Melodic and harmonic octaves

[Travis Gordy]

Dear Jim Sr. and List:

Jim, you are absolutely correct that without direct reference we do want
to hear octaves sharper as we go up in pitch.  When I was younger I
quickly pitch raised pianos a half step flat plucking the strings and
tuning where my sense of relative pitch said they should be and often
ended with a surprisingly good pitch raise which meant, of course, that
I had stretched the heck out of octaves 5,6&7.  I bet many of you have
done, or are doing, the same thing. The SAT does that for many of us now
with much more consistant results.

Another example is my violinist son-in-law, who wanted me to teach him
to tune after he developed tendinitis in his left hand which he thought
would end his future with the violin.  Beginning somewhere in the 5th
octave he could not get over how flat the note sounded when I said it
was in tune.  He had never been aware of that "problem" when playing
with piano accompaniment.

You fellows with pitch memory (which some call perfect pitch), tell us
if you experience this same phenomenon of pitch increase.  I assume you
do from my experience of tuning for a person with pitch memory.  I am
from the stretch-as-much-as-you-can school, with clean 4 octave spread
if the piano will let you.  After tuning where she is to perform, she
has more than once said, "What ever it is you do it makes the piano
sound great".  Assuming she really means that and is not just being
nice, I am convinced it's the stretch,  because once, before I tuned,
she expressed disappointment in having to perform on dull piano. After
tuning she was surprised at the brightness.

So, fellows, stretch, stretch, stretch, remembering what Jim said a
while back that clean unisons are of first importance and clean sounding
octaves are next (did he say "sounding" are did I add that?)

Travis Gordy