Every person who owns an acoustic piano faces questions about maintaining it. Questions like how to tune a piano? how often do pianos need tuning? What are piano tuning tools? Why is the piano out of tune? In this article, we are going to give you the answers to these questions. So stay with us until the end of the article.
For a powerful and beautiful sound from the piano to reach your ears, you need to tune it. The presence of any noise in the piano causes the note not to be played properly, which does not create a pleasant sound. According to pianists and its makers, the time to tune the piano is once a year and preferably twice.
If you want to adjust your piano yourself, you should learn how to tune a piano and keep in mind that tuning a piano is a time-consuming task and requires a lot of patience and effort. Because piano tuning is more complicated than other instruments and requires more expertise.
What is tuning a piano?
In order to know how to tune a piano, you must first understand the concept of piano tuning. Tuning a piano simply means adjusting the tension of its strings and changing their tension. Each string has its own frequency, and to achieve a good sound, it must reach the maximum standard frequency. Tuning means bringing the strings to this frequency.
This means that by tuning the piano, create the necessary harmony between its strings and bring the frequency of each to the standard frequency so that a pleasing sound comes out of your piano. Musicians achieved this harmony based on the known laws of acoustics and aesthetics. The correct way to tune an acoustic piano by tuners is by turning the tuning pins to tune the desired note. Piano tuning ensures that your piano plays notes at the correct frequencies, which creates a much more pleasing sound.
How to tune a piano
As we said, tuning a piano requires a lot of skill and patience. Putting each note in the right harmony requires special skill and technical knowledge. A piano tuner not only hears the sound of each note when you press each key but also takes into account the range of frequencies known as harmonics. The human brain is constantly processing harmonics. The harmony of your voice actually makes your voice stand out from others. With practice, you can recognize the harmonies of each tone.
To know how to tune a piano, you need to know the components of a piano completely. The strings are divided into several parts along the inside of the piano. In the bass part, as soon as one key is pressed, the hammer hits only one string. In the other part, by pressing one key, the hammer hits two strings, and in each case, you should hear a single sound. About the middle part of the piano, by pressing the hammer key, it hits three strings and you should hear a single sound from these three strings.
A piano tuner uses tuning levers to loosen or tighten the strings by changing the position of the pins. When tuning the piano, you should keep in mind that piano tuning tools can help you tune one of these strings, and by tuning the other two strings, you can hear the harmony of the sound. To tune the piano correctly, you can use a special piano tuning key and press the piano key repeatedly to fix the line that the tuner displays. You repeat the same procedure for other strings so that all two or three strings produce a single sound.
If you want to get familiar with the general concept of tuning, you can refer to the article on how to tune an instrument.
Why is the piano out of tune?
When talking about tuning stability, it means how long an acoustic piano stays in tune before you re-tune it. Therefore, in order for the piano to maintain its tuning stability, it is very important to keep it in perfect condition. An out of tune piano has different reasons for being out of tune, and in this article, we are going to explain some of the common reasons.
- First, you should pay attention to the physical state of the instrument. The piano may be defective due to age and wear, or it may be cracked due to the passage of time. Wear may be one of the reasons why the piano is out of tune.
- You may not have tuned the piano in time. Or, since you don’t use the piano for a long time, imagine that you don’t need to tune your instrument. If this notion is wrong and not paying attention to the instrument and not having enough knowledge to know how to tune a piano, it will cause it to lose its tune. When you don’t play the piano for a long time, the strings are not under pressure, so if you try to apply pressure to the strings after some time, it will cause the strings to break and eventually cause a lot of damage to the piano. Therefore, even if you do not use the piano, it is necessary to tune it at the appointed times.
- Cracking or breaking the pin block is another factor that causes the piano to go out of tune. The pin block is a wooden board and has several holes. Adjustment pins are placed inside these holes. Due to the passage of time and wear, these holes expand and the pins become loose. Also, the area around these holes may crack and cause the piano to be out of tune. So if you don’t have the technical knowledge to know how to tune a piano, be sure to get help from a piano tuner.
- Another reason for the piano to be out of tune is its cast iron plate. It is very rare for this plate to break, but if it does, it is very likely that the piano will be unrepairable and unusable.
- Damage and cracks in the soundboard are another reason why we have an out of tune piano. Of course, this does not have much effect on tuning. The work of the soundboard is to amplify the sound that reaches our ears.
- Bridges are another thing that causes the piano to go out of tune. The strings are stretched over the bridges and fixed through the bridge pins. The pressure and dryness of the strings cause cracks around the pins and loosen them. This causes irregularities in the sound of the instrument.
- Damage to the strings due to corrosion, rust, or metal fatigue is another cause of false and uncoordinated beats.
- If the piano has no structural defects we need to check the other factors. Daily and seasonal changes in air humidity are one of the common reasons that cause the piano to go out of tune. In this case, with the change in humidity, the soundboard swells and contracts and it causes a change in the tension of the wires.
Tools required for how to tune a piano
Technicians use Different tools to tune a piano. To know how to tune a piano, you need to know this instrument. We will continue to introduce them.
Tuning lever: One of the most important piano tuning tools is the piano tuning lever. This small conical tool is a specialized wrench that helps the tuner turn the tuning gains and adjust the frequency of the string.
Electronic chromatic tuner: These tuners are the most common type of tuner for piano tuning technicians. These are small tools for electronic tuning. This tool helps you to understand the note that each key produces and whether it is far from the target note or not.
Mutes: These types of piano tuning tools are rubber wedges that have different types and are cheap. Technicians place mutes on the piano strings to isolate a particular string from the others for tuning.
What is the correct piano tune?
Currently, and by default, musicians consider the A440 as the official standard tuning track. In England, A440 is considered a concert pitch. But in continental Europe, for concerts, this frequency varies between 440 and 444. This allows pianos in European orchestra halls to be tuned to A442 Hz.
Summary
One of the important things to hear a beautiful sound from the piano is to tune it correctly. In this article, we tried to familiarize you with the concepts necessary to know how to tune a piano. As we said, tuning means making the piano strings vibrate to a standard frequency.
In this article, you will find that there are many reasons why we have an out of tune piano. These factors include moving the piano, not using it for a long period of time, creating a gap between piano tunings, longevity, and lack of tuning by a technician. Also environmental factors such as humidity and weather that cause damage to the wooden body.
In some cases, the reason is that the piano is out of tune, which is fixed by a technician. These include replacing or changing internal metal parts such as tuning pins or pin blocks. The expert can tune it by actions such as cleaning the keys, damper and soft, tightening the keys, cleaning the hammers, checking the pedals, and lubricating the internal parts of the piano.
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