![]() ![]() ![]() There is no strict formula for how much to stretch the piano with variables such as personal taste, acoustics in the room, and climatic conditions feeding into exactly how a piano tuner tunes an instrument. But as mentioned before, Vartoukian will stretch the upper and lower octaves to accommodate our hearing. Think of it as a process of copy-and-paste. Once a piano tuner has tuned the middle octave of the piano, they use it to tune the others up and down the piano. By playing the two top notes together, Vartoukian demonstrates why we need temperaments to fit all of the different intervals within the octave. But three pure major thirds end up almost half a semitone shy of an octave, and four pure minor thirds overshoot by almost half a semitone. In theory, both should add up to an octave and end on the same note. Vartoukian demonstrates this when he stacks up three purely tuned major thirds and four pure minor thirds. In equal temperament, major thirds are much wider than pure major thirds, and minor thirds are much narrower than pure minor thirds. The deviation of equal temperament from "pure" or "just" intonation is particularly obvious in intervals of a third. Listening to the beat rate gives piano tuners a highly accurate sense of exactly how out of tune the notes are, down to a hundredth of a semitone. The resultant pulsing of the tone is known as a "beat" and the rate of the pulse the "beat frequency" or "beat rate" of the two tones. But in equal temperament they are not exactly the same, and as the two sound waves move in and out of phase (like car indicators moving in and out of sync at traffic lights) they amplify and interfere with each other. Piano tuners listen to particular harmonics to fine-tune their work.įor instance: both tones in the interval of a perfect fourth share a harmonic: The fourth harmonic of the lower tone and the third harmonic of the higher tone. With training, you can learn to distinguish the harmonic series resonating above every tone. ![]() Without harmonics you couldn't tell a trumpet from a violin. The harmonics of your voice are what make it sound different from anyone else's. Our brains are busy processing harmonics all the time. Piano tuners don't just hear one note when they strike a piano key they hear a range of frequencies called "harmonics" resonating above the fundamental pitch. Getting each note out of tune in just the right way requires a special skill. Hearing harmonics: the piano tuner's superpower He starts with the very pure interval of a fourth, but he doesn't want the interval perfectly in tune. Once the reference pitch is tuned, Vartoukian tunes the octave in the middle of the keyboard. He then removes the mutes and tunes the outside strings. Vartoukian mutes the outside strings with pieces of felt and foam and tunes the centre string first. Piano tuners use a tuning lever (not a hammer because, as Vartoukian explains, they don't bash things with them) to carefully turn the piano pins and tighten or loosen the strings until this note is spot-on.Īs shown in the last episode, there are three strings to most notes on a piano. The most common pitch to tune to in Australia is A = 440Hz, though higher pitches are becoming more common. How do you tune a piano? Loading.įirst you need a reference pitch from a tuning fork or a tuning app on your phone. According to Vartoukian, this is because our brains try to bring the sounds we hear within the range of human speech.īecause of our tricky ears, piano tuners expand the range of the high and low notes of a piano so that, when adjusted in our minds, they sound perfectly in tune.īut is a piano ever perfectly in tune? It turns out that piano tuning is an art of compromise. High sounds are also heard lower than if you measured them with an electronic tuner. People hear low sounds slightly higher than they really are. Piano tuning is all about making a piano sound in tune, even when it's not scientifically perfect.Īs piano technician Ara Vartoukian explains in the second episode of How a Piano Works, it takes an incredible sense of hearing, serious technical know-how, and careful judgement to make a piano sound just right. ![]()
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