brad nelson » intonation http://b.radnelson.com Mon, 31 May 2010 20:53:48 +0000 en hourly 1 You can tune a piano, but you can’t tuna fish !!! http://b.radnelson.com/2007/10/15/you-can-tune-a-piano-but-you-cant-tuna-fish/ http://b.radnelson.com/2007/10/15/you-can-tune-a-piano-but-you-cant-tuna-fish/#comments Tue, 16 Oct 2007 02:46:00 +0000 brad http://b.radnelson.com/2007/10/15/you-can-tune-a-piano-but-you-cant-tuna-fish/ Ever since inheriting my childhood piano from my parents, I’ve been meaning to get it tuned. Well, the time finally came. My band, the Preons, are planning on recording again very soon, and I would love to have some real piano on it. I’ve always really enjoyed the timbre that it produces, but the intonation on the high and low ends is very, ummm…. how could I put it, open minded. So, to compensate, I end up only playing the middle couple of octaves. I finally decided to shell out the money to get it tuned, knowing that we will be at our current house for a number of years.

Last week I plopped down the money for it, and boy is it nice. The tuner was a former music teacher who is now an elementary school teacher. He explained to me that most piano tuners use software these days. He happened to have a nifty HP iPaq Pocket PC with some pretty advanced tuning software. Piano tuning is a very difficult time consuming skill. The pros have hearing that has been learned and perfected over many years. The biggest problem with tuning a piano is temperament. My friend John has a nice article explaining temperament on his blog.

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