trichords unisons

[Farrell]

"When I have spent a bunch of time on a piano, and believe it still ought to
be better, but seem to have done all I can do, I close up the piano and play
some music -- not tuning checks. Often what I hear when I switch gears like
this is a surprise -- a nicely tuned piano. Even if you don't play the
piano, you can learn some chords to make a pretty sound, even if it is just
some parallel major triads."

This is a very good point Kent. I'll echo that point. Especially with some lower-end little pianos that I service, it gets frustrating trying to get some of the imperfection-noise out of them. At some point I will give up and just say to myself - "well, this one is doomed to a cruddy tuning". Then I play it (I don't play - I just run some scales and major triads up and down the whole keyboard) and I am often pleasantly surprised that the piano sounds quite nice (relatively speaking, of course).

Terry Farrell
  
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kent Swafford" <kswafford@earthlink.net>
To: "pianotech list" <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 28, 2002 11:42 PM
Subject: Re: trichords unisons


> On 5/28/02 9:52 PM, "Benny L. Tucker" <precisionpiano@alltel.net> wrote:
> 
> > it's that dang tenor section. It seems like the better I get, the more I can
> > hear, the worse I actually tune.
> 
> Sounds to me like you are coming along fine. Welcome to the club.
> 
> Now that your ear is sufficiently trained, there is no such thing as a
> perfectly tuned unison because no matter how small the error, you can hear
> it. And there is no such thing as "no error", because when you are tuning
> sufficiently well, you will be tuning to the limits of the piano, that is,
> you will hear even string  wildness as a tuning error. And you will hear
> _any_ instability in the pitch of a string as "wildness". And _all_ pianos
> have at least some instability.
> 
> As your ability to hear imperfection grows, so will the quality of your
> tunings. This is how high-level tuning skills are developed, by learning to
> listen. But, oh my, those imperfections that you think you must eliminate
> but cannot, will be magnified in your psyche, since what a piano tuner
> _does_ is learn how to hear tuning errors in order to try to eliminate them.
> "And hear them you will," as Yoda might say. The only solution is
> experience. It will teach you how well things must really be tuned in the
> face of inevitable imperfection.
> 
> When I have spent a bunch of time on a piano, and believe it still ought to
> be better, but seem to have done all I can do, I close up the piano and play
> some music -- not tuning checks. Often what I hear when I switch gears like
> this is a surprise -- a nicely tuned piano. Even if you don't play the
> piano, you can learn some chords to make a pretty sound, even if it is just
> some parallel major triads.
> 
> I bet you are doing well. Just learn at some point towards the end of each
> tuning to shut off your tuner's ears and fire up your musician's ears. Music
> isn't made until the tuner's ears are offline, IMHO.
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> Kent Swafford
> 
>