Jeff said: " Also, storing tunings and using the same tuning every time on the same piano exponentially increases stability." I agree wholeheartedly. When tuning aurally we tune different notes somewhat differently each time. The exact same tuning/tension on the piano each time really helps stability. dp David M. Porritt, RPT Oh, and one more stability benefit is the ability to measure how much pitch swing is going on throughout the scale BEFORE you start tuning. You can use this information to work with Mother Nature rather than against her when floating pitch. I always record the date, temp/humidity and cents deviation from A440 I tuned the piano at, and also usually where it was before I started, and I have a very clear picture of what the piano is going through from one appointment to the next, and how much pitch float to allow next time I'm there. I will float as little as +/- 2 cents if I think the tuning will be more stable as a result, or if a larger pitch correction is needed as much as +/- 6 cents. With the SAT III, I can program the offset before calculating the FAC and still use the pitch correction feature, and I'm sure others can do this as well. Makes for one pass pitch corrections that are unbelievably good, and this comes in very handy when you're doing bulk tunings. It's also really easy if you change your mind about how much float you want to allow after you get started. You just go into tune mode, adjust the cents deviation and recalculate the FAC on the fly. I didn't have the ability to do this when all I carried was a tuning fork that might be plus 1 cent in this room and minus 1.5 cents in the next. I suppose I am a bit of an aural tuning hypocrite. I ordered a Sight-O-Tuner not long after I started tuning, but misplaced the instructions almost immediately afterward before I had a chance to learn how to use the thing correctly (found them 15 years later rolled up in the box my first tuning hammer came in). Since I wasn't using it correctly, a tuner pointed out to me that the tunings I was performing weren't acceptable. So I worked on my aural tuning skills. If I hadn't lost the instructions, I might not have ever developed my aural skills to the level that I did, so, there's my hypocrisy. There's a post from me in the archives of one of these lists where I defended aural tuning as my art. I conceded to myself not long afterward that tunings are merely a fleeting snapshot in time, and I'd been investing all that energy into a stupid scale that, in most cases, might still remain quite musically acceptable, but will certainly not reflect the details of my artistry for most of the next 6 months or a year or five until I see that piano again. If I didn't realize this in my private sector work, full time college work hit me over the head with it like I was under that piano when it fell off the truck in those pictures posted earlier. Because if college tunings last until next week, that is a huge victory over the forces against you, and you always have at least 100 out of 120 pianos out of tune, so how can you ever feel like your work is good there? Tunings go away, some more quickly than others, along with my pride. And like snow in Georgia, they are beautiful for a short time, but they stay gone for longer than they were here. And so it doesn't matter how I tuned the piano after the tuning is gone, except that if I've put my heart into a fine aural tuning, a piece of my heart also left with it, vanishing into nothingness. And when a part of your soul can be extinguished so easily like that it can really take the life out of you and the enjoyment out of this work. Surely, there is still art to ETD tuning, but it is distributed to a different facet of the tuning than stressing over temporary minute subtleties of a dumb scale that it is likely only I will notice. But when we still have the energy (and time) to do other good things to the piano after the tuning process is complete that everyone will appreciate, that is where we become real artists. Jeff Tanner -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20100410/e3528bc3/attachment.htm>
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC