Tuning

[Tom Cole]

Jonathan,

I also spend a few moments listening to a piano before I tune.

I listen to a few notes to get a sense of how much the piano is out of
tune and where. Based on this analysis, it's fun to speculate what has
caused the piano to go out of tune - whether it was pounded heavily
(many bad unisons) or there must have been a weather change (middle of
piano sharp or flat) or has it been a long time since it was tuned?
(goes flatter and flatter as you play towards the top).

This information is also useful to decide how I will proceed with the
tuning. If the bottom of the tenor has gone several cents flat, I'll
give a quick tuning to those few notes, anything more than, say, a few
cents flat, and then proceed with my normal tuning. If the unisons are
bad (but the piano was tuned recently by a competent tech), I know I
need to pay special attention to stability. 

The main thing you need to know about the pre-existing condition of the
tuning is how it will affect the tuning you are about to do. The more
severely it is out of tune, the more your tuning is going to drift and
you will need to decide what is going to be a normal tuning and what is
going to first require a pitch change, a decision complicated by time
available and a good sense of the pianist's musical ear and
requirements.

I check the whole range of the piano so that I don't, for example, paint
myself into a fiscal corner by quoting for a normal tuning only to
discover that the wonderful sounding octave I quickly played in the
middle of the piano was a fluke and the rest is two pitch raises.

It is best if you play every note of the piano so that you are aware of
action problems, which you might want to fix first, or pin block
problems, which may mean the piano is untunable. While I'm at it, I look
for broken strings if the piano is old which, if there are some, might
dictate setting a lower pitch level.

There are many other things to check for but I think I've named most of
the important stuff.

Just one more comment about listening to the old tuning: I remember in
my early years of tuning that I used to be affected by how I found each
note before tuning it. I wasn't all that confident that where I was
going to pull it up to was right and if one note was particularly flat
or sharp, it would alter my tuning somewhat. As if the last person tuned
with perfect stability and temperament! Ah, self-confidence can be
hard-won quality.

Tom

YouthPage8@aol.com wrote:
> 
> As I said in my earlier post, I have only been tuning for a short time.
> During this time I have always spent a few moments listening to the intervals
> in the temperament octave to find out how out of tune the piano is.  However,
> I am beginning to think that this is a complete waste of time.  I would like
> to know what the voice of experience says- What do you listen to in the piano
> and for that matter, what do you look for in the piano before you strip it off
> and start tuning?
> 
> Thanks,
> Jonathan Hoover

-- 
Thomas A. Cole RPT
Santa Cruz, CA