SHUDDER Joe Goss imatunr@srvinet.com www.mothergoosetools.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ron Nossaman" <RNossaman@cox.net> To: <pianotech@ptg.org> Sent: Saturday, July 27, 2002 5:37 PM Subject: Echo-cho-ho-ho-ho-o-o-o-o~~~~~~~~~~ > Had an interesting tuning appointment yesterday morning. A small church > congregation had built a VERY much bigger facility, and were chasing the > more pressing finishing touches getting ready for their grand opening > tomorrow. Their Yamaha C-6 had been moved into the sanctuary about a week > ago, and my mission was to tune it and the new P-22 in the even newer choir > room. No Problem. It's what I do. > > The sanctuary turned out to be about a half-acre, octagonal, > concrete-walled echo chamber. It wouldn't have mattered where the piano was > put with eight reflective wall surfaces at 45° from one to the next. > Anywhere in the room was nearly equally as bad as anywhere else. The echo > effect was unusual and bizarre too, not at all like the usual annoying > "rifle shot" and diminishing ricochets I'm used to fighting everywhere. Oh > no, not this one. For the first couple of seconds, there was a general > continual (no pulse or ricochet) sound at the same pitch as the note > struck, which gradually lost volume, clarity, and organization over the > next five seconds or so, and finally died in a sudden total disorganization > that sounded like a grubby buzz. Brown noise, very unpleasant. It reminded > me of multiple generation Xerox copies that lose clarity, resolution, and > detail with each generation, still being mostly recognizable until finally, > one copy looks like a Jackson Pollock Rorschach that someone cleaned fish > on. That was the buzz that finally killed the sound abruptly in phase > cancellations. At least that's what I thought it sounded like. An extremely > strange sound. The interesting thing was that it acted like a sort of > extended super duplex! A very lively one. I got beats from the echo when I > changed the pitch of a string, but the sustain was fantastic! I was getting > three+ seconds from C-8 putting my finger on the string immediately after > striking it. The mid-tenor was good for over seven seconds with all the > dampers down immediately after striking a note. You can't get that sort of > response most places, tuned duplex or not. Fortunately, about ten minutes > into the tuning, someone started vacuuming in the hall, and I had a > familiar enough acoustical point of reference to finish up without severe > psychological damage. > > The lady who set the appointment said the choir was becoming dangerously > depressed trying to practice in there where they couldn't tell who was > singing what when, and from which direction. I suggested she advertise for > a basso profundo and break out the Gregorian chant sheet music. Heck, I'd > even attend the service for that. She said she was seriously considering it. > > I'm told a high-dollar acoustical engineer's disaster recovery team are > coming in a couple of weeks to try and conjure up a fix that doesn't > involve going back in time and shooting the architect before the thing was > built. I hope they get it under control before the Fall tuning, but I > expect it's going to be expensive. I can hardly wait to see what they do. > > Another day in tuning land. > Ron N >
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