Pitch Raise

[Jeannie Grassi]

Hi Marcel,
This is a great description of pitch raising, however, I'd like to offer one
caveat about your suggestion to practice tuning lever technique on "speed
tuning" pitch raises.  If time is taken to set the pin and string when pitch
raising, not only will that slow down the "speed tuning" but it will give
different results in terms of the results of overpull.  If no overpull is
done on this first pass, then the piano will be left a little shy of pitch
for the fine tuning.  Somewhere this needs to be compensated for. 

When I was starting out, I used to make this mistake and would end up with a
consistently sharp piano that I would then have to lower before the final
pass.  I saw pitch raises as a chance to work on my hammer technique, as you
suggest, and for a long time I didn't realize why I was having problems.  

Now, I realize I've made a few assumptions about what you mean by tuning
lever technique, but I think this might be important to address in
relationship to pitch raises so as not to confuse our beginners the way I
was many years ago.
jeannie 

Jeannie Grassi, RPT
Assistant Editor, Piano Technicians Journal
mailto:jcgrassi@earthlink.net


-----Original Message-----
From: pianotech-bounces@ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces@ptg.org] On Behalf
Of Marcel Carey
Sent: Saturday, January 07, 2006 3:37 PM
To: 'Pianotech'
Subject: RE : Pitch Raise

Now Boys and girls,

Pitch raising is nothing but a rough tuning done to bring the piano up
to pitch or closer to pitch. The only advantage of ETD (Electronic
Tuning Devices) is that they have a program to measure how far flat are
the notes just before we tune them and then the program overshoots a
certain % above the normal pitch. All this is done with the hope that
after the pitch raise (rough tuning), the piano will be close to pitch
and tunable in one pass.

Now for beginners, Pitch raises are a fantastic opportunity to learn and
practice your tuning lever technique. This is the most important thing
to practice. You will get the feel for different pianos and tuning pins
and see how they react to different techniques of the lever. 

So, be thankfull when you get to raise the pitch of a piano. Think of
the practice and remember that you don't have to listen so hard on the
first pass. Just tune it as fast as humanly possible. You'll get very
good experience.

Marcel Carey, RPT
Sherbrooke, QC 
> 
> Thanks for your help, Ron. That makes sense, though I wish 
> there was a more 
> definite answer. I guess pitch raising aurally is a tricky 
> skill to learn.
> 
>


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