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A question for the professionals.

How do you know your tuning is actually stable? Do you occasionally do checks by revisiting the customer later in the day, or next day, or next week to make sure your technique is actually working?

In my experience it is possible to have all unisons in tune and stable against test blows, but a few of them still go out of tune after a couple of hours of normal playing.

Kees

For the schools I tune at, I will often tune before rehearsals begin and then give a gratuitous touch-up before the performance. This gives me a good idea of how my stability is doing.

Then there are my home pianos, and the one I usually hear and usually play on Sundays.

I think test blows are overrated. Sure, tune fairly loudly, but that should be enough. Getting a string to be stable is like aiming high and to the right when shooting far in a cross wind. Ya kinda gotta lob the pitch on target. And often what you do with the pin after the pitch is where you want it, without changing the pitch, is important too. Be the string, Danny. Be the string. (Ever watch Caddyshack?)

Aside from good tuning technique the rest of it, in my mind, is knowing the instrument, followed by knowing the climate and environment it is used in (type of use as well as room environment).

I often have the opportunity to follow up my tuning on the next day because I have a showroom and my wife teaches piano at home. I have never found my day old tuning so perfect I couldn't improve 6 or 7 strings at least.

The interesting thing is a few go sharp. This is because I did so much tuning of new pianos early in my career that I tend to leave the pin as "high" as I can and be able to get the string tuned.

Finally, an experienced tech attaching a quantity to the stability discussion.

I don't have the years of tuning Ed does, but my tunings benefit, when I get the opportunity, to follow myself up a day or so later. A day or a few days later, after the tuning has some time on it, a few unisons will have started to drift. After cleaning them up, the whole thing stays put (a relative term) better than if I didn't have the opportunity to catch stragglers.

How many...for me, if the pins and front segment are reasonably compliant,10-11 strings, usually only one string in a unison. These are minor unison drifts. In a really tight pin, poorly rendering item, the number of strings might be the same, but the drift sometimes is more aggressive. It depends on how much of a pitch correction was required.(I always do 2 full passes, with final tweaks)

Jim Ialeggio

Interesting. From the boldfaced part of the quote it then follows that the discerning customer would benefit from scheduling a short cleanup session a day or so after the main tuning.

Does anyone offer such service?

Kees

I think that is why many solo piano recording sessions have a piano technician on standby.

I have found that when working for music festivals that use the piano several times a week I can get the piano so stable it does not change during performance. Sometimes even going many days without me needing to move a string. It does take having a climate controlled hall and not overly bright stage lights. Some situations need retuning every three days-or every performance day

Honestly, I think people obsess over this way too much. People make such a big deal about "setting the pin" (a term I really hate, btw), blah blah blah. I firmly believe that the single biggest mistake tuners (at least novice tuners) make is that they attempt a fine tuning when the piano is too far away from the destination pitch. Rick Baldassin wrote an excellent article on tuning stability, which was published in the PTG Journal, in 1990.

I concur with Beethoven986: one of the most difficult things I've have to teach was how to move on (i.e., to set it and forget it...so to say). Multiple passes are the way to go: I encourage different techniques that allow for 20/40/60 min passes depending on what in the tuning needs to be achieved.

it is easier to leave the tuning when unison goals are clear.

small rest before deciding to work more may avoid unnecessary work also .

some shapes have a larger acceptable bandwidth than others, so when at some point the eventual change only influence the harmonic content lightly and not global energy output, then it is time to give the piano to the pianist.

Very often the customers tell me they hear more or less, or are aware of what I am doing, that is surprising, I was use to hear comments that nothing was really perceived by a close listener.

of course as anyone I experiment some light drifts up or down, more on the energy side/attack width than moaning, beats. But a strong initial phase tend to lock well in my opinion, sort of auto correct itself to some point. Not absolutely the most thin sparking tone but the most long lasting certainly.

more time than available is often necessary to allow a control and play enough the notes to be sure they are really set.

ET is asking for too much precision, in the end, you can tune more pianos a day by using an UT, a little wild tone and some customers may be happy.

Those of us 'blessed' with university work have plenty of opportunities for gathering information about tuning stability - from practice rooms to teaching studios to the performance pianos. Whether or not any specific tech. takes advantage of the opportunity is up to them....

Ron Koval

When I tune for a professional high level recording studio, we tune the piano every morning and I am on stand by in the afternoon in case. What does that tell you?

This topic comes up often. Some have gone through great lengths in explaining quite well how tuning stability is achieved; but in most instances they might as well be talking to the fence post.

Case histories. Some have witnessed:

1. Good tuning technique - pitch raise or none - applied to a S&S D and surviving as heavy handed a Brahms 1 or a Rach 3 performance as one can imagine, with the fine tuning absolutely intact. Nothing has moved. Unisons clean.

2. Instances wherein new pianos tuned in the store, knocked down, loaded on the truck, traveled across town, set up for an event, have survived with the tuning intact.

3. Average Home Piano holding its tune for six months to a year - sometimes longer - anywhere from intact to virtually so.

4. These and many similar cases repeated over and again.

Who, What, Why, When, Where, How, How Much? For those who understand the tuning technique required to make the achievement of such a result possible, no explanation is needed. For those who understand not, neither would they believe if told, no explanation will suffice.

Off to Toad Suck Daze. Dueling pianos tonight.

Wart Warning !!!

So I guess you may believe in some sort of "auto alimentation" that allows the strings to get tightly coupling together.

I cannot locate that anywhere else than in the chock absorption capacity of the upper part of the wire (pin pinblock and NSL.

Whenever some controlled stress exists it is an energy reserve.
If it is not submitted to power levels higher than what it can accept it will maintain the system perfectly stable.

Piano designers take some (great) care of using strings lengths and diameters that suffer the less from seasonal changes.

But I also have noticed very good tuning quality staying despite moving in hard roads, on a 1838 and 1842 instruments.

A professional customer that have a 2008 D Steinway moved with it from France to Spain recently, and told me he did look for a technician for tuning only one month later and that the piano did hold "well" after the move.
Played professionally daily and by a tall pianist

I also happen to tune a piano regularely tuned by another tuner, thinking leaving everything good and stable, and probably I have used a slightly different way (did not notice at that point ) and the unison moved way more than I expected.

The strings seem to want to go back to their usual place...

A tall pianist??



Herr Weiss

Vertically Enabled and an Upright Citizen, I'm sure.

Thank you, Marty!

Maybe something was lost in translation.



HW

actually 73.6 inches tall, and strong hands.

Sorry may be not exactly what I should have used.

I like great pianists but the tall ones play stronger than my aunt's garden

That you haven't read the question?

Kees