A high end piano, while weighing hundreds of pounds, is actually quite a delicate item. The 2 biggest dangers are swings in humidity and improper servicing.

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.
Piano Care continued

There are 2 books I’ve been reading lately, one new and one not so new.

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.

My Yamaha CFIIIS came back from PianoWorks in Atlanta and was installed in Charleston. It was very nicely strung with new pinblock and treble bridge cap. Flawless delivery to Charleston sounding very good on arrival. Good is relative, of course. The parts PianoWorks did were very very good. The sound of the hammers and their presence in a midsize room was harsh. They will only begin to sound acceptable with a couple of hours of serious voicing, and that can’t happen until the piano is tuned and very stable. To me, that’s at least 10 tunings. I just have to get started.

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.
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Oh my dear, you understand me but you don’t understand the nature of piano technology.

I took a good wack at making progress on my piano. I fine tuned the key level, then went over the hammer line, drop and let off before taking a critical bash at keydip. AT LAST, it’s beginning to feel like a piano! Yes, uneven as hell, but at least there is aftertouch.

I’m keeping a pretty good eye on the humidifier. I’ve got 3 hygrometers scattered around and am keeping things between 40% and 50%. Still, the tuning drifts (at least to my ear…being a piano tuner can be a curse) so I spent some time tuning the other day. Rather than just do the quick fix with the standard settings in the RCT, I spent some critical time getting my ear back for aural temperaments.

Of course, by the time that was done, I had little patience for voicing, so took a couple of jabs to get the edge off and put everything back. What I really need are 2 solid 8 hour days, but that probably won’t happen soon…nobody’s paying me!

I’ve owned a Reyburn Cyber Tuner for the last year. Pretty cool little device and very informative to let you know what is going on when one tunes a piano. I’m far from being one of those egg head electronic tuners that are so common at the conventions, but have gotten a little way into it.

One observation: the standard tunings that come in these things stretch the octaves way too much for my ear. I think it  is really the drift in the country towards the loud, harsh sound you hear so often. I just don’t think the octaves on a concert grand should beat…it’s just not natural or musical. When I check my aural octaves to the standard tuning in the RCT, I’m flat by a very consistent, and very small amount. Must be my Viennese training.

I took Ferdinand Braeu, the Bosendorfer technical director to see a class by Albert Sanderson, the grand old man of electronic tuning. When it was all done Ferdinand leaned over and whispered “it just sounds out of tune to me” and to me too.

Al tuned it exactly the way he wanted to and the way most people in the room expected. Just too much stretch for us.