question for aural tuners

[Porritt, David]

John:

 

While I am a TuneLab Pocket user I do tune the bass aurally.  I find
that wrapped strings are too unpredictable and don't always follow a
pattern.  On one octave the 6:3 will sound good and 8:4 is not that
prominent so you go 6:3.  The next note 6:3 are pretty quiet but 8:4 are
louder.  Generally I want as un-busy an octave as possible so
compromises are made on that score.  Listening musically - as you said -
is the way to go.  It also helps battery life on the ETD!

 

dave

 

 

David M. Porritt, RPT

dporritt at smu.edu

 

From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On
Behalf Of John Formsma
Sent: Friday, July 18, 2008 9:09 PM
To: Pianotech List
Subject: Re: question for aural tuners

 

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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