Piano Video Lesson: How to Tune Your Own Piano: Part I

Welcome to livingpianos.com. I'm Robert Estrin. Today is a subject that I've been getting so many questions about. I thought you'd really be interested in how to tune your own piano. Can you tune your own piano? That is the real question. I'm going to provide you with the tools so you will know if you can tune your piano and if you want to tune your own piano. But more than that, I'm going to show you an incredibly valuable skill that you can all take to heart, which is how to touch up tuning on your piano, which I think all of you should learn how to do. It's something I've been doing for years, and you're going to love it once you learn how to do this.

So, what do you need to tune a piano anyway? Well, you do need a tuning wrench, tuning hammer, they're sometimes called, and make sure it has a removable head, not a one piece here, and make sure it's a star head, that it doesn't have a square head, because if there's a square head, you have four positions that you could put the tuning wrench, and that is really cumbersome because as you're going to discover, it's really hard to move this thing, so you want a star head that can be in many, many different positions, and that's going to be a lifesaver for you. Don't skip on your tools here. It's not that expensive. There's tons of them on Amazon starting less than 40 bucks. Then you just need a couple of wedges, really, so you can mute out some of the strings, because as you know, through most of the piano, there are three strings to each note, and you need to hear just two of them at a time if you're tuning up one string to another string.

On upright pianos, you might want to get a wedge that has this metal rod sticking out of it. It makes it easier to place it an upright piano. For grand pianos, this is really all you need. Right? If you're turning a whole piano, you'll want felt that can mute out all your strings. That's another subject for another video. Today, I'm going to show you what is really involved in tuning a piano. Beyond this, to turn a whole piano, you can use software for the pitches and things like this, but this is all you need to touch up your tuning. Now, why am I talking about touching up tuning as being so important? Because it has so many benefits with a front side that is really light. In other words, to learn how to tune a piano well can take really dozens or more likely hundreds of tunings before you have the skills to really get a piano not just to be in tune, but to hold its tuning any length of time at all.

Any competent tuner can get a piano in tune, but the first time you play it, notes are going out. It's really hard to set those strings and the pins in such a way that the pitchers will hold. So, touching up, though, totally different ballgame. You get your piano tuned, and a few days later, you're playing it and notes drastically out right in the middle of the piano, driving you crazy. You schedule this tuning, you pay good money for it, and now your piano is just not fun to play at all. What do you do? Hire them back for another tuning a couple weeks later? Well, if you got the tools and the knowledge, I'm going to show you here, you can touch up the tuning on select notes. Worse yet, have you ever had a broken string on your piano? That note is out of tune for months. It takes so many tunings before it's got a hold again.

Well, armed with these tools and the knowledge I'm going to show you, you can alleviate that problem and you can actually extend the tuning of your piano to last much longer just by going through and touching it up on a periodic basis. Let's get right to work on this. Now, my piano is pretty well in tune. There's some notes on the very high register that are not perfect, but those high notes are really very difficult to tune because the slightest motion of the tuning wrench knocks the pitch way off. To get it just right is so difficult. The very lowest notes on the piano are difficult. Also, for another reason, particularly on smaller pianos, there's so little fundamental pitch it's hard to tell what picture even hearing. But, you know what? If a note way up here or way down there is out of tune, it's not going to affect you that much because you're not going to encounter it constantly like you will notes in the middle register of the piano.

So, that's what I'm going to focus on here today, because it's the most value with the least work. How does that sound? Sound good, right? Let's start with middle C. Sounds in tune, doesn't it? Well, how do you know? How do you know if a note is in tune or not? Is it looking at a tuner to see if it's in pitch? No, that's not it, because the important thing is for a piano to be in tune with itself. If your piano is tuned to 442 and then you play A and you want it to be at 440, that A is going to be out of tune with the rest of the piano. So, more than that, when you're touching up the tuning, it's usually only one or two strings of a certain note that's out. Our unison goes out to make it sound funny. It's not the whole note is going to go out. That rarely happens in any kind of uniform fashion.

A tuner, you don't need for this that I'm showing you. You do need to listen. I'm going to show you and demonstrate what it sounds like when a note goes out of tune by taking this C and purposely de-tuning it for you very slightly at first. You'll hear instead of the pure sound, you'll hear waves. If it's slightly out, the waves will be quite slow undulation. As it gets more out of tune, they become quicker and quicker. So, the first thing we do is notice that these are the three strings for middle C. By pushing down the key, I released the damper so that I can pluck them. Those are the three strings, and they're in tune with one another. I'm going to follow this one all the way back, find the pin that associates with the right string, that one. I'm going to lower it a little bit by pushing on the tuning wrench. You hear that slow wave? Listen for it.

Now, if I make it even further out of tune, that wave will get faster. Now, that's what I'm talking about. You're playing your piano, it was was tuned maybe a couple of weeks ago, and a note goes out for no particular reason. It can happen, the weather, just playing hard can happen. If it's right in the middle of the piano like this, you don't even want to play your piano. You don't want to spend a bunch of money getting the whole piano tuned or even just getting your tuner there. If they travel great distance, they have to charge you for their time, right? So, armed with the necessary tools, now what do you do? Well, the first thing you do is you identify which note is low. Now, we happen to know because I de-tuned it myself, but you want to listen for it, so listen to the separate strings now. It's always hard because my nails are really short, but I'm going to go ahead and pluck them, and listen if the third one sounds lower to you. It should.

Listen to them again and see if you can notice how the third one is lower. Now, one thing you want to do is check to make sure the other two are in tune with one another. The way to do that is muting the one that was lower. Now we're listening to just these two strings, and this one's muted out with the wedge. Well, those two strings are absolutely in tune to one another. To be able to hear the out of tune string with an in tune string, having just one string sound with the out of tune is better. So, I'm going to mute out one of the in tune strings so that we're left with the middle string that's in tune and the one on the right that is low.

Once again, we're going to pluck to be sure we got this right by pushing down to the key to release the damper. So, you can pluck them. Sure enough, that one's low. Now, here's where it gets really fun, and when you try this the first time, if you don't already have a deep respect for your piano technician, you will, because it's really hard to get this in tune. Now, you might just luck out and get it the first pull. It can happen. But you might go back and forth for five or 10 minutes trying to get it locked in. It's not just you or me. I've seen my piano technician who's a master concert technician sometimes, boom, gets a note in tune like that. Other times, struggling trying to get it just locked to the right position. Here's why when you pull the tension here, there's huge amounts of string tension there.

So, what happens is there's tension that builds up at all the points of termination. Right near where this felt is, there's going to be tension, and as soon as you hit a note hard, that tension is released on the other side, where there is termination at the bridge. Same thing had happened. You get it in tune, but the first loud strike of the note and the string tension equalizes across the point of termination. That's why it's so important once you get your piano tuned to give a couple of hard blows to the key so that the first time you play it loud, it doesn't go out. I'm going to go now and go ahead and pull this up to pitch very gently. It's still not there. We'll try again. I still think it's low, but I'm going to check to make sure I didn't pull it too far, because you can't even believe the minuscule motion on your tuning hammer and how much effect that has on the string.

Let's listen to them now, middle string first, and then the one on the side that was low before to see if it's still low. It's still low, so I'm going to pull a little bit more. Now that's really close. Hear that slow wave? That's a tough one to find out which one's higher, which one's lower. Once again, push the key down and pluck them. I think it might be just slightly high now, so I'm going to push it down in pitch by pushing counter-clockwise. Now it's really, really, really, really close, but if you listen to the difference between this, it's a slow undulation compared to the two strings that are in tune with one another. Hear the purity compared to very close?

Now, which way is it? Once again, we do the plucking routine. Push the key down to release the damper and listen to these two pitches. I still think it's a little high, so I'm going to push it counterclockwise slightly again. You know, that's unbelievably close. Listen to all three strings now. I think that's pretty good. Now what we've just done is one string on a piano that has somewhere between 220 to 240 strings. Where it gets really complicated is if your piano is really out of tune, the whole pitch could be slightly low. As you start tuning one section of the piano, the pressure that is exerted on the bridge in one area pushes the soundboard down, affecting the previously tuned area of your piano. So, you have to kind of go through the tuning at least a couple of times to get anything to hold.

Tuning a whole piano is very complicated. You also have the factor that smaller pianos don't have such pure sounds. They have a lot of what are called overtones, which are colored tones that are higher notes within the lower notes. Sometimes those can conflict with the fundamental pitch of other notes. So, skilled tuners, they know how to finesse the tuning to get a sweet sound out of all different pianos. Now, the good news is, if you're so inclined that you want to learn how to do that, there are software programs that can take the tunings from great tuners and take into account the size of the piano and the pitch you're starting with. By sampling all the A's on the piano, for example, it knows how much stretch you need.

It's still an arduous task to tune a whole piano. So, I recommend all of you to get your feet wet and to have something that will really prolong the tuning of your piano and save you when you have one or two notes that are out of tune driving you nuts, touch up tuning is a great skill to develop. I hope this is enjoyable for you. Let me know in the comments and emails. If you're interested in learning more about piano tuning, I'm happy to share with you a bit more about it, but today I've given you a valuable skill that any of you should be able to take to heart and make your piano sound better, longer, by touching up the tuning. I hope you've enjoyed it. Again, I'm Robert Estrin here at livingpianos.com, your online piano resource, with tons of resources on livingpianos.com, here in YouTube, and even more premium content on Patreon. Thanks for joining me. We'll see you next time.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/tune-your-piano-pt-1/

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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