Tuning styles with octaves

[Alpha88x@aol.com]

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Greeetings,

             This may sound simplistic, but when I approach a piano to tune, 
I first play and listen to the piano's unisons to see how "wavy" they are. 
Then I play chords in octaves, for exmple c-e-g in the lower register and play 
them all the way up to the top, and then a few more chords, like a-c#-e, and 
e-g#-b. 
              This way I am aurally "measuring" or geting a sense of what the 
player is used to hearing as far as octaves go. In my mind, its sort of 
listening for octave "matching". In other words, how stretched the octaves are in 
the first place. If I find that the top octaves sound really flat, and 
unbearable to my ear, I'll end up stretching them a bit.  
              Just about always, the customer is pleased. Sometimes if one 
tunes too drastically from what was there (aside from cleaner unisons) and the 
customer isn't used to the change they may not like the tuning. I believe my 
"method" sort of plays it safe. Classical players like theirs stretched more 
than the youngster just learning. To other players, it just doesn't matter. I 
always stretch octaves, always. How much just depends on what was there to begin 
with and who is playing that piano.
               I've been tuning for alittle over a year though, I cannot say 
wether this is a tried and true approach as far as keeping customers. All I 
know is that they tell me that it sounds so much better, and thank me besides 
paying me. In this first year, I only ever had one young lady call me and say 
her top octave sounded flat. She was a teacher and a classical player, and 
wanted the top octave really stretched, so I went back and stretched it more, and 
she was happy.  

Julia Gottchall,
Reading, PA

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