Hi Michelle, As others have noted the changes are due to more than one factor. The harpsichord gives a good clue to which is *more* important--the strings contracting or the wood expanding. My experience is that humidity changes are far more important that temperature over a period of hours. With the piano the cast iron plate has a different coefficient of expansion (or in this case, contraction) than the steel in the strings. I believe the plate also "grabs" the wooden structures and helps to distort the soundboard, and this plus the greater moisture conditions will cause the instrument to go out of tune on the sharp side. If you measure the first unwound string and then the first wrapped string you may be amazed at the difference in pitch. I have toyed with the idea of a "Picasso" tuning style relying 100% on ETD measurements. The process might be tune the piano at concert temperature and humidity (right after a concert). Wait for the hall to be dark for 48 hours. Then measure every string in the piano and store it in the particular format your ETD uses. For the next concert tune the instrument to these measurements. This might have the utility of a performance instrument that ends up better by the end of the concert than where it started out. I'm not convinced that unisons would be sufficiently reliable using such a methodology, but I'd love to try it all the same. The process does mean that aural checks would essentially be useless. I suppose it is "distantly" related to the "floating pitch" concept that we are sometimes forced to use for "domestic" tuning. Good luck with your concert. At 02:12 PM 15/02/2005 -0500, you wrote: > >Tomorrow evening we have a 2 piano (Steinway B's) recital (Bartok) with a >Bach violin sonata (??) complete with harpsichord thrown in there for >SERIOUS fun. > >I have been babysitting all the instruments since Friday when they were >moved in there. Everyday they have been tuned. >Heat was on. >Anyways-I figured they would go flat being the temperature went down. > >Anyone have any idea why I am not thinking this out correctly?? Regards, Don Rose, B.Mus., A.M.U.S., A.MUS., R.P.T. Non calor sed umor est qui nobis incommodat mailto:pianotuna@accesscomm.ca http://us.geocities.com/drpt1948/ 3004 Grant Rd. REGINA, SK, S4S 5G7 306-352-3620 or 1-888-29t-uner -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.300 / Virus Database: 265.8.8 - Release Date: 14/02/2005
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