Billbrpt,
At 16:13 10/23/2000 -0400, you wrote:
>Between my 4th and 5th pianos of the day, I read Conrad's, shall we say,
>*provacative* post.
Agent provocateur? Moi-même? Merci beaucoup!! I resemble that
remark. I'm trying to provoke, pry, cajole or in some other way elicit
some documentation of "RW's " popularity.
>If you say so, I believe it. ... When I read Owen Jorgensen's
>book that tells how people were *trying* to tune ET but ended up with
>something else, I'll remember what you guys claim
Could you please quote chapter and verse, so I don't have to re-reread both
the big red book and the older "Tuning the Historical Temperaments by
Ear". That way we could at least start out on the same wavelength.
As you know, I learned to tune from Owen and like and respect him
tremendously, but that doesn't keep me from disagreeing with him from time
to time.
>Everybody who takes the PTG Exam tunes in ET whether they pass it or not,
>regardless of the score. The errors all constitute ET.
I believe I asked questions not long ago with regard to just how far from
the theoretical correct tuning of ET or HT before it no longer is ET or
HT. To go back to the lab analogy, how much instrument error is there?
> No matter what anyone does, no matter how good, fair or poor someone's
> tuning is, it's still
>ET, always has been, always will be. It's just *mine* that isn't and by
>George, that's *unethical*!
>Now have I got it right?
No.
>Conrad wanted to see hard evidence of what I was talking about: that most,
>yes I mean *most* aural tuners actually tune a backwards version of a
>Well-Tempered Tuning instead of ET but fail to recognize that fact. I have,
>on a few occasions, documented this phenomenon and once I wrote a post about
>it.
That was anecdotal observation, not documentation. - See below.
> Generally, I am not inclined to go around documenting every shortcoming
>down that I encounter, I just make a mental note of it. I hesitate to write
>this down and publish it because I am doing the very same thing I have
>criticized Conrad for doing: writing a full report on how bad somebody
>else's work is.
Let me understand this statement correctly. Your saying,
«I'm willing to say this here and now. At least 90% of what I would
document will be RW.»
is _not_ bashing 90% of tuners/tunings?????
If you check back to your favourite Journal issue, you will see
photographic DOCUMENTATION of the craftsmanship of my Brambach
flowerbed. Perhaps an opportunity to be published in regard to your "RW"
hypothesis would be welcome? Who knows? Maybe I could provide that
opportunity.
> But *Enquiring* minds want to know, so here it is.
>...
>I used the Exam program to do this analysis. I first read the tuning as it
>was, and no surprise to me, it was Reverse Well, as I expected, although it
>was not one of the more extreme examples of it. I then aurally "straightened
>it out" into ET, although I NEVER tune ET *except* for Exam or research
>purposes. I used my own aural ET as a reference tuning. It does not look
>entirely numerically regular but I have seen "Master Tunings" for Exams that
>didn't either. I am sure that it would "pass" the Exam at either 100 or with
>possible 1 error at 97.5. Having said that, I used my own aural ET as a
>reference and scored the Reverse Well (RW) temperament and my own EBVT
>against it. Here are the results: (Please note that per the Exam program,
>all values are read on octave 5 which differs from the FAC program).
So, am I to understand that you used your own admittedly flawed
temperament as the standard against which you graded the others? Were "me,
myself and I" the three RPTs doing the Master Tuning? Putting aside for
the moment the unabashed arrogance of that assumption, might there not be
the chance for compounding errors creeping in which would skew the results
in one way or the other?
I would think that comparisons to a consistent standard would produce
consistent and credible results.
>The Reverse Well scored 82.5. It "passed" the Exam!
Wrong! What it did was to show that _your_ ET was a pretty good RW.
....
>I guess this confirms the statement made recently by David who claims that if
>you use a fork, the treble will be flat. I wonder what Conrad did not want
>hard data to support *that* statement?
Uh, Bill... This is extraneous. When did I say _anything_ about flat
trebles? Besides, I believe that treble stretch or lack of it is
independent of temperament. Please stick to the topic currently under
discussion.
>Of course, this is only one "anecdotal" experience but if you really want me
>to Conrad, I'll document every time I tune a piano that someone else has
>tuned before me for a while. If it doesn't turn out to be RW, fine, if it is
>a good ET, fine, if it turns out to be ET with only a few random errors that
>do not exhibit a RW pattern, I'll document that too.
If you insist upon using your own rendition of ET as a standard against
which all others are measured, I'm afraid that your data will be, as they
say, "compromised". An experiment protocol can only be valid if there is
a solid floor and negligible calibration error. Since by your own
admission you rarely tune ET, your "control" is suspect.
>I'm willing to say this here and now. At least 90% of what I would document
>will be RW. The piano I tuned for the Temperament Festival in Providence was
>and I called Jim Coleman over to witness it but he didn't seem to understand
>exactly what RW was. Likewise, when I went to Chicago to meet again with
>Virgil Smith, there it was, as sure as the sun rises and sets, the piano is
>in RW and the treble is so flat that it had to be tuned 3 times to make it
>hold well enough for a demonstration.
I'm all ears. What _is_ the correlation between temperament and treble
flatness?
>As the old skit on Johnny Carson used to say, "Believe it, or STUFF it!"
As Ronald Reagan would say, "There you go again."
"Just the facts, Ma'am, just the facts." - Sgt. Joe Friday
Conrad Hoffsommer - Decorah, Ia.
You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say will be misquoted,
then used against you.
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