I originally achieved RPT status in 1980 but, in a stroke of idiocy, let my membership to the Guild lapse about 10 years ago. Being an Associate has bugged me and I’ve had it in my mind to regain the RPT level if for no other reason than the fact that not many people in my place in the piano business have it. Generally one is either a tech or a sales/marketing guy. Sure, some sales/marketing guys claim to be techs but not may of them actually have the RPT badge.

Anyway, after thinking about it for a long time and putting it off for over a year, I finally got it together and took the tuning exam last week (more on the tech exam later). I was pretty confident I would pass as I have tuned a lot in my life, but I haven’t been actively involved in piano tech work for some time, so you never know.

Well, I’ll cut to the chase; I nailed it. Click on the image to see the proof. I guess I got lazy in the treble section, but I’m pretty happy with the rest. I mean come on…98% in the high treble!?!? At MY age!?!?

Passing is 80% in all sections and those who achieve 90% or greater in all sections, while tuning completely aurally, are eligible for CTE (Certified Tuning Examiner)status which means, as I was told, that after training I could give my life away to the Guild and oversee tuning tests.

Yes, I’m pretty jazzed about the results because it means that even old dogs can still have it. Thank God I will never have to tune another piano!

PS. I’m still not an RPT… the technical exam still needs to be, uh, mastered.

Humidity:

While high humidity (greater than 70%) can cause inconveniences, such as sticking keys, it rarely causes true damange. Besides, in this day and age most homes that have high end pianos have central air conditioning that keeps the humidity in the summer months at a relatively constant level.

Low humidity (less than 40%) can truly damage your piano. This damage can include soundboard cracks, loose tuning pins, action problems and more.

While maintaining a constant humidity level, say 45%, is desirable, it is difficult to achieve. The most critical step is to put an absolute limit to how low the humidity in the room can go. This usually means carefully tracking humidity with a simple hygrometer, available at most hardware stores, and adding humidity by using a humidifier.

It is best to add moisture to a room, using humidifiers that have a large reservoir to reduce the need to refill and to reduce the chances of going dry for too long. Electrostatic humidifiers, while quiet, have a disadvantage of leaving a white dust. Drum or wick humidifiers need a fan that contributes to noise, but are most effective overall.

In-piano climate control systems can be effective if properly installed and maintained. Usually it is not necessary to use the “heating element” designed to lower high humidity. These devices usually have small reservoirs meaning that you must keep careful track of the water levels. The biggest danger is failing to keep the reservoirs filled leading to a false sense of protection.

Servicing

While all pianos have the same basic parts and construction, the skill levels of piano technicians are not consistent. Getting the most out of your high end piano requires you finding a technician who most importantly has a sensitivity to your brand, and an acute awareness that not all brands of pianos are intended so sound alike.

Tuning

A high end piano should be tuned AT LEAST 4 times a year. This will keep the pitch stable and the piano sounding it’s best. Pianos go out of tune very slowly and you may not notice the tonal deterioration. Do not be fooled by your own ear. The idea that “it still sounds fine to me” has little to do with whether or not the piano actually needs tuning.

A high end piano is designed to respond to very careful, high end tuning. While electronic tuning devices have made great strides, simply using one of these devices is not a guarantee that the tuning will bring the best out of your piano. Most of these pianos sound best when the “octaves are NOT over stretched”. Mention this to your tuner. If he or she looks at you blankly, it may be best to find another technician. If they know what you are referring to but begin arguing that stretching the octaves leads to greater brightness and power, then experiment with this approach and one who is more conservative. You may very well find that your piano sounds best with less stretched octaves and that the warmth and sustaining quality more than makes up for any missing power.

Regulation

Ideally a piano technician will check and touch up the regulation during each tuning, keeping things from getting too far out of specification and ensuring consistent touch and feel. It is best to work out an arrangement with your technician where he or she spends 30 to 60 minutes during each visit going over the regulation and voicing.This is the technique used to maintain concert pianos and your high end piano will respond well to this approach.

Voicing

Improper voicing by a well meaning technician can quickly ruin the sound of your piano and lead to repairs that might cost thousands of dollars for new hammers. The best source is a recommendation by another high end piano owner or a technician associated with the dealer of a particular line of pianos. Be aware that these makers strive for distinct tone and this tone is very different from the sound produced by most American Steinways. Because a technician is experienced in Steinway DOES NOT necessarily mean he or she is the best choice for your piano. A technician should approach voicing very carefully and respectfully and often the best voicer may be associated with the dealer from whom you purchased your piano. These technicians will often have had specific experience and training on how to get the best tone for your particular brand of piano. Avoid lacquering hammers at all costs. Remember, you bought this particular piano for the way it sounded to you. It does not really matter what kind of sound your technician prefers.

The Voice of the Piano by Andre Oorebeek is a welcome addition to the sparse list of books on piano technology. This book is a very clear and thorough examination of the process of high end piano voicing, which concentrates (but is not limited to) manipulating the shape and density of the felt of piano hammers.

Oorebeek brings some light to an area that has traditionally been considered a black art, mainly because it is so hard to talk about. Even with his clear description of techniques, it really doesn’t mean anything if you can’t hear the progress and results. However it holds a lot for experienced technicians as well as piano lovers who are interested in their instruments.
Next, to be clear, I really do read this kind of stuff.

Virgil Smith has long been a proponent of tuning by listening to the complete sound of a particular note, rather than listening and tuning only to specific harmonics or “partials”. He has also been a lone voice in the wind for a long time, especially with the popularity of electronic tuning devices which can ONLY listen to individual partials. However Smith makes a good point, which is that when one listens to a piano being played, one listens to the complete tone of the piano, not individual harmonics so why not tune that way. And, in my experience, the tunings I’ve heard by skilled practitioners have been quite convincing.

Smith has also proven that the pitch of a 3 string unison changes (drops) when you tune with only 2 strings sounding at a time. This is very hard to get ones head (ears) around but it has been proven. This means that the customary way of tuning, tuning the center string then the other 2 unisons to it, is, well, wrong! In Smiths opinion, one should never tune 1 string by itself.

Umm, how do you do this without 2 tuning hammers? David Anderson gives a good demonstration by “cracking the unison”, knocking one of the 2 out (you can mute the 3rd, when setting the first, thank god) and then focusing your hearing on the one that you are tuning, ignoring the other clearly out of tune string.

Easier said than done.

This technique also means that you are pretty sure (really really sure) of how you are setting your temperament since it does not tolerate a lot of fussing. But, again, in my experience the proof is in the pudding and pianos tuned this way sound exceptionally clear and musical.

I’m working on developing this skill and it does not come easy.

A single piano key sets into motion a set of 3 strings, all set in motion by the same hammer and all tuned, ideally, to the exact same pitch. This collection of 3 strings is called a unison. One usually sets a temperment by muting off 2 of the 3 strings in each unison over the temperment octave. This allows you to really focus on specific individual partials between the note you are tuning and the note you are tuning from. This is usually done by threading a thick felt strip between each of the unisons, muting the outside string of each. You then tune the center string as the reference. Setting a temperment is a really process of adjusting 12 variables, each of the strings in the octave. making those fine adjustments is considered much easier to do with one string at a time, and then, when you are satisfied, you tune each of the other strings (left and right) to the center one.

Now, there are different techniques. One way is to mute off the entire piano, listening to a total of 2 strings at a time. But as with a lot of things, less is often considered more. The macho tuner claims to use 1, or maybe 2 individual mutes. The implication and reality is that that tuner is so sure of where that single string is set, that he can tune the other 2 to it and be confident that he won’t need to come back and adjust it slightly later. It sounds like hubris but when you see it done by the right person, you come away thinking that there was no other position for any of the strings, that that person set them exactly where they were meant to be.

This assumes a very high skill level and a piano that is extremely well tuned to begin with. But it also compliments the notion that very high level tuning takes into account all 3 strings of any unison as an integral part of the overall sound of that piano. By muting off you’re taking out of consideration a key part of resulting piano sound so how could your tuning possibly be optimized?

All it takes is practice.

New brigde cap

I haven’t tuned a piano in a year and before that probably 2, so I’m rusty. The skills of tuning stay with you, like riding a bike. The facility and confidence, however, have to be painstakingly, patiently rebuilt.

Tuning is a very physical activity. You are forcing a stout metal pin, which has been driven tightly into a block of wood and is under great tension, to move a very precise and tiny amount. The movement required starts with the back, shoulder and arm and ends with the wrists and fingertips as the pin is gently nudged into proper position. The final positioning of the pin is really manipulating the twist in the pin rather than causing it to move in the wood.

The actual note you hear from a piano is comprised of up to three separate strings (under special circumstances 4). The vibration pattern emitted by each of these 3 strings is very complex and actually consists of a number of softer individual tones which are subdivisions, or partials of the note being struck. These partials, sounding together when struck by the piano hammer, appear to our ears as a single note. Piano tuning requires one to listen to these individual, very specific subdivisions of a single piano string. The more a piano is in tune, the more these sound like one note, one rich, dynamic, note. The more it is out of tune the more harsh, brittle and generally aggravating it sounds. Like any skill, training your ear to hear partials can be done by just about anybody, after a great deal of time and practice.

Inharmonicity
Tuning a piano is actually the act of putting it precisely out of tune. Because of the stiffness of the steel in a piano string, the partials, or subdivisions of a particular note, are all slightly out of tune. The condition is called inharmonicity. While any string demonstrates this condition to some degree, it is the stiff steel strings of a piano that are most difficult and critical because of the range of the piano. The equations tell us that the strong partials or harmonics of a low copper wrapped bass string should be exactly in tune with the same pitch being emitted by a string far up the scale of the piano. But that stiffness in the string makes the correct mathematical relationship impossible to obtain. This means that the tuner is actually striving for a pleasing compromise where the errors in the relationship between the harmonics are spread evenly over the keyboard.

You can think of the way an ear is used in tuning by comparing it to something like Where’s Waldo or the hidden image pictures that were so popular recently. These puzzles require you to use your eye in a very conscious way, looking at something one way, then another hoping the target will pop out. When tuning, you are using your ear to examine the various different combination of partials between two notes, the one you are tuning and the one you are tuning too. You focus your concentration on one combination, possibly another to check, then the whole pattern of sound because just having one set of partials in tune is not enough if the tuning still sounds wrong.

The various methods of tuning a piano are essentially endless and once you start listening critically, the variance in tuning among tuners is substantial. Again like any profession, there are the hacks, the tradesmen and the artists. To tune a concert piano effectively one must tune at the level of an artist which means adjusting the different components so the tuning is actually optimized for the piano, artist and environment. It is possible, in skilled hands, for the tuning to augment a performance, to add something positive to it. This is something like a Formula 1 racing engine, tuned and optimized for one single event.

The temperment
The process usually starts with setting the first reference octave, called the temperment, to which all the other notes will be tuned. This temperment octave starts with a reference from a tuning fork and then is manipulated and fussed with until it sounds a very specific way in a series of checks and tests. These checks focus on vibrational patterns that when identified and recognized, divide the 12 notes of the temperment octave into generally equal parts. These checks and tests do not take into account any musical characteristic. This technique results in a generally serviceable tuning that works with most modern pianos and is relatively quick to perform. It is hardly meant to optimize a piano on it’s own because most customers can’t hear the difference and certainly don’t want to pay anything more for it.

Concert tuning is different.

But here I am, with a rusty ear, rustier joints and a howling collection of steel and wood, far from a piano. And man, I am not into struggling with this. So I set a basic temperment that roughly fits all the basic checks. You don’t have to be too picky here because the new strings are still stretching and won’t stay in tune for long anyway. I have a Reyburn Cybertuner that would have been great for the first 6 tunings or so, but my HP Ipaq on which I ran Cybertuner and the GPS system TomTom crashed and besides, I have to get the ear back in shape anyway…how hard can it be?

Here is his blog, one of the few I have found by high end piano technicians.