1. Guitar tuners are not set up to tune the temperament of a piano.

Each piano’s temperament is tuned slightly different depending on the piano. Many pianos have different gages and lengths of strings, therefore what sounds in tune on one piano may not sound in tune on another. This is called inharmonicity. Professionals have very sophisticated piano tuning software, as well as aural tests, that calculate how to tune the temperament of each individual piano.

2. Tuning Stability

A piano’s tuning pin and string must be set, it must be secured by the tuner. A tuner will move the pin only as much as they must to get it to pitch, and then they will ensure that the pin stays put. If it is not done right, one fortissmo blow on the key and the note will pop out of tune. This is called tuning stability. It’s the last thing a piano tuner masters and for most tuners takes hundreds of piano tunings to get the hang of.

3. Time

When I first started tuning pianos it would take me 4 to 5 hours to do one piano, and it wouldn’t even sound that good. Professional tuners tune pianos in 1 – 2 hours time. The longer it takes, the more exhausted your ears get and the more precarious your tuning hammer precision becomes.

4. String Breaking

Piano wire in old pianos can be brittle and become prone to breaking. Should the string be adjusted too far sharp, it may snap. String replacement is another skill that takes practice to develop. A professional tuner will have the appropriate tools and skills to replace broken piano wire should a string break during tuning.

5. Pitch Raise

If you are considering tuning your own piano, it is probable that the piano is nothing close to A=440Hz. Most pianos require yearly tuning, and if it’s been over 3 years, I recommend a pitch raise. A professional tuner will perform a pitch raise in which the piano is tuned very quickly to get it up to A4=440Hz. They will then do a second pass tuning, the fine tuning, which will provide clean unisons and octaves.

Recommendation

If you really are interested in keeping your own piano in tune, buy the necessary tools and do maintenance tuning in between the times your tuner comes. You may hear a unison that has gone out, or a single octave. Simply tuning one or two notes that have gone out, to ensure the tuning lasts longer, can make all the difference to your enjoyment in playing your piano.

Sometimes you play a piano and it sounds and feels odd. It’s not the tuning, (though that may be a separate issue) but it just doesn’t feel right. It may in fact be that the piano hammer is striking the string twice in quick succession. Piano technicians usually refer to this effect as bubbling. Often times the cause of the note bubbling is insufficient key travel. When the key is depressed by your finger, it doesn’t travel far enough before it hits the keybed. Many times this happens in the middle of the piano. As pianos settle with age, the middle of the keyboard can sag making the appearance of a smiley face. The keys in the middle are lower than the keys in the bass and treble extremes. A piano technician will shore up these middle keys, making a straight line from the top to the bottom of the keyboard. In the instance of this picture, a Zimmerman piano from Europe needed the middle keys to be raised, allowing for greater key travel. I brought these keys up with paper punchings, which are placed under the balance rail felt. Now that the key travel is corrected, the hammers no longer bubble or double hit and the piano has been restored to the manufactures’ specifications.

While practicing piano yesterday, I went to use my Seiko DM-20 metronome to keep time on some piano exercises when I found the battery in the Seiko had died. It takes those small watch batteries which are hard to come by around the house. I’ve had this metronome for 15 years or so without any battery issues so the fact that it had died now is not surprising. I really wanted to get into these piano exercises and there was no way to do them without the metronome. What was I to do except what I always do in these situations, check if there was a metronome app for my iPhone. Lo and behold, there were multiple metronome apps. I found the simplest one which was aptly called “Metronome”. It did what I needed, which was to keep time in an orderly fashion. No flashy graphics or redundant options, just the bpm and time signature. My iPhones volume only goes so high, thus it makes it difficult to hear if I play overly loud, but other than that, a nice piece of freeware.

If your metronome has suffered a similar fate to mine, namely expungement, consider getting the metronome app for iPhone.