Piano Tuning

Keeping Your Piano In Tune – 3 Tips

January 12, 2010 · Leave a Comment

This is the KISS version – The Three Basics of Keeping Your Piano In Tune

  1. Minimize humidity changes and fluctuations.
  2. Keep your piano out of direct sunlight, period.
  3. Have your piano tuned on a regular basis, 2 times a year by an experienced professional.

I will elaborate on these in coming posts.

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Piano Tuning Past & Present | Historical Keyboard Tunings | Piano-TV.com

January 11, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Check out this presentation that I gave in 2000 on Piano Tuning – Past and Present at the Philadelphia Art Museum. This is where Sylvester Stallone starred in the hit fill series – Rocky.

more about “Piano Tuning Past & Present | Histori…“, posted with vodpod

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Piano Tuning Itself

January 11, 2010 · Leave a Comment

I’ve read your comments and questions about Gilmore’s self tuning piano. For those of you who believe that it is somehow a kind of Holy Grail..well,  you are entitled to your opinion. There is just so much out there about piano tuning that I think adding a “self tuning piano” to the mix just adds to that confusion.

I write this blog to educate about the relationship between tuning and music. Some time ago in an attempt to bring some light on the subject, I did a presentation on a variety of tunings used historically prior to the our modern “Equal Temperament.”I.e. “Well Temperament, Meantone, Just and Pythagorean tunings.” I suggest you “self tuning piano folks” watch it so you can gain a deeper appreciation for piano tuning in general. Then the question might become “self tuning piano” to what?

Technology is always trying to outdo great achievements. The modern piano is one of the greatest inventions of all time. Pianos requires input from human beings tuning or playing them. Why does that have to be improved upon? If you are looking for a real improvement, consider getting your piano re-tuned to a Well Temperament or perhaps a Modified Meantone Temperament and then play Beethoven, Chopin or Bach so you can hear what that music should and did sound like when it was composed. You can even play Jazz in these intonations.

Do you want a self tuning piano? There are tons of them already out there. They are called “electric keyboards.” If you want an acoustic self tuning piano you might have to wait a bit longer for that. As far as what happened to Gilmore’s piano? I believe it didn’t pass the muster.

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Questions

April 5, 2009 · 3 Comments

I am putting this out there for anybody who has any questions about piano tuning or pianos in general.

Please tell me what your question is and I will do my best to answer it. Bear in mind that it might take a little time for me to get back to you but if you are willing to be a little bit patient, I will get respond. If for some reason you don’t hear from me please just remind me that you tried to contact me.

You can ask me a question by simply posting a comment on this blog post. To do that you will have to get a user name and password from wordpress.com if you don’t have one already. But that only takes a minute as WordPress makes it all very easy to do.

Look forward to talking to you!

Thanks

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Self Tuning Piano?

February 10, 2009 · 4 Comments

This is not a new story but food for though. A client of mine, Christian, is a writer for a Music Technology company in the UK. He turned me on to several great links having just returned from the NAMM Conference in LA.

So there is a dream out there among techies of building a piano that tunes itself. Good luck. I think this might be a case of what perfection may or may not be. Technology in and of its self is not bad and much creativity and innovation can come from it so I applaud the effort even though it would seem that the result is a non starter for those piano owners who do not want to pay for their next piano tuning.

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Yamaha Piano

February 6, 2009 · 2 Comments

Apparently Yamaha Piano Company occasionally gives away their pianos for a charitable cause.

“On March 12, 2004, the Make-A-Wish Foundation® of Metro St. Louis – supported by the generous assistance of Yamaha Cares, an employee-based, charitable giving initiative of Yamaha Corporation of America – presented Wish Teen Sarah, of Cobden, IL, with her dream piano – a Yamaha Disklavier.”

Read more…..

I tune many Yamaha pianos and generally find them to be consistent and reasonable instruments to tune.

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Steinway News

January 20, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Just thought I would post a link here for you to access news about Steinway Piano Company.

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Welcome to my Piano Tuning Blog.

December 4, 2008 · 3 Comments

Hi Everyone! I will be writing about a range of topics that I believe are pertinent to this subject. Whether you have a piano in your living room, nightclub, classroom, auditorium or church, you might find some of things I discuss on my blog to be surprising, mundane or unbelievable or maybe a little bit of both. I hope that you leave with something, even if it is only a little tidbit.

In About Us, I will tell you a little more about myself, my back ground and motivation for writing about all of this stuff. All piano owners need continuing Education, and so do piano tuners for that matter.

In Myths, I will point you to some common misconceptions and fantasies that people have about their pianos and tuning. Aesthetics has everything to do with piano tuning but I will discuss one of the most misunderstood, unknown by most subjects – historical tunings and I don’t think it will put you to sleep.

And then there is the question of Technology. Tuning technology has a profound effect on technicians (tuners) and tunees (those of you who have your pianos tuned.)

So…..stay ??? tuned…Ouch!

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