Well, I was fascinated by this factoid when I first learned it Lo! these many years ago. It is why action and intonation are so important on physical instruments. With it in mind, I even played around with "stretch" tuning back when I owned a Fender Rhodes. And not only does picking or hammering send the string out of tune, so does fretting it. Damn! Just when I got it tuned, and you had to mess up everything by going and playing the thing.

The timing of this post is interesting. Just a few hours earlier I saw Peter Yarrow doing a PSA (that's Public Service Announcement to you non-broadcast-oriented sorts) for colonoscopy(!). He had written a bit of doggerel and set it to his fingerpicked guitar, a small-bodied Martin which was so astonishingly in tune that I looked to make sure he was actually playing.


"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."