Hi Roger: You asked now often I have "cheated" on the hammerline. Answer: very often. A dropped hammerline is the greatest cause for no aftertouch. I must confess that a few times I have "cheated" on letoff, but mostly to disempower a banger or string breaker. At the present time, we do not have any test for voicing. In giving the test, we try to use pianos with a bare minimum of false beats in order to give the examinee a fighting chance. Most of the remedies for false beats are merely temporary unless dealt with in the rebuilding process. Jim Coleman, Sr. On Tue, 16 Feb 1999, Roger Jolly wrote: > Hi Jim, > A well written, thought provoking post. Loosen the standards on > temperament, but tighten the standards on false beat elimination and > voicing. These two items mentioned, has a big effect on tuning, and > ultimately the musicality of the instrument. > Also some cause and effect test in the practical regulation part of the > test. As an expert tech, how many times have you cheated on a hammer line > to get after touch? 20mins and the piano feels a lot better, vs a complete > regulation. > Regards Roger > > > > At 04:32 PM 16/02/99 -0700, you wrote: > >I thought there may be some who would be interested in the latest Tuneoff. > > > >At the California State Conference Feb 12-14, I taught a class on Advanced > >Tuning. At the beginning of each class I presented two identical pianos > >which had just been tuned in different temperaments. One was just a standard > >SAT FAC tuning which incidentally is a very good tuning on a Yamaha C3. The > >other tuning was the Moore 18th Century Well Temperament which had some > >notes tuned 2.5 and 3.0 cents off from equal temperament. > > > >After playing identical selections on the two pianos, I asked the class > >which piano they thought was the one with the "funny" tuning (actually, I > >used the words Moore Well tempered tuning). In the Friday class, the voting > >was fairly even. 54% thought the FAC tuning was the Well Tempered Tuning and > >only 46% guessed correctly. In the Sunday afternoon class, 80% thought that > >the FAC Tuning was the Well Tempered Tuning. I next asked which piano they > >liked best as far as tuning was concerned. It was almost unanimously decided > >in favor of the Well Tempered Tuning. All of the voting was done without the > >audience really knowing which piano had which tuning. > > > >I asked for a show of hands as to how many in the audience were musicians. > >My estimate was at about 95%. I confessed my ulterior motive for doing this > >kind of demonstration. In 1977 Dr. Sanderson and I were asked by the then > >President Don Morton to develop a standardized Tuning test for the Guild. > >We adjusted our scoring procedures so that 80% of the then RTT members would > >pass at the 80% score. Being a perfectionist as I am in some areas, I began > >pushing for tighter scoring in the Temperament area. We later adopted a > >multiplier system such that the total error points would be multiplied by > >2.5 and then subtracted from 100% to give the final Temperament Score. > >We have used this tighter scoring procedure for almost 20 years now. The > >question in my mind is: "Have we tightened our scoring to satisfy the > >elitests? Are we now just 'gilding the Lily'? If an audience of piano > >technicians who are also musicians cannot tell the difference between > >equal temperament and a mild historical temperament, are we on an ego trip? > >Are we setting standards to protect our little clique? Are our standards set > >to protect the public from shoddy work? Which is it?" > > > >I asked for a show of hands in the advanced tuning class for those who think > >we have elevated our temperament standards too high. The voting was almost > >unanimous. I mentioned that I had talked to some very well respected tuners > >who also agreed with me that we are guilding the lily. I do believe that > >we should keep the 1 cent tolerance for scoring the points in the mid-range > >and temperament section, but that we should relax the conversion > >multipliers. I further believe that we should add some questions in our > >written test to include various test intervals to be used in making > >decisions as to whether an interval is too wide or too narrow. With this > >covered in the written test, we can save time during the tuning test scoring > >by eliminating much of the hesitancy on the part of the examinee in > >aurally verifying his penalty points. I do still believe that Equal > >Temperament should be our testing standard, but that we have just > >made it more difficult for associate members to upgrade because of our > >arbitrarily tightened standards. > > > >This is the third year in which I have conducted this type of test in my > >classes. The results have been even more demonstrative in other classes. At > >the Arizona Conference this year and at the Calif. State Conf. last year, > >almost the entire audience guessed wrong when asked to identify the piano > >which had the Well temperament. > > > >My question to this group is: Do you feel that our temperament standards > >are a little too high? I would like some feedback. I am not promoting > >Historical or hysterical tunings. In all of the classes where I have done > >this type of test, it was conceded that both tunings were good tunings. > > > >Have I opened a "can or worms" or what? > > > >Jim Coleman, Sr. > > > Roger Jolly > Baldwin Yamaha Piano Centre > Saskatoon and Regina > Saskatchewan, Canada. > 306-665-0213 > Fax 652-0505 >
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