Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum Advantages of tuning A4 = 442 Hz

How come certain tuners like to tune a little higher than 440 Hz? What are the advantages? I guess it affects the soundboard and the tension of the strings which in turn must affect tone. But it is unclear to me in which way.

I've also read that it is a good idea for a new piano to be tuned a little higher than 440 Hz the first couple of years. Why? To stretch the strings and let the soundboard settle quicker, or?

Greetings,
The first reason to tune at 442 that I can think of is when the piano is already there. you know, that piano you gave a 30 cent pitch raise to 440 on your first visit in February, and now, in July, it is about 8 cents sharp everywhere. I tune it there and make a note to see if it comes down.

Another reason is for new strings. They are going to lose 8 cents, easily, in the first 4 months, even if they have been tuned six times in two days,etc. Bass strings will almost always be way down. Starting as high as is safe is a standard approach to newly strung pianos.

I have had more than one situation of an artist requesting 442, getting 440, and being perfectly happy. I think it's attraction owes something to the gimmick aspect. I have also had it requested, but upon learning that four tunings were required to take one of our concert pianos up there and back, the need for dollars outweighed the desire for cents.

As a tuner, I don't care where the customer wants their piano, I am a tuner and will gladly follow their wishes, whether informed or not. I will inform if it is not feasible, but, if it is and is worth $ 500 extra dollars to someone, I am glad they are talking to me.
regards,

Very nice Ed.

I think the other thing is a bit of a fad from the orchestral world and the idea that tuning at a higher pitch imparts an additional sparkle, color, and excitement. I don't think it does for the piano what it imparts on the orchestra.

I actually don't think it ever did anything positive for anyone or anything. It really makes no appreciable difference to the sound but only creates a problem for piano technicians and other instruments which may have trouble adjusting to that pitch. If anybody thinks it sounds somehow better, it is only the placebo effect. Just try lowering the pitch to 438 but tell them you had raised it to A-440 to prove that. Of course, I never did that but I have no doubt that it would work.

The same holds true if you actually told someone that you deliberately tuned the piano in an unequal temperament. It immediately causes most people to go nuts. The very idea causes most piano technicians to have nightmares. Yet, most temperaments are actually unequal to some degree or another, including those produced by an ETD.

When I have said that before, it caused one guy to go off the deep end about it. He tore his hair out and lost sleep over what just happens every day, naturally. No piano is really ever exactly at A-440 or ever really in ET but people still beat their brains out about it.

Violinists really like 442. If they're going to tune their violins to 442 and I'm responsible for tuning the piano accompanying them, then I'll tune the piano to 442. There are people who can tell - not many, but they exist. I'm sure that for many people the placebo effect is in effect, but it's not correct to say that it never did anything positive for anyone or anything.

The problem created by tuning to a slightly higher pitch for those who can sense a difference is that over time as they get used to the higher pitch-they loose the sensation of brilliance. Then they want you to "take them higher". It is like being on addictive drugs, the size of the dose to feel high goes up over time.

In my experience, the ranks of string players have some people with absurd notions about pitch and intonation. These are often the same ones who find playing in a any semblance of tune difficult. I suspect the pedagogy of learning to play in tune is poorly thought out-but I don't know enough about that to diagnose a solution.

I find the really successful string players talk less about pitch and just go about playing in tune as much as possible. The difference between great and mediocre string players is profound.

I went to a lecture-recital by the oboist in our band recently. One of the things she talked about was why the other instrumentalists tune to the band. She said the common myth is that it is because the oboe is stable. She then played a note on the oboe and bent it to a much different pitch, which dispelled that notion.

Pitch is mutable. The obsession with exact pitch is nothing more than an obsession. It is exaggerated by modern electronics, which are capable of displaying pitch numbers with far greater accuracy than they are actually capable of measuring. At some point, it becomes meaningless.

I totally agree with Ed and BDB on this. If you live in NYC and everybody wants 442, you do what you have to do when you have to do it. I also agree that the placebo effect is sometimes, perhaps quite often beneficial.

In my original question, I was not only asking for advantages with respects to the higher pitch itself, but also if there were advantages in tone or long term stability or elsewhere with having higher string tension and more tension on the soundboard etc.

But it sounds like you guys are mostly saying: no advantage.

The advantage goes to the tuner who then has additional work to sell. I wish my customers would decide to change pitch every month….

Do I have a job for you!!!

A one piano hall has an international orchestra series few 8-9 weeks every year. We used to bring in a piano kept at 442 for just that purpose every time but it's such a difficult move, the movers won and the tuners lost, it was more convenient the last few years to take the house piano up to 442/3 for four days every week and back down for the other three days.

We managed to squeeze a double tuning up and two double tunngs down. It gets real tiresome. Particularly when most of us are congenitally incapable of jacking the pitch of a piano around that much and every tuning during that season and for weeks late took that bit longer.

Yep, you've got it. Wind and brass players aren't fond of playing in elevated pitch with instruments not intended for that.