Dear Dean Reyburn and Bill Ballard: Bill asks an interesting question, namely: "Is this the first time Virgil Smith's tuning has been captured? I'd like to try to answer that. I've been to a number of classes of Virgil and inspite of my disagreements with him over a few things, I have heartily supported, promoted, and encouraged him. He has won the argument with me about a single string being sharper than the full unison. I set out to prove him wrong and in the process discovered that he is right primarily in the section from the upper portion of the 4th octave on into the lower part of the 6th octave. As I began tuning downhill from the break at about D5, I used the SAT which was sitting on top of the MAC-RCT to get quickly into the ballpark. I refined the tuning, keeping in mind that the single string I was tuning would be at a different pitch when the unison was completed by ear (not because of a settling of the strings, but as mentioned above). When a unison was completed, if I had not properly estimated how much lower the full unison would be, I would redo the three strings until the final unison would be right with the machine. For those who use the RCT, I can detail a little better how I estimate this drift. By the time I was 7 notes lower, I could then use the 5th above to quickly zero-in aurally, then refine with the SAT, then refine with the RCT. By the time I got down to G4, it was no longer necessary to estimate the sharp drift of the center string so that it would be right when the full unison was played. I incorporated this knowledge in my 2 tunings. Score 1 for Virgil. Virgil often has made the statement that because he listens to the whole tone and its effect on the fundamental pitch of a note, he can tune all single, double, and triple octaves pure. Frankly, I have struggled with this explanation. Those of us who use electronic aids just KNOW that this cannot happen -- or could it? Well, after analyzing aurally what Virgil is doing when he tunes, I decided that I could make a closer approach to this by putting more stretch in my single octaves and double octaves to avoid the disparity with the triple octaves. The No. 8 stretch which I used provided .6 beats in the A2-A3 octave and the same in the A3-A4 octave. It also provided usually a slight stretch in the double octave up to the top of the piano. As I was tuning, I noticed that sometimes even the triple octave was a little sharp, enabling the quad octaves to be closer in tune. I personally still think that this is what Virgil is really doing, but I doubt that he would think of it in that way. I still cannot hear the beat between fundamentals which he claims to listen to, but who knows, someday I may have to score another one for Virgil. As Virgil was tuning in the afternoon,I had my RCT and SAT on the pro- gram which I was going to use. I was able to track him very closely most of the time. Also, since he was retuning a piano which I had tuned in the morning, we noticed that he did not need to make much change from what I had left on that piano. He definitely did change the temperament a little, but it was all within the bounds of acceptability. I was pleasantly surprised that he could tune so accurately with my machine, not having the ability to see it. No, I did not copy the record of his tuning, but it was very close to my idea of his type of stretch. That's why I said in a previous post that it ended up more as a battle of unisons. I should also say that when I tuned my piano in the afternoon, often I did not need to change some notes where Virgil had tuned them in the morning. So, you see that the scaling spread of the two tunings was quite similar. I believe the audience enjoyed the way we tuned the pianos. I would hope that some of them would pass on their remarks for the benefit of the rest of us. As I was tuning up from D#5, doing unisons as I went, I continued to check the finished octave so that the end result was exactly with my machine program. I often checked to see that the single octave below registered slightly flat to the note I was tuning, and the octave 5th and double octave 5th were well balanced on both sides. As I would play the note 3 octaves below, its 8th partial was usually registering right on with the note I was tuning. In the top octave, there was a little more variance in the triple octave match, but when it showed flatter than the note I was tuning, the quad octave would sound even better. All unisons from D#5 up were tuned purely by machine, each string individually. This gave me impeccable purity in that area. The Bass tuning always had definite stretch in the 4-2 relationship, slight stretch of the 6-3 relationship and in the bottom octave slightly exceeded the 8-4 relationship. As a teaser, when I was finished, I played 17ths down to the bottom octave and then switched to double octave 7ths so everyone could hear how even the beat progression was. I also played 17ths up the scale from the middle to the top just to show off the evenness of their beat rate progression. The audience was speechless during my entire tuning. I'm not quite sure just what that means. We have a very fine aural tuner here in Tempe by the name of Brent Fischer whose tunings I have been analyzing aurally for a couple of years. I think that he is doing something quite similar to what Virgil does, but does not explain it in the same terms. Sometime I hope to be able to analyze his tunings with the machine, or even maybe have a Tune-off here in Arizona. He is so busy, I don't know if it will ever happen. Both he and Virgil have been through the training sessions at Steinway Hall in NY. Many recordings on Steinways have this same type of octave stretching. Most of us have just been slow to catch on. Jim Coleman, Sr.
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