Over the years, a handful of clients have inquired if it is possible to tune their own piano. Or, after attempting it unsuccessfully, they call me to come in and save the day. This article seeks to address the question of whether in fact one might tune their piano by themselves, rather than hiring a tuner.
The answer is both yes and no. Learning to tune your piano is easy. However, learning to tuner your piano so that it sounds good and doesn’t take all day is very very hard. So do you want to spend a lot of time on something and get a less than satisfactory result?
The first problem is cost. If you want your piano to sound good, then you will need a good piece of tuning software, and a good tuning hammer. The hammer will run you about $300. The software will run you $1000. Throw in a few inexpensive items like mutes and your total is around $1350. There are less expensive pieces of software but they are still going to cost several hundred dollars for something that works. You might be thinking that you could just use a free guitar tuning app, right? Wrong. This would only work for the notes in the center of the piano. All pianos are tuned differently due to something called inharmonicity. Different pianos, based on their length, have different degrees of inharmonicity. That means A5 on one piano is not the same frequency as A5 on another piano. This is something that guitar tuning apps don’t take into account.
The next problem is time. There are about 230 strings on the piano. If you are new, it’s likely you may spend a minute or more on each string. The end result? It will take about four hours to tune your piano. An experienced tuner can do it in about an hour. On several occasions where there was a time crunch I have done it in as little as 45 minutes. True, your speed would go up as you gain experience, but you would need to your piano hundreds of times before your speed improves substantially.
Another issue is risk. Piano strings are fragile. Pull one just a little too far and SNAP! A broken string. You might ask again, “I could repair a broken string, right?” Unfortunately no. An untrained person would be about as likely to change a string on a piano correctly as they would perform arthroscopic knee surgery without training. It’s very difficult and there’s not getting around it. So the answer sadly is no, you could not change a string.
Aside from the inconvenience and time and cost, there is a much more fundamental issue which is quality. You could certainly buy the hammer, buy the software, and pull all the strings. The problem is that it just wouldn’t sound very good. While your professional piano tuner is moving the hammer and tightening the strings it may not seem like much is going on. Actually a lot going on. Many of the arm movements required for fine tuning are so small they are probably invisible to the naked eye. Tuning a piano correctly requires getting these four things in order to within 1/100th of a semitone accuracy:
- Measuring the octave stretch or inharmonicity of the piano to determine the ideal tuning.
- Measuring how flat the piano is and calculating how much the frame will bend by adding tension, also known as “overpull”
- Upon pulling each tuning pin, judging if the pin is twisted and moving the hammer back in the opposite direction to untwist it. This is called “setting the pin”.
- Judging if, when pulling the pin, the pin is leaning to one side. This is called “flagpoling”. When this occurs the tuner must make an educated guess about how far the pin is leaning and move the hammer to straighten it.
If one fails to take these things into account then one might pull the string up to the correct pitch initially, but the note will not stay there. Within a minute or a day the pin will move and be out of tune again. An experienced tuner can assess all these factors and ensure that not only is the piano perfectly in tune, but it is stable. Does stable mean that it will it stay in tune forever? No but it will stay in tune as long as possible. As the weather changes, particularly humidity, this will drive the pitch up or down. This can be mitigated with a humidity control system, but that is another topic. However, the piano will be far more stable than if one doesn’t address these factors.
The question I would pose to you is why do you want to tune your own piano? For some it’s curiosity. For others it’s cost. For some it’s convenience. I can assure you none of these are worth it, save maybe curiosity. Doing it on your own is very difficult, very time consuming and the piano won’t sound very good. In all my years as a piano tuner many customers have tried to tune their own pianos. None were successful except one young man who spent a lot of time and money and finally got the hang of it. The others wrestled with it and finally gave up, often with a few broken strings.
In summary, life is short. Let the pros handle piano tuning so you can enjoy making music!