<html> <body> Annie, At 02:47 PM 2/15/2007, you wrote: <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite=""> [Feeling akin to the puppy that blunders into No Man's Land (while the movie audience weeps, of course <g>)....]   Something I've been thinking about lately: when using an ETD, I tune from one end of the piano to the other, but when I tune aurally, I start in the middle and work out.  There's no reason not to tune middle-out with an ETD, as far as I know, but I haven't.  (I use a Cybertuner.)   So, at least two questions: *  is the sequence of tuning part of the differences between ears and ETDs?</blockquote> Probably. I use an SAT III but I ALWAYS start from the temperament octave and tune out. I guess that's because I was an aural tuner for app. 25 yrs. before I ever started using an ETD. That way you can check the temperament ever how you want and you can perform any and all aural checks going out from there. If I hear something my ear disagrees with, I change it. You can't do that very easily if you go from bottom to top. The only time I do that is when I'm performing a pitch raise! <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite=""> *  does anyone do middle-out with an ETD as a matter of course?</blockquote> Yes. <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite=""> In light of the recent discussion of how the piano reacts to the changing stresses of tuning, it seems as though a bottom-top sequence would certainly torque things around quite differently than middle-out. </blockquote> That I really don't know. But it seems that if it's a "normal" tuning, it wouldn't make all that much difference as far as torque is concerned. I'm sure I'll be corrected if I'm wrong. :-D <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite=""> Another question related to stress:  strip muting the piano and tuning one string for all notes before pulling in the unisons vs. tuning all strings in sequence........</blockquote> In non-critical situations, I usually strip mute. On our D's, and the piano faculty pianos, I have the "checked" tunings stored in memory, so I usually tune all three strings at once going up from the temperament. I find it usually gives me better stability because I can see if the pitch changes any. That's how I did it for Olga Kern's recital that Les Bartlett posted about. Abbey Simon and Enrique Graf's recitals, also. Avery Todd University of Houston <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite=""> Thanks, as always!   Annie Grieshop  </blockquote></body> </html>