It is very doubtful if a beginner could succeed with this system.  He should tune by an easier system until he can hear the beats very distinctly and judge quite accurately the rapidity of them.  Having acquired this ability, he may try this system and follow it in preference to others.

In any system used it is well to test your work in the following manner: 

Begin with your lowest major third and strike each third in succession, ascending chromatically.  Of course, each third should beat slightly faster than the one below it.  For instance, in our system of two octaves, take 1C-E; this third should beat about 5 per second.  Next, take 1C[#]-F, which should beat about 5-1/2 per second.  The beats should increase each test nearly a half beat, or the amount of 5 beats in this octave; hence, 2C-E will beat about 10 per second; or, using the exact figures, 10.16.  After arriving at the last-named test, 2C-E, you may test the remainder of the two octaves by tenths, beginning with 1C-2E.  The tenth is similar to the third mathematically, and its beats are even more distinct.

We may remark here that our system may be reduced to the compass of an octave and a half by simply not tuning the octaves upward which reach beyond 2F[#]; and if anything were to be gained and nothing lost by shortening the compass of the temperament, we would advise using only the octave and a half.  But in many years of experience in tuning all imaginable types, styles and kinds of pianos, and by all systems, we have found good reasons for adopting the two-octave temperament as laid down in Lesson VIII, for universal application.  Its advantages may be summed up as follows: 

Simplicity.—­But two kinds of intervals are employed:  the fifth and the octave.  The fifth is always tuned to a fundamental below and hence always flattened, which relieves the tuner of any mental operation to determine which way he is to temper.  Being a regular succession of fifths and octaves, without a break, the system is easily learned, and can be followed with little mental strain.

Uniformity.—­After the tuner has become well trained in tempering his fifths, there is little danger of an uneven temperament, as the various intervals used in trials will prove a false member in some chord in time to correct it before he has gotten so far from it as to make the correction difficult.  When a correction is necessary, the offending point is most easily found.

Precision.—­In our experience, we have never known another system by which we could attain the absolute precision gained by this.

Stability.—­Stability is the feature wherein rests the paramount reason for employing two octaves.  From what has been said in previous lessons concerning the liability of some strings to flatten or sharpen by reason of altering the tension of other strings, the student will readily see that the temperament should cover a sufficient portion of the instrument, if possible, to insure that it will stand while the remaining portion is being tuned.  Our two octaves cover nearly all the strings between the over-strung bass and the brace in the metal plate.  This being the case, any reasonable alteration of the strings beyond, or outside, the braces from the temperament, will rarely, if ever, affect it noticeably.