Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum Should There Be A Standard?

Between repeats and different timings of the three PBS stations I could recieve PHC seemed to be available all weekend on one station or another. Like QI here, it's on one station in repeats twice most nights, sometimes a whole night of it.

There is already a Standard. It's A-440 and Equal Temperment. Other pitches and temperments are fun to play around with on your own time. But you are paid, as a technician to do the standard tuning!Enough said

That might be all you get paid for, but I also get paid to make the piano a conduit for musical expression - which means for my clients, hardly ever placing strict ET on a piano. Oh, and depending on the frequency of tuning and the humidity in the room, I also get paid to float the pitch somewhere between 438 and 442 or so...


Ron Koval

Ron, Exactly! I will float the pitch whichever way the customer wants and pays me to float it .(remember, the customer is always right, even when they're not)

Floating the pitch does not work for me. More notes are at pitch than off. Admittedly, the climate is not harsh around here.

Tuners are not always right. Even when they think they are. The best ones often are. Even when they think they aren't. 'Nuff said.

Ooooh. That's gonna leave a mark...

Opera, THE STADARD is a-440, and Equal Temperment. If a customer(usually this is one of those "smartest man in the room" types), insist I tune his paino to something LESS than the STANDARD, then I will give it my best shot. However the dude is going to pay out the rear for me to spend the extra time required to de-tune his piano

Amazing - Congratulations for knowing that that there is a STADARD for paino and it is a-440. You have proven you know nothing about opera or temperament.

BTW - Haven't you been warned before about not listing your professional affiliation?

Also, is a-440 some strange way of indicating Ab?

Well, there are certainly standards for spelling "STANDARD", "Temperament", and "piano"!

Be a real Technician. Learn to tune by ear. Learn to set an Equal Temperment. And anything other than A440 is simply lame

If you can't set a temperment by ear, you are a wannabe tuner. It's no more complicated than that

Gary, that might have been the case a generation ago, but really isn't a reflection of reality in this time.

While there are those that learn something once and never see the need to expand, there are others that are eager to improve by finding things to learn and explore - - those are the real techs...

Ron Koval

Oh yeah? Then what does that make me??? Huh???

Standards are dictated by the needs of the market. Markets vary. Markets change. Businesses that fail to recognize this and lead (or at least adapt) accordingly usually go belly-up.

That would make you a tech that believed his career was ended, only to try something new that allowed you to re-enter the biz!!

(or it might make you a bazootie-head, at this point, I'm not really sure... )

Ron Koval

I think there was a slight misunderstanding of who was addressing whom. I read Jim's reply to be addressed to Mr. Fowler. It can become confusing when the comment isn't specifically directed or a quote is included.

Standards seem to be flouted as Mr. Fowler refuses to acknowledge his professional affiliation in his signature line. As a pianist, I could make exactly the same statement. As far as learning from experience is concerned, he seems to not have yet learned the proper spelling of "temperament."

I doubt it, OpTen.

Here's a story: I have a friend who happens to be a real toughie of the bar fighting variety. He's mellowed a bit with age, but still... Truth be told, he has a very big, and very hard cranium. It is readily apparent, because he shaves his head. Anyway, being theater dads, we were working on building a set for a production. He was the boss. I was the painter. We were having an argument about color and pattern--it got pretty heated, but then, before it came to blows, I realized what I was up against. I said, "Even if I *could* hit you hard enough to ring your bell, I know it wouldn't make any difference." He smiled and said, "Your right."

Well, at least I was right about something.

To Mr. Gary Fowler,

First of all, I can sympathize with your position: ET is the way to go in most cases, and is obviously the generally accepted standard in our industry. But you must realize that it is not so black and white. As Ron pointed out earlier, there is equal temperament and then there is EQUAL TEMPERAMENT.

Have you taken the Piano Technician Guild Tuning exam? If not, how do you know how accurate your temperament really is? Do you think you could score 100%? Very few people do. And even at 100% with the one cent tolerance it won't be an *EXACT* equal temperament.

Are your temperaments 100% accurate within a 1 cent tolerance? How about a .5 or even .2 tolerance? (I think anything beyond .2 cents is beyond normal human perception). Each technician decides how refined to make their ET based on experience, skill, and circumstances.

So we have to accept the fact that if ET is the target, we will always fall short of it to some degree. The good news is it doesn't really matter. What matters is that it *sounds* like equal temperament: gradually progressing 3rds, 6ths, and 10ths, 5ths that beat under one second, fourths that beat around one second, and pure sounding octaves.

As far as A440 being the ONLY pitch to tune for, you are simply not correct. Some professional orchestras ask for 441, 442, or even higher. Bosendorfer's standard is A=443. This quote is from their website: "The pianos are manufactured in the factory at a tuning pitch of A443 Hertz, however it may be altered between A440 Hertz and A445 Hertz according to need."

In regards to tuners who don't tune aurally being "wannabes" - that's harsh. Although I share your sentiment to some degree, there are some ETD tuners who do very well. I believe the ones who are successful do use some aural checks as part of their work. So maybe we can edit your statement to "technicians who only use an ETD and have no aural skills are wannabees!

There are some who will say any tuner who hasn't passed the PTG tuning exam is a wannabe. But we don't want to beat that dead horse again...

I also encourage you to avoid sounding too much like a broken record on the forums. It can get tiring, and if anything it detracts from your argument. You sound like you are committed to quality work and have built a successful business. I hope we can continue to learn from your experiences.