Two days ago, I was at home and enjoying the night before the New Year’s Day. I was sitting in front of the piano and decided to play some chords. But, the piano has not been play for over 2 years; and, it sounded quite out of tunes. New Year is for fresh start. I decided to tune my upright-piano (see the attached pictures). I need the following tuning gears:
- Piano Tuning Wrench
- Pitch tube
- A pencil with eraser – I found that it is often easier to mute the strings with an eraser on the back of a pencil than a felt. On the higher notes, each key has 3 strings to keep the harmonics. The lower keys have either 1<really low> or 2 <medium low> strings. The tuning technic involves first tuning each note using either the perfect 5 or perfect 8 harmonics. Then, sync all 3 strings for each notes.)
- And, optional Chromatic Tuner for check up.
As violin is my first instrument, naturally, I tune the whole piano starting from middle A. I then tune the piano using the natural resonances of Perfect 5 and Perfect 8, because their harmonics are really easy to hear.
- Find Middle A
- Tune using the Circle of Fifth (-5->) and Perfect 8 (-8->), #note: 2 methods exists. One goes up (A -> E). One goes down (A -> D).
- (Down method) A -5-> D -8-> high D -5-> G -5-> C -8-> high C -5-> F -8-> high F -5-> A # -5-> D# -8-> high D# -5-> G# -5-> C# -8-> high C# -5-> F# -5-> B -8-> low B -5-> E
- (Up method) A -5-> high E -8-> E -5-> B -8-> low B -5-> F# -5-> high C# -8-> C# -5-> G# -5-> high D# -8-> D# -5-> A# -8-> low A# -5-> F -5-> high C -8-> C -5-> G -5-> high D -8-> D
