[snizzle]

So, i've been wanting to dabble in this for a while and i'm at the perfect place to do it. It's an old church with 3 pianos (2 that are NEVER used...at least yet). I put in a purchase order to buy a piano tuner set and a standard electronic tuner. My logic is that the church can save LOTS of money by the church letting me tune the pianos myself and that I can learn a valuable trade in the process.

Anyone done this before? I came across this website:

http://piano.detwiler.us/

And that's about what I figured tuning a piano would be like. I know it's an extremely tedious process but I have a good ear, lots of time, and pianos that could take a little beating as I learn. What do you think?
-shane

[Decency]

Should be easy. Get a nice tuner. That's my advice to you. Doesn't seem that hard to do. Try it out, man.

[snizzle]

Originally Posted by Decency

Should be easy. Get a nice tuner. That's my advice to you. Doesn't seem that hard to do. Try it out, man.

So, i've been reading up on it and it seems like it's a lot rougher than I thought it was going to be. And here's what it all comes down to....experience.

Pretty much all of the stuff I was reading said that it's not really hard to actually tune it. It's tuning it well that is difficult. Apparently there's a lot of strange things about piano mechanics that you can only pick up through experience.

For some reason, you cannot actually tune each key to the 'ideal' tuner pitch. You HAVE to tune the piano to itself using your ear. For some reason the higher keys will actually be a little flat to the tuner and the lower keys, a little sharp. BUT, it sounds right to the trained ear.

I've got some unused pianos at church that I'm going to practice on, but I don't think this will become a secondary profession as I had hoped. It seems that only the very dedicated have what it truly takes to make it as a piano tuner. (I'll just be able to tune my own piano).
-shane

[snizzle]

So, the finance commitee actually approved my request! They cut me the check today so I'll be ordering the supplies tomorrow.

I'm a little anxious/nervous to begin but this will give me something to work on for the next few weeks.

I'd love some first hand advice if anyone out there has ever done this?
-shane

[snizzle]

So, i ordered the supplies and a tuner last week. Should be in within the next few days which means I get to spend the next 2 weeks studying and learning piano tuning!

No one has ever tried this?
-shane

[MrCrabby]

From what I've read, you don't need to have a great ear to tune pianos, you just need to be able to count the waves when you pluck two strings. If I recall correctly, there are only about 10,000 certified piano tuners in the entire country.

Good luck!

[Decency]

Yeah. Crabby did bring up a good point. If you can hear the waves mesh together, you're in tune. Not that hard to hear the waves gel either. Good point, Crab.

[snizzle]

Originally Posted by MrCrabby

From what I've read, you don't need to have a great ear to tune pianos, you just need to be able to count the waves when you pluck two strings. If I recall correctly, there are only about 10,000 certified piano tuners in the entire country.

Good luck!

Actually, piano tuning is a completely unregulated field so there are no 'certified' piano tuners. Or, more aptly put, there is no standardized certification. Anyone can get a certification from anywhere (college degree, online program, tv infomerical, etc.) and consider themself 'certified'. From what I read, there's roughly 8-10,000 professional piano tuners across the country.

The most common certification is from the Piano Tuner's Guild (PTG). They offer a Registered Piano Technician (RPT) certificate, that one must go through a series of tests for. Though, from what I hear the PTG is more like an elitist, country club than an organization that wants to help piano tuners. Either way, it's still an unregulated field which can be good or bad for piano tuners out there.
-shane

[TravisR]

Originally Posted by snizzle

So, i've been reading up on it and it seems like it's a lot rougher than I thought it was going to be. And here's what it all comes down to....experience.

Pretty much all of the stuff I was reading said that it's not really hard to actually tune it. It's tuning it well that is difficult. Apparently there's a lot of strange things about piano mechanics that you can only pick up through experience.

For some reason, you cannot actually tune each key to the 'ideal' tuner pitch. You HAVE to tune the piano to itself using your ear. For some reason the higher keys will actually be a little flat to the tuner and the lower keys, a little sharp. BUT, it sounds right to the trained ear.

I've got some unused pianos at church that I'm going to practice on, but I don't think this will become a secondary profession as I had hoped. It seems that only the very dedicated have what it truly takes to make it as a piano tuner. (I'll just be able to tune my own piano).
-shane

That makes sense. We own a piano in my house, a sort of family heirloom, so to speak. My great grandfather bought it and didn't know much of anything about pianos. (From what I've been told he was a drummer in a band that was popular on the East coast.) Anyways, he never had it tuned. Well, my mom and I are the piano-players in the house (I despise the word pianist), and when we looked into it, we realized a piano is supposed to be tuned like every 6 months to a years or something. Well, our piano had not been tuned in over 20 years!

So I remember going through the yellow pages looking for a piano tuner, and finding a few. The reason I say what you said makes sense, is that almost all of these ads focused on the amount of experience that the tuner had. So, I suppose this is an area where experience is really important. (But hey, don't let that discourage you. Everybody has to start SOMEWHERE!)

So as it turned out, we had this guy come and try to tune the piano, and he said that it was so bad that he couldn't tune it all at one time or the strings would break! He was going to need to make something like 6 trips to have it all tuned up. It was something around $100 for each visit too... and so to this day, we haven't had our piano properly tuned. It really kind of just sits there and adorns the living room now. I use my digital piano for practice.

[snizzle]

Well, the tools came in and they look great. But we just got a dog, so I'm dogsitting for the next few days. I'll keep you posted on my piano tuning progress.
-shane

[jamforchrist123]

Keep us posted. I'm really curious to see how this goes.

[+SEAL+]

Originally Posted by TravisR

So as it turned out, we had this guy come and try to tune the piano, and he said that it was so bad that he couldn't tune it all at one time or the strings would break! He was going to need to make something like 6 trips to have it all tuned up. It was something around $100 for each visit too... and so to this day, we haven't had our piano properly tuned. It really kind of just sits there and adorns the living room now. I use my digital piano for practice.

Yeah...so he conveniently had to make six trips, charging you $100 each time he came back? Sure...

[TravisR]

Originally Posted by +SEAL+

Yeah...so he conveniently had to make six trips, charging you $100 each time he came back? Sure...

That's the mentality my dad had about it, but I'm not so sure. I mean... isn't that about how much you'd expect to pay for a tuner to come in? And if he has to keep coming back because the job is that big.... then... I dunno. Either way, it never got done. :/

[snizzle]

Originally Posted by jamforchrist123

Keep us posted. I'm really curious to see how this goes.

So, I still haven't really had the time to go on there in properly tune the piano but I did get a chance to fix the notes that were badly out of tune.

I laid out my tools and just went for it. It's definitely harder than it looks, although with some practice and guidance it seems like it would be a fun, easy way to make money. I'm hoping to really spend some time at church and get it properly tuned this summer when I have a little more free time.
-shane

[Pablo Crucelli]

Awesome man! It sounds cool. I hope it goes well for you - let us know what hints and tips you pcik up from your own experience!