Cracking the unisons

[Susan Kline]

At 10:13 PM 1/5/2006 -0800, you wrote:
>Sometimes I don't hear the 1
>cent error, especially in upper octaves.

Me either, and there, I think, lies an opportunity.

Consider the "errors" which a tuning must accommodate,
both in the tempering of intervals and in the inharmonicity
and difficult timbre unevenness inherent in all pianos,
especially those which are -- less than perfect.

But it's all less than perfect.

We can nudge everything, because there's a margin of
error in our hearing, and in that of even our keen-eared
customers. We can rob a little here, and put it over
there, and (for example) get rid of that one nasty
fourth where there's that break between the wound and
unwound tenor. Never mind that an octave may compress
a little, and some fast-beating intervals wouldn't
measure up quite according to Hoyle.

Be glad that we don't have to pay attention only to
what an electronic machine tells us. Instead, we get
to go to the source, the sound itself, and impose our
value judgments onto it. Why do people who tune with
an ETD do the unisons without it? Because that fudge
factor works in our favor, giving us control of tone
quality in a way which "exact" frequency control
doesn't.

Truth be told, I think that a lot of aural tuning,
especially by people like Virgil, incorporates "errors"
a lot bigger (MUCH bigger) than one cent, in the
service of the whole musical sound.

Just MHO.

ssssssssnnn