<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; = charset=iso-8859-1"> <META content="MSHTML 6.00.2900.2668" name=GENERATOR> <STYLE></STYLE> </HEAD> <BODY bgColor=#ffffff> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I would like to ask your opinion about = piano tuning stability. Last weekend we finished our international piano competition = in Boston. It began on Wednesday June 22nd. I was the director of the = competition and had a lot of administrative work to do.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>A couple of weekends before the = competition I made several visits to the college and tuned four of the practice pianos, = because last time in 2003 they were badly out of tune. They hadn't been tuned = since January, the beginning of the semester, and I thought I would save our organization some money. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The pianos were very old (looked as if = they were from the early 1900s), and consisted of two Steinway Bs, a Steinway A, = and  a Baldwin Hamilton Studio console.  They didn't seem to have = been looked after very well. There were paper clips, pins, dust and = other debris inside. Some of the tuning pins were rather loose. The music stand on a = Steinway B was broken and in terrible shape. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I used the SAT III to  to tune = them. I applied strong blows to equalize the tension in the strings, and lighter = listening blows to check the resultant tuning. When I finished each piano, = there was a very big improvement, and I could have given a recital on each of them. The notes had a bell like clarity, although the tone of the = Baldwin upright was rather mediocre. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>During the competition, the practice pianos were in use from 8 am until 11 pm each day by contestants. They practiced such things as the Prokofiev Toccata, = Rachmaninoff Etudes, Liszt etc, and they began to go out of tune. The air = conditioning in the building cycled on and off during the night and day. They were in quite out of tune by the end of the competition. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>My question is, would you typically = expect pianos to go out of tune under these circumstances or should they have held = their tuning better? I know it is difficult to say without seeing the pianos, = but I just wondered what your opinion might be.  I'm not sure what else I = could have done to make the pianos hold their tuning longer. I couldn't go in = to re-tune them because they were constantly in use by the contestants from = morning to late at night. I was also overloaded with work, running the = competition, so I wouldn't have had the time anyway. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Thanks for your thoughts and a happy = July 4th. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Robert Finley</FONT></DIV></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>