<HTML>In a message dated 12/13/01 9:09:41 AM Central Standard Time, Tvak@AOL.COM writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">In a message dated 12/13/01 5:12:26 AM, A440A@AOL.COM writes: << Being sensitive to temperament is a learned skill.  And the only ones that are going to be teaching it are the technicians. >> A technician I work with told me a story. I have no reason to believe it's not true, as he is a very straight shooter.  The subject came up in a discussion of EBVT, which I had just tuned for the first time, and was delighted with.  Since we had two identical grands sitting next to each other in the store, I suggested an experiment: we tune one with ET, the other with EBVT and see if the customers preferred one over the other. He told me it was his privilege to tune a piano for a concert held at a PTG convention about 10 years ago.  He tuned it in an HT, but which one he didn't tell me.  After the concert, (the audience of course consisting exclusively of tuners) he received many compliments on the fine tuning,  but no one made mention of the fact that it was not ET.  Seemingly, no one noticed.   Therefore, he thought it would be a waste of time to tune the two identical pianos in different temperaments. <<the heavyweights of academia don't want to be told that they have spent their careers in ignorance of some fundamental aspect of the music that they profess to have mastered. They will resist, no matter what. >> Anyone care to respond (...resist) to the anecdote related above? </BLOCKQUOTE> This has happened many times.  I have done the same thing several times myself.  If the EBVT were presented next to an identical piano in ET in a classroom situation but the audience did not know which was which and only music played, not intervals, the like result would be that the majority in the audience would prefer the EBVT but would also identify it as the piano in ET. For this reason, it is not likely to be done.  People do not want to feel that they have been deceived and furthermore, do not want to feel afterwards that everything they have always believed never was true. Coincidentally, I tuned a nice Steinway last Friday for a dinner party at a very nice place on the UW campus where French is spoken.  It is a place where I have frequented and cared for the piano now for some 25 years.  For nearly the last 10 years, it has been tuned in EBVT. Last night, I hurried back to town to attend a wonderful salon concert of all 20th Century French music:  Debussy, Ravel, Messien, Milhaud, Satie and others.  In addition to piano, there was Soprano voice, flute, harp and violin.  Conventional wisdom dictates that all of this music should and could *only* be performed in ET.  I remember vividly passing by a classroom at a PTG Convention where I think it was Del teaching and on a big easel were the words, "Conventional Wisdom Is A Idiot (sic)".  I've always kept that in mind. Needless to say, the music was wonderful.  I doubt that any technician would have been able to pick up on the fact that the piano was tuned differently without being told this fact although I can recognize the features of the kind of tuning I do.  One of the pianists happened to be one of those in town who insists upon having ET only although he often plays on pianos I tune and never knows about it.  The RPT technician he has tune the piano at his home tunes in a very mild Reverse Well.  Draw whatever conclusions you like. The pianist does not know me personally so he did not recognize me but played enthusiastically and wonderfully well and received hearty applause and took extended bows and offered an encore, the Chopin Polonaise in Ab.  The piano roared and soared and the audience immediately stood and offered their sustained applause. I have good reasons in many cases for *not* talking about the way I tune, many more than I would have for *full disclosure* or trying to educate someone who does not want to be educated. Bill Bremmer RPT Madison, Wisconsin <A HREF="http://www.billbremmer.com/">Click here: -=w w w . b i l l b r e m m e r . c o m =-</A> </HTML>