Chasing ghosts

[David Renaud]

How many people use ghosting as a regular tuning technique?
I went through a phase lately of chasing ghosts.

I concluded, not on account of any knowledge beyond experience,
that ghosting to tune the bass sends things a little flat. I presume on
account
of the whole string not being in "normal" motion, stretching it slightly
sharper??

So I started stopped "pure ghosting" and started amplifying them
within normal sounding octaves by striking the appropriate notes
to "excite" ghosts sympathetically amplifying
them above normal levels..
How many use the coincidental partial notes just to amplify
the "ghost" being examined as a regular technique.

I even tried what I call "reverse ghosting" ,
i.e.: depress c4-c5 without sounding the notes
    use sostenuo to hold c4-c5 open
    staccato hit c6 loud enough to make harmonics speak on c4-c5
    repeat c6 normally and tune to harmonics sounding on lower strings

Go ahead & tell me I'm nuts.

I don't do this much in regular tuning,
but find it interesting from time to time to see what it gives me
as a reference compared to what I'm actually doing at the time.

Do find it useful for the lowest few notes to ghost. It may send me a
little
flat, but I know where I'm am, it's close, and can fish for a compromise

from there.

For theses lowest few notes I've recently got into the habit of almost
always voicing them a bit making the fundamental more dominant so I can
stand
not having to stretch beyond tolerable limits to accommodate sharp
harmonics.

                                        Haunted by conflicting ghosts
                                        Dave Renaud
                                         RPT
                                        Canada