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Tuning a piano


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Don"t. I used to travel with a triple string Baldwin Electro-Piano. I started out tuning it myself, ultimately hired tuners. I did keep a tuning tool handy for the occasional touch up of a string or two when absolutely needed, though. Just my opinion, others may differ.
I would like to apologize to anyone I have not yet offended. Please be patient and I will get to you shortly.
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Do reserch on "streteched piano tuning".

 

If you tune each string "to the "correct" tempered scale notes, it will not sound correct. Physics of different strings under tension.

I have a friend who tunes pianos as an income stream, he explained it to me. Makes perfect sense.

 

Honestly, unless you move it around all the time you are better off to hire a well-reviewed professional.

If time is money you will not save anything.

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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I'd say make friends with a good piano tuner and try to apprentice with them for awhile, there is a lot to being a good piano tuner.

 

Also from watching it happen at the church I worked at don't bring a tuning wrench with you to gigs and just "touch up" a couple notes, you'll find people start losing your phone number for gigs.

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You will need a stobe tuner, a tuning hammer, and rubber wedges. I used to carry a Conn strobe tuner on the road (expensive!) but now days you can probably get an app for your phone.

 

The rubber wedges are used to damp strings you are not currently tuning. Use the tuner to set one string on each note in the middle 2 or 3 octaves. Then set the unison strings.

 

From there, move upward and downward among the octaves and tune it by ear listening to the beats. Since the harmonics at either end of the piano's range are usually off pitch wise (due to the inherent inharmonic behavior of short strings), what you are really doing is splitting the difference between having the fundamental pitch in tune or the most prominent harmonics in tune. Your ear is the best judge of this.

 

You do have to learn to set the pin correctly, as others have mentioned. If you don't, the pitch will soon slip.

 

 

Moe

---

 

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I'd say make friends with a good piano tuner and try to apprentice with them for awhile, there is a lot to being a good piano tuner.

 

Also from watching it happen at the church I worked at don't bring a tuning wrench with you to gigs and just "touch up" a couple notes, you'll find people start losing your phone number for gigs.

I never had any problems with the occasional touch up at gigs, but admittedly, I may have just been lucky. But as I said, I would never attempt to do a complete tuning. It"s an art and takes some skill.

I would like to apologize to anyone I have not yet offended. Please be patient and I will get to you shortly.
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I'm crazy enough to do my own. I started on my old Kranich and Bach, but now I do my Kawai. I use an app called TuneLab, which is available on several platforms. I started doing it myself after having some techs do more harm than good. The money spent for the app would have been spent in a few tunings. I still use a pro tuner I know sometimes. It just depends on if I feel like spending the money vs. spending the time (a couple of few hours) to do it myself.

 

I use the app on the entire piano. I haven't learned to count beats like Moe describes. There's a classic book that's so old it's in the public domain called Piano Tuning by Jerry Cree Fischer you might want to check out for some old methods. Things haven't changed much.

"I'm so crazy, I don't know this is impossible! Hoo hoo!" - Daffy Duck

 

"The good news is that once you start piano you never have to worry about getting laid again. More time to practice!" - MOI

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I used to touch up my CP-70, which had a maximum of two strings per note. I was amazed at the tuning stability of that piano. I have a G-2 in my living room, but I have it professionally tuned.

"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing."

- George Bernard Shaw

 

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I used to touch up my CP-70, which had a maximum of two strings per note. I was amazed at the tuning stability of that piano.

 

I still own a CP 70 and agree. I find it amazing how well it stays in tune. My 52" Kawaii Upright, not so much. Wish I were more help to you, Anne, but I pay someone to tune my Kawai. Better for me in the long run.

 

:nopity:
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Maybe depends on your piano and your expectations ? ;)

 

I pay $300 a tuning, twice a year. If I could afford it, I'd have it done quarterly. I've tried many people over the years and for my ears Allan Cate is the best pure tuner in LA. And his tunings hold very well too-- that's where the rubber meets the road for piano tuning imo..

 

When he raised it to $300, I took about 2 years off from him and tried different/less expensive people but it wasn't the same rock solid in the high registers.

 

I have one voicing and regulation done, by a different tech, once a year. Again at $300.

 

These people that are at this level are highly skilled. They've apprenticed with the best and have honed their craft well, often under high pressure situations , with picky, high temperamental Artists.

 

The lady who does my voicing/ regulation was head tech at Royce Hall/UCLA for over 20 years. She encountered the entire gambit of nice people to not so nice. She did tell me, she would never tune for Keith Jarrett again , no matter how much dough is offered.

There was a major fuzz during Keith Jarrett"s Kölner concerts in the seventies if i remember correctly. Till the last minute he didn"t fancy the small Bösendorfer because he asked for an Imperial. After FIVE hours of tuning Keith agreed to perform.

I must say you can hear the rapid detuning in the recordings, but boy it was a classic recording.

 

Poor poor pianotuner that day....

 

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Maybe depends on your piano and your expectations ? ;)

 

I pay $300 a tuning, twice a year. If I could afford it, I'd have it done quarterly. I've tried many people over the years and for my ears Allan Cate is the best pure tuner in LA. And his tunings hold very well too-- that's where the rubber meets the road for piano tuning imo..

 

When he raised it to $300, I took about 2 years off from him and tried different/less expensive people but it wasn't the same rock solid in the high registers.

 

I have one voicing and regulation done, by a different tech, once a year. Again at $300.

 

These people that are at this level are highly skilled. They've apprenticed with the best and have honed their craft well, often under high pressure situations , with picky, high temperamental Artists.

 

The lady who does my voicing/ regulation was head tech at Royce Hall/UCLA for over 20 years. She encountered the entire gambit of nice people to not so nice. She did tell me, she would never tune for Keith Jarrett again , no matter how much dough is offered.

 

I'd say you get what you pay for. You can dump more than that into work needed on Hammond's and Leslies so $300.00 is worth it.

 

"Danny, ci manchi a tutti. La E-Street Band non e' la stessa senza di te. Riposa in pace, fratello"

 

 

noblevibes.com

 

 

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My father was an in-demand piano tuner. He tuned Van Cliburn's pianos at home, tuned pianos for certain artists at Bass Hall & Meyerson. Later on in his life, he was attending a concert at Bass Hall. The pedals on the piano broke. A person comes on the PA "Is there a piano technician in the house?". According to the new paper article the day after, they said father "leaps up on the stage" and using simple tools the theater crew had available, fixed the piano. He got a standing ovation and the concert resumed.

 

Father always used pitch forks as reference. That was his key to dialing the stretch and sweet voicings.

 

Good luck finding a good tuner. I'm still looking.

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Pianos are a beautiful pain in the ass tuning wise. Temp/humidity if not constant.

Recently played a show on a Yammy C7 in an auditorium. Hours before the show at rehersal tuning was out and the plate was cold. Wondered if I should touch it up or if room warm up would correct it. Decided to fix and take chance. Tuning held til end of show where it sounded bad and room was warm. No damp chaser system.

Not the pianos fault. Treat it right.

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...I used to travel with a triple string Baldwin Electro-Piano.

I did the same and never had much trouble with it. If I had relied on professional piano tuners, I would have lost money on every gig. I had a neat little roll up kit with hammer, felts, and wedges that I carried around, but usually all it needed before a gig was one or two unisons that needed to be de-jangled. I'd do a full tune once every couple of months.

 

... It's also bad for your ears. Wear plugs doing high treble.

Really? I've never heard this - and I'm not sure I'm buying it. Why would it be any worse than just playing the piano? Particularly on stage with a rock band.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

-Mark Twain

 

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Everytime you turn the tuning pin you slowly wear out the torque in the pinblock. Practice with an old junker first if you can. Setting the pin and the string takes experience. It's also bad for your ears. Wear plugs doing high treble.

OOh....thanks Pete. I didn't know that! Thanks for the warning about the plugs...I have a good pair which still allow me to hear pitch perfectly. :)

"Turn your fingers into a dust rag and keep them keys clean!" ;) Bluzeyone
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You will need a stobe tuner, a tuning hammer, and rubber wedges. I used to carry a Conn strobe tuner on the road (expensive!) but now days you can probably get an app for your phone.

 

The rubber wedges are used to damp strings you are not currently tuning. Use the tuner to set one string on each note in the middle 2 or 3 octaves. Then set the unison strings.

 

From there, move upward and downward among the octaves and tune it by ear listening to the beats. Since the harmonics at either end of the piano's range are usually off pitch wise (due to the inherent inharmonic behavior of short strings), what you are really doing is splitting the difference between having the fundamental pitch in tune or the most prominent harmonics in tune. Your ear is the best judge of this.

 

You do have to learn to set the pin correctly, as others have mentioned. If you don't, the pitch will soon slip.

 

Cheers Moe. I have the equipment already and have tuned the odd annoying note (but admittedly I do not find it easy.) The thought of tuning an entire piano is scary, but my (unspeakably fabulous) tuner is moving away next year and I am worried about finding someone good to replace him. Hopefully if I can manage to do it myself then at least I will never be totally stuck.....

 

"Turn your fingers into a dust rag and keep them keys clean!" ;) Bluzeyone
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I'm crazy enough to do my own. I started on my old Kranich and Bach, but now I do my Kawai. I use an app called TuneLab, which is available on several platforms. I started doing it myself after having some techs do more harm than good. The money spent for the app would have been spent in a few tunings. I still use a pro tuner I know sometimes. It just depends on if I feel like spending the money vs. spending the time (a couple of few hours) to do it myself.

 

I use the app on the entire piano. I haven't learned to count beats like Moe describes. There's a classic book that's so old it's in the public domain called Piano Tuning by Jerry Cree Fischer you might want to check out for some old methods. Things haven't changed much.

This is most encouraging Joe .... thank you! I love the idea of using an app...it is the imperfect tuning intervals which are most scary... I hope to be able to get a tuner sometimes but also be able to cope on my own between his visits

etc.

"Turn your fingers into a dust rag and keep them keys clean!" ;) Bluzeyone
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I used to touch up my CP-70, which had a maximum of two strings per note. I was amazed at the tuning stability of that piano.

 

I still own a CP 70 and agree. I find it amazing how well it stays in tune. My 52" Kawaii Upright, not so much. Wish I were more help to you, Anne, but I pay someone to tune my Kawai. Better for me in the long run.

No need to apologies: all replies are extremely helpful, Dave. Hearing a cross section of how other people manage is the best way to see the full range of what is possible and what people generally prefer to do. :)

"Turn your fingers into a dust rag and keep them keys clean!" ;) Bluzeyone
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I've been a professional tuner for 35 years. If you have true desire and passion to do it you can do it. You need to read a lot ,think a lot, and practice a lot. The hardest part is in your hands- developing good tuning hammer technique. Musical pitch/beats are pretty easy to learn but getting the piano to stay in tune is hard. You may check to see if there is a chapter of the Piano technicians guild near you and attend some meetings. Learning to tune is a serious commitment but most people can do it if there have the desire. An elctronic tuning aid is a small help. I tune aurally.
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Hi,

 

I would recommend you to read the book A Grand Obsession by Perry Knize. It's not a technical book but it's a great story to read about pianos and she talks a lot about tuning.

 

A no-so-popular comment: sometimes keyboard player ears prefer to hear less stretched tunings... just a matter of what we are used to.

 

Regards,

Fran

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I'm not sure if this is the correct way to put it, but getting the right amount of "stretch" to compensate for a string overtone's inharmonicities seems to be where the art of tuning is. Many years ago I owned a Yamaha CP70 which as most know is is a very imperfect substitute for a real piano â but is tuned the same way. I will never forget the day our regular tuner came to my mom's apartment where she had her C3. For reasons I forget, my CP70 was also there, and this tuner made my CP sing like I never heard on any CP70 or 80, live or recorded, ever or since. And he did it by ear as I remember â this was the late 70s so he could have used a strobe tuner but I don't remember that. It blew me away. Of course that lasted until I brought it to the next gig!
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If this is something you want to do in between tunings by a professional, then watch a few videos on YouTube, get a decent tuning app like TuneLab, and you can do your own touch-ups if you're careful, patient, and mindful.

 

If this is something you want to do for a living, as a professional, then you need to apprentice with someone. You cannot learn it on your own. There is SO much more that goes into tuning pianos other than counting beats, setting the temperament, stretch tuning, etc. It is a DEEP subject of immense complexity. And then there's the technician side of things; learning how to repair, how to regulate, how to replace parts, etc. That's another entire universe in and of itself.

 

It's a fulfilling and endlessly interesting profession but not one that can be mastered in a few years. I've been tuning for 12 years and I'm still learning something new every single time I sit down at a piano.

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If this is something you want to do in between tunings by a professional, then watch a few videos on YouTube, get a decent tuning app like TuneLab, and you can do your own touch-ups if you're careful, patient, and mindful.

 

If this is something you want to do for a living, as a professional, then you need to apprentice with someone. You cannot learn it on your own. There is SO much more that goes into tuning pianos other than counting beats, setting the temperament, stretch tuning, etc. It is a DEEP subject of immense complexity. And then there's the technician side of things; learning how to repair, how to regulate, how to replace parts, etc. That's another entire universe in and of itself.

 

It's a fulfilling and endlessly interesting profession but not one that can be mastered in a few years. I've been tuning for 12 years and I'm still learning something new every single time I sit down at a piano.

Thanks very much Jim. Don't worry - I have no wish to attempt anything more than my own piano. I am fully aware of the huge amount of skill & technical expertise which tuners possess and have neither the time nor the inclination to attempt to travel that road. All I want is to be able to cope on my own for a bit if for some reason I cannot access a tuner. Or to be able to add in extra tunings of my own between visits his visits once I have found someone...

All the info in this thread has been most helpful. thanks everyone. :)

 

"Turn your fingers into a dust rag and keep them keys clean!" ;) Bluzeyone
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I will join in with the comments along the lines of "find someone who's damn good at it, and pay them their due".

 

I have had a few mediocre technicians work on my instruments over the years. They tend to over-rely on digital tuning, and less by ear. And I'm always a bit disappointed when they're done.

 

Last month, the last surviving high-end piano dealership in the area pointed me at a semi-retired tech they recommend. The guy had to drive an hour each way. Used a tuning fork for A, and the rest was done entirely by ear. It sounded magical when he was done. Since the piano is basically new, nothing was needed in the regulation department. 60 minutes or so.

 

$160 +tip, so I think I got a bargain.

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