Established Memory

[kennyfin@jetstream.net]

Hi List:

One thing we didn't mention in the discussion of pitch raise, and help 
with 'bad tuning', is established memory. If the piano has had a well 
established memory at one time, it is easier to re-establish that memory.

A customer a few years ago called me to tune a piano which hadn't been done in 
30 years. It was alomost 1/2 tone flat; that is, nearly 100 cents. After a 
pitch raise, and tuned to A440, it was very nice. I told her it would have to 
be tuned again within a few months. About four months later I returned. The 
pitch held practically as I had left it; and the tuning wasn't bad at all. I 
asked her if she had called another tuner. She said no one had touched it since 
I had left it. 

How could this be? Another similar piano I had done at about the same time, and 
at about the same pitch, had fallen in little short of three weeks. 

It had to have been established memory. 

Further questioning the client revealed her mother had been a piano teacher, 
and she had kept the piano regularly tuned for many years, with regular tunings 
at least every year. The memory therefore had been firmly established at one 
time. Thinking back, I remember when pulling the strings up, each string felt 
like it had been lost, and had finally come home, at A440: I could actually 
feel it returning to its niche of established memory where it had once been.

Kenny Finlayson,
RPT

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