tuning

[John M. Formsma]

>Whole tone tuning, when practiced by a good tuner, is incredibly accurate.
> Whoever made that statement to you is ignorant on the point,  with all
>due respect. PTG sells a little book by Virgil Smith about tuning that
>will set you straight, I believe.
>
>David Andersen

[John Formsma] I definitely agree with David here. There's something about
whole note tuning that actually makes it easier to hear when the note being
tuned gets in the right place. (It's probably the fact that you have more of
a solid "foundation" with all three strings sounding together then if only
the middle string is sounding.)

Now the caveat is that you have to get your unisons perfect as you go, or
your octave will be off.  The better the unison, the better the octave. For
me, tuning octaves is easier to hear this way than with a strip mute,
although it still takes me longer than with a strip mute.  I like tuning
with open unisons better because of the better sound it produces.  I think
it is also more stable.  However, I don't always tune with open unisons.
Usually just with better pianos that are close to pitch to start with.

Also, the piano should be fairly close to pitch before trying this.
Otherwise, there will be pitch drop that will cumulatively affect the rest
of the piano.  With experience, you can learn to expect pitch drop in
certain sections, and tune sharper to counteract this.  For instance, today
I was tuning a piano with the middle section just slightly sharp, and the
first section of treble was about 6-8 cents flat.  I only did one pass
through this section, but had to make adjustments to four unisons because
they had dropped a bit flat.  If you are careful to check your double
octaves and your octave-fifths, you will catch these before you make too
much cumulative error.

I have not read Virgil's book on tuning, but in his classes he teaches to
get the upper note of the octave just a tad sharp, so there is just a tiny
beat.  This beat will go away once the unison of the upper note is tuned.

JF