Tuning a Piano

Don't you love peeking inside to see what makes it work? I took this photo late last spring when my old piano was being tuned. It's said that the only time a piano is in tune is when the piano tuner is finished with it, and if you want to define "in tune" then I might agree. I better explain.

Why it goes out of tune

In an acoustic piano, the entire instrument is always under huge stress. There is a wooden soundboard, a metal frame, and strings that are under varying degrees of tension from about 150 to 200 lbs each. Overall, the pressure is easily over 18 tons.

With every tiny change in temperature or humidity, the stresses change. In the spring, the soundboard, which functions like your eardrum, swells and tightens the strings. The pitch goes up, meaning each sound gets slightly higher. In the winter, when humidity is lower, it shrinks and causes the strings to loosen. The pitch goes down. The loosening is always greater than the tightening, and on some level, this happens daily. Even under perfect climatically controlled conditions, the strings will gradually slacken over time.

With temperature and humidity extremes come bigger problems. Condensation will cause the strings and metal components to rust. Extreme dryness can cause cracks in the soundboard and even warp the hammers' wood. Press the key attached to a warped hammer and it might miss the string entirely.

How often to tune?

When a piano is brand new, its metal strings are relatively elastic. You tighten them and they loosen on their own, tighten again and they loosen less. It's recommended that new pianos be tuned four times the first year, at least twice the second year, then at least yearly after that whether they are played or not. Those are minimums. It is recommended that good pianos be tuned with every season and certainly a concert pianist would appreciate a more frequent tuning schedule. All of this is just to keep the piano tuned to concert pitch, defined as the A above middle C vibrating to a frequency of 440 Hz.

My tuner recommended a yearly tuning for my old piano and I installed a central humidifier in my furnace that has really helped.

If it hasn't be tuned in years

This is where it gets interesting. If a piano hasn't been tuned in years, the strings have continued to slacken, and the overall pitch may have slipped enough that it would be unwise to raise it to concert pitch in one tuning.

Unwise? Yes, you don't ever want to break a piano string because a new one would need to be tuned... and it's four times that year, twice the second... I know that guitar players will relate to this but it's worse when you're paying someone else to replace the string and do the tuning for you.

Instead, your tuner will raise the pitch of every string a little each year, and it might take a few years before they are all back to where they should be. Don't worry, even if your piano's pitch is lower than concert pitch it will still sound good. It's only a problem if you're trying to play along with recorded music or other musicians with untunable instruments such as harmonicas and accordians.

Needless to say, tuning is not free but it's cheaper to have yearly maintenance tunings than it is to skip a few years and then have to raise the pitch of every single string on the piano. Even though they loosen, they loosen at different rates and may not all need to be tuned each year.

Is it worth it?

The question is really about owning an acoustic piano. If you have one, take care of it and have it tuned yearly. If it's a good piano, it has a rich sound that still isn't 100% reproducible by an electronic piano and the keyboard has a nicer touch. Every acoustic piano is different because no two pieces of wood are alike and acoustic pianos are lovable old characters that you bond with.