How to Tune a Piano

Series Summary

The piano is a very important instrument in the development of western music of almost every genre. Its popularity with composers rests in the fact that the tones made by its keys offer an easy means of expressing a complex melodic and harmonic relationship of notes. And anyone familiar with the construction of a piano will not be surprised by the virtuosity of range that can be attained by tickling the ivories. The simple fact is this: the piano is one of the most complicated musical instruments ever constructed. With up to 12500 individual parts and pieces, the gravicèmbalo col piano e forte—commonly known as the piano—is both a masterwork of genius and a work of art.

Caring for your own piano can be a costly, time-consuming process. With so much to know about how the instrument works, and considering that pianos have around 198 strings, people often hire professionals to perform tasks as mundane as tuning. And pianos are often kept for long periods of time, passed down from generation to generation. As the instrument ages, more care and maintenance more care and maintenance is required.

In these free piano care videos, learn how to do some minor tuning on your own. Our expert will walk you through how to use some basic equipment to adjust the strings for any given key to bring it back in tune, including techniques for isolating bad notes, and how to properly use a tuning hammer. Enjoy!

Video Transcript

"On behalf of expertvillage.com my name is Tom Flowers I'm here to talk to you about tuning your own piano. The piano has roughly 225 strings, there is 88 keys, many of the keys has more then one string per key. For instance at this point of the base to this point of the base you have 2 strings all the rest of the way out you have 3. If have desire of tuning a piano or probably more then likely cleaning up the tuning you already have there are ways to purchase basic tools they are available on the Internet. If you happen to Deciner it is something you can accomplish. However attempting a full scale A to C tuning is something that I would not recommend however you can correct many things so we are going to talk about exactly how to approach that. "