>I saw Virgil, at a workshop. Extremely elegant stretching, and a great human >being. But were his fourths the same at the expense of clean unisons? I would say no; I've talked to him at length, and there is no time at which he purposefully "fuzzies" a unison to make a fourth work out. It's so difficult to recreate a great tuning in a class situation---for one thing, for all the classes he's done, I think Virgil still gets nervous in front of his peers. Plus, everybody gathers around the piano, and all those bodies probably drive the temperature and humidity way up in a short period of time, wacking out the tuning so far. Here's what I know: when I started to take Virgil literally about fourths beating the same about 3 years ago, a whole new, intense, joyful, precise, musical level of tuning a piano opened up for me, and after a little while my longtime serious-player clients noticed a difference: it sounded "more right," "smoother," "finally in tune in the treble," "wow! It sings now," "the action feels so much better (and I didn't do a damn thing to the action)," "it rings so clear," "it sounds like a recording,".........you get the idea. Everybody loved it. And most importantly, I loved it. I feel like I'm really on the road to mastery. AND---I don't know a damn thing, really, about how I got here. I'll leave that to the theoreticians and propellerheads, God love 'em. I DO know what sounds great to me, and on a piano, it's all the fourths beating at basically the same rate..........toodle-ooo........David A > >There's a lot I didn't understand about Virgil's tuning, Join the club. I was confused or intimidated by it until recently (8 years). > and I wasn't >convinced by some of his explanations, but it was a good experience >to watch him and listen to what he did. Absolutely. Trust your ears; trust your body; trust your musical sensibility. Best.......David Andersen
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