- You'll save money. And you can tune your piano more often.
- You can easily get your piano in tune for an important occasion, such as a performance.
- Often, it is not really necessary to tune every note on the piano. Just touching up a few wayward unisons can substantially extend the life of the tuning.
- You'll learn a lot about music theory and pianos.
So what's involved? Well, traditionally, the first step to tuning a piano was to "set the temperament". This means to choose a region in the centre of the piano (at least an octave) which can be used as a template for tuning the rest of the piano. Unfortunately, since the advent of equal temperament, the intervals of each scale are not set to their pure (non-beating) ratios, but misaligned in just the right way to render all keys "equal". This means that setting the temperament by ear is not easy. Furthermore, when one attempts to extend the temperament to the extremities of the piano by tuning in octaves, one encounters the phenomenon of "inharmonicity", where the harmonics generated by piano strings are not perfect integer multiples of the fundamental. This means that the octaves also cannot simply be tuned "pure", but must be increasingly "stretched" as you move away from the centre of the piano, and done so in a consistent manner. Again, this is not so easy.
The good news is that modern piano tuning software takes care of these tasks for you! I can recommend "Tunelab", which will run on a laptop (there are also versions for smaller devices like ipads and mobile phones). The trial version is fully functional and free to download here:
It does, however, feature the occasional "pause" after tuning a certain number of notes to encourage you to purchase the product. This is only a small inconvenience if you do not tune professionally.
In essence, piano tuning software provides you with a visual display so you can determine the correct pitch for each note. Now, for most notes there is more than one string that must be tuned. You could set each string via the software; however, I recommend setting just one string using the software and then tuning the remaining strings to that one by ear. This is called "tuning the unison". Using your ear is a lot more fun and, once you get good at it, faster too.
With your laptop taking care of determining the correct pitch of each note, the main challenge is then the physical task of manipulating the tension in the string. This takes some practice, and you must remember to always go a little bit over pitch and then bring it back down to make sure the pin is not going to untwist later.
All you need to get started is a tuning hammer and a couple of mutes. I bought a nice tuning set on eBay for around $50. You could also obtain a book on piano tuning, although the internet might suffice. And then only one ingredient remains: practice!
Hopefully I have inspired you to find yourself a tuning hammer and give it a go! Please feel free to email me with any questions you may have.
