How Often Should My Piano Be Tuned?

Concert pianos are tuned before every performance. Performance pianos in clubs are tuned weekly. The piano in my living room is tuned three or four times a year.

What about your piano? Since it's your piano, you get to decide. Every six months is a good answer for many people. If you tune on that schedule, your tuner will be doing a "fine tuning" at every visit, rather than making large corrections. The result will be a piano that will want to stay in tune, and that you will enjoy playing.

But pianos don't stay in tune. Consider the guitarist. Every time he picks up his instrument he tunes it! The complexity of the piano makes tuning an art which requires years of practice to master. So piano tuning is not in the skill set of most pianists. But fortunately, pianos do stay in tune better than guitars. Remarkably so! Nonetheless, if you are very attentive to the tuning of your piano, you'll notice subtle changes within weeks after your tuning is done. Pianos go out of tune from playing, from changes in temperature, and from changes in humidity.

Since I'm a piano tuner, we can be pretty sure that I listen to a piano in more ways than you do. But I do expect that after your piano is tuned, you'll find new joy in its sound and in your playing. So in that way you are sure to hear the fine resonance of a well-tuned piano. As I mentioned earlier, it's your piano, and you get to decide. How I decide for my own piano is not really technical, but emotional. When I'm no longer enjoying my piano the way I have in the past, I tune it. Then I sit down to play. And I smile. I encourage you to decide in the same way. Is it time to have your piano tuned?

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