FAQ’s

Just as in a guitar or a violin, the piano’s sound is produced by strings stretched tightly over a wooden bridge, which sits on a broad, half-inch thick sheet of spruce called the soundboard. With more than 200 high-tension steel strings in a piano, you can imagine the huge amount of pressure being exerted on that soundboard and on the entire instrument – about 16-20 tons of it, in fact.  

              Picture a clothesline strung from the back of a house to a post across the backyard. Now imagine a neighborhood of over 200 yards, each with a similar clothesline. This, on a very large scale, is what the inside of your piano looks like, except for the underwear flapping in the breeze (on the clotheslines, not in your piano). The clotheslines are the 200 or more steel strings inside, and the ground in which each of the posts is anchored is the soundboard, a half-inch-thick slab of solid spruce that resonates and amplifies the sound produced as the strings are struck by hard felt hammers. (Less expensive pianos often use laminates of spruce or various mystery-woods.)  

            As summer and winter pass and humidity levels rise and fall, the wooden soundboard (the ground of the back yards) swells or shrinks, rising and falling with each season, so the tension on the clotheslines changes accordingly. Also, the striking of wood-and-felt hammers on the piano strings is somewhat analogous to the neighbour kids swinging on the clotheslines, which of course tends to loosen the strings.

          But even if the strings are never played, the passing of 6 to 12 months and the up-and-down of seasonal humidity changes – not to mention the constant strain of about 110 pounds of tension on each string – will rock the tuning of the piano somewhat.

         The posts standing in those 200 yards represent the tuning pins that I manipulate to change the tension – usually raising it back up – and bring the instrument into tune.

Generally, $130.00, but occasionally a pitch raise is required first – if, for example, the instrument has sat out of tune for many years. A pitch raise is sort of a rough initial tuning, without which the piano will not stay in tune. Tuning stability is the most difficult thing a technician has to learn, and part of it involves performing a pitch raise when necessary. This could bring the price to as much as $180.00. But not often.

Repairs on a piano are generally pretty reasonably priced. Often the most irritating defects – broken hammers, a single note that refuses to stop ringing, a squeak – are in the 10-minute-repair category – at $50.00 per hour. Often included in a tuning.

When all the co-incidental harmonics are either on the same frequency, thus eliminating the pulsing sound caused by sound waves that don’t perfectly overlap, or they are perfectly and smoothly balanced to be equally out-of-tune, according to the system of equal temperament developed in the 17th century.  

Well, you asked.

If it hasn’t been serviced in the last 6 months, you can be pretty sure that your piano is at least slightly “out of tune”, since the soundboard, bridges and strings are all under extreme tension, and all are twisting and morphing with the changing seasons.

          It’s really your call as to how out-of-tune you can stand it. But you should be aware that if it stands out of tune for 3, 4, 5 years it’s going to warp semi-permanently into a shape which it’s going to want to re-assume, when the piano finally does get tuned. In other words, the more often the instrument’s tuned, the less it needs to be tuned.

          In a new piano, the brand-new strings and fresh wood have a certain amount of “stretch” to them which takes a little time to settle under the 16 to 20 tons of string tension. (Yes, that much). For that reason, manufacturers always state on their warranty cards “should be tuned 3 or 4 times in the first year”. The fact is, they don’t tune them at the factories the 10 or 12 times that older pianos were tuned back in the day, in order to take all the stretch out of brand new strings and wood. A few passes with the tuning hammer and the piano is on its way to the showroom and then your house, with all those shiny new strings just waiting for an excuse to slack off into out-of-tuned-ness. 

          Tune it 4 or 5 times in the first couple of years and a good piano will stand in tune for the rest of its life with just a touch-up every year or two from then on.  

         The other very important consideration is that for children – or anyone else starting at the piano – their sense of pitch comes from what they hear early on. If everything they hear when they sit down at the piano is blood-curdling dissonance, that becomes “normal” for them. 

Only you can decide what your piano is worth to you! But of course you mean, “What’s it worth on the open market?” Older uprights – of which MANY were made in Canada between 1905 and 1929 have lost a lot of value in recent years and it’s a rare one that’s worth more than a couple of hundred dollars. But there are still a few old gems around; a Heintzman from the 1920s, for instance. I’ll be happy to assess for you at half the cost of a tuning (refundable against any work done, of course), but I’d really have to lay eyes and hands on the piano to tell. 

Usually, about an hour and a half.

As the owner of a couple of digital keyboards, I can hardly tell you that they’re the spawn of the devil. They do marvellous things – but they’re not pianos.  No digital keyboard can synthesize the satisfying, organic experience of your hand interacting with a delicately crafted, wooden mechanism, lifting a perfectly-pear-shaped, deep-felt hammer from its soft wool bed, caressing a trio of steel strings and setting them to singing in a complex dance of sound waves that pulse through a warm spruce soundboard…….. *Whew*, I need a break for a minute here.      

        Where was I? Oh yes: the sensuous experience of a real piano is appreciated by every experienced player, but it’s absolutely necessary for anyone just entering the world of the keyboard. Far better to learn the joy of music on a beat-up old upright – in tune – than on a pristine and robotic digital simulator.

By calling me to come and have a look at it first!  As I said above: I’ll be happy to assess for you at half the cost of a tuning (refundable against any work done – extraordinary travel costs excepted), but I’d really have to lay eyes and hands on the piano to assess it. 

       There are, however, a few glaring danger signs to be on the lookout for: the smell of mildew, a lot of the keys not rising after being depressed – or not pressable at all, or the sound of two distinct notes playing as a single key is played. This last often indicates that the tuning pins are too loose to be tuned – one of the few very expensive repairs and one that is absolutely necessary once the problem arises. 

There are good machines and software to help with tuning, but ultimately a well-trained human ear is still the surest guide to tuning. Besides, it’s way more fun.