---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment List, I believe I've made my point about Ed Foote's motivations for writing what he did, so for the moment, I'll drop the moniker. Yesterday, I tuned an interesting old upright which had been superbly rebuilt by the local university staff. It was a Grinnell Brothers full size upright from Detroit. I chose this instrument to take readings because it does demonstrate a few points I've always made. Not every old upright is worthless and despite scaling irregularities that ETD programs may not handle well, they can sometimes be quite useful and beautiful instruments. This is one of those. It has plain wire down to B2. Although I would have chosen to rescale it, this one was not and there are many other pianos built like this. The Yamaha G1 comes to mind. Even the Steinway L has this problem. Although many rebuilders do rescale Steinway L's (and O's which are essentially alike), Steinway summarily dismisses any suggestions from the field on how it could make its instruments better. So, tuning, whether aural or electronic, must cope with these. We can't all say that we won't tune them because there wouldn't be many pianos left to tune if we did. I believe this is a prime example of the kind of piano which would produce skewed and incorrect results by using an FAC program with or without correction figures for another kind of temperament. I can't be sure about other ETD's since I have no experience with them. It was tuned very, very carefully by ear and the results of the interval sizes for Major 3rd's, 5ths and minor 3rds were carefully measured and recorded. What the readings show is what I expected. There are no imbalances within a narrow range near the F3-F4 octave but yes, one does have to be very careful in tuning or there could easily be. Once out of that narrow range however, the wildly varying inharmonicity causes what might be *interpreted* as numerical imbalances. When I saw these, I checked very carefully again and again to see if I had made any aural tuning errors but was satisfied with the way it sounded and let it stand. The sizes of the intervals do not remain consistent from octave to octave. The combination of efforts to stretch the octaves and to compromise for inharmonicity cause this. For this reason, I think that computing the correction figures has to be limited to work done in the F3-F4 range. Otherwise, other factors will inevitably skew the results. I'm going to warn Ed Foote right here and now not to start saying anything about this at all, such as "inconsistency" or anything else. I have been taking readings of interval sizes long before Ed Foote ever tried to tune any HT's. If he would take my suggestion and record the results of his own work as he usually does it, he would find that each piano yields its own, unique results which are to a point, unpredictable. Ed would like to have us all believe that simply dialing up a program and applying correction figures to it would always yield a chart of uniform results where interval sizes always turn out to be predictably the same. This is not true. Ed Foote has never at any time had a kind word to say either to or about me even though I have had many for him and his efforts. When he calls my tuning a "disaster", he gets called "Uncle Tom". When he says my tuning is "inconsistent, unauthentic and full of imbalances", I'll have my own sharp criticism of what he says and does. I take another approach to tuning. Either strictly aural or by using my SAT in the Direct Interval mode to create the exact kinds of intervals I desire. While using the correction figures method is valid to a point, it doesn't allow the tuner to really know what is being done unless that person goes through the tuning and aurally verifies it. Dr. Sanderson will be the first to tell you this. It only gets you close, it is a calculated approximation. I don't believe at all in teaching people they can have the experiences of the different temperaments there are just by offering them some numbers to dial in. Sure, there are always people who want to take that short cut approach and who wouldn't know how to construct a temperament from scratch but that's not me nor do I advocate it. What I completely and totally resent is the constant attempts to discredit what I do in favor of that shortcut approach. When that stops, I won't have anything to complain about. If Ed Foote wants to continue to play his insult, defamation and discrediting game, I have bigger and better ammunition than he does. Here are the Direct Interval results from B2-F4. Note that the note B2 itself appears quite out of line. It is one of those "oingo-boingo", wolfish sounding strings where, particularly for the intervals of the 5th and octave, two sets of irreconcilable coincident partials can be heard. But this is the reality of tuning and the challenge. I prefer to meet that challenge and find a solution, not dismiss it as being beneath my dignity and thus provide the customer with a poor representation of a tuning. Ron Koval and Jason Kanter, do what you will with these figures. Note M3rds 5ths mi3rds B2 19.7 -2.4 -11.8 C3 9.3 -2.8 -10.2 C#3 17.5 -0.3 -14.3 D3 9.1 -4.3 -14.4 D#3 14.1 -5.3 -21.1 E3 14.4 -2.5 -12.5 F3 10.5 0.0 -18.1 F#3 17.2 0.0 -13.9 G3 9.9 -4.4 -19.2 G#3 15.1 -0.5 -17.6 A3 12.8 -1.1 -10.7 A#3 12.2 0.4 -17.6 B3 15.0 -5.3 -16.3 C4 7.6 -2.4 -20.4 C#4 16.2 0.0 -16.0 D4 9.3 -0.7 -15.4 D#4 15.7 -1.5 -22.2 E4 15.0 -0.4 -13.4 F4 11.5 1.8 -18.2 Bill Bremmer RPT Madison, Wisconsin <A HREF="http://www.billbremmer.com/">Click here: -=w w w . b i l l b r e m m e r . c o m =-</A> ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/ba/1b/aa/5e/attachment.htm ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment--
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC