committee suggesting a reevaluation of > these standards is in order. (Something tells me you'll be hearing > from Duaine on this soon.) While I eventually complied with the Guild requirements, took the tests, got the credential, and so on, setting and enforcing objective standards is not my normal way of approaching life. I keep high standards for myself, but those don't have to be uniform with all the rest of the piano technology world, and they have nothing to do with credentials. Those who wish objective uniform standards will have to take care of the testing process. So long as what they decide isn't too big an annoyance or expense, I'll do what they wish. I am glad, though, that the tests were a one-time obligation. When dealing with concert pianists, credentials printed on cards are pretty nonsensical. They can sit down at our newly-tuned and prepped pianos, play some chords, some passage work, and in less than a minute know all about us which they need to know. Why would you presume that **any** etd users would lose their sense of the voice of the piano. I watched a tuning. It went from note 1 straight to note 88 as single notes with muting strips in, and then the unisons were tuned fairly quickly. There were no intervals, there was no time to savor the sound. There were no checks of octaves to hear stretch. Afterwards, the piano did sound in tune, and not unmusical. But the tuning itself seemed an exercise in avoiding contact with the instrument. If these ETD users retain their sense of the voice of the piano, when are they doing it? This was just one tuning, and I've only seen little fragments of other ETD tuning. Perhaps it was not typical? And if you consider the RPT exam to be meaningless, why would you think that any aural tuner would have any sense of the "voice" of the piano. As far as I can tell, the exam has nothing at all to do with the voice of the piano. It's about accuracy in setting pitch, which is about the only thing which can be graded by rules. An aural tuning doesn't automatically impart musical sensibility to the practitioner, but at least it allows hours of connection to the instrument, which would allow one to develop the neural connections and associations needed. The other critical requirement, of course, is to hear the piano played, by recording or even better in person. Best of all, to hear pianists -- they are SO good! -- making music of one's own tunings. What a wealth of information about our work! How many people who have too much tuning work to get through in a day end up with the leisure and desire to savor a concert, whether they tune ETD or aural? A very unfortunate necessity for so many, that work load. What someone uses to tune the piano simply has no bearing on this particular ability if it's even a relevant description. I don't really know why you say that. The tuning process, and therefore, what comes into our ears for hours on end, is quite different. My "poor silly" was a flight of fancy. Ignore it if you wish. I do think that the tendency to tune slightly warbling unisons need not interfere with a sense of octave size. If that were true, string players would be royal idiots when asked to play octaves. Susan Kline -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20110131/353122c9/attachment.htm>
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