Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum Aural Tuning Lessons - How Often?

The title says it all. How often should one have tuning lessons? I've been studying aural tuning with a local RPT for several months. He's very busy and only has time to fit me in every 4 or 5 weeks. I'm slowly getting better, but it's very slow going.

Thoughts?

Good job, keep practicing. It takes a long time to get your skills up to the point where you can pass the PTG exam.
I love to hear people working on aural tuning.
There are ways to supplement. You can buy the PACE tuning lesson plan from the PTG store.
Check out Sierra Software Services, Tremaine Parsons has some cool stuff to help with learning.
If you have a piano, maybe you and your tutor can put a quality tuning on it, record it on ETD and tune aurally and have a way to score yourself.
Spend lots of time tuning solid unisons.
Learn how to set the tuning pin so it will hold up to hard playing and last for a good length of time.
Learn about equalizing string tension between string terminations.
Learn good hammer technique.
Loads of stuff you can do on your own.
Do you have a tuning fork or other pitch source?
Learn how to use it to set A4.
Get the Coleman Beat Locator, it will help you learn how to focus your hearing on coincident partials that you need to hear when tuning intervals.
Join the PTG and go to chapter meetings, you may find other techs that can coach you.

Well, the things that take the longest are developing your ability to hear the beats and learning to have fine control over the tuning pin. More frequent lessons won't help much with that - you just have to practice a lot. And it really does take a long time for everybody, just be patient with yourself

I am of course assuming you have a piano to practice on!

On the other hand if you are having a hard time understanding what you are doing (I.e. the aural checks and how they fit together) you either need more frequent instruction or some good books or articles.

Thanks for the responses! Lots of good info here. I have a Kimball upright to practice tuning on, and a Steinway A, but I only touch up the unisons there. I also practice tuning on a few other pianos. I understand all the checks (or at least the ones I've learned so far), it's hammer control/technique that's killing me. I just got Ken Burtons book, Different Strokes. I think that's going to help me out a lot. My stability is slowly improving, but pin setting seems to be the mythical unicorn that's just out of my reach at this point.

I like the idea of recording a good EDT tuning on my upright, something to judge myself by. I have played around with the free version of Tune Lab a bit, as well as a few freebee tuning apps. They don't agree with each other at all (especially on G3), oddly enough.

The Sierra Software Temper Tool looks like a great resource. Something to explore when everyone else is sleeping!

Joining the PTG is on the docket for the fall.

Thanks!

It's good you recognize pin setting difficulty.
If you can't feel the tick of the pin as it twists and rotates then breaks friction in the pin block it is difficult to set the pin. You may need a different hammer. Some are better than others and a quality hammer is very important. I didn't say expensive, I said quality. The goose neck kits that appear on eBay I would stay clear of.
Your tutor should be able to assist you with this.
Later in your career you will find that you spend more time tuning unisons and this is what people hear first generally when the tuning starts moving out. Solid unison tuning is probably as or more difficult than setting a temperament.

Some Kimball uprights are not the easiest to practice tuning on. Further, the scaling might not lend itself to a decent temperament. I'd recommend practicing on the Steinway instead - work on moving the pin only the amount needed to preserve the block.

Thanks again for the responses. I bought a Faulk lever a few months ago, and it made a huge difference. A bit pricey, but cheap considering how quickly it pays for itself compared to the necessary tools of other trades.

Everyone I talked to says the same thing; unisons are the hardest. I didn't believe it at first, but I'm finding that to be the case.

As for tuning the Steinway, I need to keep it in tune for work. My teacher did suggest I practice temperaments on it, and then just put it back to where it was.

I would like to add or pass on what my mentor said about setting pins. We did an exercise to improve tuning hammer control, which incidentally seems related. We used a unison for this example to demonstrate tuning hammer control by detuning the left string of a unison( muting off the right) and then I was asked to count how many ticks I heard or felt that it took to bring the left string in tune with the center. In doing this exercise I'm learning to make smaller movements and more stability. Now for setting the pin, he said you should bring the string your tuning a click or a few clicks over " pure." So don't bring the string up from the bottom and leave it pure, you have to bring it a few clicks over pure and then push with slight pressure to bring it back to pure and this takes out the twist in the tuning pin(setting the pin).. Hope that helps.

You can say that again and again and, (did I say again, again?), again Gene! Great advice Gene.

All tuning is unison tuning to some degree. Coincident partial matches of intervals other than the octaves are detuned unisons. And octave partial matches are artfully detuned unisons.

I totally agree with the above explanation, even though raising the pitch above the pure point should be done with utmost care and based on experience in order not to break the string due to over stretching...

I totally agree with the above explanation, even though raising the pitch above the pure point should be done with utmost care and based on experience in order not to break the string due to over stretching...

THe 1 click over pure and then eassing it back to pure has worked for me so far, id be interested in hearing what others suggest in setting the pin. A couple months ago I was tuning the wrong tuning pin and found that i tuned it like 3 notes higher than it should have been, luckily it didnt break... I suppose its because its a newer piano lol.. The other day I broke a string off at the tuning pin because the handle of my tuning hammer got caught on a rather high baby grand rim eek.. good thing it is not a clients and it is a crap piano