Testing The Tuning Tests

Some of the most useful information to come out of the last years use of the proposed testing procedure is an objective analysis of the skill levels of the testees, a concept of what a good tuning is and some of the most effective tuning evaluation procedures I know of.

If you are in a testing situation, or just wish to be able to perform an analysis of your own work these procedures can be helpful. If you do not have testing equipment and wish to objectively look at your own tuning you will have to do the tuning and then walk away from it for an hour or two to let your mind rest and acquire a new perspective on tuning.

It is of no consequence which fork you use or which “temperament octave” you prefer. The analysis of tempering will require a minimum of twenty-five notes for potential error elimination. The only strictures on this two-octave placement are those imposed by the piano and your ears. The two octaves should not cross over wound strings if at all possible and the range should not be such that the beats of sixths and thirds become too fast for accurate assessment.

For this purpose the biggest or the best is better, but biggest does not necessarily mean the best, so choose an instrument that is easy to tune and fine for listening and all that might imply for you.

Pick almost any notes, high, middle or low and using that note as a pivot point, check the two fourths, the two fifths and especially the two thirds that revolve around that one note and compare them all but in pairs, not mixed. If all appears well with that note and its intervals, then go to the next note above or below and continue this form of analysis until the entire two octaves have been validated and possible changes noted but not necessarily made yet.

As an example, C4 is the pivot note. Listen very carefully to the C4-F4 and G3-C4 fourths several times. What is being sought is a variation of the beat rate that is less than acceptable. Within practical limits, they should be identical. If no change is desired, then switch to the related fifths, C4-G4 and F3-C4, again played several times, seeking improper tempering. It is well to make good use of the third/sixth test of fourths and the sixth/tenth test of fifths to help define beat rates. The more difficult but highly informative conjunctive thirds G#3-C4 and C4-E4 must have the 4 to 5 beat rate ratio. This is one of the more helpful tests in that it has a balance that remains constant and once the ear is attuned to the relationship, a minor error assumes major proportions.

Each octave must be tested three ways. First the third/tenth test will verify the degree of expansion, second ...

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Music Quality Stability Tone Touch Tune Cost Beauty Durability Serviceability

Music is the ultimate goal of the piano, an objective that sometimes gets lost among the tunings, regulations, voicings, etc., etc., etc. At the same time, we must be concerned with the quality and stability of our work and of that of the instruments. Tone, touch and tune are our daily bread, as they are for the musicians, if in somewhat differing manners.

Of great importance to all is cost, beauty and durability, but the final stone in my echelon of priorities is essentially ours and that of the manufacturers or rebuilders: serviceability. In the designing and fabrication of pianos, and during rebuilding, certain practices, procedures and oversights creep in that can have a dramatic effect on one aspect of serviceability - tuneability. The next time you tune a piano that is pleasure to tune, you can be assured that many factors contributed to that quality. Here are listed few of the possible sources of trouble on those pianos that are not as tuneable.

The tuning pins must be round, with a consistent diameter and radius. Poor pins can be too long, too short, out of round, change dimension from pin to pin and from the top to the bottom of the thread. They can be poorly plated, the threads poorly cut, the metal too soft, the holes out of place and too small for the larger gauges, and finally, they may have unsquare tips. The tuning pin may appear to be a very simple piece of metal, but when carefully considered, its complexity emerges to demand our attention.

Tuning pins that are too tight require much effort that could best be used to control the pitch of the strings. These pins leave one with less than the best feel for the block and what the pin is doing in the block. Tuning pins that are too loose lack ease of control, long term durability and stability of the tuning. Pin block materials and construction need not be discussed here except to define our requirements; rigidity, dimensional stability, resilience and durability. If made and installed with care, all else is fulfilled. What is required at the interface of the tuning pin and the pin block is a slightly different matter. Wood and metal should come together with out any other matter at all; no resins, oils, moisture or carbonized wood. Some tall orders, but the factors of greatest importance are the care in drilling the holes and the cleanliness of the pin and the stringer.

I have seen beckets (the part of the string that goes through the tuning pin) so long that they have been wound part way around the tuning pin in the opposite direction by an adjacent pin. This is a little long; the proper length is through the pin but not out the other side. The reasons for this are that overly long beckets make repinning that block difficult in the extreme because the becket will not come out of the pin without destroying the coil. The overly long becket represents a painful hazard to the fingers when moving the tuning hammer and, finally, it looks tacky.

Coils that are not tight against each other leave a pin too high, tend to cause tuning instabilities and lack the beauty of neatness. On the finer gauges, a becket can be pulled out of the hole over a period of time. This is why old piano makers put four and five coils in the treble; also, the holes in the pins were bigger than the holes in present pins. Three coils are sufficient; two and a half are not.

 

Tuning pins that have been left too high present several problems to the tuner, not the least of which is tuning instability. These pins will not twist any less than lowered pins, but the twist can be ...

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Tuning Instability

In speaking to our customers about what causes a piano to go out of tune, the most common subject is the weather. A change in temperature will have little or no effect on the tune of the instrument except that most temperature changes are directly coupled to a change in humidity. Humidity change is the major factor when pianos are tuned two or more times a year.

The next most common factor is string stretch. It takes very little stretch, as we all well know from what a new string does, to make a piano sound horrid. Several years of tunings are needed to get all the stretch out of new strings. The newer pianos seem to go out because of settling of the structure as well as the stretch of the strings, but I have no proof of that.

Time itself, with the changes of weather, string stretch and structure, all cause the tuning to slide downward.

Hard playing and especially hard hammers will knock out the tuning of even the best tuner and the best piano.

One factor that seems to be rather neglected is the degree of sensitivity of the client. Some pianists are on the phone the instant the piano thinks about going out of tune, others can let the instrument go for ten years and not know the difference.

After the piano is settled in and the weather, stretch, age, time and customer demands are compensated for any real problems of the instrument itself can be considered.

One common cause of tuning instability is pinblock-back separation, where the pinblock is being pulled away from the back posts of uprights by the tension of the strings. This is most easily spotted by looking at the top of the assembly or from the bottom of the block. When the sides begin to separate from the back a weak piano plate and back can flex more than planned by the designers; tapping with the knuckles along the side will produce a hollow sound where the glue has failed.

A good number of pianos were produced with aluminium / magnesium plates that over extended periods do not have the rigidity and stamina of cast iron. This is a chronic problem without any real solution for that instrument.

When the smaller pianos were in their developmental stages, many of their unique problems were yet to be solved. One of which was determining the minimum weight and the structural rigidity for long-term integrity. Some of these early instruments tend to be ...

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Key Weighting

This post is intended to suggest a possibly lesser known “aid” for tuning the entire piano. Not included in this discussion are such basics as temperament, tuning checks to use, methods of tuning and electronic instruments if one is used. This post will focus on “fine tuning” a piano that is already at the A440 pitch level and in fairly good, even tensions in all sections.

While tuning certain pianos, particularly the older uprights, all of us have encountered certain strings, usually the longer tenor ones, that suddenly start to ring or sound while tuning due to sympathetic vibration. It was exactly this situation that prompted further study and the exploration of these “open” strings as an aid in aural tuning. It was further noted that the more in phase the octave being tuned, the louder and clearer the sing-through sound created by sympathetic vibration.

This article assumes that the reader also understands at least some of the physical characteristics of vibrating piano strings, their modes, partials and inharmonicities.

The principal of weighting keys is to deliberately raise the damper, freeing the string to sound sympathetically as related intervals are being tuned. The louder and clearer the sound of the weighted-open note, the better in tune the interval being tuned. This is the main principle of the system. Primary intervals in key-weight tuning are the octave, fifth, octave fifth and the double octave fifth. We hope to stimulate enough reader interest for many to actually experiment with the use of key-weighted open sounding strings in tuning.

One very discriminate college piano teacher once remarked, “I am more interested in the fifth being in tune than the simple octave.” Of course what she was favouring was really the 6:3 octave tuning instead of using only the fundamentals in tuning the octave 2:1. A good example of “fifth” tuning is in the matching of the fundamental and the fifth in bass tuning which is fairly standard and well known by most tuners.

In regard to the type of key weight used, anything of size and shape, heavy enough to hold any key fully depressed to open the dampers, is fine. It must also conform in size and shape to hold only one key down at a time, including the sharps, without falling off easily. It is also suggested that the weight be felt covered to eliminate the possibility of scratching any keytops.

BASS TUNING USING KEY WEIGHTS

After completing a fine-tuned temperament, extend accurately the first few notes up to the first B natural above (B4)*. The reason for tuning up these few notes is to have in tune the first fifths to weight keys open before starting the bass tuning. For example, the first note of the bass section below temperament is E3. Now place the weight on ...

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Prestressing Approach to Pitch Lowering

 Piano tuning has been established as a specialty occupation for over 130 years. Now, more than any other time in our history, rapid and basic changes in other fields are having massive influences on piano tuning.

In the last decades  we have seen the superfast tuner, the precision approach to pitch raising, inordinately accurate tunings, the advent of inhumanly accurate electronic tuning aids, and a better approach to scaling pianos -just to mention a few.

In the next years, we will be modifying many of our approaches to tuning, rebuilding, and resealing. We will see an ever-increasing demand for accuracy by ourselves, of each other, and by the buying/owning public. Competition will become stiffer - especially for those who do not keep abreast of what is happening and who do not incorporate the new and superior methods.

It is the philosophy and intent of this blog to present the more suitable, the improved, the new, or even the novel way that is in keeping with good craftsmanship and work habits. It is the further intent of this blog that such methods mentioned are in agreement with the best practices of piano-tuning.

PRESTRESSlNG APPROACH TO PITCH LOWERING

We might tend to assume the aural art/science that we practice has not developed much in recent years, but one has to admit that the art of aural tuning is still developing.

In keeping with that thought, let me now outline the procedure I have developed to rapidly “prestress” the scale prior to fine tuning when lowering pitch. Let’s change the wording of the familiar old shoe, “You cannot fine tune an out-of-tune piano,” to read, “You cannot fine tune an out- of-balance piano scale.” Since a fine tuning is also a delicate balancing of the scale’s tension, any rapid method of achieving a close approximation of that balance prior to the fine-tuning sequence would be of great benefit.

Suppose a particular piano is 8 cents sharp (i.e., A442), and it must be tuned to A440 for a concert. The iron plate and the soundboard crown would not be offended, if we lower the pitch of every other note 16 cents (twice the required amount) to pre- stress the scale prior to tuning every note. Carrying this logic a step further... 

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Hammer Technique

When thought is given to hammer technique, consideration must also be given to the various elements that taken separately, may not appear to be so very important; but a chain is made of many links and we all know the weakest one.

The tuning hammer, at first glance seems to be just a tuning hammer - but there are a variety available. The first consideration is its length. The average hammer is 10 to 11 inches long without a head. I have seen hammers as short as 6 inches and as long as 15 inches. The short hammer feeds back information more directly from the pin and has less length for flexing, but requires considerable strength and endurance to operate. The longer hammers provide more leverage but tend to flex, causing poor hand-to-pin communication, and the increased weight bends the tuning pin a little more than desired.

There have been several variations on the standard “professional” tuning hammer - the very heavy hammer turned from a piece of drive shafting which gives considerable weight to the matter, and the impact tuning hammer which has gained favour with some for pitch-raising. (These are experimental or special application tools and do not, on the average, apply for fine tuning.)

Having an extension hammer is not entirely necessary for extending t introduces so much flex that all mechanical advantage is voided through lost communication. Extension hammers tend to flex at the tightening ferrule and the shaft turns in the handle. The only advantage they have is that the handle can be removed for stringing or other special applications. The ideal hammer, then, is one that is about 10 inches long, lightweight, rigid, one-piece construction, and made of nice wood if possible.

I should be talking - the disreputable hammer I use is only 7-l/2inches long, but is extended to 11inches overall for tuning...

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On Pitch Raising

Pitch-raising of the last few years has been turned into a bit of a circus. There is nothing inherently wrong with this as there has been much good accomplished in the way of technique, world records, and written words about the subject. What seems to have been neglected is the fact that, for so many of us that go out there day after day to make a living, pitch-raising is no game but a function of our activities that saps our energy and stresses our minds and bodies.

Occasionally, I am tightly scheduled for two or three weeks at a time. When I encounter a piano that is flat, and that I know will not stay in tune and on pitch with only one tuning, I have to work harder to do the two tunings during the same time I had hoped to do but one. What this means is that I have to decide what the fall rate of this instrument will be and raise the pitch to compensate. I must tune the piano well enough so that, when I go through it for the second time, it will require less energy than in a regular tuning, will stay where I want it, and will leave me feeling confident that it reflects the skill I brought to bear.

I schedule four tunings a day: one at 9:30 am (to avoid the rush hour), the second at 11:30 am, the third at 1:30 pm, and the final tuning at 3:30 pm. I allow 90 minutes to go in and do the work required, and then 30 minutes to move on to the next job. If I am unable to do the work necessary during that amount of time, I decide what work can be done and what work can be postponed to another time. I have never deferred a pitch-raise, although on some doubtful pianos I have not raised the pitch at all.

I generally take 20 to 30 minutes to raise pitch and then another 45 to 50 minutes to fine tune. The pitch-raise time may seem excessive to some, but my objective is to finish with a piano in tune that requires a fine polish only for the second tuning - without more rough cutting.

At one time I was tuning so many pianos of one make and model that I was able to pitch-raise them up to ... 

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