question for aural tuners

[John Formsma]

On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 8:01 PM, joel a. jones <jajones2 at wisc.edu> wrote:

>
> The mention of using 4ths and 5ths all the way down the bass caught my
> attention.  I also find those intervals useful all the way down the bass in
> some
> pianos .


Yes ... since the 6:3 and other partial coincidences are hard to hear down
there, the 4th and 5th do come in quite handy as a quick test to see if
you're wide or narrow.



> Another quick test I use is adding the 5th and octave all the way down
> and adding the triple octave on top.  Try to make this chord sound as
> beatless as possible.
> I would classify these test as 'musical' and not necessarily 'technical'.
> As others
> have said use what interval gets the best sounding results.


I'll have to try this.

I also think the "musical" tests have much merit.  If it doesn't sound good,
then it doesn't matter just where the coincidences are, right? :-)  One of
David Anderson's tips helped me not too long ago.  He said something like
"come up from below" when you're tuning bass octaves.  When you have the
octave right, it will sound right too.  Naturally, that is a learned
experience. And it can be helpful to learn to hear the coincidences.

Perhaps if we spent a little bit more time listening to the overall sound
rather than picking apart coincidences, we would probably spend less time
testing.  After all, the goal is musicality, not how many ways we can prove
the width of a particular octave.  I'm speaking to my own self as well as
anyone else, mind you.

Heck, I'm just glad there's still interest in aural tuning here on
Pianotech.  Five respondents in 23 hours ... not too shabby. <G>

-- 
JF
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