Maintenance & Care

The piano requires various forms of maintenance to produce its best sound. Maintenance is also important for the appearance of the piano. more...

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Care by Technician

Tuning

Pianos that are prized by their owners are tuned regularly, usually once every six months for domestic pianos, and always just before a performance in concert halls. The longer a piano is left out of tune, the more time and effort technician will need to restore it to correct pitch. When a piano is only slightly out of tune, it loses the glowing tonal quality characteristic of a freshly tuned piano, probably because strings slightly out of tune with one another have weaker sympathetic vibrations. Pianos that are more than slightly out of tune tend to be unpleasant to play and listen to, to an extent that varies with the ear of the listener. Tuning hammers are the main tool that piano technicians use.

Pianos go out of tune primarily because of changes in humidity. Tuning can be made more stable by installing special equipment to regulate humidity, inside or underneath the piano. There is no evidence that being out-of-tune permanently harms the piano itself. However, a long-term low-humidity environment may eventually crack the soundboard and warp keys and other wooden parts. In particular, pianos located in arid climates and otherwise very dry rooms (for example, a cold climate with an extended heating season) require special attention to humidity control.

There are a growing number of musicians and composers who are tuning the piano to non-standard tunings, in order to achieve different kinds of harmony not possible with the standard 12-tone equal temperament tuning (normally found on the piano). Examples of such persons are La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Michael Harrison - to name a few. Their tunings create never before heard of combinations of intervals (some large and some "micro") that lend themselves to many beautiful and interesting new harmonies, scales, and textural effects not possible in equal temperament. Of course, these brands of tuning are limited by the internal structure of the instrument itself. One must be very careful because the piano can only hold so much tension before it breaks.

Voicing

The felt hammers of the piano tend to harden over time. They also form grooves at the points of contact with the strings. Harder hammers produce a brighter tone quality, which may ultimately become harsh and undesirable. Piano technicians can soften hammers using special tools called voicing needles. They also sometimes use special hardening agents when the hammers are too soft (though this practice is controversial among some technicians). In either case, an important goal is uniform tone quality across the piano, since the hammers are not used with equal frequency and therefore tend to wear unevenly. How much and how forcefully the piano is played is a factor in how often a piano is voiced, as are the piano's setting and the preferences of its players.

Read more at Wikipedia.org