technology and temperaments

[A440A@AOL.COM]

Greetings, 
      Since she was going to be unavailable in July, in preparation for the 
temperament classes this year at Reno,  I asked Enid Katahn to play the 
demonstration pieces on a Yamaha Disklavier.  I will be taking the disk with 
me, and Laura will have a Yamaha there for the classes,  (pss.  Laura?  I 
really need a Disklavier grand for these two classes!!) 
     I suppose anybody that has presented classes numerous times will notice 
that they are all different.  Even with my original outline, charts, murals, 
etc. to keep me on track,  the 90 minutes always take a different route to 
completion, and I always learn something new everytime I do this.   This year 
will be different, in that I will have transposition available, and we can 
compare the selections in various keys.  It is rather amazing to hear what 
happens to say, the prelude in C# when it is played in C on a well-tempered 
piano.  Tonality, what a concept! 
    We have a couple of the instruments at Vanderbilt, so I went over this 
morning to tune one for the session.  (I figure she would have an easier time 
playing if the piano was well tempered).  
    I found the piano to be 15 cents flat from the middle up, and I had one 
hour to have it ready.  Soooo......  I put its FAC into the SAT III,  a Young 
template on top, added .5 to the double octaves and took a pitch raise 
measurement on A4.  The first pass took 12 minutes,(the SAT can listen to two 
strings at once, and with a little practise, the user can discern the 
stopping of lights for one string while the other is spinning the lights like 
crazy).  
    The second time thru took another 42 minutes and I had the piano ready to 
go, at pitch, in its new tuning.  I have a hard time believing that that 
could have been done aurally in 54 minutes. The piano sounded fine, (as fine 
as a smallish Yamaha upright can sound!) 
   Not only is the tuning technology available today astounding, but the 
Disklavier is impressive as well.  It recorded Enid's playing so close to 
what she had done that I couldn't tell the difference.  She mentioned the 
pedal wasn't exactly like she felt she had played, but otherwise, it was a 
true rendition of her playing. She also caught a couple of things that had 
escaped her as she played.   
   Reno will be my last Guild temperament presentations for a while, as it is 
time for more (and new) voices to be heard on the subject. From what I gather 
as I have traveled around speaking on the temperaments these last three 
years, there are many techs out there now that are multi-temperament 
familiar, so I know that there is increasing knowledge and perspectives that 
we could all profit from.   
    Hope to see as many as possible of the list in Reno. 
Regards, 
Ed Foote RPT 
Nashville