----- Original Message ----- From: "Susan Kline" <skline at peak.org> > But .... but ..... but ............ (the mind boggles). The only thing > that the ETD tells you is the minutiae of tiny pitch differences, and > whether your unisons are holding. Where's the beef? See, that's a bit of a misconception, in that it's somewhat backward. It actually allows you to not have to focus on the minutiae of interval relationships our aural rules impose so that you can get more in touch with everything else the piano is telling you. Just because you're watching lights, doesn't mean you're disconnected and ignoring everything else the piano is telling you. But if you're intently focused on the scale and aural checks, it takes some focus off other things the piano is telling you that are really more important to the overall musicality of the instrument than the minutiae of the scale. I tune all unisons aurally (except occasionally high treble), because I've not had good experience with inharmonics of unisons lining up well enough that you can always rely on the same partial to get clean unisons, and I think it's just faster. So, it's not like you're not involved with the piano just because you're looking at lights. Speaking of high treble, the ETD will also tell you if the last tuner tuned aurally or with a machine because an aural tuning just won't wind up that even in the high treble. I tuned one piano this week, and the tuning I found was all over the place. But I discovered that every F was oddly out of place - RIGHT ON PITCH. That told me something about the last tuner who serviced the piano. It also might give me an indication of how much pitch correction was performed and how much that pitch correction varied in different sections or even single notes the LAST time the piano was tuned. If you're tuning aurally, you won't think to pay attention to that kind of detail because you're intently focused on where you're going rather than where it's been, but with lights spinning at different speeds, it becomes very clear with no extra effort. Among other things, it also tells you something of the character of how the piano responds to climate changes, and gives you much more information about how much the piano moves around than we have aurally. If it's raining, I can reset the pitch after a quick run through the scale tells me where best to let the pitch float, and not worry about turning every danged tuning pin, resting assured that the piano will be back about where it should be tomorrow. And that not only reduces stress today, but tomorrow as well. Aurally, we have a somewhat accurate tuning fork that can help us check a couple notes pretty quickly, but not all of the piano that fast to see how to reduce workload and wear on the pinblock. Aurally, you really don't know how much each section moves until you tune them. > > How can a machine telling you exactly where it wants the pitch to be > compare with listening to the whole sound of intervals and unisons, how > they interact, and the resonance and warmth of different stretches and > unisons, for a couple of hours? Well, it has more to do with hearing the final product than forcing the individual intervals and unisons to obey certain rules. Kind of like the difference in Micro and Macro Economics, the overall economy can be humming along beautifully doesn't mean that all individuals or localities are faring so well, or that everyone has a job or even NEEDS one, we as a nation are more affected by the Macro than the Micro, and our standing in the world relies more on the Macro than the Micro. Same applies to tuning, you can take your mind off of micro-tuning and listen to the macro-tuning afterward, and realize the piano can produce quite beautiful music without wasting so much energy on the little details that form it. It really takes using an ETD for a while before you can begin to understand just how little what you just wrote about matters to the overall tuning and how much less stressed you can be because of it. > > As for the trouble with notes changing behind one (like in Hansel and > Gretel, where birds eat up the breadcrumbs), it seems to me that the > answer is a second pass, which isn't a great hardship if the first one is > fast enough. And I don't see the benefit of the ETD in this situation, > since the machine will tune the higher treble exactly where it thinks it > should be, but the lower registers would still be changing behind it > exactly the same way as with an aural pitch raise, so the second pass > would still be needed. Not necessarily. If the tuning is changing behind you, it is more likely that when the ETD tunes the higher treble where it thinks it should be, it will wind up closer to where everything else is moving to. This is very helpful especially for situations where you can float pitch without much grief. Because of unusually dry climate for us this winter I was doing pitch raise tunings I call "A440 minus", where I just shoot for the at pitch tuning and let what happens happen, allowing that the climate changes that will occur over the next few weeks will make the tuning better before it gets worse again. It actually leaves the piano quite musically acceptable with one pass, with the changes that happen behind you being relative to the degree of climactic change affecting the degree of pitch difference. That's something the ear won't allow you to trust to happen. With spot on pitch corrections, believe it or not, the pitch raise feature will get a first pass tuning so close that for a practice room, for example, it might not be worth the effort of a 2nd pass. I've even done 20 cent pitch corrections on "important" grands at the college that finished so close that the 2nd pass wasn't worth the time. I was never able to achieve that kind of precision with an aural one pass pitch correction, and I'd gotten what I thought was pretty decent at it. Obviously, having a treble > tuned to a nominal pitch while the middle register has sagged is no better > (and maybe worse) than the aural situation, where the whole thing is > wandering down together. I just erased a very long response to this for the sake of space. But there are situations when a 2nd pass can be counterproductive, and a single pass with an ETD will produce a better result than a single aural pass. If you haven't done it both ways it will be difficult to understand why. But think church sanctuaries where the air is controlled only on Sunday and for the tuning. Or somebody goes and turns on the A/C after you start and you don't really realize it until you're well underway. The piano just won't adjust quickly enough, nor do you want it to, to be able to do a satisfactory job aurally, but running the scale quickly with an ETD will produce a better result for the one hour it is used on Sunday. Same goes for verticals with 50 watt DC rods burning down beneath, keeping the piano nice and cozy in rooms where HVAC control is poor and you might be forced to tune the thing at 61 degrees in the middle of August. I even have one customer who only adjusts the thermostat in the room where her piano is just before it gets played or tuned. If you try to do a fine aural tuning in these situations, you just wear yourself out. > > In my unusually humble opinion, of course. After all, women are not the > problem!! <grin> Of course not! ;-) Jeff > > Susan > > >
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC