Hi all,

I always enjoy talking about the art of piano tuning. And I feel
relatively confident that every tuner has his own set of rules
regarding changing the relative pitch of a piano. Personally, I term
any pitch change of more than 20 cents as an "aggravated pitch change"
because it aggravates the balance of tension on the plate. But more to
point, what always concerns me, as a tuner, is how well the piano will
hold it's tune after I leave.

To that end, I try to stay abreast of the latest information regarding
tuning. So, about eight months ago I bought "The Educated Piano" by Ed
McMorrow.

On page 73, he states, "When a piano is badly out of tune (more than
three Hz off from A-440), it is wise to start by doing a rough tuning
that will leave the piano approximately at pitch, so the piano can be
fine tuned. Since the plate, soundboard, pinblock and rim structure
have a certain amount of elasticity, they will respond to large changes
in overall string tension created by the tuner's adjustments by
changing the pitch of the strings. If the piano is off by 10 Hz or
more, you should retune the piano within one to three weeks of
rough-tuning it. The basic rule is: The piano must be close to being in
tune in order to be tuneable."

I'm just looking for some common ground here since there seems to be a
rather large gray area with regards to changing the relative pitch.
Precision is great but I'm always reminded of a phrase I heard some
years ago which goes, "The closer you get to perfection, the easier it
is to spot imperfection."

  Q. Can we even agree on what constitutes a large pitch change? Is it
10 cents, 20 cents, 50 cents?

Musically, John A. Tuttle¶
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