[CAUT] String Coupling / SB and Bridge stiffness...and maybe Pure Sound

Fred Sturm fssturm at unm.edu
Sat Jun 13 16:59:33 MDT 2009


On Jun 13, 2009, at 5:12 PM, Richard Brekne wrote:

> He said at the time that for almost anyone who ever had become  
> reasonably skilled at ear tuning it would be really very difficult  
> to completely turn off the ears.


	I think it is very easy to "turn off the ears" while tuning, other  
than unisons: don't play any intervals, just play individual notes.  
Then there is and can be no aural component to the decision of where  
to put a note. Another way is to play other notes (an octave, 12th,  
double 8v, double 8v 5th, triple 8v below for high treble) and make  
your decision based on where the coincident of those notes partials  
line up, what compromise is best. That is a kind of hybrid approach,  
but certainly one isn't making decisions based on what one is hearing  
at the time. That is how I tune. Or that is how I set up tunings,  
which I save and reuse. I make decisions based on what experience  
tells me will work best for the piano as a whole, which is often in  
conflict with what my ear would tell me based on listening to the 8v  
and 12th.
	In any case, good to learn a little more about what Dr Jim has to say  
about the process that went into the legendary tuneoffs.
Regards,
Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico
fssturm at unm.edu





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