In this issue:
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| President's Message
The September meeting/picnic will be at the Ritchie’s Tuesday September 21, 2004 at 5:00 PM. I’ll start the grill at 6:00 with the burgers and brats, and as always please bring a dish to pass. Please RSVP to Marilyn at 614.855.7704 so we know how many to plan for. Hope to see everyone there for some food and fellowship and a short business meeting. Mark & Marilyn Ritchie 6262 State Route 605 Westerville, Oh 43082
Meeting Minutes (excerpts) Elections were held and the new officers for the Columbus Chapter of the PTG are: Pres.-- Mark Ritchie V. Pres - Chris Altenburg Sec. -- Kimberly Hoessly Treas. -- Ron Kenreich New business: Directions for voting were given to convention delegate Chris Altenburg Tom Russell applied for membership to the Columbus Chapter of the PTG and was accepted. Plan Ahead for the Nov. Chapter Meeting Don Mannino of Kawai will be gracing our November Chapter meeting with some fun super-slo motion films from the R&D department at Kawai and some of the developments in a new piano action design. More details to follow ----STAY TUNED ---- Tech Tip If you have ever had a problem replacing a bass string on a vertical piano due to it getting tangled up on the action, or keybed or the treble wire this little tip might work. Use a safety pin through the loop of the string to be replaced and then snap it closed over the adjacent string. You can slide the replacement down to the hitch pin without a problem.
Circuits and Strings Revisited (A response to a letter from Virgil Smits, RPT) by Ron Koval First, let me thank the Chicago chapter for giving me the opportunity to begin to give back to the community of technicians by teaching some classes. It has been a very positive experience for me, leading me to research topics in much more depth than I would have on my own. Virgil wrote about hearing beats in the octaves in all of the pianos tuned for the class. During the class, I shared some graphs to show how in those pianos, there are mismatches between the 4:2 and 6:3 octaves types that cannot be resolved. Virgil claimed that the beats in the 4 upright pianos could be eliminated by aural tuning. I will have to respectfully disagree. They could possibly be minimized through voicing, both string and hammer, but never eliminated. (For a more in depth look into the fallacy of beatless octaves, see the article written by Jim Ellis RPT, in the January 2000 Journal.) Mismatches such as these exist across the scale of almost every piano. I think it was Tom Porter who recounted that after not tuning for a while, coming back to tuning and hearing beats in everything! Then, after awhile, his ears adjusted back to the way they had been. I think a better term to use for this idea is homogenous octaves. There is a place where the octave sounds the smoothest, and sometimes it is found in a very narrow margin, depending on the piano and the voicing. In the weeks following the class, I have paid particular attention to octaves in all the instruments I've worked with, and using the machine in a zone tuning fashion, (topic for another class?) I've found that an objectionable octave, aurally corrected, many times ends up exactly where it was placed before moving the pin! This demonstrates that without moving the pin, it's impossible to tell if the octave is set in the most homogenous location. It's easy to say that "I hear beats", but tougher to tell if that's the best that can be done for that piano. The class was set up to display what the electronic tuning devices calculate, based on the default, or basic settings. When Virgil asked how I would get beatless octaves in the grand piano, my first response was to remind him that I had already explained that customizing tunings was the topic of another class, that I had invited other technicians the opportunity to step forward and share their expertise with the particular machines. When he asked me the same question again, to keep the class moving, I gave the answer that Virgil wrote in his letter. The grand piano was there to be used by a student who was preparing for a recital. Unfortunately, he was unable to perform for us, so I never retained that instrument, choosing to join the group for dinner instead. Each of the machines highlighted has ways of customizing the tuning calculation to better fit each piano- Since that was outside the scope of the class, there wasn't any discussion, or demonstration of these features. So I was surprised by Virgil's statement that "Without aural tuning skills, the machine tuner will be limited to routine tunings on inferior pianos with less critical owners." My experience has been different, I feel that being able to hear octaves and unisons- as musicians do, are the only aural skills needed to use one machine, to come up with tunings that will satisfy the most discriminating clients, or tune for concert situations. Our ears are amazing things, yet they can fool us. I know at 43,I hear differently that when I was 20. We have the ability to filter out sounds, sometimes without being a conscious choice. To explain the concept of beatless octaves, I have to wonder what is NOT being heard; is one set of partials set beatless, or is there a balancing between the partials that uses some sort of equal beating to smooth out the sound of the octave? There are many styles of tuning, from very conservative, to very stretched. Tuned in equal temperament, or something with a bit more "flavor". there is room in the tuning world for many different types of technicians; individually we choose what will be the focus of our energy, based on our individual gifts. We project to the client our own biases towards the tuning process. It is impossible to discount the power of the technician's beliefs when deciding what makes a client happy with any tuning. Each of us works to develop a 'sound' that we sell to our clients, to create a fruitful, symbiotic relationship between client and technician. Hush Hush: Classical Musicians And Hearing Loss "An often-cited study by Canadian audiologist Marshall Chasin measured hearing loss among rock musicians and found that about 30 percent were afflicted in some way. Among their classical music counterparts, the figure was 43 percent. Yet while noise-induced hearing impairment is a well-known issue in the rock world, long highlighted in educational campaigns featuring The Who's Pete Townshend and rapper Missy Elliott, the discomfort from loudness suffered by classical musicians is generally kept hush-hush." Chicago Tribune 09/08/04 From Kim Hoessly 2004 PTG Convention- Nashville TN Here are a few of the highlights of the convention for me. First, I did the all day class with Team Yamaha headed up by LaRoy Edwards who is always informative and entertaining. The best thing I got from LaRoy this time around was something he said at the beginning. We often assume that because we have the knowledge, we also have the skill. That is a dangerous assumption and I think about that when looking at a particular job. I think I have a lot of knowledge about what I’m doing, but not always the skill so I have to do two things. First, work on the skills that I need and second, when I don’t have the skill, to refer to someone who does. I can’t remember exactly who told me this, but a good piece of advice I once heard was that referring a job to someone better qualified isn’t losing business, it’s saving your reputation. If you’ve been doing a good job for someone, they’ll call you back even if another technician, say, rebuilds the piano or does some other major job you cannot do. If, however, you get in over your head and really mess things up, well you know, that customer will probably never call you again. Team Yamaha also did their regulation spiel which offered a few tips and reminded me of a few others. I did get a bit of hands on regarding their method of bedding which helped clarify the pull up action/ knocking method. Probably the best thing I did was take the voicing tutoring class. Only six of us in a class working with Dave Barr. So, that’s some of what I did with my summer vacation, hope yours has been good. Kim Hoessly
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