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I know there's one being developed using heat on the wires. But also, as far as I understand, even though this would be a huge achievement, you will still need to have a professional tune it once every year or two, since the heat can only tune within a certain range.
But, since this is still in development, I'm just wondering -- has any automatic tuning piano ever been constructed? Even as a one-off project? (I'm assuming it would be too expensive or complicated to mass produce, maybe?)
I understand it's a large engineering challenge. But am I naive in thinking that if it were something extremely important to very many people, like winning a war or building a bridge, this would have been figured out by now?
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I may be wrong, but this is my perspective on this. ( I'm not a tuner) Even if you could achieve such a thing as a self tuning piano, I would think the added cost would make it have a very low uptake in the market. My view is that if any new invention would greatly improve the tuning picture, it would be an improved pin block. I am starting down the road of learning to tune my piano and find that the hardest part is simply moving the pins and having them and the string stay where you leave them. Do that, combine it with tuning software and either you or your tuner will be able to do it so quickly, you won't think about a self tuning piano again, IMHO. Want support for this? Check out my yahoo group- http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/DIYPianotuning/?yguid=74281353Neil
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I may be wrong, but this is my perspective on this. ( I'm not a tuner) Even if you could achieve such a thing as a self tuning piano, I would think the added cost would make it have a very low uptake in the market. My view is that if any new invention would greatly improve the tuning picture, it would be an improved pin block. I am starting down the road of learning to tune my piano and find that the hardest part is simply moving the pins and having them and the string stay where you leave them. Do that, combine it with tuning software and either you or your tuner will be able to do it so quickly, you won't think about a self tuning piano again, IMHO. Want support for this? Check out my yahoo group- http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/DIYPianotuning/?yguid=74281353Neil Hehe . . . Yes I suppose it's people who are learning to tune their own pianos who think about self-tuning pianos the most  And I agree that getting things to stay where you put them is also my own biggest challenge. But I would think that a self-tuning device would have a market if you could sell it for less than about 5,000 dollars, which doesn't seem to me to be obviously impossible for the engineering geniuses out there to accomplish. Yes, for the 1-tuning-per-year folks, that's forty years of tunings, but imagine how nice it would be to have a *perfect* tuning all the time. No slipped unisons, with that perfect 'vowel' sound when you hit each note. For that, people will pay 5,000 I'm sure, at least for a certain part of the market.
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Well, Yes, I would love it if my piano was in perfect tune all the time. I suppose since such an invention would involve a computer interface, it could also be programmed to tune it in any style, temperament or even a historical temperament if you wanted. Who knows, maybe it'll happen. I would imagine that part of it would involved a new kind of pin block where the pins would be easier to move as part of it.
I thought there was a company working on one. I'll have to do some searching.
Neil
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NPR has a short pod cast about the heat tuned piano. Listening to the podcast it sounds like the idea is nearly a reality. It is on this page: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=878091Neil
Last edited by Neil Sundberg; 12/13/09 09:18 PM.
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Whoa that's from seven years ago -- I wonder if something went wrong or if it's still happening. I checked the Story and Clark site and there's no word of it there.
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The inventor, Don Gilmore or eromlignod, has posted here from time to time. You can check his posts to see what he has said about it.
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Thanks. I guess I read a reference from grandpianoman to Don Gilmore a while back and I'll go look at eromlignod's posts.
It seems like it would be a very enjoyable engineering challenge to solve, to do it mechanically.
Piano technicians and builders are used to doing lots of things 88 times. Why not 88 little gear boxes with 88 little motors?
The challenge is getting enough torque to withstand the tension on the string, on the one hand, and enough precision to keep it perfectly in tune, on the other. Finally, you would need it to hold its position precisely after the motor was finished getting the string in tune.
The advantage is that you don't have to do it quickly; this is not like power steering in a car for example. If the system takes ten minutes to tune the piano, or even an hour, customers will still be giddy about it.
Why not have 88 extremely heavy-duty servos? A servo is a small gear box with a motor that is geared down so that the output shaft can be moved with precision.
Usually they have plastic gears which would never work, but you could use steel gears and increase the gear ratio much more to get the necessary torque.
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Actually, there are about 230 strings in a piano. Also, the precision needed for tuning is extremely precise, more precise than can be done with an inexpensive mechanical device.
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Of course, I know that there are about 230 strings in a piano. Not sure why my mind was thinking in terms of 88.
The other way to do it would be to have one device that moves between the pins, and does a whole tuning in a certain amount of time, say, half an hour. They could be screws, like those old Mason and Hamlin uprights had, without any pinblock.
Then you'd only have one expensive, highly precise device. You'd need a kind of system to automatically move it from pin to pin. Maybe it could move a little bit like the head on an inkjet printer, with some kind of belt-driven positioning system.
Last edited by charleslang; 12/13/09 11:53 PM.
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Have you seen the Gibson "Robot Tunner"? It is a guitar tuning pen with a very small electric motor built-in. It is no larger then the standard tuning machine on normal guitars. It moves slow and takes a couple minutes to tune. There is a pickup under the string and a computer that compares the sound from the pickup to a reference and turns the pin to correct the difference between the string and the reference. I think it can handle standard tuning as well as some others See here for details http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibson_Robot_GuitarThis is a real product that sells in retail stars. You can buy it now. Gibson builds guitars not pianos not the idea could be adopted. The problem is the cost. Guitars only have six strings. Would you pay an extra $10,000 for this? Why use this for a piano? It might allow you to do things you otherwise could not. Like adjust the temperament to be historically correct for a given piece and then change it back for the next, just like a digital piano can. But there is another good reason for self tuning: Currently pianos are built strong so they stay in tune. But if a piano could be tuned several times a day in just a few minutes maybe you could reduce the structure and build it cheaper. I bet you could build a lower cost piano if it only had to stay in tune for half a day. So could the system might allow lower cost pianos to be built? I don't know.
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Gibson does make pianos. They own Baldwin.
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Have you seen the Gibson "Robot Tunner"? It is a guitar tuning pen with a very small electric motor built-in. It is no larger then the standard tuning machine on normal guitars. It moves slow and takes a couple minutes to tune. There is a pickup under the string and a computer that compares the sound from the pickup to a reference and turns the pin to correct the difference between the string and the reference. I think it can handle standard tuning as well as some others See here for details http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibson_Robot_GuitarThis is a real product that sells in retail stars. You can buy it now. Gibson builds guitars not pianos not the idea could be adopted. The problem is the cost. Guitars only have six strings. Would you pay an extra $10,000 for this? Why use this for a piano? It might allow you to do things you otherwise could not. Like adjust the temperament to be historically correct for a given piece and then change it back for the next, just like a digital piano can. But there is another good reason for self tuning: Currently pianos are built strong so they stay in tune. But if a piano could be tuned several times a day in just a few minutes maybe you could reduce the structure and build it cheaper. I bet you could build a lower cost piano if it only had to stay in tune for half a day. So could the system might allow lower cost pianos to be built? I don't know. Wow. That's very helpful. Looks like they use an individual servo for each string. Comparatively easy with six strings and low tension, but still interesting. If you could get a heavy-duty servo down to $10 in cost, 220 of them would be about 2200 dollars. Improbable perhaps but there might be some economy of scale. Even if they go in just 1,000 pianos per year, there are 220,000 of that little device. You could make it a joint venture between Samick and Yamaha or something, like the car companies did for Hybrid systems.
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While listening to some recordings of big-name, professional musicians today, I noticed that probably more than ten percent or more of these recordings have a piano that is to some degree out of tune. Mostly I'm assuming these pianos were tuned right before the performance but slipped during the playing.
So I guess even a self-tuning system that cost 100,000 dollars would probably have a market for large performance venues and studios.
Assuming of course that the system could, in addition to tuning the piano, also maintain that tuning during a performance.
But I bet if the strings were attached to servos, there would be much less 'slipping', like there is with pins set in wood, regardless of whether the technology were capable of actively maintaining a tuning during a performance. So, it would probably still be advantageous over traditional pins in wood, regardless of this ability.
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Most of the time pianos go out of tune because the music wire streches due to soundboard/bridge expansion and contractions and to being struck, not because the tuning pin slips in the pin block.
Actually there is a guy who is currently working on a project of a self tuning piano design that applies small amounts of heating electrical current to the strings to adjust the pitch. An original good tuning is placed on the instrument, then periodically a switch is thrown or button is pushed that activates a combination measurement system and then applies the exact amount of current to achieve the required stored pitch. This happens for each string and in a matter of seconds. There was a thread several months back on the Technician's Forum about this. Very cool.
Co-Author of The Complete Idiot's Guide To Buying A Piano. A "must read" before you shop.
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Interesting thread, Charles.
To tell you the truth, I have a very sensitive ear regarding musical tone and intervals. And, there is nothing in the world that sounds better than a well tuned piano.
However, I’m not so sure I’d want my piano in perfect tune 100% of the time. I think the slight and subtle nuances and blends of tonality that an ever so slightly out of tune piano can make gives it a unique character and personality. In fact, if I wanted a perfectly tuned piano, I’d buy a high quality digital piano. And what about temperament, inharmonisity and stretch? Is there a universal perfect tuning?
Of course, the closer to being “in-tune†a piano is, the better; but that particular “sweet spot†that an acoustic piano can have at times sure does sound nice.
As far as a perpetual self-tuning acoustic piano is concerned, it might be a reality as a novelty, but it will most likely never be very popular. (Of course, I’ve been wrong before)
Take care,
Rick
Piano enthusiast and amateur musician: "Treat others the way you would like to be treated". Yamaha C7. YouTube Channel
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Does anyone else smell something fishy about this topic? I think it is a early April Fool's joke on this forum.
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This thread is from 2009.
Eric Gloo
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This thread is from 2009. That's probably why Guapo said it's a bit fishy. The timeline is quite strange when you take in account the relatively recent thread from earlier this year. 
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Don Gilmore has been working on his auto-tuning system for years. It has been written about and discussed quite a lot, there was an article in the PTG Journal some years back. This one is only one of the numerous threads in the PW archives going back a fair ways. Nothing fishy, just old.
JG
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