How to Tune Pianos

The Hobby, Skill, and Career of Piano Tuning

By Mark Cerisano

The Bisecting Beat Speed Windows System of the Go APE Method allows for incredible accuracy, precision, and efficiency.

The elements of the system that allow it to be so powerful are:

  • Aurally measuring inharmonicity to know which of the three sequences to use, allowing more accurate pitch setting and less refinement needed.
  • Each pitch is set exactly halfway between two already tuned intervals (the Window) allowing more precision and accuracy.
  • Before tuning a pitch, its “Window” of slow-fast beating must be confirmed. If it has disappeared, we can easily find out which note has drifted and correct it. This is the “Self Correcting” feature of the method.

The general procedure of tuning the temperament using Beat Speed Windows is:

  1. Tune A4 using 25% over or under pull.
  2. Tune A3A4 using the aurally measured inharmonicity criteria.
  3. Tune the Skeleton F3A3C#4F4A4. (Same procedure for all pianos)
  4. Tune D4 using its window. (Same procedure for all pianos)
  5. Tune F#3 and A#3 using Beat Speed Windows and the appropriate sequence for this piano’s inharmonicity. (Three different possible procedures)
  6. Tune the rest of the notes using Beat Speed Windows. (Same procedure for all pianos)

The course isn’t finished yet; I will constantly be uploading relevant lessons to this page.

The Skeleton (F3-A3-C#4-F4-A4)

There are many ways people tune these notes. Each way is different but all hope to end up with the stacked M3’s (F3A3-A3C#4-C#4F4-F4A4) to be increasing in speed smoothly and evenly. We call those “Progressive Major Thirds”.

The Skeleton procedure is the fastest, most efficient, and accurate way that I have seen to do this.

Other methods require excessive reiterations and retuning if errors are made. They also may use M3’s that may compromise larger pure intervals, like the 12th, if they are tuned progressive.

These videos and quiz teach how the Skeleton works and how to tune it.

Tuning the Skeleton – Video of me doing it and a visual using pieces of paper.

Tuning the Skeleton – Graphical video showing how the Skeleton works.