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This tread/post responding to Ryan’s question in Andy's thread,about what I heard in the what I called the “stretch” David Andersen demonstrated…
First...stretch is really to confined a term for what I heard in his tuning. Its more than that. Its a visceral quality of sound. How David gets to the sound he creates is something he describes in various venues, quite well himself. I won’t speak for him. I relate to the sound he created, but get there in my own way…I am indebted to David because he showed me that the sound I was starting to doubt, actually existed.
I usually don’t participate in the fine aural tuning descriptions on the forum…and frankly mostly keep what I’m doing, or rather what I’m trying to teach myself to do, to myself.
The reason:
It’s non-verbal…it is outside the accepted pedagogical descriptions mostly employed to teach aural skills. It is non-verbal…purposely so…whole brain…whole ear...inextricably tied to my musician’s ear, and tied to my ear as a singer. Actually, as a singer, its an experience of whole body resonance. (I think singers will find it easier to relate to this sense than non-singers or non-wind players. The nicest tunings I hear come from singers and wind players).
What I heard in that initial encounter was a quality of sound. It appears in singing unisons first, then as octaves, multi-octaves, fifths and multi-fifths. It is much easier to hear in decent instruments with well mated unisons, and probably appears in noisier intervals, but I’m not there yet .
When the unison is there, I could break it down as Isaac has tried, to say the 1st partial appears… But frankly whenever I approach it that way, going in to the analytical brain, I miss the mark. The 1st partial appears in a large bandwidth, relatively speaking. Instead, I look for the unison to lock-in where the unison is quite still, but given a decent piano, it shimmers...still, shimmering, elicits a visceral physical reaction. In my case the sound of the locked in unison puts me at ease…That’s how I know I hit it.
Octaves…the same sensation…when the 2 octave unisons, or the lower unison and the upper 1st string(middle) lock in, the sound blooms with a visceral dimension that is missing otherwise. Very similar to the effect the unison creates
I tried many ways, in years past, when directing choirs, to figure out how to get the choir to understand this way of evaluating the consonance I’m speaking of. The only thing that really works, is for them to create the sound and experience how an entire room begins to vibrate for themselves. When it happens, it blows their minds.
I use octave, octave-fifth, multi octave and multi octave-fifths to find the relatively quiet zone, where they all are relatively quiet. I use Stopper’s still point triads. I use Stopper’s software, playing my ear, the tests mentioned and the program as a team.
In thinking about how to clumsily communicate this, instead of looking for comparisons to make, partial or otherwise, that is, instead of looking for activity, I look for absence of quantifiable activity. Instead, I look for a shimmer, fullness, which is quite active, but not active with obvious, musically perceptible beats.
Sound like Virgil??? Virgil tried to explain what he was doing with the language of science…but it didn’t work well. Using the wrong language just makes a powerful sensation seem like the rantings of a yahoo…so I avoid talking about it, since its non-verbal anyway.
There, put that in your pipe and smoke it. The sensation, aural and visceral, is why I am a musician and tech, but it, as a sensation, is not a particularly handy pedagogical technique to communicate…neither does it lend itself to competency metrics. But to me, it is real and essential. It exists.
Jim Ialeggio
Last edited by jim ialeggio; 01/30/15 10:54 PM.
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This tread/post responding to Ryan’s question in Andy's thread,about what I heard in the what I called the “stretch” David Andersen demonstrated…
First...stretch is really to confined a term for what I heard in his tuning. Its more than that. Its a visceral quality of sound. How David gets to the sound he creates is something he describes in various venues, quite well himself. I won’t speak for him. I relate to the sound he created, but get there in my own way…I am indebted to David because he showed me that the sound I was starting to doubt, actually existed.
I usually don’t participate in the fine aural tuning descriptions on the forum…and frankly mostly keep what I’m doing, or rather what I’m trying to teach myself to do, to myself.
The reason:
It’s non-verbal…it is outside the accepted pedagogical descriptions mostly employed to teach aural skills. It is non-verbal…purposely so…whole brain…whole ear...inextricably tied to my musician’s ear, and tied to my ear as a singer. Actually, as a singer, its an experience of whole body resonance. (I think singers will find it easier to relate to this sense than non-singers or non-wind players. The nicest tunings I hear come from singers and wind players).
What I heard in that initial encounter was a quality of sound. It appears in singing unisons first, then as octaves, multi-octaves, fifths and multi-fifths. It is much easier to hear in decent instruments with well mated unisons, and probably appears in noisier intervals, but I’m not there yet .
When the unison is there, I could break it down as Isaac has tried, to say the 1st partial appears… But frankly whenever I approach it that way, going in to the analytical brain, I miss the mark. The 1st partial appears in a large bandwidth, relatively speaking. Instead, I look for the unison to lock-in where the unison is quite still, but given a decent piano, it shimmers...still, shimmering, elicits a visceral physical reaction. In my case the sound of the locked in unison puts me at ease…That’s how I know I hit it.
Octaves…the same sensation…when the 2 octave unisons, or the lower unison and the upper 1st string(middle) lock in, the sound blooms with a visceral dimension that is missing otherwise. Very similar to the effect the unison creates
I tried many ways, in years past, when directing choirs, to figure out how to get the choir to understand this way of evaluating the consonance I’m speaking of. The only thing that really works, is for them to create the sound and experience how an entire room begins to vibrate for themselves. When it happens, it blows their minds.
I use octave, octave-fifth, multi octave and multi octave-fifths to find the relatively quiet zone, where they all are relatively quiet. I use Stopper’s still point triads. I use Stopper’s software, playing my ear, the tests mentioned and the program as a team.
In thinking about how to clumsily communicate this, instead of looking for comparisons to make, partial or otherwise, that is, instead of looking for activity, I look for absence of quantifiable activity. Instead, I look for a shimmer, fullness, which is quite active, but not active with obvious, musically perceptible beats.
Sound like Virgil??? Virgil tried to explain what he was doing with the language of science…but it didn’t work well. Using the wrong language just makes a powerful sensation seem like the rantings of a yahoo…so I avoid talking about it, since its non-verbal anyway.
There, put that in your pipe and smoke it. The sensation, aural and visceral, is why I am a musician and tech, but it, as a sensation, is not a particularly handy pedagogical technique to communicate…neither does it lend itself to competency metrics. But to me, it is real and essential. It exists.
Jim Ialeggio
Thanks, Jim. This is the nearest description to what I have experienced. I have always held that tone quality or tone colour is very influential on perception of intonation. I first discovered this for myself when I was attempting to reconcile a unison with false strings without it sounding flat when I had got it the best I could. This was on my first real job that entailed tuning the same make of pianos every three months. They were incredibly stable so there was always plenty of time to concentrate on particular problems. I often say that false strings are our friends because of what we can learn from them in tuning and in tone regulation. I've never come across a false unison that was too quiet unless somebody had tried to quieten it. Perhaps because i was a trumpet player, I first perceived it in terms of colour like a glittering shiny metalic rod and later found the same phenomenon within unisons that could be stilled more easily. this stuff sounds pretentious and even crazy and lays oneself open to ridicule and even demonisation by some on this forum but they are easily ignored. It is not voodoo. The phenomenon exists in octaves and double octaves also, as you say. I currently findiChat aspect a bit more elusive but, although I am still tuning well past what modern society calls retirement, maybe one day..... It see everybody has a different description depending on their background. At first, I wouldn't have used the word shimmering but then I just used the word glittering. Hm. Remarkably similar words with only very subtle differences. All this is an aspect that is almost never is brought into the complex equation that is tuning. Thank you for raising it.
Amanda Reckonwith Concert & Recording tuner-tech, London, England. "in theory, practice and theory are the same thing. In practice, they're not." - Lawrence P. 'Yogi' Berra.
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I repeat this here where it is more appropriate.
One of my colleagues that I follow often (the most senior tuner here) tunes the most fantastic still unisons. I don't quite know what he's doing and he can't explain it either. I have been trying to emulate his unisons for many years now. Just a few weeks ago I was thinking to myself as I tuned that this was the work of my colleague, he being the last one to tune it. When i signed the tuning record book that some halls keep, I found that I was the last one to tune it. I finally emulated his unisons and I still can't explain it. How many variations of an apparently absolutely still unison can there be.
Shows me how elusive attempts to describe different kinds of absolutely still unison can be.
Amanda Reckonwith Concert & Recording tuner-tech, London, England. "in theory, practice and theory are the same thing. In practice, they're not." - Lawrence P. 'Yogi' Berra.
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rXd,
Thanks for your candid post.
Your description of first finding that glistening or shimmering sound in a false unison is very similar to how I found it on my own. I described this once. I think it makes sense to repeat it here.
I had a piano core in for rebuild. Dampers were all out already, but strings and action were still intact. I was just starting to learn to tune, and wanted to practice. This core without the dampers was the only victim available, so I decided to try and tune some unisons, senza the dampers, and no strip mute to quiet things.
I used a mute to shut off the the third string of a 5th octave unison, but had the entire rest of the belly doing its cacophonous thing. I decided to try to listen into the cacaphony. I just sat there quietly manipulating the string to see how the field of vision changed for some time. The longer I did this...a good 20-25 minutes on that one string, the problem presented itself like a "koan". A "koan" meaning something that cannot be understood linearly...its got to understood in a different part of the brain than the analytical side...the part of the brain, I think that accesses creativity when I improvise.
Anyway, the first session ended without any clear notion of learning anything. However, the next evening, I went back and did the same thing, and low and behold, through the cacophony, I heard the sound I spoke of in my post, rise above the whole beating mess.
Can't describe it...you gotta experience it, aurally and viscerally. But it is the sound and sensation I look for as I tune unisons and octaves.
Adding to the above, the open unison tuning to the mini-pitch raises on each unison I now do, revisiting notes throughout the tuning, so the notes are staying closer to where I want them, has transformed my tunings...really fun stuff
JI
Last edited by jim ialeggio; 01/31/15 11:15 AM.
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Jim,
I am an amateur, but I TOTALLY get your point about shimmering sound. I know it when I hear it, but I don't hear it often.
My choral instructor at the University of South Carolina was Arpad Darazs, who was a student of Zoltan Kodaly. He took our choir of 40 voices in 1980 to Debrecen, Hungary where we competed in (and won, brag brag) the mixed choir division of the Bela Bartok choral competition. A choir that I heard there, the Estonian Chamber Ensemble (12 voices!), under the direction of Arvo Parte, had the most beautiful sound I have ever heard. Dr. Darazs commented to our group that their singing was some of the finest 'mean tone' singing he had ever heard, and for us to take note as that was the sound he always tried to cultivate with us. (I think 'mean tone' was the term he used), but at any rate he tried to make us aware of the sonic differences, and when it happened with us, we knew it, could feel it.
Dr. Darazs would use a piano to help us learn parts (only if needed), but mostly he taught us the parts by solfege (hand signals). The piano was rarely referenced in any a cappella music we learned, which was most of it.
Virgil Stopper's tuning style is one that I greatly admire. I think he tries to get this kind of sound.
Knowing that you think this way, I would love to hear some of your tunings!!
Forrest
Mompou, Cancion y Danza #6 some Chopin, some Bach (always), Debussy My beliefs are only that unless I can prove them.
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Thank you, Jim! Outstanding description on so many levels! I have two comments, just to affirm that "I think know what you're getting at..." 1) Earlier this year, when trying to figure out how to tune the bass on the Lester spinet, it occurred to me to stop listening with my ears, and start hearing with my whole body. As you say, "visceral." 2) I have learned to rely on the sleep/wake cycle to help problem solving. Not being very analytically inclined, myself, and taking this longer view, I have learned that problems that are not "clear" or "solved" one day became clear or improved the following days. (I learned this first when working on the technical side of *playing* piano and working through the sections where I had the most difficulty.) Your experience of listening into the cacophony of a damper-less piano for a long chunk of time where time fell away, while manipulating one string to observe the changes, brought this to mind. When we sleep, the brain does some amazing seeking, finding, and re-wiring... --Andy
I may not be fast, but at least I'm slow.
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rXd,
Thanks for your candid post.
Your description of first finding that glistening or shimmering sound in a false unison is very similar to how I found it on my own. I described this once. I think it makes sense to repeat it here.
I had a piano core in for rebuild. Dampers were all out already, but strings and action were still intact. I was just starting to learn to tune, and wanted to practice. This core without the dampers was the only victim available, so I decided to try and tune some unisons, senza the dampers, and no strip mute to quiet things.
I used a mute to shut off the the third string of a 5th octave unison, but had the entire rest of the belly doing its cacophonous thing. I decided to try to listen into the cacaphony. I just sat there quietly manipulating the string to see how the field of vision changed for some time. The longer I did this...a good 20-25 minutes on that one string, the problem presented itself like a "koan". A "koan" meaning something that cannot be understood linearly...its got to understood in a different part of the brain than the analytical side...the part of the brain, I think that accesses creativity when I improvise.
Anyway, the first session ended without any clear notion of learning anything. However, the next evening, I went back and did the same thing, and low and behold, through the cacophony, I heard the sound I spoke of in my post, rise above the whole beating mess.
Can't describe it...you gotta experience it, aurally and viscerally. But it is the sound and sensation I look for as I tune unisons and octaves.
Adding to the above, the open unison tuning to the mini-pitch raises on each unison I now do, revisiting notes throughout the tuning, so the notes are staying closer to where I want them, has transformed my tunings...really fun stuff
JI Thanks, Jeff. Your likening to this phenomenon and it's discovery to a koan stopped me dead in my tracks. I hadn't thought of it like that before. It can only be discovered individually by each person with the kind of application that makes self discipline a contradiction in terms. Finding an answer is merely opening the door a mere crack, a glimps onto the here and now of eternity. (if eternity really is the depth of immediacy) Listening to a unison knowing that, however still, it will still beat at some point after it has become inaudible puts many new dimensions on the simple unison. The perception with something other than the imagination of something we will never hear. Maybe life is a damperless piano. The only part we can control is hat part of ourselves we choose to control. One string at a time. It was when I began to put into practice a mere few of the teachings of the great philosophers of life that I began to lead a charmed life. Only to discover that I have always led a charmed life. My early discovery took me through my career and then, towards the end of my career, I find a new kind of still unison as practiced by one of my colleagues. I just carried the sound of his unisons in my mind and eventually discovered I was able to get that sound fortself with seemingly no conscious effort. All this variety of a still unison. I say still unison because a still unison doesn't have to be a dead unison. Dead being the most used word to describe a still unison. Still unisons run deep. Habit is destructive of the many improbable things, fantastic things that can happen for us if only we let them. It's a matter of becoming receptive to anything happening. Much of the time nothing happens but occasionally something wonderful is discovered. Sometimes it is persevering with something with the fascination that takes us way past the point of boredom. Some of this may seem nonsensical or maybe it another koan?. Speaking as one who has survived some risky situations, All the great "problems" in life that wars have been fought over, creation, reincarnation, whether to use a strip or not,etc. are of absolutely no consequence in the greater scheme of things, to living a long and fruitful life.
Amanda Reckonwith Concert & Recording tuner-tech, London, England. "in theory, practice and theory are the same thing. In practice, they're not." - Lawrence P. 'Yogi' Berra.
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This is a very interesting discussion and I want to pay tribute to the quality of the prose in it, especially of your original post, Jim.
It seems fitting that the beauty of tuning we envisage and strive for, should be discussed in elevated and beautiful prose.
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Thanks. I just read another definition of koan. "A metaphor for principles of reality beyond the private opinion of one person". I like that.
Reminds me of an ancient principle about dichotomies. That when two seemingly opposing truths present themselves, accept both equally and a greater truth will eventually emerge where both sides of the dichotomy are true. Called "living the dichotomy".
Having spoken of the almost divine properties of the unison I had a sharp reminder that I am also fully human.
The cold snap finally hit some of the conservatoire pianos and I felt obliged to do as much as possible in the time I had early this morning.
Knowing also what kind of unisons I can get away with, I lost count of the quick scruffy tunings I did in just a few hours in order to make as many pianos as possible at least presentable.
In another thread I expressed the thought that those who tune designer unisons should be able to tune accurate intervals from their unisons. I had to eat my own words and carry on tuning, single wedge, from my own deliberately careless unisons. I was pleasantly surprised. I resorted to Tuning by thirds, tenths and seventeenths into the treble based from the slightly more carefully laid temperament octave and only checking the octaves and fifths and their compounds for reasonableness. The two pianos I played for a minute afterwards were quite acceptable. I'll go in again tonight and do some more while I'm on another roll.
Amanda Reckonwith Concert & Recording tuner-tech, London, England. "in theory, practice and theory are the same thing. In practice, they're not." - Lawrence P. 'Yogi' Berra.
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Reminds me of an ancient principle about dichotomies. That when two seemingly opposing truths present themselves, accept both equally and a greater truth will eventually emerge where both sides of the dichotomy are true. Called "living the dichotomy".
Isn't it called Hegelianism?
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Reminds me of an ancient principle about dichotomies. That when two seemingly opposing truths present themselves, accept both equally and a greater truth will eventually emerge where both sides of the dichotomy are true. Called "living the dichotomy".
Isn't it called Hegelianism? . The idea, in one form or another is found in ancient Tau and Buddhist texts so, theres one to live for starters.
Amanda Reckonwith Concert & Recording tuner-tech, London, England. "in theory, practice and theory are the same thing. In practice, they're not." - Lawrence P. 'Yogi' Berra.
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When I think of a "Koan", for me, I think of it, in practical terms, as a pedagogical device. The rational mind and self is not about to shut up long enough for other dimensions of experience to speak..."to speak"...the very words actually give voice to the dominance of this rational, quite verbal mind.
The point of a koan, as I see it, it to present the rational mind with a riddle which cannot be solved using the neural paths open to the rational half the brain on its own. In listening to 230 open strings, trying to discern the beat of only 2 stings in that cacophony, the rational mind does not have a chance. It shorts out temporarily, and the mind starts to try and focus on something it can organize...this because minds must be able, in some way, to organize data or vertigo sets in.
Vertigo is hyper-stressful, so the mind will search for some organizing principle. Other neural pathways will open up, as a matter of survival, if attention is sustained. The mind will try to discern something other than the relatively easy beat counting which it used to rely on exclusively.
I think Mark Cerisano alluded to this, though he might not be aware of it yet, in discussing tuning a unison with 3 open strings. You hear though the 3 variables in a way that is different than listening to a simple 2 variable, ie 2 string doublet. If you try and use your brain as you would in tuning only 2 strings, you are cooked. However, if you just listen to the whole 3 string, 3 variables unison, fuzz-out and let your body move the lever, it is somewhat freaky how you can, with practice make sense of that mess.
Same actually might be said about his DSU technique to some degree.
In my experience, at least some version of this way of approaching listening, can alleviate the phenomenon many tuners experience where the music, the final sensory experience of the sounds, the whole point of tuning, recedes into memory. Some tuners complain that tuning has, in some ways, reduced their enjoyment of listening to music. For them the immediate sensory experience of sound has been replaced with a less-than muscially fulfilling cataloging of beat rates, even when not tuning...probably unconsciously, because the beat rate listening is so hyper-developed.
After a tuning, for me, my improvising contains some of my most musical playing. I am hearing so deeply into the entire sound that I can hear complexities in the voice leading that I don't have a prayer of hearing in other circumstances.
In short, my goal is to make the tuning as musical an experience as playing and listening is. This is why I seek to "inform" the rational brain's analysis with the big picture which happens when the rest of the brain participates as a equal partner.
JI
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I think the experiences above show well why tuning can only be taught to someone to a certain level. And that unisons are the key to tuning all intervals. One simply has to have the lever in their hand to "know" what is going on. One teaches themselves by learning to hear all the sounds working together and learning how they fit all across the compass.
I still think the simplest description is; you just make all the Wah-Wahs right.
The intellectual dissection of all the partial matches is a very important part of creating the global soundscape in ones mind-but immersing oneself in the auditory/musical experience turns the understanding into "body knowledge".
It also helps much that the tuner learns the tone regulating skills to fit hammers and strings into phase.
And it also helps if a tuner actually "lives" with a piano that he/she tunes and plays so they can experience how stable their work is.
In a seemingly infinite universe-infinite human creativity is-seemingly possible. According to NASA, 93% of the earth like planets possible in the known universe have yet to be formed. Contact: toneman1@me.com
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Ed, In thinking about this the last couple of days, it occurred to me that this way of proceeding, to some degree, also describes the way you approach touch design. Your piano actions represent an intersection of every part of your experience, as a tuner, builder, pianist, husband of pianist...etc. Your approach is to some degree linear, but it is also markedly non-linear...evidence that you understand and are friends with the rational as well as creative side of the thing. You can point out linear sign posts which describe where you are in the course of designing the touch weight, but at some point, the verbal constrains the big picture your mind has visualized, and the communication by definition becomes less easy to "quantify"...this because the big picture is not about "quantifying". As you say, tuning as well as these other complex building tasks can only be taught to someone to a certain level. My interest in communicating this is that although some of what we are discussing can only be taught a certain incomplete level, that is, can only be taught verbally to a certain level, at points past that level, there are still helpful devices that one can employ, to move into non-linear level of the work. Most of these devices are mind devices. For example: Autosterograms..."images which create 3d visual illusions from a 2d image. In order to perceive 3D shapes in these autostereograms, one must overcome the normally automatic coordination between accommodation (focus) and horizontal vergence (angle of one's eyes)." (wikipedia definiton). Aurally one can employ the listening challenges I described above, and if one puts their mind to it lots of other techniques. Most of the techniques are ways to show the mind where to "go" in the mind to find the place where creativity is experienced. Lots of them are ways to confound the rational mind and force it to "play nice" with the rest of the brain. Lots of them, by definition teach one how to relativ-ize so-called mistakes..removing the emotion that often accompanies meaningless boo-boos. JI
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Thanks Jim.
I do think it is an advantage to be able to just run your hands up and down the keyboard in a number of differing ways that bring out the response characteristics of the piano without sitting there with extensive charts and measuring protocols. To be professional, one must go through the exercise of learning the physical measurements we have available to quantify certain parameters, but once that has been done, one needs to relate those things directly to how the piano plays/sounds.
In a seemingly infinite universe-infinite human creativity is-seemingly possible. According to NASA, 93% of the earth like planets possible in the known universe have yet to be formed. Contact: toneman1@me.com
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See what happens when you ask a "simple" question? One issue that I see with this type of topic is there is a grey area in in the mind where real world perception and imagination overlap. As real perception gets more and more subtle, the perceptions created by our mind (imagination) become larger. There is a point at where they intermingle. Take silence as an example. Silence is an illusion, because you can never actually hear it. The quieter the environment gets, more subtle sounds are revealed until you start actually hearing your own body work. It is the same with complete blackness. Even in the total absence of light you will begin to see subtle patterns and images created by your brain that are not visible under normal visual conditions. I'm not saying this to discredit real musical phenomenon that can occur when tuning pianos, but to point out that we should be aware that we may not be "hearing" what we think How many times have you sworn you heard a subtle pitch change in a string only to find you are on the wrong tuning pin? It is like an auditory placebo effect. This certainly can happen with clients. There are numerous stories about artists complaining about an issue with the piano before a concert and the technician pretending to fix the "problem" with the artist being satisfied with the result. One of my friends was tuning for a music teacher with "perfect pitch" who complained that a low bass note was off. My friend put his tuning lever on the pin and said he would move it until the client was happy with it. "There! That's it!" declared the client. My friend swears he did not move string an iota. Dan Levitan taught a voicing class where he jabbed the hammer a bunch with his voicing tool and asked how many in the class could hear the change in tone. A bunch of hands went up. He then showed that his voicing tool had no needles in it. My original question was about stretch. The story was that David Anderson tuned a note in a traditional way, but it sounded flat. He then apparently raised it by some amount and the quality of the note was noticeably improved. My question is: How much do you think the note was raised? 2 cents? 1 cent? .5 cents? .2? .02? It should be quantifiable. I'm very curious to learn more about the work that high-end tuners do. I wish I had listened more carefully to the tunings at Ed McMorrow's shop. I guess I was so enraptured by the experience of playing his amazing instruments, I didn't really think about analyzing the the tuning. I would be interested in hearing one of Jim's tunings in a recording. Mostly what helps me is listening to 3rd/10th/17th groups moving chromatically up the scale to get an idea of what the octave spread is. Chromatic 17ths through the 6th octaves can tell me a lot. The tuning phenomenon discussed in this thread should be quantifiable in some way. Autostereograms are easily quantifiable even though they take practice to see. Without some actual measurements of some sort, this discussion seems to be caught up in tuning "mumbo jumbo".
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There are so many ways in which we fool ourselves. One of them is overthinking things. Most of us do this to one degree or another. I often watch "the big bang theory", (we get repeats of it here) where this human foible is regularly pointed out to comic effect. .
Most people's minds are full of constant thoughts and worries all jostling for prominence. These thoughts form a screen that blinds us to other things. Another of those illusions that Ryan pointed out. As Andy says about sleeping on things and the subject takes on a different perspective, be it a problem or a perception.
In sleep, the constant smoke screen of thoughts are stilled somewhat in order to let something that lies deeper take over enough to give us this different perspective. What is this wisdom that lies beyond this screen of thoughts? How can we harness it? Can we slip into the gap between this obstruction that is keeping us from a different perspective?
We are comfortable with the familiar. This dense fog of thoughts and worries is familiar. Almost all the thoughts and worries are the same thoughts and worries we had yesterday, or just a moment ago. They don't change much over time.
What a colossal waste of mental energy!!!!
Some people, with years of practice, can get past these thoughts. For a while, there's nothing there but stillness. This in itself is a relief from the constant bombardment of thoughts. Then other things start to happen. It is very different for different people and at that point, it is pointless to try to talk about it with anybody who hasn't experienced it for themselves.
Many of us have tried to demonstrate the phenomenon of beats to someone who can't hear them. I have been told, quite seriously, that I must be imagining them. This, not surprisingly, was from a psychology student. Just because she couldn't perceive something that all successful tuners have no trouble perceiving, she immediately assumed I must be delusional. There are degrees of this phenomenon also. Many people don't hear the brats that we all hear. Many more cant distinguish between 'good' and 'bad' unisons. There are finer degrees of this also.
What is dangerous about insisting everything is quantifiable is that we all start to tune like an STD. We are obsessed by partial matching, which is the only thing an ETD can quantify.
An ETD will perfectly match only one set of partials and let the forty or so other audible partials that don't quite match land where thy may. This is one of the hallmarks of an ETD tuning and also of the unaware aural tuner. Surely to allow a vary slight mismatch of all of them is better if it creates a smoother sounding octave??? (I am thinking of bass strings where it is very apparent) which, in turn, skilfully done, can produce smoother other intervals???
I realise that talking of all, yes, all the audible partials beings mismatched is heresy. Mark C. has alluded to it and Isaac talks of global listening which I assume to mean the same thing.
The fact is, aural tuners today are being taught to tune like an ETD does. Not bad for beginners but there's a lot lies beyond it.
According to the group of old tuners that taught me, scientists have been trying to tell tuners that we are all wrong since as long ago as that 1930's. The "scientists" have finally taken over.
But not quite.
And that relatively small remaining stubborn group is what this strange thread is all about.
The unisons that this thread is about are not an elusive mystery. A person can't, without practice, listen to a unison any harder than they can do but anybody can listen longer. Anybody, given enough illusionary silence, can listen until the sound has gone. listen.
What happens just before the sound of the unison disappears? You will have to listen well into the ensuing silence to appreciate what you thought you just heard. Yes it's strange, a bit like looking at your own face before your parents were born.
Repeat a hundred times ....past the point of boredom. don't change anything, just listen to what you thought you just heard.
Just like slipping into the gap between your thoughts, what is experienced is different with different people. If I were to tell of my experience, or anyone else's, it would create expectations in your mind. Don't try to describe it. That would be classic overthinking. You would find it pointless to try to describe it to someone who hasn't heard it for themselves anyway.
You would start listening for what I have described and, in so doing, close yourself off from a whole world of personal experience that you didn't even know existed. Go into it with no expectations. None.
Change the unison slightly and repeat the listening process. Listen well into the silence each time. What did you just hear?
Then, as has been said, give it a rest. Sleep on it. Do the same thing again tomorrow.
Repetition like this has been a common thread in this thread.
Amanda Reckonwith Concert & Recording tuner-tech, London, England. "in theory, practice and theory are the same thing. In practice, they're not." - Lawrence P. 'Yogi' Berra.
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Excellent rXd!
Ryan...I did not answer your question directly, because what I heard when DA tuned the octave was a quality of sound the octave made. What good is it to know the octave was raised by .1 cent, when whatever amount it was raised was particular to that individual instrument? He chose to tweak the octave because a tonal quality was missing. The re-alignment or coupling of the partials may well have created the impression of sharpening the note, or the upper sharper partials may have become more prominent...who knows...way too much speculation. At this level of tweaking, it is the quality of the sound, not to an individual partial match which that I'm looking for. And...the tone quality of the unison and octave is very similar.
JI
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Thanks, Jim.
I have taught people to tune successfully with absolutely no reference to partials or any of the theory behind it, but by sound alone. Indeed, that's how it was taught in the factories until relatively recently and, incidentally, how I initially taught myself enough to get a job as an outside tuner with a major company. I was promised some weeks further training but they saw fit to send me out after only a few days. There was plenty of in the job training in that company.
I often wonder if I wasn't a better tuner then, in many respects, than I am now with all my subsequent larnin'.
I would venture to say that teaching by sound alone might be the most certain way of producing the kind of tuner we are talking about. If someone is limited to matching this pair of partials or that pair, how robotic is that??? It becomes more difficult to get beyond partial theory (pun intended) once those ideas and habits get locked in.
Amanda Reckonwith Concert & Recording tuner-tech, London, England. "in theory, practice and theory are the same thing. In practice, they're not." - Lawrence P. 'Yogi' Berra.
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Piano
by Gino2 - 04/17/24 02:34 PM
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Piano
by Gino2 - 04/17/24 02:23 PM
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