Knowledge

Understanding Your Piano: Before start tuning, familiarize yourself with your piano’s structure and mechanics. Take time to notice how the keys feel under your fingers and how they move when pressed. Watch the hammers as they strike the strings inside the piano when a key is pressed, and see how the dampers lift to allow the strings to vibrate freely. This initial observation will not only help you appreciate the complexity and beauty of your instrument but also serve as a crucial foundation for effective tuning.

Gathering Tools: You’ll need a few essential tools for tuning, including a tuning lever (also known as a tuning hammer), mutes, and an electronic tuner or tuning app for accurate pitch reference. To avoid damaging the tuning pins, it’s necessary to use a quality tuning hammer, not a cheap one.　You may want to have a few more items in your tool kit in case you break a string and need to re-string it.

Tuning Knowledge: In the world of piano tuning, an interesting paradox exists. To achieve a harmonious “in tune” sound, a piano must, paradoxically, be tuned with slight deviations from exact pitch. This method, known as Equal Temperament, involves dividing the octave into twelve evenly spaced notes, enabling the piano to maintain a cohesive sound across all keys. In contrast, Inharmonicity describes the natural phenomenon where a piano’s string overtones slightly diverge from being perfect integer multiples of the base frequency. This characteristic necessitates subtle adjustments to each pitch, ensuring that the collective sound of the piano compensates for these natural variances and resonates beautifully in any composition.
It would be good to have a thorough understanding of the difference between ‘Just intonation’ and ‘Equal temperament’.

Pitch and Stability: When beginners attempt to tune a piano, it’s common for the tuned notes to not last long and quickly become out of tune again. This instability is mainly due to two factors. The first is environmental conditions that affect the stability of the tuning, such as changes in room temperature, the settling of new strings, and regular use of the piano. The second factor relates to the tuner’s proficiency with the tuning tools, especially in handling the tuning lever (hammer).

A skilled tuner understands the tuning methods needed to accommodate the effects of the environment. Moreover, correctly operating the tuning lever requires an important technique: stabilizing the tuning pins at the ideal pitch position. This technique ensures that each pin is adjusted to its most stable position while evenly distributing the stability of the piano’s twelve notes across the scale. It is this technique that presents difficulty.

Patience and Practice: The first time I tuned a piano, it took more than 5 hours and the sound result was not satisfactory. Tuning your piano is a skill that improves with practice. Start slowly, and don’t be discouraged by initial challenges. Your ear will become more attuned to slight variations in pitch over time.

Understand the risk of DIY: One critical aspect that must be carefully considered is that DIY piano tuning can potentially damage the tuning pin and pin block. Improper handling of the tuning hammer can not only bend the tuning pins but also widen the holes in the pin block where the pins are secured, leading to a situation where the tuning pins no longer stay in place. Such damage can impair the piano’s ability to maintain its tuning, possibly necessitating repairs or replacements, such as changing the pins.