There are times in my life when the SAT is not a luxury or a stress reducer but is the difference between being able to do my job or not.
I am often the victim of Tuneous Interuptus. A bunch of kids and a professor come waltzing into a room when I am partway through a service and I am done. Well I have learned to always look over my shoulder. I always tune and stabilize unisons as I go so that the piano is somewhat usable at any point in the process. Using the machine I can come back to that piano a few hours later and start right back in without any hesitation or interval checking.
Sometimes I create my own interruptions. Some classrooms are in use all day. I like to keep this job more or less 9-5. If I can tune a piano in three 10-minute sessions while the room is kind of empty it gets done. Art it is not. We are talking a machine tuning, no aural checks and great unisons. I can tell you, that is a really good-sounding piano.
Another scenario- I tune for a music festival. The piano lives and performs in a tent 100 yards from the Pacific for two weeks. The fog can roll in and the temp can drop 10 degrees in 15 minutes. The performers are all rehearsing in the only place available, the tent. Sometimes they don't like to stop rehearsing. I sit there enjoying the show and sometimes have 30, 20, 10 minutes to prepare a piano for performance. Somehow the lighting guys always have to be fiddling right over the piano and talking during that time. I have always managed to get it done somehow using the machine. (What was that about stress??)
These are the extreme situations. Normally I am a cyborg tuner- totally aural and the machine is mostly on. I choose to agree or disagree with the machine at my discretion. I do hit my knee with a tuning fork and tune from scratch from time to time. After all, I worked very hard to get those aural skills and I don't want to lose them.
Ted Kidwell, RPT
California State University, Sacramento
Capistrano Hall, rm. 153
6000 J Street
Sacramento, CA 95819-6015
916.278.6737
________________________________
From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Porritt, David
Sent: Tuesday, April 13, 2010 4:31 PM
To: caut at ptg.org
Subject: Re: [CAUT] using as ETD
Ron wrote: " The ETD uses the fundamental to determine the pitch, and will not be 'listening' to the fifths, fourths and tenths which will be annoying the aural tuner at the break transition."
Your observations about the hockey stick bridges and inharmonicity jumps are totally correct. However no ETD that I am aware of listens to the fundamental in the hockey stick area. SAT is listening to the 4th partial, TuneLab is flexible and can listen to any partial the tuner determines, but I'm not aware of anyone setting TuneLab to listen to the fundamental in that area. My choice was the 3rd partial in that area. The Verituner supposedly listens to multiple partials though I've never used one so I can't verify that.
Listening to the 3rd of 4th partial seems to help that area to be somewhat less bad that if it really were listening to the fundamental.
I still believe that once you solve the puzzle on a given piano it's nice to be able to save that solution for next time rather than solving the same puzzle over and over. Before I retired from SMU my life consisted of maintaining 106 pianos. It was quite a time and energy saver to pull out a saved solution for subsequent tunings rather than tuning as if I had never seen the instrument.
dave
David M. Porritt, RPT
dporritt at smu.edu
-----Original Message-----
From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Ron Overs
Sent: Tuesday, April 13, 2010 4:01 PM
To: caut at ptg.org
Subject: Re: [CAUT] using as ETD
Jim wrote;
>. . . and truthfully, sometimes the ETD just ain't right! I've got a
>SATIII and a Verituner and especially at the break I'll occasionally
>disagree with the machines. I really don't know why, and maybe the
>real good ETD guys can tell me, but sometimes I hear strong beats
>that are objectionable . . .
I'm strictly a 'fork basher' Jim, but I'd like to follow up on your
observation. The ETD's stretch calculation is based on the
inharmonicity following a geometric curve, which certainly doesn't
happen at the break when a hockey stick long-bridge is incorporated
into the 'design'. When tuning down towards the shortened speaking
lengths of the hockey stick, the rapidly falling tension will result
in the inharmonicity rising up, away from the geometric curve of an
idealised scale. The fifths will appear to be increasingly narrower
than they are on account of the sharper I(3) in the lower note of the
fifth - when checking the fifth, or the I(5) when checking the tenth.
The aural tuner will compensate by slightly widening the octave to
achieve an acceptable beat-rate progression. Similarly, when the
lower inharmonicity of the first covered notes are encountered,
especially if the first covered strings are on the hockey stick, the
aural tuner will tend to make these octaves slightly less wide, to
prevent the fourths from beating wildly. The ETD uses the fundamental
to determine the pitch, and will not be 'listening' to the fifths,
fourths and tenths which will be annoying the aural tuner at the
break transition.
If a technician can't tune a piano without the help of ETD, it will
be most unlikely that he/she will be capable of obtaining an accurate
tuning with one. Especially at the break of some pianos.
Its amazing how some technicians, who use ETD, claim that their
tunings will, by virtue of the machine, be superior to an aural
tuning? Ironically, it gives me an indication of the aural tuning
skills of any ETD-technician who makes such a claim.
Ron O.
--
OVERS PIANOS - SYDNEY
Grand Piano Manufacturers
_______________________
Web http://overspianos.com.au
mailto:ron at overspianos.com.au
_______________________
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