Self tuning? Unlikely =P

I recently bought this book from the Kinokuniya@Ngee Ann City. They don't have the paperback one, so I bought the hardcover one. Anyway, I realised buying online (including the shipping cost) is cheaper than what I spent for this book. Silly me. But ok lah, let Kinokuniya earn more profits lor.

The Book:
Piano Servicing, Tuning, And Rebuilding
For the Professional, the Student, and the Hobbyist
by Arthur A. Reblitz

My intention of buying this book is to read up and learn more about how to service and tune pianos. And thinking that if it is easy to maintain pianos, then it might make more monetary sense to tune the piano myself than to pay a technician to come every 6 months to help me tune my piano, which cost about S$70 per tuning.

But as I read more and more and learn more about tuning, I realised it is not as simple as I thought. In that, there is actually a lot of knowledge in piano tuning. So, haha, I think I have changed my mind and will continue to pay for my piano tuning. But, I've learnt a lot!

Ok, I will share what I have learnt. Limited lah. Coz I also "half bucket of water".


Price of the Gadgets Needed:

To do tuning, the simple gadgets you need are (quoted in Singapore Dollars from one of my technician friend):
1. Rubber Mute ~ 80 cents
2. Wrench $100 to $180 ("cheap tuning wrench from china are not so good. good ones are japanese or real US type")
3. Meter (tuning software is 380USD and pda is bought from used market. now very rare to find 2nd hand. good sets of ears, free.")
So, which means, just to have the gadgets, you will need to spend about $700, and more if you don't have a PDA. Is cheaper if you can tune by ear, but unfortunately, I can't differentiate the difference! And ya, I have this guitar tuner which my hubby bought when he was learning guitar for about $20+. It is EssenTune for Guitar/Bass/Violin JG200. And after some research, this is not good enough to replace the meter for the tuning of pianos. This is because based on the theory of tuning for piano, the tuning requirement for piano is much more stringent, and it goes by the counting of beats. It is ok to use a piano to tune a guitar, but not a guitar tuner to tune piano. Hence, this cheapo method cannot not work!



Haha, actually up to this point, I already feel that it does not make monetary sense to tune a piano yourself, given that per tuning is about $70. And by spending $700, I can already pay for 10 tunings, without risk of snapping the strings. And if I were to try it on my own, the risk of snapping the string is much higher, and of coz I will need to have a lot of patience to tune one string at a time. And not forgetting a piano has about 200 strings altogether. Haha, I am pure lazy! Also, I need to find a "Si Fu" to teach me first before I dare to try it on my Hailun. Else, it will most probably the Schubert piano (which is at my sister's house) which I will do experiments on! Haha!

Btw, I found this interesting course conducted by Asia Piano on how to tune pianos. If you are interested. But I don't know whether is it good or not. Not tried before. But just FYI that there are something like this available in Singapore. =)

http://www.asiapiano.com.sg/classes.htm


Theory of tuning pianos:

This is the "chim" part. According to what I have read, there are different temperaments which a piano can be tuned at. Usually in Singapore, the pianos are tuned at Equal Temperaments.

Temperaments are like different sets of frequencies to which a piano can be tuned to, and still "in tune". But does that as 2 different frequencies are played together, they will form constructive and destructive waves. And for piano to sound nice when 2 keys are played together like the 'C' and 'E', usually there are theories that these 2 frequencies should beat with each other. Basically it means that you can hear a series of loud and soft vibration when the 2 keys are played with each other and makes the sound more musical.

So what happens is that, there are a lot of "researchers" who go into trying out different frequencies and listen to how they sound, and then set a few temperaments which can be used. Some are more commonly used while some are less common. But the different temperaments will actually give the piano a different sound colour. Some will have an more Victorian feel, some will give a more spicy feel while some will give a more pleasing feel. So it also really depends on which one is it that the pianist prefer before the pianos are tuned accordingly. But frankly, sometimes, the pianist might not know there is this option. If not because I read more into this, I wouldn't know either.

Ok, so what temperaments are available (based on what I know):-
1. Equal Temperaments => http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_temperament
2. EBVT (Equal Beating Victorian Temperament) by Bill Bremmer => http://www.billbremmer.com/ebvt/
3. Bach/Lehman Temperament => http://www.larips.com/

For EBVT and Lehman Temperament, there had been various versions, and each version has a different sound colour.

And hence you need to first know what is the Temperament that is set on your piano before you can tune it accordingly.

But non of the Singapore Technicians are PTG certified:

PTG stands for Piano Technician Guild => http://www.ptg.org/

It is a US regulatory board to ensure that all Piano Technicans are certified, have their knowledge and skills tested to ensure that they have a sound understand of how to rebuild, repair, tune and service pianos. Ok, it might not be an international board, but at least they are trying to make it international. However, I do hear that some other countries also have their own regulatory board, like Japan. But I don't know very much about them.

However, sadly, non of the Singapore Piano Technicians are PTG certified. And in Singapore, there is no such regulatory board. Hence there are skillful technicians and also those that are bluffing their ways through. The only way to find a good technician is by the word of mouth. Unfortunately even piano teachers themselves do not know much about the technicial parts of piano, let alone differentiating which technician is better than which. I mean, it is common that everyone will follow the crowd and if one person say this is good, the rest will just follow and say this is good without really understanding what does it mean by "good".

So, a good way is to see which Piano Technicians are the ones who usually tune pianos for those Singapore Symphony and so on. But I suppose they are really expensive too!

Hopefully in time to come, there will be a regulatory board in Singapore to certify these piano technicians, else it is no difference from those "Jiang1 Hu2" doctors. Haha!