4 ms·

Not sure how I feel about this. As the author acknowledged at the end, the piano tuning maybe was "good enough" in the beginning that no one would really notice

• Etheryte 2y ago
  You could say the whole point of art, and mastery in it, is to seek something beyond a "pretty good". The pianist could tell the difference and so could the person tuning the piano. Similar to how you can print a copy of a photograph taken of a master's painting, there is a difference between a "pretty good" and "the best".
  • madrox 2y ago
    Yeah, this has shades of "shining your shoes for the fat lady" to borrow a Salinger reference, and I understand that within the context of performance, but maybe I expect this to generalize farther than it does. There are many domains where a low cost, good enough solution is better. Not everyone can afford a piano tuner's exorbitant Sunday fee...
    • jononor 2y ago
      If we are going to bring cost into it, then digital pianos are superior in term of tuning (one might argue about other aspects of sound and feel). Same tuning every time, no adjustment needed.
      • Suppafly 2y ago
        >If we are going to bring cost into it, then digital pianos are superior in term of tuning (one might argue about other aspects of sound and feel). Same tuning every time, no adjustment needed. I think they tune them slightly differently depending on what's going to be played. But I suppose a master pianist could have a whole database of their preferences saved up or something.
      • ithkuil 2y ago
        I bought a Kawai ca99 digital piano three years ago. The feel is great. The simulated sound is pretty damn good, with a lot of attention to harmonics produced by undamped strings. The built-in speakers do however quickly reach their limit when played at high volume and distortion artifacts can be annoying. I'm not a professional pianist. I tried a few pianos both digital and some vertical pianos and I have to say that this one is the best instrument I have played so far.
• zarzavat 2y ago
  Poor tuning often leads to cascading failures. If an instrument is out of tune it limits your technique because your brain is expecting frequency X but you are hearing frequency Y. To play quickly and accurately you have to be able to trust the instrument. Tennis players are really particular about how their rackets are strung. While nobody in the crowd will notice an unbalanced racket, the crowd will notice if they hit the ball out. Consistency is important.
  • ikekkdcjkfke 2y ago
    But I want to hear The Entertainer and I certainly don't want the piano in tune!
• roughly 2y ago
  To the point of the article, sure, it was good enough, but it could be better, and if we're not striving for the best - if we're not valuing the expertise and practice that allows someone to hear a fractionally out-of-tune piano and recognize it immediately; if we're not valuing the technical expertise to then listen to that piano, recognize all of the tells, and know how to adjust them; if we're not valuing the notion that the piano sounding better is a net good in and of itself - then what's the purpose of us? In the long run, if we're just going to settle for mediocrity, what's the purpose of anything we're doing at all? Sure, make the device that tunes the piano to the imperfect level it was at the beginning. Better piano tuning is a net good. But recognize the difference between a thousand pianos tuned very well and one perfectly tuned piano, and don't pretend the first is a replacement for the second. (And, to the obvious point that, like, everyone in this thread is missing: Substitute "piano tuning" for anything you actually value. The point is excellence, not pianos.)
  • madrox 2y ago
    Remember this the next time you cut a technical corner to launch faster