Pianotech

Hi, Justin

Regardless of how you tune, in every life some call-backs will occur. Some will be your fault, but others will not. My approach has always been to take a no-fault attitude, to do the call back as soon as possible, to listen very carefully to what the customer is telling me, and to always do the first call-back for free, whatever the actual merits of the case are.

If it is apparent that a customer is anxious and has unrealistic demands, I drown him or her in a flood of cheerful attention and hard work, with copious and completely blame-free explanations. Then if necessary (it usually isn't) I explain that the first call-back visit is always free, but if they need to call me again, I'll have to charge a modest fee for a service call. No one has ever incurred the service call fee.

The exception to cheerfully scheduling a free call-back visit: I sometimes have had to explain what one might call "the statute of limitations" when someone calls back four or five months later complaining that the piano is "already" out of tune. It's unpleasant, but one just has to explain that seasonal changes, heavy playing, etc., will change the tuning. I assure people like this that if they had called within the first few weeks I'd have come back and checked the tuning. After all, we're not infallible.

As for tuning stability, many of us take different approaches. The point is to end up where we want to be. I never found any difference in stability from the angle of the tuning hammer to the string. I set the hammer where it is physically the easiest to move, and where I can keep a relaxed but straight wrist. Sometimes when nudging the pitch downward, I'll even push on the end of my long extension hammer by putting it between my ring finger and little finger, just because my wrist and elbow are the most comfortable that way. I make many small nudges, jerks, taps, etc.

Fans -- overhead fans distort the sound by reflecting some of it, so they have to be turned off. In very hot situations (when I was down in <sweaty> Stockton, CA), I'd take a small fan with me and aim it right at myself, to keep from getting heat stroke. It was quiet and didn't disturb the tuning. I'd also stop partway through, go to the bathroom, and wet my head if I felt dizzy from the heat. I prefer to tune in the same conditions as the piano will live in when I'm done, but a certain amount of comfort is necessary. One thing I really get testy about is if the piano has sun streaming across it. I tell people that tuning stability is impossible when a piano suffers intermittent sun exposure, and it's also lousy for the piano.

What I feel all stable tuners have in common is the ability to move the tuning pin in extremely small increments, without "flag-poling" or springing it too much. If uncertain about stability, in the middle treble (where it is both the hardest and most important), I give very hard blows in a chromatic scale through the whole area. Then I check the pitch with very moderate blows, and fix whatever needs it. I find that it is better for stability to set the pitch quickly, still moving the pin as little as possible, and then to check it several times so that I can micro-manage the pitch. I always want the last tuning of a pitch to be as "micro" as possible. The greater the pitch change you've had to do, and also the more likely it is that the piano will have very heavy playing (some concerts ...) the better it is to rough in the pitch, give the note a firm blow, and then wait awhile, come back, and clean up whatever shift it has done, if necessary more than once.

Lots and lots of practice of course helps. As for using an ETD to tell if a unison is in tune, I think you're much better off listening carefully to it, trying to get a particular tonal quality to it. (I prefer creamy.) Listen to see what vowel sound the note is making. Long Ah's and Oh's, very unchanging, are the best.  People talk about various tests, but for me the best test is, "do I like it?" If I don't, that tiny but invaluable touch of OCD kicks in, and I tune it again. As you gain experience, dealing with problematic notes and questions of stability will seem less threatening. It's a permanent part of the work, trying to get a piano to behave long-term, so you might as well drop the burden of worrying about it as soon as possible and just do your best, as so many of us do.

When I was taking Ted Sambell's course in Toronto, one day in class someone asked, "how long does a fine tuning last?" Ted had a little smile on his face as he said, "as soon as you finish and pack up your tools, they all start going out again."

Regards,

Hi, Justin

Regardless of how you tune, in every life some call-backs will occur. Some will be your fault, but others will not. My approach has always been to take a no-fault attitude, to do the call back as soon as possible, to listen very carefully to what the customer is telling me, and to always do the first call-back for free, whatever the actual merits of the case are.

If it is apparent that a customer is anxious and has unrealistic demands, I drown him or her in a flood of cheerful attention and hard work, with copious and completely blame-free explanations. Then if necessary (it usually isn't) I explain that the first call-back visit is always free, but if they need to call me again, I'll have to charge a modest fee for a service call. No one has ever incurred the service call fee.

The exception to cheerfully scheduling a free call-back visit: I sometimes have had to explain what one might call "the statute of limitations" when someone calls back four or five months later complaining that the piano is "already" out of tune. It's unpleasant, but one just has to explain that seasonal changes, heavy playing, etc., will change the tuning. I assure people like this that if they had called within the first few weeks I'd have come back and checked the tuning. After all, we're not infallible.

As for tuning stability, many of us take different approaches. The point is to end up where we want to be. I never found any difference in stability from the angle of the tuning hammer to the string. I set the hammer where it is physically the easiest to move, and where I can keep a relaxed but straight wrist. Sometimes when nudging the pitch downward, I'll even push on the end of my long extension hammer by putting it between my ring finger and little finger, just because my wrist and elbow are the most comfortable that way. I make many small nudges, jerks, taps, etc.

Fans -- overhead fans distort the sound by reflecting some of it, so they have to be turned off. In very hot situations (when I was down in <sweaty> Stockton, CA), I'd take a small fan with me and aim it right at myself, to keep from getting heat stroke. It was quiet and didn't disturb the tuning. I'd also stop partway through, go to the bathroom, and wet my head if I felt dizzy from the heat. I prefer to tune in the same conditions as the piano will live in when I'm done, but a certain amount of comfort is necessary. One thing I really get testy about is if the piano has sun streaming across it. I tell people that tuning stability is impossible when a piano suffers intermittent sun exposure, and it's also lousy for the piano.

What I feel all stable tuners have in common is the ability to move the tuning pin in extremely small increments, without "flag-poling" or springing it too much. If uncertain about stability, in the middle treble (where it is both the hardest and most important), I give very hard blows in a chromatic scale through the whole area. Then I check the pitch with very moderate blows, and fix whatever needs it. I find that it is better for stability to set the pitch quickly, still moving the pin as little as possible, and then to check it several times so that I can micro-manage the pitch. I always want the last tuning of a pitch to be as "micro" as possible. The greater the pitch change you've had to do, and also the more likely it is that the piano will have very heavy playing (some concerts ...) the better it is to rough in the pitch, give the note a firm blow, and then wait awhile, come back, and clean up whatever shift it has done, if necessary more than once.

Lots and lots of practice of course helps. As for using an ETD to tell if a unison is in tune, I think you're much better off listening carefully to it, trying to get a particular tonal quality to it. (I prefer creamy.) Listen to see what vowel sound the note is making. Long Ah's and Oh's, very unchanging, are the best.  People talk about various tests, but for me the best test is, "do I like it?" If I don't, that tiny but invaluable touch of OCD kicks in, and I tune it again. As you gain experience, dealing with problematic notes and questions of stability will seem less threatening. It's a permanent part of the work, trying to get a piano to behave long-term, so you might as well drop the burden of worrying about it as soon as possible and just do your best, as so many of us do.

When I was taking Ted Sambell's course in Toronto, one day in class someone asked, "how long does a fine tuning last?" Ted had a little smile on his face as he said, "as soon as you finish and pack up your tools, they all start going out again."

Regards,

I think Fred is exactly right.

One of the aspects to this discussion has been about getting to the target from above or below the target pitch. I want to add that our ability to approach the target from above or below has a lot to do with the lever position. 

For example, when tuning an upright from the 1:00-2:00 position, the pin is naturally flexing toward the speaking length. That flex pulls the pitch flat so that when we release the lever the pitch wants to move sharp. In that case it makes sense to not overshoot the pitch target but rather to even slightly undershoot and allow the release of the lever to pull the pitch the rest of the way. It's easier in this case to approach the target from the flat side. 

if we tune a grand from the 1:00 -2:00 position then the pin tends to flex away from the speaking length pulling the pitch to the sharp side and when we release the lever the pitch drifts flat. In that case it is more natural to pull above the target pitch and settle back down. 

if we move to the 12:00 position then the flex is somewhat more neutral relative to the pitch. If we move to the 10:00 position (not terribly ergonomic) we begin to experience more like what happens to the pin as described above with the upright. The actual lever position on a grand that is equivalent to 1:00-2:00 on an upright is the 7:00-8:00 position on a grand.  Unless you are left handed that is rather uncomfortable  

In practice we can flex the pin either toward or away from the speaking length moving the pitch flat or sharp as we turn the pin to offset the natural flex tendency that our lever position generates in the case where we prefer to tune from one direction or the other. 

I prefer to tune from below the pitch up to the target because I like to have the higher tension of the non speaking side pulling the speaking length to pitch rather than overshooting and then trying to release tension in that non speaking tension and hoping it releases the speaking length through the bearing points. 

In actual practice we do both and we can't really lock ourselves into one or the other. Different pianos call for different approaches.

As Fred pointed out, we have to learn to sense the free movement of the string through the bearing points. I would add we also need to learn to feel the incremental  movement of the pin in the block in our fingers irrespective of what the flexing of the pin does to the pitch. Therein lies the art. Hearing it is the easy part.