Tuning a piano is the process of adjusting the tension of its strings, thereby altering their pitch, or frequency of vibration, by slightly turning the tuning pins to which they’re attached, so that each string sounds pleasingly in harmony with every other string. This harmony is achieved by tuning the piano according to certain known acoustical laws and aesthetic rules and customs.
How Is a Piano Tuned? Is It Difficult?
To the uninitiated, tuning a piano may seem a simple, straightforward procedure, but it isn’t. The process is complicated by the sheer number of strings and tuning pins (more than 200 of each, the exact number varying with the model), by the high tension under which the strings are stretched, by the tightness with which the tuning pins are anchored in the pinblock, and by the friction points over which the taut strings must slide as they’re being tuned. All of these factors are obstacles not only to tuning, but also to creating a tuning that will be stable for a reasonable length of time, given the piano’s use and environment.
Tuning is also made more difficult by the design element of modern pianos known as loop stringing. In loop stringing, each length of steel music wire in the treble actually forms two strings, which are separated by a sharp bend in the wire where the strings are anchored to the piano’s cast-iron frame. Sometimes these two strings sound the same note and are tuned to the same pitch. Other times, they are parts of adjacent notes, with one half of the wire tuned a half step higher or lower than the other half, the two halves necessarily held at distinctly different tensions. Because all parts of a single wire have a tendency to seek the same tension, loop stringing is a more challenging environment in which to learn how to create a stable tuning.
In addition to physical obstacles, there are acoustical obstacles to tuning. A paradox common to all fixed-pitch instruments, first discovered by the ancient Greeks, is that it’s impossible for all the intervals — thirds, fourths, fifths, sixths, etc. — within a perfect octave to themselves be perfect. This problem is dealt with by slightly expanding or contracting — tempering — each of these intervals so that, together, they will add up to a perfect octave. The tuner creates a temperament — a single octave of 13 notes at the center of the keyboard in which every note is tuned in its correctly tempered relationships to all other notes in that octave — and then copies those relationships to all remaining sections of the keyboard by tuning each note to be a perfect octave (or octaves) above or below the corresponding note in the temperament octave.
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