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use T-bar

Grands because the tone is more pure.

Tight tuning pins? I use what I call "drive by" or "move and massage" with a wiggle or impact style.

Drive By uses a hammer angle that leaves the NSL tension in the middle of the tension band. You go flat or sharp, and then approach pitch slowly, trying not to let the pin jump. When your ear says it's good, just stop. The untwisting and unbending of the pin will leave the tension equalized, if you used the appropriate hammer angle.

The better the piano, the easier to tune.

I love to tune concert grands.

Tight pins? I use jerking method (nudging).

Loose pins, soft pull (from below)

Tuning hammer always parallel to NSL, that allows me to tune grands with my left hand. (I am left handed).

That's what works better for me.

I think of it as threading a needle.

--Andy

I think you never tuned really tight tuning pins Max, T bar is not at all an advantage for them.

Learning is done on verticals because the feeling of the wire is more direct and some basics of pin mastering are gained sooner that way.

Grands allow to be in a more comfortable posture, and are easy once one is used to perceive the delay between the tension in the pin and NSL, an the one in the speaking length .

Tight pins : lenghten the lever and have more suppleness in it but more force.

Or wave it, adding stress wave after wave until the pin "jump" in another position (the pin is also applied more on the less useful part of the hole when doing so, so the "bed " of the pin is not too much "sanded" by the motions, while I remind that all new Young Changs where conscientiously "jerked" in the attempt to ease a little the pins.

If impact works, you can use it, but the difficulty is that you have no "reading" of the pin motion when using impact alone, and the whole reading is to be done at the same time the wire is set, so there is more shot in the dark.

I mean, with very tight pins, slowly pulling may twist the pin about a semi tone high or more in treble, an that is not easy to go back then.
But with impact the pin is still twiste a little when you release it, an need much massaging and nudge to be released so the wire tension "ddo something" to the pin.

If not you are only counting on the pin to hold due to its tightness, an the NSL is not balanced, and will move later.
On a correctly build piano, the torque an twist will be similar +- from pin to pin, so you can learn to judge for that, but slow motions and massage are what allow to tune the NSL.

The principle is really to have no amount of turning counterclockwise to do, so to keep the control on NSL and develop a feel for those last "setting the pin" moments.

On some pianos you may be very lucky, raise exactly where you want and have no much to do once the pin is just untwisted a little.

Long term not guaranteed but it waorks correctly.

Re: hammer parallel to NSL.

Does not produce stability on slow pull in these situations:

Sharpening. String will go flat on hard blow if NSL tension is left too low. Tension is at top of band initially. (Result of sharpening note). 12:00 means no unbending effect. But untwisting may drop NSL tension too much if: pinblock is very tight, (induces much twist during tuning which translates into much untwisting after tuning), and short NSL (NSL tension more sensitive to pin movement). Solution: 9:00 adds bending toward string during tuning which results in unbending away from string after tuning which reduces NSL tension drop.

Similar analysis can be done when pitch goes sharp on sharpening, or pitch goes flat on flattening, or pitch goes sharp on flattening.

Different hammer angles induce different amounts of bending/unbending which affect NSL tension.

This analysis is only for slow pull. And we may have a piano that will not give enough bending/unbending needed to return NSL tension to middle of tension band (zero tension differential). In those cases, a little leaning during tuning can induce more bending which results in more unbending. In those cases 12:00 allows for the application of the lean while tuning, but I prefer to find a hammer angle that induces the appropriate bend; it is more precise than trying to feel how much lean is needed.

(Tension band is the range of NSL tensions that produce no pitch change)

Today, Lucas Brookins tuned two pianos at the Madison Area Technical College (MATC) under my direction. For the very first time, Lucas tuned ET on a Yamaha studio piano, entirely by ear. I invite Doel Kees to produce a beat rate analysis which I am sure will not reveal a completely correct progression of Major Third beat rates but perhaps he could say whether it was better than most or not, so far.

I firmly believe in methods that actually work, if you don't mind. The sequence that begins with a chain of Contiguous Major Thirds (CMT) and is followed by a sequence of, "Up a third (M3), up a third, down a 5th" is unbeatable (in my opinion) for access to immediate checks for each new note tuned. You can't go wrong and it can even reveal any flaw in the initial chain of CMT that may exist. It will mold itself to any short scaled piano of which even a fine, Yamaha studio piano is an example.

After having measured Inharmonicity samples on such pianos so many times in my career, I can attest that the low Tenor of such pianos is very high in inharmonicity. The consequence of that is that the F3-A3 initial M3 of any ET must be somewhat slower that n the theoretical and proverbial "7 beats per second".

That means that if anyone tries to impose that beat rate on such a piano, there will inevitably be a dilemma. There is a way to find the proper beat rate that, yes, "The piano will tell you!"

So, I expect that if Doel Kees provides beat rate information, the F3-A3 beat rate may be closer to 6 bps and there will probably be some irregularities further on but not significant enough for me to say that what Lucas Brookins did on his very first attempt by ear would pass the PTG Tuning exam at either a perfect or nearly perfect score!

This is a testimony to both the desire to achieve and to the method itself.

Here is a You Tube video of the progression of M3's that Lucas produced, entirely by ear:

http://youtu.be/WoA0aIh3O2o

Then, you can listen to the way he made the whole piano sound with a brief video (recorded by my cellphone which admittedly has its own limitations) but I am sure you will agree that what this young, 17 1/2 year old student produced was a totally professional sounding tuning!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKkFpJckw2E

Congratulations Lucas and Bill!

How long it took you to tune this piano?

I suppose you did it in two tuning passes, didn't you?

Here are photos of Lucas Brookins tuning a Kawai KG-2E that I have maintained for 24 years now. Lucas saw the insides and that they were clean and remarked about that. As with other pianos I had brought him to, I said that it was because only I had ever maintained that piano and I had cleaned it every time I ever worked on it and it took me less than a minute to do so.

It is the neglect of regular cleaning that amounts to a job that cannot be done! I never charged extra to clean that piano in 24 years! Yet, it is virtually spotless inside. Think about that for all of you who say that that you never clean a piano unless you are asked to do so. No one ever asked me to clean it but I always did and I never charged for it and I didn't need to charge for it because it never took more than a minute to do. It was part of the job, as I saw it.

Soon, I will have to go to Lucas' high school to clean a piano that has never been cleaned because nobody ever asked or said anything about that. But Lucas wants to have his Senior High School photo taken with that piano and he does not want a dirty piano to be the backdrop of a memory that he wil cherish for a lifetime.

I will show Lucas how to clean such a dirty and neglected piano and one which has been habitually tuned in Reverse Well and charged for as a professional tuning. That has come to an end because Lucas will take over the tuning and maintenance of all of the pianos at his school by first of all, demonstration of his own skills at aural tuning, but also by a portfolio of pianos which he has tuned and serviced over this past Summer and by endorsements of his skills and dedication from me as a Registered Piano Technician and from the faculty at another nearby high school and the technical college in Madison. Lucas is up to the job!

Look at these photos of Lucas tuning the Kawai grand at the technical college. He really looks like a pro already!





Maybe tomorrow, Lucas will post a recording of what he did with the Kawai grand. I left him to finish it after I had spent a long day already helping him and tuning other pianos.

Here is how the Kawai grand came out! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I0n9yABfGc&list=UU-QsuECzr9hD-4URcLtiJ4Q&index=1

Great job Lucas!

I want to congratulate the three of you: the pianist, the tuner and the great mentor you have!


Cheers!

Very well done Lucas! You have both the ear and the musicality to internalize what an instrument wants to do. Not something all technicians have IMO. If you decide to stay with it I should think the future for you will be very bright indeed. Brings back memories of when I was starting out tuning as a teenager some 20 years ago. Congrats!!

C'mon, I can understand and appreciate the encouraging comments.

But just leaving that at that really won't help him develop.

Yes this is an achievement for a 17 year old, but the comments must also include some constructive criticism as well.

Well done, Lucas. No criticism from me!!

Hey Lucas - Great Job!

Not only are your tunings first rate, your recording technique exceeds that of your mentor! Bill's cell only goes so far.

Isn't it time to expand your repertoire? There are composers other than J. Schmitt.

Marty, I'm working on another song. I was suppose to learn that song 2 years ago along with like 5 others.... Procrastination.. Haha I will hopefully get a few songs learned, depending on time.

I think the general praise is a bit misleading (i.e., he's not 7 y/o). That Tooner is making great progress, but the Kawai grand is not a passable/professional-sounding tuning--that is going to take some more time. Some hammer voicing would have helped to take some of that edge off, in order to hear better during the tuning.

Bill Bremmer RPT, good for you for keeping the pianos clean! I advocate the same: dirty pianos are a displeasure to work with; in an intuitional setting, dirty pianos are also treated with less respect by students/faculty than clean ones.

I disagree, A-443, whoever you are. I was actually amazed at the results. It is a 24 year old Kawai KG-2E with at least a dozen replaced and/or spliced strings in the treble and high treble. It has many very wild, false beats in that section as well.

While I am quite sure that you, in your lofty position as one of the "Illuminati" who occasionally surfaces in this forum for no other purpose than to tell everybody "how great thou art", there are mostly normal, every day piano technicians on here who have questions that need answers.

There was no time, request for or really any particular need for what you, in all of your loftiness may have perceived as falling short or what you consider to be professional expectations. I have been called twice a year for the last 24 years to TUNE that piano and nothing more!

Of course, I have gone far beyond that over the years on my own initiative. Keeping it clean is only a slight sample of what I have done to maintain it. I did manage to coax another $30 out of the music department two years ago to repair broken lid hinges, torn out of the rim.

Lucas came to me because at his young age, he recognized that the pianos at his school did not sound at all to him like pianos he had heard on recordings. It was not a matter of what you seem to be hinting about at all. It was a matter of complete, wholesale neglect and such substandard tunings that they do not merit the description of a piano having been tuned at all.

So, there is the dichotomy. You choose to tell a high school student who could already quite easily pass the PTG tuning exam as an RPT with superior scores that his tuning was essentially no good at all, that he has a long way to go before what he did would ever even get close to what you deem to be professional standards.

I certainly do not agree with that and I have a basis for not agreeing with it. The Technical College director, a PhD in music education, also agreed that the results Lucas provided were quite enough for him to offer Lucas a reference for Lucas' bid to take over the challenge of servicing the pianos at his high school. And yes, the very first thing that will have to be done is to get rid of all the dirt!

As for pianos in the media and on stage, I have heard far worse than the recording that Lucas produced through his own effort and equipment. No, he won't be flying to the world's major cities first class and helicoptered in to the major stages and recording studios, at least until he finishes high school!

What he has done so far, in my opinion, is quite impressive and I will stand by that statement. It is certainly so far much better than what had been done for years at his high school that the difference is literally the difference between night and day.

So, I am telling you, Mr. A-443 to just back off a bit from what you say to someone who could become a very great piano technician. Nobody knows who you are and yo have never posted a recording of a piano that you have tuned.

Lucas has never even owned a piano before two months ago when he received a Baldwin Acrosonic spinet from a church that was giving it away.

What you heard was his very first attempt at tuning a small grand piano in ET, entirely by ear. He did spend at least three hours doing that but that can be expected at his stage of development. Still, the results were outstanding and actually quite better than what many veteran technicians can do. The results were easily within standards of what is required of an RPT.

I would go so far as to say this: I think what you say in many posts I have seen by you on here is nothing but a lot of baloney. Some of it has been unreadable. By that, I mean unintelligible nonsense. It often contributes nothing but is easily seen as merely an attempt to put yourself high and away more highly skilled than anyone else. You don't ever say what to do, you only say that you can do it much better than anyone else.

Those are the typical kinds of posts that are seen from people who post anonymously but who elevate themselves (in their own minds but usually not to anyone else) merely to attract other technicians into some kind of worship of a persona that does not really exist.

Bill Bremmer RPT, we all have the right to express our opinions.

Immediately before posting mine, I read your opinion: "the careful instruction that I gave him resulted in a tuning that any professional pianist would accept and use for virtually any recording venue." I disagree that the Kawai grand meets the standard you described.

My posts may seem like unintelligible nonsense if you haven't taken the time to comprehend them. If you need me to explain further, I am happy to provide more details, examples, and demonstrations. However, only thing I posted here was: "that Tooner is making great progress, but the Kawai grand is not a passable/professional-sounding tuning--that is going to take some more time." Do you really think that comment is too harsh for That Tooner, or is it too harsh for you to handle personally? This is not a personal attack. Why are you treating it as such?

Bill Bremmer RPT, you wrote that That Tooner's "tuning was essentially no good at all, that he has a long way to go before what he did would ever even get close to what you deem to be professional standards." I didn't write anything like that; you creatively inferred all of that on your own. The one and only comment I made is quoted above.

This is such a great thread--do you really want to have it spiral out-of-control by making it about me?!? That would be silly, right?