When to Tune a Piano – How Often Should you Tune a Piano?

If you play the piano you know there is nothing better than sitting down and playing a piano that is in tune. Unfortunately, tuning a piano is no easy task. It’s extremely difficult to learn how to tune a piano on your own – it takes tuners years to master the skill – and it can also be pretty expensive (ranging anywhere from $50-$200 or more depending on the tuner and where you live). With this in mind, how often should you tune your piano?

In a perfect world, you would have a tuner living next door and they would come over every day and keep your piano in tune. Because pianos start going out of tune right after being tuned simply by being played. How often you should tune your piano depends upon several factors:

Stability of the environment

Pianos are pretty temperamental instruments and require a decently stable environment to be kept in tune. Like most string instruments, the temperature of the room can drastically affect the tuning of the strings. Unlike most string instruments, pianos will rarely leave the room they are placed in. Keeping your room at a constant and comfortable temperature is one of the best ways to ensure your piano is kept in tune.

How much the piano is played

Naturally, the more you play your piano, the more it will go out of tune. From the second your piano is tuned, it will start to go out of tune – and playing it only makes it worse! For the average player, they probably wouldn’t notice their piano slowly going out of tune as they practice every so often.

I play the piano every day and actually had to learn how to spot tune notes in order to keep my piano in playing condition. I have the luxury of having piano technicians in the store almost daily and can have them tune my personal piano on a pretty regular basis. This is not the case for the majority of pianists.

If you play your piano every day you might want to think about monthly piano tunings.

If you play your piano a few times a month you then you might be able to have it tuned as little as one or two times a year.

Level of refinement required

The piano has hundreds of moving parts and eventually, they will break down and need to be refined, repaired, or even replaced. All sorts of small problems can lead to your piano going out of tune more frequently.

This is a complex topic and as such should be discussed with your piano tuner or technician to see if they recommend any proactive measures to keep your piano in good shape.

Thanks again for joining us here at LivingPianos, if you have any questions about this topic or any other please contact us directly: info@livingpianos.com (949) 244-3729