[CAUT] using as ETD

[Jeff Tanner]

On April 12 at 10:23 PM, Susan Kline wrote:
> There is something awfully pleasant about being in touch with the 
> instrument, without the distraction of any extraneous non-musical data.

See, this is really the heart of the misconception. After I started using 
the ETD, I learned a lot more about the piano than I knew before. The ETD 
actually put me more in touch with the instrument. The diagnostic abilities 
the ETD brings to the table are far more revealing of the character of the 
piano than what we have at our disposal without it.

Albert Picknell wrote:
>A generalization to which I am an exception (from David Ilvedson):
>"I tune unisons as I go and this is a challenge for aural tuners...why? 
>Because they are not confident in >tuning from unisons."
>
>I tune aurally from unisons all the time. No problem.

So do I. I've always tuned all treble unisons as I go, midrange and bass 
depends on the piano, either aurally or ETD. He may not have worded it the 
best way, but he's right. I think the benefit David probably meant to bring 
light to is that when you tune unisons as you go, everything changes behind 
you more rapidly than with single string tuning, so that as you aurally tune 
octaves going up, for example, your reference pitches are not where you left 
them, so you are carrying that error forward, multiplying its effect, unless 
you are a really good guesser.  With the ETD, your reference is unchanging 
and unisons as you go is more reliable.

Ron Overs wrote:
> 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.

Ironically, the point you make goes both ways. Now before anyone gets 
offended, read closely - this is not an indictment of anyone commenting on 
this thread. I suspect everyone commenting here is quite well skilled. But a 
lot of aural tooners out there defend aural tuning as superior because they 
don't want to have their skills challenged.  I heard just such an urban 
legend from a customer this week, "You know some people say that ear tuning 
is better because the machine makes it TOO perfect." You know that had to 
have been started by some tooner with an inferiority complex and that is 
what is used as a competitive claim to protect their reputation. Even after 
I started using my SAT, I thought for a long time, you know, I can tune 
aurally better than this thing -- it just makes my day less stressful. But 
as the years have gone on, I've studied what its doing vs what I would do 
aurally. It is most noticeable when you start trying to make aural 
corrections to force the imperfect piano scale to submit to our aural rules, 
only to realize that you're starting a mad cycle of making things worse. But 
more lately, I've begun realizing that my aural tuning sequence produces a 
tuning that might sound ok, but the machine gives me a little more 
confidence to be a risk taker with the overall tuning. You get results that 
you wouldn't have allowed yourself to produce aurally, and its usually 
pretty darn eye-opening. Certainly, its most noticeable when a poorly scaled 
spinet actually sounds like a piano afterward. But you then realize that 
every scale has imperfections, and if I'm setting the entire scale based on 
an imperfect middle section, then maybe my aural rules need to be 
reevaluated, even with concert pianos.

Two days ago I had a 6 piano day 80 miles away. The 5 pm appointment had two 
of the pianos, and the lady wanted me to tune her 90 year old beater upright 
to her Yamaha M404 and make it sound good. Thank you Mr. Sanderson.

Jeff Tanner