I know you tuners and technicians are going to put this question on your 10 most hated questions list...but I am sincere in wanting to know the answer.

I know it is recommended that a piano get tuned twice a year. There are people who get their pianos tuned a lot more often than that, I know.

My question is...why is it recommended to get it tuned twice a year?

What if I think my piano sounds just fine? It is hard for me to call a tuner and pay him almost $100 when I think my piano sounds just fine already.

I know they say something like that you wouldn't keep driving your car without a tune up or changing the oil every so many miles, but it doesn't seem the same to me. The car would start to tick or whatever that would make you realize you did need to add oil.

I'm really sincere. I'm not trying to be argumentative. I truly want to be convinced of why it is necessary.

What would happen if you didn't get it tuned? How long would that take?

You change the spark plugs because the car runs better. Sure it runs ok wih the old ones.
Waiting till the piano is so badly out of tune until it is tuned again is like waiting for your car to run out of gas before you fill up.

You say it sounds ok but if you are having a hard time spending the money to keep it in tune, you probably don't know what a really nicely tuned piano sounds like to begin with. You need to have your piano tuned more often till you know the difference.

My apologies if my reply sounded insulting. The twice a year thing comes from the usual difference in humidity from winter to summer which will cause 90% of the pianos to go out of tune.

It does no harm, per se, not to tune a piano. However, they will go continue to go flat over time, whether or not they are tuned. After several years, when the piano is first tuned again, it will be unstable, as a ton or two of tension is added to bring it up to pitch.

I've run into several pianos recently that hadn't been tuned for ten years. The pitch of "A" was down to "A flat". It will take two or three tunings over six months or so to get the piano to stabilize again.

The right frequency for tuning is like the right frequency for changing your oil, or cleaning your teeth. It depends on the condition of your piano, its environment, its use, and your sensitivity to it being out of tune.

Churches, for example, can often be harsh environments for pianos, because the twice-yearly indoor humidity changes happen twice a week (or more) as the heat or air is turned on and off Wednesdays and Sundays.

--Cy--

　Wonder if I have two pianos, one for winters and the other for summers. Thus, can I save payments for tuning?

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am amateure

I always tell customers when they are unhappy to pay for a pitch raise, fine tuning and that I will have to come back in 3 months (300$ total)that since they haven't had the piano tuned in years, they actually saved 2 tunings a year for those years. (5 years= roughly 1000$) Plus they got to play an out of tune piano for that same amount of time. So you see, you might as well budget for 2 tunings, you'll end up paying at some point anyways.Better for your ears, your kids ears and everyone else's ears. No financial surprises for you and a well maintained piano.

I give my tuning customers three reasons for regular tunings: 1. Its better and stabilizes the piano so that tunings last longer. 2.If there is a piano student in the house, their piano sounds like their teacher's i.e., when you play an "A" you hear an "A". 3. Playing will be much more enjoyable on a tuned instrument. Every orchestra tunes each time they play. Obviously we can't tune the piano each time we play, but the message is clear....

A few reasons to keep them in tune:

1. It 'sounds fine to you' because you have not gotten accustomed to what a finely tuned piano sounds like. But a finely tuned piano is so much more beautiful, once you are accustomed to it, you won't want to go back to letting the tone degrade by not tuning it enough. (Keep in mind that in most new pianos, it takes a couple years of regular tunings and tuning instability before you will even hear hear it stay in fine tune for any amount of time.)

2. The longer you let it go without tuning, the more out of tune it gets (even if it sounds OK to you). When the piano is too out of tune, you can't get a fine tuning on it that will 'hold' for any amount of time, so you are in for a series of tunings. So what you have actually done is postponed needed work- you did not eliminate it's need. Then you have to pay for multiple tunings in quick sequence, which is false economy. However if you would have kept up with the tunings you would have just been paying a little at a time instead of a bunch of work all at once, and the piano would have been in better tune. (Note: Many people don't tune the piano regularly, and don't get all the needed tuning done once they do decide to get it tuned. They just get one tuning every so many years. In such a case, a piano can often spend it's entire life never being truly, finely in tune, and the owner never hearing it's full potential beauty. With the spotty tuning history, it's =always= a little ragged sounding.)

I should also mention that a lot of tuners are used to dealing with neglectful owners, and will just play along with the lack of regularity without saying much, because at least they are getting paid that day for whatever work the owner is willing to put into it. IOW, if the owner is only willing to pay for one tuning in 3 years, some tuners will just accommodate that and not say much about it. But that doesn't mean the owner would not be better off tuning it more. It just means the tuner doesn't want to press the issue.

3. There are a lot of other things that need to be done to a piano besides tuning. I would say in 3 out of 4 appointments some other kinds of adjustments are repairs are needed. So by neglecting the maintenance schedule you get behind in more issues than simple tuning. Again, you are simply postponing the inevitable and letting it pile up- not eliminating the need for the work.

(However I must add that there are a lot of tuners out there who are underskilled and don't tend to the 'whole piano'- but rather have a tune n' go, get-the-money attitude. Or they figure if the owner doesn't care, why should they?)

I think the biggest thing that I have seen as a "benefit" to regular tunings is the stability. Pianos that are badly out of tune will go badly out of tune pretty quickly after the pitch raise and tunings - as the others have already said.

In contrast - I do a full tuning on my church's piano once a month - and I do "touch up" in between just to keep the unisons clean. Why does it need the unisons touched up if you do a good tuning? - you may ask. As Cy stated - the church environment can be harsh for a piano. But I think the other factor is - that when a piano is being well maintained - the small things show up because you are used to hearing a fine tuned instrument.

The other benefit of this regular care and stability is that it tunes up quickly and easily.

Things to consider:

Every piano has different maintenance needs based on:

Age (new, used, unmaintained, etc.)
Climate changes
Amount of play
Intensity of play

There are some pianos I work on that hold their tune quite will, sometimes literally for years. But the SF Bay Area climate is ideal for pianos, with some exceptions in particular situations where there is exess moisture, or direct sun.

Some of my clients beat the #### out of their pianos, and I try to get out of their houses before they test my tuning by hammering out octaves in the lower treble....These are the customers to whom I explain why there are technicians that come out at intermission in most major concert venues.

My point is, you can't lump all pianos into one category. If you live in a place that goes through big changes in humidity and temperature, getting your piano tuned twice a year will keep it sounding decent.

As has been pointed out, if you're not used to hearing an in-tune instrument, you can't tell the difference between that and one that's out of tune.

I'll fess up here: before I became a tech, during a stressful time in my life, 13 years went by before had my piano tuned. This was California, and it was less than a half-step flat.

It sounded better, alright, but it was different. It took me a few weeks to adjust.

--Cy--

Pianos are designed to bear the tension of the strings at pitch and in tune.
When the pitch drops there is no gurantee that this happens evenly across the scale.
Maybe a better analogy would be to your car's tires being neglected and allowed to loose air pressure and be driven on at different pressures?
Then there are those odd pianos that will be 30cents sharp after not being tuned for years - go figgure.
I always recomend 6 months to one year not to exceed one year. Many pianos will suffer the seasonal moisture cycles and not offend the owners ears and after a year will not require a quick pass pitch correction prior to fine tuning.
This will save the additional fee and require less of my time.
Usually if a client hears the tuning change because of moisture cycles they are candidate for a humidity control system.

I always told students to be sure that their pianos were tuned at least every year. It's important from a teacher's point of view for students to hear the correct pitches every time they play. Unfortunately, it's easy to adjust your ear when playing an untuned piano so that an untuned instrument will seem in-tune. It's impossible to develop appropriate musical sensitivities to tone and pitch on such an instrument. I can also vouch for the remarks from those tuners who said that a piano that is kept in tune will be more stable than one which is allowed to become seriously out of tune. These pianos can be much more difficult to return to pitch. Try annual tuning. That's manageable and, if your piano is in a stable environment, it may work well for you.

If you wait till it sounds bad (like most people do), you've waited too long and a pitch correction is likely needed, and the associated instability will result. You can train your piano to stay in tune with regular tunings. How regular depends on the piano, the players, and the environment. It ranges from weekly to annually.

A piano goes out of tune within hours of the tuning. Some pianist that play professionally have their pianos tuned each week. If pianos go out of tune so fast, why would anyone wait six months? I have mine tuned every four months, no matter what I hear. If I have a tech over for something else in the interim, I have him touch it up. Although, I can tell you, I think I like a flatter pitch, and am probably going to sample a pitch just a tad lower than A440. I personally think there's nothing wrong with a flat pitch, I actually like it. It's true recorded music is at A440, but that doesn't mean I have to play at that pitch. I'm not playing with anyone else and it doesn't hurt anything.

JMO!

I disagree with that Piano Gal. Pianos don't go out of tune in an hour. If pins weren't stablized properly or the piano wasn't played hard enough while tuning, then the piano settles out of tune. I've seen grands tuned by the likes of Don Mannino before they are moved to the convention and still be in perfect tune after the move. My mentor does not need to touch up after the rehersal before a concert. It's been in his contract before but has never been needed. There is an edge of exactness to tuning like Virgil's and he says that lasts a week and usually it's the climate and note the player that puts it out of tune. That sort of stability is hard to achieve but can be done by a not so lazy tuner.

Most professionals that I have tuned for will only hear individual notes if a unison should slip. They do not hear intervals. So if one unison has a meow the entire piano is out of tune.
These are generally the classical artists.
Jazz artists are a different breed - if the bass tenor area moves slightly for example they can hear if 10ths slow too fast descending as well as other fast beating intervals being off a bit or uneven.
There are exceptions as I know one classical artists that can really hear the intervals.

Seems I recall reading in Braid-White that a piano starts going out of tune the moment one stops tuning it.....

Technically the string is still stretching slightly, yes. However, if the temperature and humidity stays constant, the tension of the string won't change and the speaking length won't change and the piano won't go out of tune for a long time. The piano will not change tension on it's own unless acted upon by outside influences and playing it shouldn't affect a tuning that was done properly. This is assuming you have a decent piano.
Braid White also thought pianos shouldn't be rebuilt, You should buy a new one when the parts are worn out.
With some piano tuners the piano goes out in the first minute you start to play it.

You may be right, but as an engineer I can say that doesn't make sense to me.

The entire wood structure is probably in constant motion with temperature and humidity changes.

But the steel of the string is below the plastic limit - as long as the tension is constant it is not going to stretch. The peg could turn. Perhaps the wire could slide around the peg if there is insufficient friction. But stretching isn't going to happen.

When you put a new string on a guitar you give it a yank and say you stretched it so it would hold tune. But you didn't, you just took the slop out of the windings.

There are a number of factors in tuning stability. I agree that the steel doesn't lengthen, but every time it changes direction, it initially makes a wide curve around the bearing point, which develops into a sharper kink over time, thus reducing tension. This happens most with new and newly strung pianos, but can also happen with a major pitch change, where a bearing point touches a different spot in the wire.

We also have to deal with the multiple string segments other than the speaking length. If the segment between the tuning pin and speaking length has a different tension, this tension will equalize during play, changing the pitch.

The steel tuning pins can also act as springs and store torque: you can turn the top without the bottom of the pin moving. So it's important to "set the pin" to make sure it has no stored torque.

--Cy--

P.S. My new unwound nylon guitar strings sure as heck stretch! :-)