Pitch Raise

[Ron Nossaman]

> I am a novice tuner learning to tune aurally. I am confused as to how to 
> do an effective aural pitch raise.

It'll probably take you longer to learn to do an effective aural 
pitch raise dependably than to learn to tune acceptably.


> How can you accurately judge whether a piano needs a pitch raise 
> (without an electronic guage)?

I don't think you can, accurately, with any method. So much depends 
on the situation, and every tuner has a different threshold. Just 
figuring out where the piano is in pitch is guesswork. If you live 
in a part of the world that has seasons, you'll find often tuned 
pianos that are very close in the A-4 area, five beats flat or sharp 
in the low tenor, and the same in octave 6. The bass will be pretty 
close, and the high treble could be anywhere. Most of your clientele 
won't be too interested in paying for pitch corrections twice a 
year, so you do the best you can in one pass.

At A-4, each beat per second is four cents. I tune school systems 
where the pianos are off 4+ beats (16+ cents) sharp or flat at A-4. 
They get one pass. While this won't produce concert level tuning, 
it's surprising how nice sounding a tuning you can produce like this 
with practice, which is good, because that's all they will get under 
these circumstances.

In other venues, a 4 cent or smaller change will require a pitch 
adjustment pass.

Bottom line is, there isn't a rule. Your judgment is made on the 
likelihood of your meeting the requirements of the tuning in this 
instance, on this piano, in one pass.


> Once you determine a pitch raise is necessary, is there a particular 
> sequence to use when pitch raising? I am aware of the general guideline 
> of overshooting a string by half the amount that it is flat. Do you do 
> this on every note, or is there a certain graduation as you go to the 
> bass and the treble?

I start with the overshoot at the fork, and set a decent, but not 
overly fussy temperament. I then chase the overshoot beat rate by 
octaves up to the treble break, and down to the low tenor. The 
overshoot in the bass will be less, or none. Overshoot through 
octave 6 will be more than in the center, tapering to none at the top.

Again, everyone slays their pitch correction dragon in their own 
fashion. You'll just have to keep paying attention and adjusting 
your approach until you find a set of processes that work for you.

Ron N