Having your piano tuned on a regular basis is the most fundamental aspect of caring for your piano. Naturally this prompts the question, “How often should my piano be tuned?”

Generally speaking, piano manufacturers recommend that their pianos be serviced three to four times in the first year of ownership and at least twice a year after this. This includes such well-known names as Baldwin, Kawai, Pearl River, Samick, Steinway, and Yamaha. (You can follow this link to read specific recommendations from piano manufacturers.)

Why do new pianos need more frequent service? It takes about a year for new piano wire to stretch and become stable. Tuning a new piano three to four times in that first year of ownership compensates for this rapid stretching of strings and ensures that the pitch of the piano is never allowed to drift too far from the international standard of A-440 (the note A above Middle C is tuned to a frequency of 440 cycles per second). Of course, strings continue to stretch after the first year, but at a much slower rate.

There is another reason why new pianos should be serviced more frequently. As a piano acclimates to its new environment (your home), it is common for small problems to develop. Keys may start to stick and other action parts may become sluggish. It is important to address these issues early, before they develop into bigger problems. A professional piano technician will be able to recognize and correct these issues, sometimes before you even notice them.

So that takes care of new pianos up through the first year of ownership. But what about pianos that are more than a year old?

Again, referring to the recommendations given by piano manufacturers: They should be tuned “at least twice a year.”

But why twice a year? Is there a logical reason for this?

Actually, this recommendation is based on the fact that for most of continental North America there are essentially two indoor seasons: wet (or wetter) and dry (or drier). Changes in indoor relative humidity are the number one reason why pianos go out of tune. (Perhaps in a future article I will delve into the science for why this is so.)

During Fall and Winter, what little moisture was in the air is quickly driven away when we turn on our furnaces and close our doors and windows. And then in the Spring and Summer, the humidity inside our homes increases as we turn off our furnaces and open our doors and windows. In many parts of the country, this is coupled with extremely high outdoor humidity. So you can see that there is a normal cycling inside our homes as the seasons change, from dry (or drier) to wet (or wetter) and then eventually back to dry.

And remember, it is when the indoor humidity changes that your piano goes out of tune.

With this in mind, let’s consider what happens when a piano is tuned only once a year instead of the recommended twice a year. When a piano is tuned only once a year, it ends up spending about half the year out of tune. For example, if you have your piano tuned in the Fall when the air inside your house is relatively dry, it’s going to go out of tune about six months later when the weather gets warmer and the indoor humidity rises. If you wait until the next Fall before having your piano tuned again, that’s six months (half a year) that it will remain out of tune.

This is why it makes sense to have your piano serviced on a six month schedule, once in the Fall or Winter, and again in the Spring or Summer. A twice yearly tuning schedule will help keep your piano sounding its best throughout the entire year.

If your piano receives heavier than normal use, it may be necessary to have your piano serviced more frequently than this. But for pianos that receive light to moderate use, a twice yearly schedule should be sufficient.

Absolute minimum maintenance for a piano, even one that seldom gets played, is once a year. Allowing a piano to go longer than a year between service appointments amounts to neglect. And neglecting a piano for extended periods can cause small and relatively inexpensive problems that might have been discovered earlier to develop into serious and potentially expensive problems.

I am surprised at how many people seem to think that their piano should be tuned once every five or ten years “whether it needs it or not.” I tell my clients that they’re wasting their money if they intend to have their piano tuned only once every five or ten years.

Here’s why.

It is a simple fact that small pitch changes produce more stable tunings, and that bigger pitch changes produce less stable tunings. The less the tension on the strings has to be changed in the process of tuning the piano, the more stable the tuning will be. This is why pianos that are tuned regularly are more stable (meaning they hold their tuning longer) than pianos that are tuned less regularly.

When a piano is neglected for two or three years, or even longer, it becomes necessary to make bigger adjustments when the piano is finally tuned again. Consequently, that first tuning is not going to hold for very long. As previously stated, the bigger the changes that are made, the more unstable the end result will be. This means that if the piano is to hold a tuning for any significant length of time, that first tuning will have to be followed up in one to three months with a second tuning where only small adjustments are made.

Why would someone pay for a tuning that is going to last only one to three months if they plan on going right back to neglecting their piano for another two or five or ten years? It just doesn’t make sense!

Of course, the better choice would be to stop neglecting the piano and see that it receives the service that it needs when it needs it. Then it will sound its best all the time!

I hope that what I’ve shared with you in this article has helped you better understand the service needs of your piano. And I hope that the next time your piano tuner-technician suggests that your piano should be tuned every six months, you understand that he or she has your piano’s best interests at heart. It’s not that he or she is trying to drum up more business at your expense. This really is what’s best for your piano.

If you live in the Inland Empire area of Southern California and are in need of piano service, I would love to hear from you! Simply follow this link to the contact page of my website.