Cracking the unisons

[Ric Brekne]

Interesting to hear (once again) some citing the use of high coincident
partials for tuning unisons.  Interesting because so many techs go about
this differently.  One thing I learned at the Yamaha Technical Acadamy
was to listen to the lowest possible coincidents... and not really to
just one single pair.

Their idea of a clean unison... one I have come more and more to rely on
as time has passed since my last stay there..... has to do with how long
one can stretch out a kind of conglomerate beat rate of the most audible
lowest coincidents.  In almost every case you can keep it from going
full circle if you cant get it to level out perfectly.  Sometimes you
might have to exept a kind of sideways flutter... but no full circle
wave was ever accepted.

I'll never forget the instructor when test examining thetenor andbass
area... when ever he found a unison that he thought perhaps a bit
unclean he would sort of reach out with his arm and hand like he was
trying to glide on a wave.  If he heard a beat go full circle he would
always stop and demonstrate.  With his hand he would do a dip at the
exact point in the decay he meant the beat turned the corner as it were.

When I mentioned trying to match higher partials he just smiled and
said...no no no...thats a disturbing and unclear sidestreet,  and he
would repeat his demonstration.  Since he was the guy giving the scores
out... I of course had to learn to do what he wanted.

I think I've begun to like that approach as I started to often find that
if I tuned higher partials beatless then afterwards when I ran through
my quick double checks to just listen to the overall sound of octaves,
10ths, 12ths, and the like... I found that the character of bass unisons
varried far too much, where as if I did what the Japanese taught me I
had more of a consistant colour to the bass unisons.

Cheers
RicB