String massage

[Ron Nossaman]

>
> I don't do the bass - doesn't seem to matter there. It makes more difference
> in the upper treble.


Specifically, about where the agraffes end and the killer octave begins - on up
to about the beginning of the last octave. Gee, imagine that, another killer
octave phenomenon.


>
>  One is trying to raise the pitch of the backscale to the target string
> tension. When you pull a string up to pitch and hit it several times with the
> hammer (piano hammer, that is!), and it keeps going flat, it is likely that
> the backscale tension is less than the speaking length string tension. By
> pressing down on the speaking length, you increase the tension on the
> backscale. Then, when you raise the pitch of the speaking length, the
> backscale is already at a similar tension and you will not observe the
> tendency for the pitch of the speaking length to keep dropping - it will be
> much more stable.


Absolutely, but you can get a similar effect by whacking the string with the
hammer without resorting to massage. First, however, you have to accept the
seemingly unpopular notion that strings actually render through bridges so you
have some clue about the observed reactions. You've already done that I see, so
the rest is relative gravy. BTW, the production of gravy is in some - er,
relatively primitive circles, considered to be the optimal utilization of
otherwise superfluous and redundant relatives, which tends to lend a whole new
flavor to the  phrase "You are what you eat". While this has arguably little to
do with stabilizing string segment tensions during the curse of a tuning, I
think it possibly does tend to focus attention on the topic at hand as a means
of avoidance, if nothing else. In any case, I think I just heard a substantial
quantity of attention snapping into focus, so I suppose it worked. 


>
> I don't know that there is really any specific technique to doing this. In
> the high treble especially, try not to press down in one spot on the string -
> you will make a kink in it (I read that in a book somewhere). 


Will you? I wonder. What sort of deflection angle would you have to inflict on
a string with an (x) radius massager to exceed the elastic limit of the string
at the "massage" point? What would be the resultant string tension from having
achieved such a deflection angle in the area(s) indicated (so as to kink the
string), and by what magnitude would the breaking point of the string be
exceeded to affect this kink? I haven't actually done the math on this one, but
I have serious doubts that it's possible to kink a string in this section of
the scale by a single point deflection without breaking the string.

Hint - it's dependant on the radius of the implement of massage/speaking
length.

Sorry. It's been a day from the Stygian depths of "unremittingly usual" and I'm
bored.
 
Ron N