David, you might keep in mind the post I was replying to. Jeff had said that when he started using the ETD he felt it put him much more closely in touch with a piano. He said the diagnostic abilities of an ETD revealed far more about a piano than we can do unaided. So, I was wondering what great revelations an ETD could produce which our ears could not. (I really was ... is there some capacity of an ETD I'm unaware of?) My idea of an ETD is that it says, "this note is high -- well, now you have it too low -- ah, that's just right. And by the way, that unison you tuned five minutes ago -- one of the strings is exactly 1.3 cents flat now." Not that this isn't all good information, I just didn't see how it adds up to a great new understanding of and contact with a piano, compared to tuning it aurally. In aural tuning one gets the full tonal envelope and has the capacity to listen to different intervals and therefore the voicing and tonal blend as the overtones from two or more real physical strings mix with each other. Perhaps there's now an ETD which can listen not only to all the partials and their different strengths, but also how they interact with all the partials of other notes? The physical, not the theoretical partials? But then, even after it "listened" to all that, would it have the taste to decide which exact placement of a note sounded more musical? And all very, very close to ET? That would take one powerful algorithm! Moving up the scale after setting an equal temperament (not that hard to set one which is close enough to exact that no musical difference will be discernible when playing), ... that is, having set a decent temperament and then moving up the scale, I try fourths and fifths and octaves with each note, all the way to the top. This prevents "outliers" from straying and puts everything into a sort of self-reinforcing interval net, where anything which wanders too far from the ideal will stick out and be noticed, and where any chance discrepancies from ET will tend to wander back into The Plan instead of diverging. It also catches any notes which have shifted since they were tuned. And one ends up able to play open chords of extreme clarity and warmth, especially those covering a wide span. There is some music which really grooves on that. Not that a tuner with an excellent ear and a good ETD used right couldn't achieve that -- but is it as satisfying as "cooking from scratch"? Susan (who isn't the problem!) <grin> (I'll have to remember that one ... thanks, David.) >But nothing...are you saying the minutiae of pitch isn't important >in aural tuning? That's what I always suspected. This whole >sound you love is happening one note at time. You bring the octave >into relative tune and check it with other intervals and make >adjustments. I do the same thing except the next note set with >ETD. Your ballparking is no more whole sound than mine. I love >aural tuning instruction where you are told to not worry about a >note because you will come back and adjust it later on...I prefer to >have all notes very close.
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