Hi Dean, We carefully checked the upper octaves aurally, me and the 3 tuning examiners (Teri Meredyth, RPT, Steve Schell, RPT, and Brian Holt, RPT). My upper octaves were noticeably narrow. It's possible that I subtracted the cents incorrectly for the highest octave, but I had enough time to go over the entire piano 4 times, I rechecked the high treble a fifth time, and I tried to be very careful each time. To be honest, I didn't even check the upper octave for clean sounding octaves aurally (my mistake), I just tuned straight off the SAT using the high-treble-tip. I'm completely to blame for the errors as I'm the one who tuned the piano. I guess this is a good lesson in that your ears must be the final judge - not a machine! (Although, the SAT scored at 95+ percent (overall average) during this exam - not bad.) As far as the master tuning possibly being "off" a bit, I don't think this was the case. The piano (Yamaha C3) was master-tuned several years ago, and they rechecked it just last year making very, very minor mods. Of all the examiners to be guilty of not strictly following the exam rules for the upper octaves, these would be the last folks to do it. My exam experiences in Long Beach were by far some of the most professional, fair, encouraging, and helpful experiences I have ever encountered. The Long Beach test center for Southern California has got to be one of the best. And all the examiners I encountered were ultra-professional. Anyways, I still suggest to future examinees to tune the exam piano the way you would any other piano in real life - just do your best, and aurally check those upper octaves when using an ETD! Regards, John Piesik, RPT Usually the above tip is very helpful if the examiners follow the exam rules and set up the highest octave tuning to single octaves. They sometimes don't, in this case they probably tuned to double octaves or wider, a better sounding tuning but not strictly following the rules which specify clean single octaves. I would love to have checked the the single 2:1 octaves on that master tuning, I'm pretty sure they would check very wide. See you in Febuary! -Dean ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dean L. Reyburn, RPT 2695 Indian Lakes Road Cedar Springs, Michigan, USA web page: www.reyburn.com 1-888-SOFT-440 (or 616-696-0500) email: dean@reyburn.com
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