Being of a technical nature myself, I love this section of the forum, and spend sometimes hours wading through current and past posts, and find your experiences and explanations totally fascinating.
I've never tuned a piano in my life, or done any regulation, but would love to one day - preferably on an old 'banger'.

Now to cut to the chase.
It would be much appreciated if you expert tuners here could provide some assistance.

Is it possible to give an appreciation of a given tuner just by listening to their tuning method? For example, from a recording could one say with a certain measure of confidence if the tuner was excellent, good, average or bad?
My piano - a European upright - which is 18 months old was tuned last week for the third time by the same tuner. This took 34mins.

I'm generally quite happy with the results, which one might say is the most important factor. However there's more to it than this, which will be revealed in due course.......
To your expert ears, could this tuning be improved? The following is a quick musical check directly following the tuning: HERE

Now, you may be asking, and rightly so, "Is there a point to all this?"
There is, which I will enlarge upon after having received any feed-back on your observations.

34 minutes is extremely fast for a standard tuning. Even a piano that is very close in tune, I'll spend an hour on in most cases.

That's my first comment, before I listen to the file.

Thanks Randy.

Did you obtain your tuner's permission to record and post his work?

RPD, are you suggesting this should be removed for any reason?

Your subject asks about evaluating the tuning "method", which leads me to think of the process by which the piano is tuned. You then present an audio file, which is the result, and the way that all tunings are judged.

I'm curious, though, why you would go to all this trouble to take your issue to a worldwide forum, especially when your own recording methods may cloud the original result. Have you talked to your tuner about what you hear? Do you plan to take our comments and send them to him or her?

--Cy--

I listened to the second clip, and the tuning sounds fine -- the mike is kind of far away.

Yes, like RPD I'm a little disturbed that you would record the tuner's work session and post it; I certainly hope you have their permission (and I didn't listen to it). I share a lot of my tuning methods, but certainly at a time and place of my own choosing. How would you feel about a recording of your own work being published on the Internet?

"Praise in public; criticize in private."

--Cy-

Regardless of the method - as a novice tuner myself, it is my observation that experienced tuners develop and use quite varied methods of their own making based on the establishied sound fundamentals over the years of experience.

It seems the key is that the piano performs and sounds to the player's/owner's satisfaction.

Aside from how the instrument was recorded on the tunes you played, etc, the piano sounds just fine to me.


So... do you find playing the piano satisfying after this tuning?

Glen

If your eventually going to reveal the tuners name or allow the public to easily deduce who it is you should ask for their permission first. I won't cite laws, rules or ethics, but it would be appropriate to get their permission out of courtesy at the least.

I thought that this posting might have a bizarre revelation in the end, something to the effect that you trained a chimp to do it. I'll leave this to others to comment on if they dare. (This is not a veiled criticism of the tuning, as I did not listen to it yet)

I only listened to the checks. Any tuning can be improved. The unisons seem OK, but the test for those is in another week. There seems something off, just a little, in the temperament. Is it equal? The bass is offensive to me, but it could be the strings themselves. Sometimes the bass can only be made less bad, and it cannot be blamed on the tuning. The stretch in the treble seemed Ok, but could not tell because there were no high treble checks.

It is not possible to indentify who you are here tweedpipe even though I have knowledge of that. By extension it is also not possible to indentify your tuner or whether or not both of you are even on this continent.

The tuning is done using fourths and fifths from what I could hear. I would agree with Randy, less than one hour is not usually a good thorough tuning; however none of us could know how badly out of tune the instrument was previous to commencing the work provided.

With the compression of sound files used here it is difficult to judge the quality of the tuning but it is acceptable.

I deliberately posted the above before reading what others had posted so that I would not feel influenced.

Since the OP paid for the tuning, it seems that he has certain rights to recordings of it. I have never heard of a tuner getting royalties or anything from recordings that are sold of performances of a tuning. But I suppose that there are morals involved if this is a set up.

Holy smoke, that's me!!

Just kidding. It sounds to me like the tuner is just doing a little touch up. You said he's tuned it three times. What was the time interval between the tunings? 6 months, 3 months, two weeks, 3 days, etc.?

The third tuning on an 18 month old piano... that is a tuning every 6 months... and being a newish piano I would suspect it needs more than a touch-up tuning.
However the recordings are not good enough that I can perform an extensive analysis ... I suspect that there is a 100 Hz cut and also the compression algorithms will suppress the higher frequencies.

Given that happiness is a well tuned piano - I suspect that you should start looking for a tuner who can spend a bit more time making it perfect...

Why would one need that? Does every recording on YouTube has the permission of the tuner?

I thank you for your feedback, and some interesting points have been raised.

It would appear that you are able to make a reasonable judgement on the musical over-check only. For this reason the other fairly long compressed recording which would probably discourage audition anyway, appears unnecessary and has been removed.
There was never an intention to reveal the tuners name, I can see no point to that.
Perhaps this tuning was considered a little touch up, but to my ears it was really necessary, as being quite out of tune. The time interval between the tunings were 5 months, 5 months, and 8 months.

Now to the point. This tuner is a pleasant person.
I had given instruction before the visit that I wanted a tuning, any necessary checks/adjustments recommended by the manufacturer, and also to rectify a noisy sustain pedal, therefore to reserve adequate time during the visit to complete these tasks. This was understood.
On completion of the tuning I was told that due to the newness of the piano, the checks I asked for were unnecessary and not required for at least 10 years.
I replied that was not my understanding, especially as I could see some slight misalignment of hammers against the rest.
A cursory visual check was performed which took approx a minute and a half! Neither the fall-board nor the narrow panel just above the keys were removed, and was again told adjustment was unnecessary.
The sustain pedal was looked at next and to my surprise treated with a quick blast of WD40 at pivot points - the choice of lube concerned me, but at least it rectified the squeak.

My dilemma is the following. I thought the tuning was good - and you generally have done too, which reassures me somewhat. However I'm feeling reluctant to have this person back for future visits, due to the other points indicated.
Your thoughts please.

If you question the service you received, I am sure there are other good technicians/tuners from which to choose the next time.


Glen

Tweedpipe:

You are the only one that needs to be satisfied with the service. You shouldn't need our consensus. Maybe you feel loyalty to your tuner. That is admirable and important, but is he being loyal to you? Is he taking your concerns seriously? You make the call.

I didn't hear the recordings, so I can't comment on that. There are some technicians who can tune amazingly fast yet very well. The time it takes is not necessarily an indicator of how well it was done. The concert tuning I did last Saturday only took 35 minutes and I got a thank you card in the mail from the pianist. "Super job!" he said. It is all about circumstances and technique.

However, I think you have the right instinct about a guy "unwilling to lift a finger" (as I wrote recently on another thread)to render normal and expected service requirements. The pedal squeak may well return. WD-40 is generally not recommended for use anywhere in a piano. It amounted to a quick, cheap fix so he could move on. One question I have is whether you paid for the service or whether it was part of the almighty "free tunings" that come with the piano from the dealer. It it was one of those "free" tunings, you may be able to understand the lack of motivation even though it was not proper.

If you paid for it, it sounds like to me to be an unfortunate example of how I have observed these past 40 years how so many tuners operate. There are far too many tuners who purposefully neglect ordinary service requirements. I have been told many times in the past by other tuners, "You don't do that for that kind of piano. Tell 'em if they want the piano to play that good, they should get a grand." (Believe me, the same people would neglect a grand too). Pretty much the same was being said recently about what some tuners perceive to be a piano not worthy of normal, routine service. I read some of the most ridiculous hypothetical scenarios I could imagine. Unfortunately, there are tuners who will do that. I do suggest looking for someone who will treat you and the piano you have with the respect it deserves.

Bill, yes I paid for this tuning, the previous one's were complimentary. Needless to say the cost of this visit was far less than I was expecting, but I didn't exactly find that reassuring, as I'd put faith in having a fully qualified technician satisfy the needs of my piano. Sad eh?

Many thanks to you all for your input. Much appreciated. Not forgetting RPD for the comprehensive reply........

On the other hand, it's more than just a little creepy that you recorded this tuner at work, and then posted that recording. Did he or she know that you were doing this? Give consent to be recorded and have it posted on the internet? I would say that you have every right to record yourself playing the piano that this tuner tuned, but not to record someone else at work even if you are paying them. If this was a video recording then there would likely be no disagreement on this point, so why is an audio recording any different? You own the end result of his/her work, and that's it.

My two cents.

Unsettling! I didn't listen to the recording by choice.

Simply decide for yourself if you want the guy's services.

I'm gonna' start singing show tunes at the top of my lungs while I tune. If folks are gonna' record me, they should have something entertaining to listen to rather than ding, ding, ding.

I had a guy pull out a video recorder while I was tuning his piano once. He was filming me from over my shoulder before I noticed. It was a bit startling when I turned and saw him "filming". I didn't say anything and he said "do you mind if I record?" I figured it was his house and his piano but I wasn't comfortable so he turned it off. I heard him replaying it so I know he had a few minutes recorded. The guy turned out to be....let's just say missing a few screws upstairs. He caused myself and a dealership a great deal of aggravation over the next few months. It still gives me an uneasy feeling that he has footage of me working. I often wonder if I'll show up on YouTube. I'm not saying this is the same situation. I just thought it was something worth sharing.

A few homes I have been in have video surveillance recorded on a hard drive with cameras here and there. I never really thought about it, but I guess if we are in a customers home in a situation like this, they have a right to record us or any of their visitors. Sort of 1984ish.

Do I detect a little jab there?? Oh well, if so, I'll take it.

The reason I asked you if you obtained his/her permission before recording the tuner at work, was based on simple, professional ethics. (yes, some homes have video surveillance, but it would still be poor form to record, and then use that recording/video to question another person's methods or quality of work on an international public forum-all without his knowledge). Its a matter of intent. I'm not prepared to call your methods "creepy" but face it, the tuner is entirely unaware of this post, presumably. That's troubling to me.

Although you may (read may) have the legal right to record somebody in various situations, you will quickly find that in any professional setting a recording device will be viewed in a variety of ways. For example, meet a celebrity (tuners do all the time) and thrust a video into their face backstage, or start snapping camera shots of these folks without their permission, and see how long your presence is tolerated. Next time you visit your dentist, video tape the session. Best of luck.

Yes, you have the legal right to photograph Sean Penn if your job requires it...but get too close, and, well, you remember!

Its just not good manners to secretly record, and then post, a tuner at work. Not, that is, unless you obtained his/her permission.

Did you?

...another short point. We are touring musicians part of the year, most years. All musical contracts stipulate that "no unauthorized recordings shall be made" etc etc.

I wonder, under common law, if there is "implied consent" to capturing film or sound files of the tuner's (or dance instructor, or physician's) methods, just because that job or service call occurs in-home.

I really wonder.

My bet; it approaches a sticky legal issue...just my bet.

I don't feel threatened by recording. Listening to a tuner has virtually nothing to do with actually doing the work. I have plenty of people who sit back and try to study my work but I naturally move so fast they give up. I don't see the problem. I've tuned on stages during intermiession with a 1000 people watching. What's a recording??

The tuner should make keep some good poses... ~ha

Gotta work on my tuner-face :-)

After re-reading the original post, I do not see where it says that the tuner's checks is what was recorded. I thought that it was the owner that recorded himself. If there was a hidden recording device, then it is creepy.