Learning the overtone series (Sorry)

[Susan Kline]

At 09:44 PM 1/8/2006 -0500, Ed Sutton wrote:
>If you say "Make the octave pure," how will you tell us what that means in 
>a way that we can replicate and test?
>Would it interrupt our affinity to learn the names of the notes on the 
>keyboard?

I don't know how this got sent before I finished it -- maybe those stupid 
extra keys near the right shift key.

I hear all of you, talking about the dreaded erratic A5 partial of the fork 
-- on the other hand, I know that when I do my normal thing, tuning A3 from 
the fork, using F3 to check A3 and also to rough in a reasonable major 
third size, if I check A4 directly from the fork, after tuning the octave 
from A3, A4 is sweet and beatless. It works from my Walker fork, and also 
from my Deagan fork, both of which test as accurate against an Accutuner. I 
make the fork roughly room temperature, just by holding it but not too 
long, before use, then I lay it on the plate, so it is the ambient 
temperature by the second pass.

I don't see anything dire in this ...

Ed dealt with two ideas above -- to the first I say that accurate 
reproducible testing for the Guild's status and advertising categories is 
less important than the musical quality of the  tuning, if the two are in 
conflict -- not to say that they always are.

As for learning the partials and note names to become better tuners, I'm in 
favor. Now, how about becoming musicians? Some of us are, many of us are 
sadly lacking in simple musicianship, musical literacy, theory, the 
classical repertory, and even the most rudimentary experience of performing.

Which is likely to be more useful to someone playing a concert, setting A4 
accurately within a tiny fraction of a cent, or knowing how a piano should 
feel and respond from direct experience, and having some idea what demands 
the program is likely to make on the instrument?

(No reason, of course, not to offer both virtues ...)

(Conrad -- can you send me a duplicate flamesuit? My original one is out at 
the cleaner's getting some kind of unidentifiable doo-doo removed ...)

Ssssssssssnnnn