I had a piano tuning job in Decatur, GA today that required me to tune the piano twice. This is a common occurrence when the piano tuner is called to tune a piano that has not been tuned in a long time. The term "a long time" could be any amount of time greater than two years. Most piano manufacturers, by the way, recommend that pianos should be tuned twice a year in order to care for them properly. I tell my customers that they should tune their pianos once to twice a year as a minimum if they are being played and no less than every other year if they are not being used regularly.
What most people don't realize is that pianos will go out of tune even if they are not being played. As a matter of fact, normal piano playing will not cause the piano to go out of tune much at all. The greatest factors that affects the piano's tuning are temperature and humidity changes in the environment where the piano is located. For instance, if you had your piano tuned in early fall when the AC was still on, and then had a cold snap that caused you to turn the heat on for a night or two, odds are your piano will noticeably out of tune the next time you play it. Why? Because the environment around the piano changed. This is the same phenomenon that causes a guitar to go out of tune when it is tuned at home, then thrown in the car and has to be tuned again later that same day when it's time to play the gig. Guitar strings and tuning pins are very similar to piano strings and tuning pins in that it doesn't take much to cause them to move away from that perfect tuning you just gave it.
So, the truth of the matter is, that pianos will go out of tune even if they are just sitting there and not getting played. And, if neglected long enough, the strings can get so far out that they either cannot be brought back up to standard pitch or they stand a good chance of breaking when you require your tuner to bring your piano up to standard pitch.
The rule of thumb here is that if a piano is more than 10% (or "cents") above (sharp) or below (flat) from standard pitch then it will require at least two tunings for the tuning to hold at standard pitch for any reasonable amount of time. The reason for this is that it has been proven that piano strings will drop about 25% of the distance they are pulled up within the amount of time that it takes to tune the piano. For example, if your piano is 100% flat (that would be one half step flat from standard pitch) and you instruct your piano tuner to bring the piano up to standard pitch, then the piano will be approximately 25% flat (1/4 of a half step flat from standard pitch) by the time he or she is done with the first tuning. So the second tuning brings the piano closer in from 25% flat to 6.25% (or less) flat from standard pitch. If you follow this line of reasoning on out, you can see how it could take more than two tunings to bring the piano back to standard pitch if it is even further out than 100% flat.
Piano technicians call this process of tuning a piano twice in one visit a "pitch raise" or a "pitch correction". Generally speaking, this procedure involves the first tuning to serve as a faster and less accurate tuning to just get the whole piano within the parameters so that the second tuning can serve as a normal "fine tuning" just as if it the piano had been tuned a year or two ago.
What most people don't realize is that pianos will go out of tune even if they are not being played. As a matter of fact, normal piano playing will not cause the piano to go out of tune much at all. The greatest factors that affects the piano's tuning are temperature and humidity changes in the environment where the piano is located. For instance, if you had your piano tuned in early fall when the AC was still on, and then had a cold snap that caused you to turn the heat on for a night or two, odds are your piano will noticeably out of tune the next time you play it. Why? Because the environment around the piano changed. This is the same phenomenon that causes a guitar to go out of tune when it is tuned at home, then thrown in the car and has to be tuned again later that same day when it's time to play the gig. Guitar strings and tuning pins are very similar to piano strings and tuning pins in that it doesn't take much to cause them to move away from that perfect tuning you just gave it.
So, the truth of the matter is, that pianos will go out of tune even if they are just sitting there and not getting played. And, if neglected long enough, the strings can get so far out that they either cannot be brought back up to standard pitch or they stand a good chance of breaking when you require your tuner to bring your piano up to standard pitch.
The rule of thumb here is that if a piano is more than 10% (or "cents") above (sharp) or below (flat) from standard pitch then it will require at least two tunings for the tuning to hold at standard pitch for any reasonable amount of time. The reason for this is that it has been proven that piano strings will drop about 25% of the distance they are pulled up within the amount of time that it takes to tune the piano. For example, if your piano is 100% flat (that would be one half step flat from standard pitch) and you instruct your piano tuner to bring the piano up to standard pitch, then the piano will be approximately 25% flat (1/4 of a half step flat from standard pitch) by the time he or she is done with the first tuning. So the second tuning brings the piano closer in from 25% flat to 6.25% (or less) flat from standard pitch. If you follow this line of reasoning on out, you can see how it could take more than two tunings to bring the piano back to standard pitch if it is even further out than 100% flat.
Piano technicians call this process of tuning a piano twice in one visit a "pitch raise" or a "pitch correction". Generally speaking, this procedure involves the first tuning to serve as a faster and less accurate tuning to just get the whole piano within the parameters so that the second tuning can serve as a normal "fine tuning" just as if it the piano had been tuned a year or two ago.
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