Do you set the temperament using the 4ths/5ths sequence? If so, please pay attention!

The manual I first studied from, a correspondence course (whose name I will not write on here but which is still very commonly purchased), gives that same 4ths & 5ths sequence but provides NO information regarding Rapidly Beating Intervals (RBI). None of the checks that we all supposedly should know but instructions to "back up" when the sequence doesn't work out.

The most recent book on tuning does the same thing in its simple version of temperament. All the checks that should be known are much later in the book.

Quite often, I have seen technicians write that they had a problem discerning the RBI's but could easily hear 4ths & 5ths. A sequence that begins with a set of four Contiguous Major Thirds (CM3) seems so difficult to many but that 4ths & 5ths sequence seems easy, so that is what they use.

So, as hard as you may find it to believe, most (I would say 9 of 10) technicians who find the RBI's too difficult to discern, begin each time they tune a piano, to tune a Well Temperament (WT) exactly a** backwards. (The "a** backwards" title is what my father used to call what someone did who did not know what they were doing. Put the part on upside down or backwards and leave it that way and not ever know the difference and not even care that they didn't know the difference and would resent anyone who may point that out.)

Here is a link to a video (under 2 minutes) that shows exactly how it occurs. You will note that all of the 4ths & 5ths I tune sound apparently "good". The one and only check that I did (the only one some people may know, if they know any at all), shows the F3-A3 M3 beating very similarly to the F3-D4 M6. They are both too fast but if a technician had never learned all of the RBI checks, that check may have sounded just fine!

Bill Bremmer, RPT, on "Reverse Well."
From Piano World Forum