tuning forks & pitch raises

[Newton Hunt]

Aural pitch raising, or lowering, is always a guessing game, you
against inadequate information.

The best solution I have seen, Steve Fairchild I think, is to use
either A3 or C4 and tune the M3 above to a good representative of it's
normal beat rate then pull up the reference note until the third is
pure.  The M3 is expanded by about 12 cents.  Count the 12 cent steps
and any fraction of that and add 25% (or 30% if you tune unisons
later) and hope you guessed right.

This is a crude but elegant and effective method requiring but a
little extra time.

A good part of this method is experience and getting a feel for how a
piano behaves during and after a pitch change.  Unfortunately you may
guess wrong about 1 piano in 10 and will have to tune it a third time.

Even with an SAT one can guess poorly because each section changes and
behaves differently and sometimes the chosen compensation factors
don't work as expected.

		Newton