In 2000, Mark Cerisano bought his first piano tuning hammer and went to work tuning an old piano he bought for his 80 year old mother using a Korg tuner with no stretch and pencil erasers for mutes!
At the time he had already had a short career as a mechanical engineer and was starting a new career as a high school music teacher, having just finished five years of playing jazz trumpet on Carnival and Holland America Cruise Lines.
Five years later he became a Registered Piano Technician with the Piano Technicians Guild and began teaching others what he knew about piano tuning.
Right away he discovered his own weaknesses as a teacher but also the weaknesses of the traditional methods being taught. If he was going to help people make the transformation from complete beginner to competent and confident piano technician, he needed to solve this problem.
To solve the method problem, he had to use his engineering background to ask the question, "What about traditional piano tuning instruction is wrong?" He did that and developed the Go A.P.E. Aural Piano Tuning System to help people get more Accurate, Precise, and Efficient aural piano tunings.
In order to be as efficient a teacher as possible, he also asked the question, "What do people really need to know to be able to tune pianos to a high level by ear?" (He has already answered the question, "Are ETDs better than the trained ear at tuning pianos?" The answer in NO!)
By doing research and gathering data using studies, he found out what things we don't need to work on, (Being able to identify small differences in beat speeds. We only need to tell down to 3% and everyone is born with this ability.) and the things that we need to start working on right now!
The Go A.P.E. System, as well as many other traditional aural piano tuning methods, has a very strong emphasis on beat rates. In order to use the Go A.P.E. system and virtually ever other aural piano tuning system, you need to be able to hear beats. And not just hear them, but hear them clearly and easily and consistently.
If you can't hear beats clearly and easily, you can't tune pianos by ear to any decent level at all. Period!
Not only that, but a 2012 study in the Journal of Neuroscience showed that aural tuners have more brain mass and the amount of that increase depends on the length of time tuning pianos by ear.
Once Mark realized that students needed to hear beats well in order to be able to tune pianos to a high level, he started work on developing ways to help them.
He developed a method of recording, filtering, and measuring beat rates using the bandpass feature found in many audio programs like Ocenaudio.
He developed and shared many tricks to hear beats better and published them for free in a blog post on his website.
In the process, he imagined a new electronic tuning device, ETD, one that would allow you to hear beat rates in real time, while actually tuning the piano!
He started searching and found a tuneable audio bandpass filter sold by MFJ Industries. It seemed to fit the bill and after doing many tests, discovered a setup that worked.
So, now all he had to do was find someone who could build it for him.
Easier said than done.
MFJ was the obvious choice but they said they weren't interested.
A Chinese company said they could do it. They built guitar amplifiers and sent him a video of their facility. It looked to be on the up and up. They wanted $3,000 to build all the units but he only gave them $1,000 and sent them all the components.
Now all he had to do was wait.
Well, after about 2 years and many back and forth emails, they said they couldn't do it because there was too much distortion. He said he didn't need the audio to be clean, the filter filters it out, but they just stopped answering his emails and never sent back his components he sent them.
He then contacted an American filter company. They said they could do it and he paid them $400 for a prototype. The prototype came and was horrible. It did not even come close to the original setup.
He contacted an individual electronics technician and offered him $1,000 just to build an amp circuit. After about a month the guy said, "Come and get your stuff. I don't have time."
Along the way, many well meaning individuals with electronics experience offered to help, but they never followed through.
Nobody it seemed had the skills to make this happen.
Along the way, Mark had been advertising his unit for $500 as a pre-order. One guy bought but after about six minths with nothing to show, Mark had to refund him his money and offered him an extra 10% for his troubles.
Then when giving one of his classes and demonstrating the unit as it was years ago from the YouTube video, one student said, "I want that!".
Mark said, "It will be expensive. I need to start recouping all my lost investment and it will take me a long time to figure it out. I may not even be able."
The student said, "I don't care."
Mark said, "It won't be pretty."
He said, "I don't care what it looks like, I need that filter!"
He was right. For anyone having trouble hearing beats clearly and consistently, learning to tune pianos by ear is like trying to bite your own teeth!
And let's face it, everyone has trouble hearing beats clearly and consistently at the beginning.
So, he went to work and what you see here is the first working prototype of the Piano Tuners Ear.
The top box houses all the amplifiers. There are three pre-amps and one post-amp.
The volume knob controls the post-amp gain. There's a knob to dial in the frequency from A4 to A6.
And there's a bandwidth knob that controls how much of the piano sound is let through.
Probably the most amazing thing about the Piano Tuners Ear, is that it is by definition, an Electronic Tuning Device, ETD. But unlike every other ETD on the market, it trains your ear, instead of being a crutch for your ear becuase it has the ability to let in more and more of the piano sound as your ear gets better at filtering on its own, by adjusting the bandwidth knob so that eventually you won't need it!
Truly, the Piano Tuners Ear is a massive change in how piano tuning is taught.
And now that the basic design has been finalized and proven, the future is hopeful.
Mark hopes that one day the Piano Tuners Ear will lose its homey and crafty design and become a more sophisticated unit but until then, orders are being taken and units are being put together; each looking a bit less scruffy than the first unit, the PTE-101. (Mark has decided to name each unit he builds using the serial number, PTE-101, PTE-102, etc.)
However, Mark has been informed that the heart of the Piano Tuners Ear, the MFJ-751B, has been discontinued and obsoleted. That means there are only 29 units left and after that, who knows what will happen.
One thing is for sure. If Mark hasn't given up on this vision of having a tool to help students hear beats easier in the last ten years, a little problem of supply is not going to stop him!