for those on the fence about hearing protection..

[Porritt, David]

Diane:

When I'm talking about stability, I'm not referring to the tuning next
week, I'm mainly concerned with the duration of the recital tonight.
Before I started hitting keys pretty hard (and I don't really murder
keys but I don't have any db figures to give) I used to be embarrassed
during recitals by little slips that I heard.  Now that I pound as hard
as I think the piano will be played the piano stays better.  

I don't think we have to murder keys because when a pianist gets his
crescendo climax, he's putting his energy into lots of notes - no one of
which will be hit as hard as I hit a single key.  I don't really like to
be embarrassed at recitals.  It kind of kills the enjoyment. 

dave

David M. Porritt, RPT
dporritt at smu.edu


-----Original Message-----
From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On
Behalf Of Diane Hofstetter
Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2008 2:00 PM
To: pianotech at ptg.org
Subject: for those on the fence about hearing protection..


It's good this topic has come up.  It's one we have collectively been
taught and now collectively need to objectively examine. 

 I taught a class in hearing protection and did hearing tests at a piano
tuning school last fall.  
Part of the class included measuring how loud they were tuning.  When I
asked the instructor to demonstrate tuning blows,  he asked "should I do
it like I teach them, or like they DO?"   I said "both".  So he
proceeded to tune, using an average blow of 95dB.  Then he demonstrated
his students' blows.  They measured 85dB.

Afterwards, when I tested the students' hearing individually, they
confessed to me that it hurt their ears to tune as loud as the
instructor wanted them to.

So I started wondering whether it is actually necessary to use extremely
loud test blows, or whether it is PTG folklore?

How many of us have actually done objective studies?  Now we have ETD's
we have the ability to measure our results down to thousandths of a
cent.  We can go back immediately after a tuning. the next day, the next
week, and measure whether it is holding or not.   

In the 1990's my husband, who had previously been involved in quality
control, devised a graph and we started measuring every tuning on the
piano before we tuned it.  This allowed us to have a picture of the
results of our previous tunings.  It gave us information on the seasonal
tuning changes--helped sell Damppchasers.   It helped us selll pitch
raises.  It gave information on the changes in pitch in the conference
center concert instruments so we knew what time to tune to have the
piano at pitch.  It gave us information on our tuning stability.

When I went back to school, more than full time to study hearing, I
stopped tuning for a year and a half.  One day I opened a little used
dresser drawer, and gasped!  It was filled with devices I used to use to
try to stop the pain in my left fingers, wrist, arm, shoulder..........

The worst part is that those pianos I hurt myself on three years ago are
no longer in tune, but I have residual pain.

Diane




for those on the fence about hearing protection..
Ron Nossaman rnossaman at cox.net <

> Sorry I don't use a "trusty etd" I instead use my "trusty god given
> ears" and I haven't experienced what you describe.
>
> Mike

I tune aurally, and I sure have, which is why I let up on the
pounding.
Ron N


Diane Hofstetter