How long piano tuning

The soundboard is the wood that supports the strings and resonates with each note, giving it that deep, beautiful sound.

The soundboard is not completely flat. As temperature or humidity rises or decreases, the soundboard expands or contracts. When it expands, it puts more pressure on the strings, causing the notes to go sharp. With each fluctuation, the balance of the string tension is compromised. Even without temperature and humidity fluctuations, a piano will go out of tune as the piano strings stretch.

The tension in each piano string is equivalent to around 38, pounds of pressure. Even if the environment is perfect, these strings will stretch over time, causing the pitch to go flat. The best way to know if your piano needs to be tuned is to keep a twice-yearly schedule. Many pianists have a good ear for pitch and can hear when their piano starts to go sharp or flat. They may also notice buzzing or twanging when notes are played, instead of the sweet and clear sound typical of a piano.

The long waves are the easiest to measure I think. The long waves of the two notes should match up. As you already suggested, it takes time. I would say that to begin to be a good piano tuner takes at least 3 years and you still have plenty of room to improve.

It helps to have a good and discerning ear, but you do not need what people imprecisely call perfect pitch. You will need a good reference tuning fork or pro electronic tuning reference. I prefer using a C tuning fork but most people use a A. One of the most difficult part for amateurs is that they usually have only one piano to tune, their own and that. A thing you must do and that you must do often is to go in as many places as you can piano sellers, friends, etc.

Most upright pianos have the same kind. Choose one with a solid and long handle, it is more comfortable. The best would be to have two different pianos in the same room. One more correctly in tune than the other. Practice on one trying to match the tuning quality of the other. On a piano which is not too out of tune, concentrate on a few notes in the medium part of the piano extreme low and the upper register can be tricky at first that are the most out of tune or the most disagreeable sound.

This is usually because the two or three strings of this note have been drifting from each other. First mute the two lateral strings on the target note and do the same to a note one octave apart. First tune the central string using the octaved note as a reference. Then unmute one of the lateral ones and match it with the central string, listening for beats, try to always finish your tuning by a smooth move pulling the string while playing it is usually more stable. Unmute all and check first as an isolated note and with the octave.

Most amateur pianos are not tuned sufficiently frequently, especially in their early years, that's a pity because it degrades their further tunability.

First learn to improve its harmonization : improve individual notes, try to determine how the drift is spread other the piano it is quite common that the medium has drifted more than the bass or the treble parts because of a more frequent usage.

Look closely at the strings and tuning systems: are all strings and systems in good shape no rust, regular winding, no excessive pinching, even outside length of tuning axes, etc. Good tuning is associated with good key subsystems : learn more about the mechanics, look at the hammers are they moving silently, are they aligned with the strings angle, are they moving back in place quickly?

As promised. One good but not as complete as it claims reference in English, now in paperback is :. Arthur Reblitz, , Beware, the same author made several books on piano construction, mechanical piano, history of piano-making. Why do I say this? You can however learn a lot in a 20 hour basic crash course. But how well your tuning will sound after depends on your ear and aptitude. The final tuning is not great, but playable. These statistics are subjective, from my experience teaching over people to tune their own pianos.

You can break strings and round off the edges of the tuning pins with poor technique and poor tools. If you have good fine motor skills, can read and understand the section on tuning in the Reblitz book referred to by ogerard, and learn to use a professional grade Electronic Tuning Device ETD , I think your goal is entirely achievable.

But probably not in one day, maybe closer to a week, that's how long it took me to get to the first tuning I thought was "listenable," starting from scratch with an old upright I bought to learn on.

I used the Tunelab software in free trial mode. Yes, you will make your piano's tuning worse, to start with, until you get good enough at it to satisfy yourself or decide to call in a professional.

Yes, you can cause serious damage to the pinblock of your piano if you are not careful, so I wouldn't recommend learning on your main piano, because the pinblock is a major component and can be expensive to repair.

Getting "good" at it takes some serious investment in time, energy, and practice. But for some people, it's worth it. After that first acceptable tuning, it took me a few months before I felt up to tuning my main piano, a small Chickering grand.

A year after that, I passed the Piano Technicians Guild tuning exam, and now tune professionally. And my piano is always in better tune that it used to be before I headed down this path.

For decades, there has existed a raging debate in the piano technician community about aural vs. I have learned and used both methods. My feeling is that it is easier and faster to learn to do an acceptable tuning electronically, than it is aurally. But that alone will not give you the understanding required to be able to tune professionally. I had 2 pianos that needed tuning. I bought a tuner for my ipad and a cheap tuning wrench and read a lot of details on the internet. The YouTube videos showed me what a decent piano tuner does to learn the craft.

It's an ear training exercise and can take hours to get a piano sounding optimal. BUT, I didn't want to spend the money so I used the tuner and tuned from middle C up and octave using the tuner a guitar tuner would work for this step. Then I tuned all the C's, C 's, D's etc until the whole keyboard was intune with that original octave. So, it made a terrible upright useable for my daughter to have a piano when she moved out.

I think the pianos we vastly improved by the effort since I can hear a piano that's out of tune. When I was done I didn't hear any notes that sounded like clinkers any more. I'm sure it would have not met the standards of a professional tuner but you get what you pay for in life and cheap is often good enough if you don't have a lot of savings like most of us. I've been tuning pianos since I was Since age 42 professionally. I'm almost 62 now and still getting better.

Another point about settling has to do with new piano strings stretching. New pianos go out of tune quickly because the new strings stretch. To compensate for this stretching, piano manufacturers recommend new pianos be tuned at least three or four times the first year.

Yet many piano dealers recommend waiting before having your new piano tuned after moving the piano into your home. I would assume most, if not all experienced piano tuners have serviced pianos neglected for 10, 15 or 20 years; pianos that have never been tuned since the date of purchase.

Such pianos after settling for so many years still behave like new unstable pianos; the strings have not been pulled up to pitch the required number of times for them to become fully stretched. In other words, it is not the length of time the piano settles, but the number of tunings required to stabilize a new piano. A new piano, or a piano 10, 15 or 20 years old that has never been serviced needs tuning three or four times before stabilizing.

The only exception is when a new piano has been sitting on the showroom floor for several months and has gone through several in-house, or showroom tunings before purchased. There have been other myths disproved in the piano tuning business; such as pianos unusually low in pitch needing more than one appointment to bring them up to standard. This still may only take 1. Unlike a guitar with 6 strings, or a violin with 4, a piano has over strings!

Tuning is a skilled art, and requires an extreme amount of concentration.