Quick Answer: At least once per year.
Quirk Answer: If you can hear it out of tune, it's too late, call immediately for professional assistance! If you can hear that it is out of tune, you've waited too long, all is lost!
Long Answer:
Most piano technicians will tell you to tune your piano at least two times per year. In my location this is, for most customers, unnecessary.
What will cause your piano to become out of tune?
There are several factors that will cause your piano to become out of tune:
Going through each of these items seperately:
Fluxuations in environmental humidity - Pianos love consistency. A piano in a stable environment will stay in tune better than in an environment that is moving from humid to dry with the seasonal changes. If you think of the wood as a sponge it will give you a clearer idea what will happen when you introduce moisture. The moisture I am discussing is however in the air, the change of relative humidity is key to what will happen with your piano. A few weeks after the change you may notice the area of the keyboard from middle C and down about an octave and a half is out of tune. When the humidity increases the wood will swell and cause the strings to become tighter increasing the pitch of those notes. When the humidity decreases the wood will shrink causing this same section's strings to loosen a bit and drop in pitch.
Amount of use - The more you play the instrument the more frequently you will need to have it serviced. As you play the piano you are "exercising" the strings, they are bending between two fixed points, vibrating at the pitch set, these small vibrations will cause the strings to stretch somewhat. The more you play the more likely the strings will stretch a bit.
Type of Use - A good example of the difference among piano users is the "University Practice Piano vs. Home Piano". University pianos are generally played 12 or more hours every day often in humidity controlled rooms, these pianos are tuned much more frequently than once or twice per year, sometimes every month. Your home instrument is unlikely to receive this amount of attention for your players. I break down the type of use two ways:
Most piano technicians will tell you to tune your piano at least two times per year. In my location this is, for most customers, unnecessary.
What will cause your piano to become out of tune?
There are several factors that will cause your piano to become out of tune:
- Fluxuations of environmental humidity
- Amount of use
- Type of use or music played
- Time since last tuning
- Frequency of prior service
- Temporary direct sunlight on the strings
- Quality of the tuner/technician
Going through each of these items seperately:
Fluxuations in environmental humidity - Pianos love consistency. A piano in a stable environment will stay in tune better than in an environment that is moving from humid to dry with the seasonal changes. If you think of the wood as a sponge it will give you a clearer idea what will happen when you introduce moisture. The moisture I am discussing is however in the air, the change of relative humidity is key to what will happen with your piano. A few weeks after the change you may notice the area of the keyboard from middle C and down about an octave and a half is out of tune. When the humidity increases the wood will swell and cause the strings to become tighter increasing the pitch of those notes. When the humidity decreases the wood will shrink causing this same section's strings to loosen a bit and drop in pitch.
Amount of use - The more you play the instrument the more frequently you will need to have it serviced. As you play the piano you are "exercising" the strings, they are bending between two fixed points, vibrating at the pitch set, these small vibrations will cause the strings to stretch somewhat. The more you play the more likely the strings will stretch a bit.
Type of Use - A good example of the difference among piano users is the "University Practice Piano vs. Home Piano". University pianos are generally played 12 or more hours every day often in humidity controlled rooms, these pianos are tuned much more frequently than once or twice per year, sometimes every month. Your home instrument is unlikely to receive this amount of attention for your players. I break down the type of use two ways:
- Hourly - If the piano is being played, on average, more than and hour daily, you might hear a benefit in tuning semi-annually.
- Type of music played - If you play the piano aggressively and/or very loud (fff) you will likely need to have the piano serviced more frequently.
In proceeding with this situation I tune very rapidly attempting to achieve the proper pitch and stability. How do I determine when a second visit needs to be scheduled? If as I tune the piano it is slipping back out of tune rapidly I will suggest a second tuning in as little as 30 days. Often with 3 passes or 3 tunings I am fairly confident that the customer will be satisfied with the piano until the next tuning can be scheduled. I do not charge extra for this service.
What other piano tuners have expressed to their customers (this account is from a client who refused to agree to the work proposed and call to schedule an appointment with me instead):
Because you have neglected your piano for so many years and the piano is "x" cents flat, my fee for today will be 50-100% more than quoted. In addition to these charges I will need to spend more time regulating the piano and making it as perfect as possible.Needless to say, this piano tuner lost this client because their approach to the customer was inappropriate. A stranger comes to your house, implies neglect and then want to charge you hundreds of dollars. Don't fall for it!
An additional fee for tuning is appropriate in some instances, I personally don't do this. As tempting as it is to be able to charge a bit more, I find a more educated and informed customer who is made to feel awesome about their instrument and understands that going forward there is a better way to make the piano last grants me the opportunities to do the more invasive work later on. I prefer to develop the relationship first, this business is about the customer understanding the piano's needs, it is not about the piano technician, their income, or their ego, which I find all too common among my colleagues.
The RED flag indicating a piano may need to have several tunings before it stabilizes?
- My piano has never been tuned
- I don't remember when I last had my piano tuned
- It's been decades
- When I play at my lesson, it sounds like I'm playing the wrong notes
- I just got a deal on craigslist
Frequency of prior service - Pianos that are tuned regularly, whether that is once per year or more often have a longer useful musical life than pianos that are neglected. If you open your piano and it is more than 20 years old there are likely to be business cards, stamps or stickers marking the dates of tuning. Pianos that have numerous marked dates with recent years notated are often in better condition than those without the recent tuning notations.
Regularly I service instruments that receive only annual tunings which need only slight adjustments to the pitch. The better more regularly you service your instrument the better it will sound.
Temporary Direct Sunlight on the Strings - This I discovered one day while tuning a piano that sat in a south facing window with the sunlight shining directly on the strings. As I tuned the piano the sunlight would gradually move from one string to the next and the shade would follow behind. What I discovered was that as the sun would shine on the strings they would heat up enough to cause the string to go out of tune, when that same string was in the shade and cooled off a bit, the pitch would change. A frustrating experience when you don't understand what is happening. After about 30 minutes of tuning I ask the customer about the positioning of the piano and whether they had stability issues with the instrument. Not to my surprise, they had been through several technicians, and not really been happy with their service. I explained to the customer that the direct light from the window was causing the strings to heat up and then cool down after the sun had passed. This heating and cooling was forcing the string to undergo some very small changes that were likely affecting the stability of the tuning and that in order to correct the issue and achieve a tuning that would be more satisfying to them, we should resolve the sunlight issue. In this instance I wasn't proposing any additional fees to the customer, simply that they should move the piano a few more inches into the room and away from direct sunlight and have the windows covered during the times when the sunlight was shining directly into the room.
Prior to this customer I had always known that sunlight was damaging to the finish, but had not thought too much about sunlight heating the strings and causing them to change enough to cause the piano to go out of tune.
Quality of the tuner/technician - Not all piano tuners are the same! I have had a few clients that I could not satisfy, it happens. I have had some experiences with clients who had only had their pianos tuned by technicians that use an electronic device as an aid to their tuning. I believe this to be a crutch for the technician, it does achieve acceptable results for 99% of the piano owning public. I have always and will always be an aural tuner. It produces to me a more natural sounding instrument. But no matter how your instrument is tuned (by the human ear or with the aid of a device) if the technician doesn't understand how to set the tuning pin and equalize the tension in the string their tuning will not be stable and withstand the riggers of everyday playing. Unfortunately there is no real test that you the consumer can be directed to in order to know if the tuning is stable. The only way you can judge is to have someone service your instrument and see how it fares over the next several months. If it doesn't seem to stay in tune, and you've serviced the instrument regularly, try someone else the next time. Continue this process until you find a tuner/technician who satisfies your musical ear.
Stay tuned to find out how to select your piano technician.
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