Stringing & Tuning A Piano

  • Thread starter Thread starter Whyte Ice
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Whyte Ice

The Next Vanilla Ice
Is this a hard process? I'd prefer not to pay for something that I could do myself. Is there any good tutorials out there or can someone give me a step-by-step instruction on how to do this.

Also, what piano string/wire is recommended?

I'm used to stringing/tuning guitars and instruments like it so I wonder if my knowledge in that will help.
 
dont try it. its way more compicated. ive seen it done before. ive seen it take all night long before, especially when you get into changing hammers and making two pianos match. its not easy, i wouldnt even think of trying it.
 
That would be a pretty intense project if you dont know what you are doing. Have you even counted the strings?

You can damage a piano by putting too much stress on the harp. Maybe you can find some good tutorials but I wouldnt take the chance of ruining a good piano just to save a few hundred bucks.

If it's a cheap piece of crap then go for it. ;)
 
Piano

I'm just saying what the others already have: don't try it!

Consider that a guitar has 6 (or at most 12) strings. A piano has ... well, I'm not sure ... must be 200-some strings. A piano is a big monster piece of machinery that should only be fooled with by a qualified tuner/technician, if anybody.
 
Not only that, but it could be extremely dangerous. The tension on piano strings can put a crossbow to shame. You don't know what you're doing, you could put a serious hurtin' on yourself. To say nothing of ruining the piano. In addition, if one is restringing a piano, it is often a good time to consider replacing the pin block.(The reason being, if you ever do need to replace the pin block, you'll have to restring anyway.) Another difficult task that requires specialized training.

Tuning is a little safer. You could always order one of those "learn to tune a piano at home" courses, and see if you have the patience and aptitude for it. It can be tedious work.
 
Leave it to a pro

I used to play a helpinstill stage piano. For those of you too young to remember this monstrosities, it consisted of a spinit piano, built into an anvils style road case. THe keyboard was hinged, and folded into the case. It had a pickup running across the harp under the strings. It sounded great, really bright, almost like it had tacks in the hammers but not quite. Great in a honkytonk blues sorta way. But it was heavy, and you had to tune it every time you played somewhere. I broke a string once also, and had to replace it. that was an adventure. You cant just go to GC and ask for a low d for a piano. They had to take a mic to the strings on either side(like a dumbass I tossed the broken one). I wound up taking it to somone and having it strung right after i screwed it up. Imagine moving this heavy bastard for every gig, and then having to sit there with a tuning wrench counting beats while the rest of the band is out having fun.
 
Wow Bdgr! Does that bring back memories! You must be an old fart like me!

Seems back then, I spent most of my existence searching for a keyboard that I actually liked the sound and feel of, and could still lift without a Roadie. I remember how pleased i was with my ARP 4-voice, because it "only" weighed about 65 pounds!
 
littledog said:
Wow Bdgr! Does that bring back memories! You must be an old fart like me!

Seems back then, I spent most of my existence searching for a keyboard that I actually liked the sound and feel of, and could still lift without a Roadie. I remember how pleased i was with my ARP 4-voice, because it "only" weighed about 65 pounds!
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Yep, these kids with thier midi, and thier nano pianos...They dont know how good they got it. my first keyboard was a micromoog, one note at a time, no saved patches, no MIDI, no onboard sequencer. And I was happy to have it. At least I didnt have to screw with patchcords. My first polyphonic was a VOX jaguar. For you kids out there, it made just one sound..A VOX jaguar sound. Damn kids....
 
Um, guys.....
We just got the cobwebs off the servers here, now there back. Dang nabbitt!
 
PIano tuning is not only difficult, it is a zen like art.

If you take the standard 12 note scale we all hold so dearly and really delve into it you find that, for instance, if you make the root and the thrid in precise tune, the root and the forth or fith will not be in precise tune. The scale is not perfect, on a guitar and othersuch instruments the slight harmonic differences are nearly inaudible whereas due to the great range and tension of a piano the imbalances can become pronounced. So tuning a piano is about makeing the octaves right and then filling in the rest of the notes (this is excruciatingly simplified). so the real skill is in not putting it in tune, but putting it out of tune just enough so that the disharmonies between every chord combination sound good. Back in the day of roman times i think, the 8 note scale was prevelant (thus the octave). In fact the pope declared the use of any other scale to be a mortal sin, simply beacause they were not perfect and music was considered holy and must be perfect. This of corsue gives rise to doryian, mixinian and the rest however they are spelled:rolleyes:

Piano tuning in itself is really an artform just as difficult as playing it, you have to have an ear that notices how out of tune perfectly tuned instuments really are.

-Angermeyer
 
The essence of Angermeyer's post was correct. Creating the "compromised" intonation within the scale is called setting the temperment. (Same reference as in Bach's "Well-Tempered Clavier")

The other modes that Angermeyer referred to (Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolean, Locrian) are simply the same notes as the major scale (Ionian) but played starting on a different degree of the scale. As far as temperment or tuning goes, there is no difference.

But, there are tricks to setting the temperment, involving hearing the "beats". While it's not trivial to learn, it's not extraordinarily difficult either. Think of it like being a good auto "mechanic": there will be a period of training and practise before you get competent. It's all a matter of if you are willing to put in the time. And you do have to have reasonably good ears.

But it's hardly magic.
 
littledog said:
The other modes that Angermeyer referred to (Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolean, Locrian) are simply the same notes as the major scale (Ionian) but played starting on a different degree of the scale. As far as temperment or tuning goes, there is no difference.
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I mentioned this as a side note to early 8 note scales, not in any reference to temprement (thats the word i was looking for):D

-Angermeyer
 
Hey Ice - All the above, +: if you've noticed, as you go up the scale the piano goes from one string per note, to two, to three. People, in their ignorance, have tried to tune a piano so that all 3 strings of one note were exactly the same, using a strobe or electronic tuner of some kind. If you tune a piano that way, I guarantee you'll want to give it away! Talk about a flat, un-interesting, crappy sounding piece of shit...
Trust us all - Probably the best advice I could give you, unless you intend to become a proffessional piano technician, is to go get a part-time job at McDonalds, save all the money you don't eat up in fries and burgers, and hire this particular job done by a proffessional. You'll be done quicker, you'll like the sound better, and you won't have to worry about all that rubber padding on the walls killing the highs in your recordings, not to mention the long arms on that funny backward jacket getting in the way... Steve
 
knightfly said:
Hey Ice - All the above, +: if you've noticed, as you go up the scale the piano goes from one string per note, to two, to three. People, in their ignorance, have tried to tune a piano so that all 3 strings of one note were exactly the same, using a strobe or electronic tuner of some kind. If you tune a piano that way, I guarantee you'll want to give it away! Talk about a flat, un-interesting, crappy sounding piece of shit...
Click to expand...

Holy shit! This could be the first time in my life I might find myself disagreeing with Steve!

I don't have a strobe tuner, but when I touch up drifting strings in the middle of a session, I sure as hell TRY to make the strings on each note the same. That's why they are referred to as UNISONS. And as far as i know, every piano tuner I've ever used had better get damn close on the unisons, or they don't get paid!

We didn't even touch on the concept of "stretch" tuning, but that has nothing to do with unisons. Am I missing something here?:confused:
 
Thanks for the answers. I don't even have a piano yet, I just play with my keyboard but I just wanted to know how these things were done, didn't know it was such a hard process.

How long can pianos stay in tune? How often are tuners needed?
 
It depends on your needs and how picky your ears are, as well as the instrument, especially the age and condition of the pinblock.

In typical home "recreational" use, people should tune their pianos twice a year - ideally about a month after the main weather shift (warm weather to cold, and visa versa - after the piano acclimates to the new conditions). That's not to say that everyone who owns a piano is that conscientious, but it's better to do regular maintenance. Kinda like a dentist or an oil change.

In a pro studio the piano will be tuned before EVERY session! At least that's what i do. And often touched up every couple of hours during a session. After all, pepople are going to hopefully be listening to the recording for years to come, and a piano tuning is a relatively mild expense in the grand scheme of things.

The main enemy of intonation is not so much changes in temperature, but changes in humidity. Anyone with a good piano in a building with central heating should definitely invest in a humidifier. And in the summer, running air conditioning can dry out an overly humid room.

Without any climate control humidity swings can go from 10% or less in the winter to 90% or more in the summer. The pinblock will absorb water and swell in the summer, and dry out and shrink in the winter. This not only plays hell with the tuning, but reduces the life of the pinblock itself. That's why you'd like to do what you can to avoid such drastic swings. In my room, I make sure the humidity never falls below 25% or gets above 45%.
 
Littledog...you're not going to Beserklee, are you? I graduated there in '78...hence my residence in Boston awhile back.

btw...my other thread on mastering, was a lame joke on my part, and I appreciated your sincere answers....but I deleted the thread after thinking about it for awhile. It wasn't all that funny after thinking about it.

If you are going to school there...or even teaching there, I'd like to know more about what's current at the school there. I went when their top equipment was a 1"MCI 8 track and a MCI board, but a killer mic selection. The synth dept. had a "new" Arp 2500 and a bunch of 2600's....nothing polyphonic yet!! I hear things have only gone uphill in a very major way there.
 
mxmkr:

I wondered what happened to that thread!

Anyway, I moved to Boston in 1978, right when you were leaving i guess. I dare say I'm even older than you, so, no, I'm not a Berklee student. Unfortunately, I never went to any kind of music school at all (other than taking a couple of composition courses at the Univ. of Michigan - but I wasn't a music major). Everything I've learned about music (playing and recording) has been pretty much sink-or-swim/seat of your pants method.

While I know dozens of berklee faculty (many of whom regularly record in my studio, and there's four of them in an 8 piece R&B band I play with) I can't claim to be one of them. But chances are I've worked with and recorded some of the "old timers" that were there when you were there - like Herb Pomeroy, for example.

Anyone in particular you want to know about?
 
Hey LD - I doubt we really disagree on "unison" - what I meant by my comments, was that if you should somehow actually SUCCEED in tuning all 3 strings PRECICELY the same, as in no beats whatever, not even slow imperceptible ones, that a lot of the characteristic harmonics of a piano note would be missing. I did NOT mean detuning to the point of making a "honky tonk" out of the piano. I agree with you that one should TRY to accomplish perfect tuning, though, it's harder to explain than I had/have the time for right now.

Liked your JPEG's, BTW - I KNEW there was more than one reason we always got on well... Steve
 
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