A thread relating to etiquette has turned to discussion of ETDs . . . and perhaps that discussion might be best kept there. However over in the UK perhaps I might have a different perspective on ETDs which I'll detail a bit below.
However for those intrigued by the usage of unequal temperament
Kershaw trio jazz in unequal temperament
might be enjoyable. It demonstrated unequal temperament to be very suitable for jazz and the bass player commented that it really made a WOW difference moving from key of D minor to C# major. The instrument is a baby Broadwood grand of 1905, just 60 inches and hell to tune the bass but sometimes in the concert and the recording I noticed a bass note being right from time to time. :-) The strings being more than a century old are starting to click on one or two, making precise pitching more difficult so not an example of my very best tuning but good enough for jazz!
Reverting to ETDs - as a child I had early exposure to such as our then piano tuner was an early adopter in the 1970s. Perhaps you can imagine my delight when around 2008 or so I was able to pick up a machine that seemed to be just like his. Analogue, requiring three heavy 9volt batteries, it had a 7 segment LED display to indicate a phase difference in real time, analogue of course, in comparison with an exact analogue generated frequency tuned by capacitors and compared with a Phase Locked Loop. The delight of this sort of circuit is a real-time response, very unlike modern digital apps which I've found to lag and give confusion. One could plug in a cheap £10 microphone to place where one wanted.
This link
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| Tuning bass piano notes with harmonic accordance on piano |
| Unequal temperament enables fine tuning of bass notes to provide better resonances for the instrument. |
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shows it in operation, a long time ago as my methods and machine have progressed. Being tuned by adjustable capacitors I was able to convert it from equal temperament to my favourite unequal temperament . . . It got me into the practice of controlling the machine to listen to what I wanted the machine to be listening to rather than me being merely a slave to the machine.
My favoured machine is modernised and based upon the same sort of analogue comparators
- the CTS5 demonstrated here
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| Musing upon a cheap Chinese tuning lever, the usefulness of Papps Wedges for Bechsteins and the brilliance of the TLA CTS-5 electronic tuner for fast tuning. |
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and the machine is lightweight and portable enough to be able to place anywhere in the piano for it to get the signal that I want it to listen to, without the need for an external microphone. The accuracy of this machine is brilliant, good enough to rely on for unisons when one wants to - and I do tune those by ear also - but as the display allocates around 20 dots to a wavelength one's looking at movements down to that level of detail in the pitch - and seeing such in real time in the instant.
One of the difficulties nowadays is that external mics are capacitor mics needing 48v phantom power, which isn't really very helpful, and that people have forgotten that dynamic mics costing peanuts generate their own signal electromechanically so not needing any fancy kit at all.
With the intrinsic simplicity of the analogue mahines I see some of the digital solutions either as overkill or hamstrung in simplification.
Oh - and pitch. The CTS5 is a professional machine standard to European techs, often organ builders and tuners too, and I've found mobile phone and computer apps not properly calibrated. I've recorded 440 on
440hz
and which might be a useful check to see if European 440 matches 440 on US machines and apps :-)
Greetings and best wishes
David P
https://youtu.be/xjhNt-ZksVw?t=755
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David Pinnegar BSc ARCS
Hammerwood Park, East Grinstead, Sussex, UK
+44 1342 850594
"High Definition" Tuning
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