Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

[Avery Todd]

Bill,

I started to respond to all of your "***" but decided it wasn't worth my
time. I am so glad you're so impressed with your "tuning" skills. Maybe
someday, I will be too. I hope everyone else thinks the same thing. I am
SO tired of all your rantings. I wish you'd get off your soapbox about
how wrong everyone else is and write "productively" about what I know you
can! Otherwise, I wish you'd just quit posting to the list at all!

Finally, even I have had enough!!!!!!!

Avery

At 02:52 PM 05/05/02 -0400, you wrote:
>List,
>
>I have been far too occupied during the last 2 weeks to read much of what 
>has been discussed here.  I've been doing as I have for over 13 years now, 
>tuning not a single piano in ET.  I have tuned for public performances, 
>rehearsed the Bach St. Matthew Passion in which I will perform as one of 
>the soloists today, attended a Baroque English Opera where the harpsichord 
>was in Meantone and tuned a Steinway A & B for young artists who are 
>preparing to be in competitions.  Both are studying Beethoven.  Both 
>choose me as their technician because of the superior way I make their 
>pianos sound and for how long they continue to sound good after being tuned.
>
>I did manage to read some of what Ted Sambell wrote.  My encounter with 
>him is very clear in my memory too.  Let me say that I do respect him very 
>much.  I believe that he is the caliber of PTG Member who deserves the 
>kind of recognition provided by the Hall of Fame or Golden Hammer 
>award.  Anyone would be lucky to have him as a mentor.
>
>I clearly remember Ted's very strong admonition.  If it wasn't a finger 
>pointing, I remember a hand gesture, what the French would call "montrant 
>le doigt"  (showing the finger) intended to dissuade me from the ideas I 
>had about tuning.
>
>The piano I used that day in 1990 was a Korean import which was used to 
>give PTG Tuning Exams.  I was on the Exam Committee, training to become a 
>Certified Tuning Examiner.  In order to qualify for that training, I had 
>to have passed the exam with all scores above 90 which I had done fully 8 
>years previously and scoring a perfect 100 on unisons among other scores.
>
>Now, Ted said my unisons and octaves were bad but he had noticed an 
>improvement in more recent years.  That piano had some very bad false 
>beats which were noted as part of the record.  I had also invited an RPT 
>who is a piano dealer from New York to play the piano.  Both Ted and he 
>said the same thing and both banged violently on the notes they thought 
>were mistuned and unstable.  I explained that false beats were the cause 
>but apparently Ted does not remember that.
>
>As for the octaves, I was also using the unique Tempered Octave system I 
>had developed several years previous to that event and which I still use 
>today, have been using all along and certainly will continue to 
>use.  Neither my unisons nor my octaves are substantially different or 
>better now than they were 12 years ago, except that I may have more skill 
>at hiding false beats through unison tuning today than I did then.
>
>I listened to what Ted had to say and noted it.  I also noted that it was 
>coming from a most erudite practitioner who commanded a great deal of 
>respect.  But I still was not at all convinced by what he had to say, just 
>made aware that there are many people who must have the same strong 
>convictions and sets of beliefs that he has.
>
>Ted's views are much like those which appear in Isacoff's new book, 
>"Temperament".  He does what William Braide White does, tips his hat, so 
>to speak, to Meantone, letting us know that there once was this other way 
>to tune but which is obsolete to the point of not even being worthy of 
>study unless one wants to prove to oneself just why it is obsolete because 
>of it's restrictiveness.  There is no other possibility, so it would seem 
>from reading these authors.
>
>Ted, Isacoff and others ascribe many accomplishments in music history to 
>the use of ET.  Others are grasping at any straw to try to show or prove 
>that ET was in use at such and such dates in history so that such and such 
>composer *may* have used a piano in ET.  From this pure conjecture, we are 
>supposed to be motivated to embrace the almighty oneness, correctness, 
>appropriateness and infallibility of ET and reject any other idea as folly.
>
>Well, I don't.  It was my work as an Examiner and learning to use such a 
>tool as the SAT which demonstrated to me that ET never was and is not 
>today the standard which it has always been believed to be.  It is well 
>achieved today by some top professionals but even in the latter part of 
>the 20th Century, the tuning profession was not always consistent which 
>can be heard on many recordings, even very recent ones.
>
>Ted implies that all evidence of acceptance of non ET is anecdotal but 
>acceptance of ET is proof of its superiority.  Ted's dislike of the 
>Vallotti temperament that day in 1990 and his description of the 
>distasteful sounds it produced were his opinion and thus anecdotal 
>too.  That piano dealer hated it too but what interested me was the fact 
>that there were many people who tried it, listened to it and found it 
>beautiful and intriguing.  I remember one Quebecer telling me that the 
>Beethoven which someone played on it sent chills up his spine the way no 
>other tuning had ever done.
>
>Yet, we are supposed to dismiss this as anecdotal and go back to the idea 
>which has been standard practice for over 100 years, so they say.  It 
>would be imposing to do anything else.  It would be unethical to do 
>anything else without explanation and permission and the offer to tune it 
>*BACK* to ET if it is not found to be acceptable.
>I don't buy any of that because I know from many, many observations (some 
>of them documented) that professional piano technicians, some of whom call 
>themselves concert tuners cannot and do not tune in ET.
>
>In fact, I believe that it is the ET only philosophy which has led to the 
>perversion of practice which I heard once called Reverse Well and which 
>designation stuck with me.  If there is only one way to tune, then that 
>one way becomes whatever interpretation the practitioner puts upon it.  It 
>most often ends up being Reverse Well but is never recognized for what it 
>is.  It has been going on long enough and is pervasive enough however, 
>that I believe it may have established its own influence on music, the way 
>ET is thought to have done.
>
>I'm not going to tune any pianos in ET for anyone for any reason and that 
>is my right and prerogative.  If I lived in another area and worked under 
>different circumstances, I might be forced to but that is why I choose to 
>live and work where I do and as I do.  If I did go tune in New York City 
>for example, I would speculate that the resistance to what I do would not 
>come from artists, musicians or the public, only from other tuners who 
>can't do what I do.
>
>I've often been told as a way of putting down what I do that it is not new 
>and has been tried and rejected before.  Bill Garlick used to say that 
>there is nothing that anyone could do today that had not already been 
>done.  I can accept that but I challenge anyone anywhere to show me any 
>documentation which shows a temperament and octave arrangement that is the 
>same as mine.  When I see it, I'll change the name from EBVT with Tempered 
>Octaves to whatever it was called before.  I don't expect anyone will ever 
>find it.
>
>It does play Beethoven more appropriately than ET does.  It also plays 
>Bach and virtually any other composer's music from any era and in any 
>style more appropriately than ET does because of the Cycle of 5ths Key 
>Color feature and the Equal Beating features which allow simple keys to 
>sound purer than they really are.  It avoids the harshness of most 
>documented HT's and so it makes it suitable and appropriate for all kinds 
>of music, more suitable and appropriate than ET.  This is not just an 
>opinion nor is there just anecdotal evidence for it.
>
>Everyone has the right to believe what they want and I don't expect very 
>many people to take up my idea because you can't do it by just programming 
>an ETD.  You have to work at it and understand what it's all about.  But 
>that means that what I do is unique and of my own design.  Anyone else is 
>free and encouraged to come up with their own ideas too.  A new CD will 
>appear on the market in July which will feature 2 pianos tuned this 
>way.  The pianists and other musicians are all from New York except the 
>leader who is from Madison, WI.
>
>Bill Bremmer RPT
>Madison, Wisconsin
><http://www.billbremmer.com/>Click here: -=w w w . b i l l b r e m m e r . 
>c o m =-