We've had some weather extremes (high of 80's, looked like summer was here but now it's gotten cold and is low 40's at night!) and my piano is going off. (Still working with my new tech on finding a satisfactory tuning but I like him and he's good at voicing so I'm sticking with him for now.)

Anyway, one string went way off and the note was very shrill, and I tried to fix it yesterday but only made it worse! Today there were two very shrill notes and I couldn't stand it anymore and tried tuning them again, and miracle of miracles but I managed to fix both! My new tech is all booked up for the next while but now I can stand to wait a couple months for our next tuning appointment.

I use a guitar tuning app and mute two strings and tune one string at a time looking at the app, so I'm not listening for unisons. I'm pretty bad at tuning and I hate doing it, but I was successful this time so I want to brag about it 😊

    Two Cats, wow! You’re braver than me.

    What app did you use btw?

      ShiroKuro I use the gstrings app! It was already on my phone because I use it for banjo as well 🙂

      My former tech gave me a lesson and even bought me a tuning hammer as a gift! I would never have attempted it on my own without an in-person lesson first. He also gave me two old mutes.

      Here's the hammer he got me:
      https://www.howardpianoindustries.com/levitan-utility-piano-tuning-lever/

        So cool! I used to play classical guitar, and I hated tuning it, so tuning a piano seems sooo much hard! 😃

          ShiroKuro it's really hard 😭 I feel like half the time it's luck whether I'm successful.

            6 days later

            I have an Android app called Pianometer which is easy to use because it calculates the "stretch" for me. I'm a bit concerned about doing much tuning on my (new to me) Yamaha C2, as I don't want to put needless extra wear on the pin block. Also, it's pretty clear that although I can get good unisons and can set a fair temperament, it doesn't sound as smooth and clean and does not stay in tune as long as when my technician does the work. So, recently I have generally limited myself to fixing sour sounding unisons in between professional tunings.

            If you are only touching up one note, you don't need a tuning app. Mute two strings, tune the remaining string to the octave above and below, then tune the other two strings to the one you just tuned. It will sound better until your next tuning.

            Yes, I tune my own pianos...

              Sam If you are only touching up one note, you don't need a tuning app.

              I do 😂 I see where the dial shows up on the app and then I know whether to go up or down and I don't have to listen for beats!

                4 days later

                twocats
                Regarding fixing a few notes. If you can hear unisons well enough to tune a guitar against the tuner and not have any wobble, you can tune a piano string too. It's a matter of hammer technique - an art as our technician friends will tell us, and rightfully so - that gets better with practice.

                May I suggest that rather than tuning against the tuner (which will not be tempered?), you tune against one of the three strings if it's a tri-chord, one of two, if it's a bi-chord. Depending on which way your piano has drifted - up if the relative humidity has gone up, down if the contrary - press the key down to lift the damper - then use your guitar pick to strum each string. Pick the ONE that is most likely right - mute the other two - and listen for a quiet 8ve, a 5th that beats at less than 1 beat per second. Having found that ONE probably correct string, tune the others BY EAR to that one probably correct string.

                Regarding hammer technique - LESS (movement) is definitely MORE. Small movements should be enough. The pros will do a few other things to equalize the tensions of different parts of the string in addition to rotating the pin. They will push down on the hammer and listen, sometimes they will push UP on the hammer. Point is they are getting non-speaking lengths of the string to settle in and stability will help.

                Anyhow - you CAN do it sometimes just with straight on lateral rotation.
                Please let us know if this helps.

                    Seeker If you can hear unisons well enough to tune a guitar against the tuner and not have any wobble, you can tune a piano string too.

                    Thank you for the tips! I tune my banjo using the app and just see where the dial lands. But then I test and see if when I press the 5th fret on the 1st string it should match the 5th string exactly. I think I can hear when it's clean but also the dial on the app helps quite a bit.

                    Seeker May I suggest that rather than tuning against the tuner (which will not be tempered?), you tune against one of the three strings if it's a tri-chord, one of two, if it's a bi-chord.

                    I'm not sure what the tempered part means? My piano is tuned at A443 so I know where the dial is supposed to land for that. I also check it against other notes and usually it's just one string that has gone out, so if I identify which two sound the same, I try to fix the odd one out so that they all hit the dial in the same spot. It didn't occur to me to use a pick for the string and maybe I can get a cleaner reading that way. But maybe next time I'll try muting one string and using my ear.

                    It's really challenging for me and it's usually way up in the treble where a note will go out, and I'm told that it's harder to tune up there. I try to use small movements but it seems easy to overshoot 🙁 I do think I'm getting slightly better with some practice though...

                          twocats I'm not sure what the tempered part means

                          A tempered scale ..... If you tune your guitar by ear using the traditional 5th and 4th fret method, tune them to match perfect, and them compare the open top and bottom E strings, for some reason many don't understand, this double E octave will be slightly out of tune. Same deal on a piano. A tuning is 'tempered' to make the more important octaves perfect.

                          If you tune all the notes of the scale to be 'perfect' you don't arrive at a 'perfect' octave. It's just a quirk of the 12 semitone Western scale. The bit it is out by is known as the 'comma'. To arrive at a perfect octave, the notes within the scale have to be fudged a bit to take up the 'comma'. If you allocate a bit of the comma equally to all 11 notes between the octave notes, making each just a tiny bit less than perfect you end up with an 'equal temperament'. If you give some notes more of the comma than others you a creating an 'Historical Temperament' (pianos were tuned this way prior to say 1900).

                          Clear as mud?

                          Sydney Australia
                          Retired part-time piano technician

                              JohnCW ah ok, I understand, thank you (have seen discussions on temperaments before). And my app would not have it built in? I just match the strings to hit at the same spot on the app (A443 so not centered on the dial) so I think I'm not affected by the temperament.

                              Every time I tune my banjo to the app the G-B-D-G octave sounds a little flat. My tech always said he tunes my piano with a good amount of stretch. Could this be why it sounds flat to me?

                                  twocats And my app would not have it built in?

                                  Yes, a modern electronic guitar tuner uses an equal temperament. But that isn't why a guitar tuner can't be used to tune a piano. To explain properly would require a technical discussion pages long, but principally the only place they may agree is in the middle octave. But, there the guitar tuner is listening to the fundamental component of the tone, and the dominate part of the tone on a piano is likely to be the second partial. And the second partial is NOT a perfect half of the fundamental (due to the piano string flexibility)

                                  Once you move outside the middle range, because the tuning of a piano becomes 'stretched' (to take account of the physical properties of piano wire) the correct note placement no longer agrees with the guitar tuner.

                                  The way you are using the guitar tuner gives you a visual reference for tuning a unison. But the overall note placement is unlikely to be correct. You will get a better result learning to tune the unison by ear (because you'll be considering the fundamental and all partials that make up the tone). If someone can tune a guitar by ear, they are well on their way to being able to do a reasonable job of tuning a piano unison. At least good enough to get by till the next professional tuning.

                                  Sydney Australia
                                  Retired part-time piano technician

                                      JohnCW The way you are using the guitar tuner gives you a visual reference for tuning a unison. But the overall note placement is unlikely to be correct.

                                      Thank you for the explanation, I understand (well, not all of it but at least some of it!). I am basically counting on the note placement from the last tuning, and I'm only fixing the unison for single strings that have gone off.

                                      JohnCW If someone can tune a guitar by ear, they are well on their way to being able to do a reasonable job of tuning a piano unison. At least good enough to get by till the next professional tuning.

                                      I haven't been tuning by ear at all for any instrument, but I think I should be able to tell when I have a clean piano unison. Next time I have to fix one I'll try doing it by ear. One step at a time! Thank you for all of your help 🙂

                                          Twocats, it's admirable that you have plucked up the courage to touch up the tuning yourself. But I would like to encourage you to do your beautiful Bosendorfer a favour, and get a proper piano tuning app. I am in a similar situation to you, and need to touch up the tuning on my fortepiano. I downloaded Pianometer and have been extremely pleased with it - it has been highly recommended in discussions on PW. It cost me $30 for the non-pro version. In practice this gives you the full power of the app, the only thing it doesn't do is allow you to tune several pianos and keep records of them all. You can set the pitch and you can set the temperament. In comparison with the cost of the piano and its maintenance, I would suggest that this is not a lot of money to give you a high-quality tool for tuning. I have been very pleased with Pianometer and have found it straightforward to use. Its developer Anthony is on PW (and here I think) and always seems pleased to answer questions.

                                            David-G thank you, I wouldn't have been brave enough to try if my old tech hadn't given me a tuning lesson once!

                                            If I'm only fixing unisons, is there a benefit to using Pianometer? I would look into getting a proper piano app if I was tuning the whole piano, but after facing difficulties with just a few notes I'm very happy to pay someone else to do it 😜

                                              Personally, I would say yes. It would mean that when you tune a unison, you know exactly what pitch you should be tuning it to. My situation is actually rather similar to yours. I went on a tuning course to learn how to tune a square piano, but I find that I just don't have the time to tune the whole instrument. So I have short sessions fixing the worst notes. The thing I particularly like about Pianometer is that at the start of a session, you slowly and steadily play all the notes from bottom to top, and it then shows you the ideal tuning curve - and on top of this, a set of spots showing the actual tuning of all the notes. You can then instantly see the state of the tuning of the whole instrument, and also you can immediately spot the worst notes which would benefit from tuning. It depends on one's attitude to these things. Even if I am just dabbling, I like to use a proper tool. And for a one-off cost which is less than half the cost of a professional tuning, to me it seems well worth it.

                                                David-G thank you! I'll look into it after my next tuning. $30 is really a drop in the bucket.

                                                  Also helpful in getting an objective view of when you need to call the tuner!

                                                    David-G I'm already on a 3 month schedule 😂