Piano Video Lesson: How often should you tune a piano?

Hi, I'm Robert Estrin here, at livingpianos.com and virtualsheetmusic.com. The question is, how often do you have to tune a piano? Boy, that's a great question. You know, the short answer is constantly, no kidding. I carry this around with me wherever I go. You could ask my wife, my concert grand, I pretty much touch up every day. You know, my father, on his recording sessions, the piano tuner would be there at the session every time he took a break. He would touch up the piano.

Pianos start going out of tune the moment you play them. I work around here, you know, this is actually in my home, at our live-work loft, so I come down here and I touch up all these pianos, even though I have tuners here every day. Just before we do our video shoots, I'm always checking the tuning on all, and checking unisons, and put the wedges in, and it's a constant job. Now, there is no substitute for a professional tuner, but you can get a good quality piano hammer, tuning hammer, a wrench and some wedges, and you can learn how to touch up to keep your piano fresh because, boy, when the unisons are pure, it sounds so beautiful.

Now, what about in a normal situation? You might wonder, of course, you're not going to tune your piano constantly. Well, there's a saying among piano tuners that you can't tune an out-of-tune piano. That sounds nuts, doesn't it? But, believe it or not, there's some truth to it. Here's the deal. As the piano gets too far out of tune...let's say you've neglected your piano, or you're buying a piano that hasn't been tuned in a number of years. Well, as soon as the tuner starts to tune one section, when he gets to the next section, the first section goes out because the bridges are on the sound board and, if the whole pitch is lower, as a section's tuned up it stresses the sound board, which puts out of tune the other section, which is why a piano that hasn't been tuned in a great amount of time needs to be tuned at least twice in a row, what's usually called the pitch raise in the tuning. And even that tuning won't hold very long.

Now, if you get ahead of the curve and you tune your piano on a very regular basis, let's say three, four times a year, in a home that is very stable, and the piano is barely played, you might get that piano where it just stays in tune after a while. For example, when I went to Music Conservatory, one of the schools I went to - Indiana University - the concert grands on stage were tuned every single day. And it got to a point where they almost didn't go out of tune at all, so stable. I work at my concert grand trying to get to that point but, unfortunately, the practicing that I do on it, I knock it out constantly. So, I can't quite get it to that point, but I keep striving.

So, the bare minimum you really want to tune a piano is at least twice a year. Now, why twice a year? Where did I come up with that number? Well, you see, the thing is, seasonal changes are going to affect the piano. So, when you go from heat to air conditioning, and back from air conditioning to heat, your piano's going to go out of tune. Now, it might not even sound bad, the whole piano could possibly shift down, or sometimes even up slightly. It might sound okay, but if the pitch of the piano isn't a concert pitch, the next time it's tuned and you want to get it back to concert pitch, once again, that tuning won't hold as long. So, the bare minimum is twice a year; ideally, three or four times a year if you play your piano on a regular basis. And, if you're like me, you're going to tune your piano all the time to try to get the purity of the tone. It's a thankless task, and I have a deep respect for piano tuners.

Thanks for joining me. Robert Estrin here, at livingpianos.com and virtualsheetmusic.com.

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