Stretching

[ATodd@UH.EDU]

Ed,
   Thanks for your comments. I think the overstretching you mentioned is
what is happening in regards to my original question from a piano teacher
on another list. The information Randy posted was very interesting to me. I
appreciated him taking the time to do so.
   In regards to another of your comments:
> You may have to lower then several times since lowering the
tension on one note will dramatically raise the pitch again on adjacent notes.

is this why it is so hard to get a piano down to pitch when is has been tuned
sharp at the factory or has just gone very sharp from excess humidity?
I've never really understood why. I can understand when raising the pitch
because of stretching the strings back out, and soundboard movement, etc.
   As far as stretching in my own tunings, I don't "consciously" stretch to
the point where I can hear obvious beats. As a musician, I don't like that.
With arpeggios and fast notes it probably isn't too noticeable, but in slow
legato playing, esp. with octaves in that area, I just don't like to hear
wildly beating octaves. I had a good tuner tell me once that if a double, or
maybe a triple octave sounds pretty clean, that is enough stretch. I've also
found that is easy for me to tell if I'm going too sharp on those last few
notes while actually tuning them if I will play a broken octave very softly.
If the top note is too sharp, I can hear it, while playing a solid octave
loudly, sometimes I can't. Of course, then I go ahead and do the other checks
to verify what I've just done.
   Thanks again for you post and I hope you had a good Christmas and will
have a great New Year.

Avery Todd, RPT
University of Houston
atodd@uh.edu