Piano Tuning: A Simple and Accurate Method for Amateurs

by J. Cree Fischer

If you have a note that has dropped in pitch, do you have to call in the tuner? A stuck key? Sympathetic rattle? Missing bridles? A broken hammer shank? An unglued ivory? The answer, in each case, is no: you can make all of these repairs yourself!
This is the clearest and most complete book available for beginning tuners and amateur pianists. It explains all the basic processes practically and with model clarity. A non-musician can use this book without too much difficulty.
You will learn how upright, grand, and square actions work, and how to take care of the smallest repairs — repairing stuck keys, poorly adjusted bottoms and capstans, crowded back checks, felts and leather on the hammers, hammer stems; softening damper and hammer felts; installing new bridles; eliminating "sympathetic rattle"; all with a minimum of tools and training.
You will learn a professional method of tuning based on slightly flattened fifths, where only the octave and the upward fifth intervals are used. This is one of the easiest systems to learn, one capable of a great deal of control, and one perfectly suited to adjusting one or two keys. It is a tested method especially right for amateurs working without a teacher, and a method that trains the ear for other recommended systems. The author also explains "beats," the theory of the tempered scale, and useful experiments you can make with harmonic phenomena.
If you want to experiment with tuning a piano, there is no better book to start with. It will help performers and teachers make occasional repairs and learn the structure and scale of the piano. Those who want to know how pianos work will find this book both clear and useful.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Reference

224 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1975

About the author

Jerry Cree Fischer

Reviews

[Silas · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a useful resource that I found on kindle that taught me how to tune a piano for free. I was able to do that, despite some of this book's shortcomings. The free kindle version I had did not have the illustrations, which were frequently referenced and a rather important part of making the process clear. The content didn't really match up with the title, either, since much of the material was about learning the craft of being a piano tuner professionally, and extensive sections were made up of the mechanical workings of the piano and how to repair various issues that might come up (that, again, would have been greatly helped by the illustrations). A significant portion of the middle consisted of mathematical proofs that the tempered tuning that was taught was more effective than other versions, which was interesting, but not strictly necessary, and the portion on reed organ repairs was also unnecessary for me. This book also really showed its age, with instructions on how to make a pendulum to measure a second or instructions to get new hinges made by any local blacksmith. Of course, it is public domain, so that means it is an older book. It was effective in teaching me to tune a piano, though I did find myself wondering if there were more modern, simpler methods to tune pianos, so I had to take some time to look up alternatives outside of the book, but if you have the time, the price is right for learning an effective means of tuning a piano.

[Carson Bruce · Rating 4 out of 5]

Best explanation of piano tuning I’ve heard yet! Very in-depth, hard to understand at times, and each chapter is set up like a workbook with questions and new practical exercises. It’s a little wordy sometimes—could have been a tad more concise. Because it’s an old book, it sticks to the fundamentals of learning to tune. There are newer digital tools for tuning in today’s technology that make this book outdated in many of the old school methods. Either way—always useful to know how to tune even without the newest and best technology.

[J. T. K. Tobin · Rating 3 out of 5]

While this was very interesting to read, it did not suffice (present day) to the task of informing a novice piano tuner. The illustrations are low quality and difficult to read. The text itself is bogged down in details which cannot be grasped properly without a visual aid of some kind. This was written a long time ago and it shows.

If you're curious about the action of a piano, and some of the details of tuning, this could be read as something to whet your appetite, nothing more.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great guide to get started in piano tuning

[minhhai · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall comment: Very helpful for those who want to tune their piano without the assistance of electronic devices.

I'm a piano beginner who owns an upright piano. I've followed this method and it worked quite well, except for some issues which are due to lack of experience.

The book is concise, clear and self-contained. It covers the basic structure of pianos, a little of theory of sound (but very easy to understand, don't worry), descriptions of his and other tuning methods as well as any issues that the tuner should pay attention to.

Although the method is simple enough, that you tune octaves and fifths, for example, start from C then tune G then D, etc. After 12 rounds you'd return to the original C. One problem of this method is that, very often the "starting C" and "ending C" don't match because the accumulative uncertainty during the 12 tuning rounds. It's very tricky to avoid that uncertainty and that requires a lot of experience.

Anyhow, I found this method applicable for amateurs, as long as you can recognize the "beats" generated by two slightly-out-of-harmonic sounds (if not, tuning with an electronic tuner would be advisable).

[Jill Crainshaw · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some things never change

I have been a professional piano technician for 25 years. I enjoyed reading this book, written about 1907. I am doing some research for a novel that I'm writing that includes a character who becomes a piano technician around 1935-40, and wanted to read what information he might have had access to while learning his new trade. Interestingly enough, things haven't changed a great deal in the last 100 years, since pianos designs have not radically changed. Our tuning methods have changed, of course (because of electronic tuning devices) and some names of parts have changed, but many things have remained the same. It was an interesting (and occasionally amusing) book.