In the video, I explain to "Joe" what the Superior Stability System is all about and what makes the Go A.P.E. System so different from traditional piano tuning instructional courses.
I hope this video convinces you of the incredible benefits of becoming a member of howtotunepianos.com.
Watch the Introduction Lesson and then...
Video Transcription
"Hi Joe.
This is Mark from Mr. Tuner Piano Service and HowToTunePianos.com.
I'm sending you this video because you said that you're having some trouble with stability.
Let me just say first off that I teach people how to tune pianos. I would love to be able to make a living doing this and that's why I have this website.
However this is not a sales video. I've learned that the only way to get people to be interested is to give it away for free so I'm going to be giving you free the information that I've gathered on how to get stability tuning a piano.
Besides the need for me to make a living, I'm very, very concerned and frustrated. I feel the frustration that people have when they're tuning pianos and the frustration comes from the fact that it's being taught poorly.
Piano tuning is not a very well regulated industry. Therefore we have tons of people who are teaching how to get stability, for example, who have really no clue what's going on.
They tell you to do stuff because it works some of the time but this is not an efficient way of teaching somebody.
Let's talk a little bit about the traditional way that piano tuning stability is taught.
- We have the idea that you keep your hammer at 12 o'clock.
- You need to set the string by hitting it really hard.
- We have the idea that you have to set the pin by leaving it bent towards the string, twisted counterclockwise.
These ideas don't work all the time.
You said you're having trouble but I'm willing to bet you've heard these things before: Keep your Hammer at 12 o'clock and don't bend the pin, hit the key really hard to make sure the string is settled and go sharp a little bit and then ease the pitch flat and that will leave the tuning pin set.
Watch this now.
When it comes to…and this is another reason why I'm giving these free lessons:
It's because the way piano tuning has been taught in the past is full of problems and so as a piano tuner, I was experiencing these problems and when I started to teach, then students were calling me out.
For example, when I would say that the fourth beats one beat per second wide and they would say, "How do you make sure it's one beat per second wide?".
Based on the traditional way I was taught, many people said, "Go away. Leave me alone. Go tune a thousand pianos. Learn on your own."
That is not the proper way for a teacher to instruct their students, but it's the way that we as piano technicians instruct a lot of people.
It's an embarrassment to me as a teacher that other technicians would tell someone something like that.
If want to learn how to drive, people don't say, "Just go out and drive. Drive 1000 hours and hit a bunch of people, bang up your car, etc.".
This is not right. Why are people doing this?
I'll tell you why - I don't begrudge them - it's because they don't know how else to instruct.
We will talk a little bit about how tuning stability is being taught, but first I want to share with you why I'm giving out all this information for free.
I've been giving free lessons every Monday at lunch for the last two months; giving out all of the information I have for free because I believed, and still do, that the traditional way that aural tuning is being taught is not good enough.
I had to develop a new way by taking what we know and taking also things that other people have discovered - other very, very high-level technicians like Virgil Smith and Dan Levitan - and use what they've been saying and systematize it; put it together and use it to get much, much better aural tunings.
It has the benefit of saying to us, "Yes! you can tune a piano using just your ear and get a better result than just using an ETD." (Electronic Tuning Device).
This is now possible, whereas before, with the traditional method it was always a fight.
People are trying to use the traditional aural method, and in the back of their mind are thinking, "I really want to do this by ear." and eventually they just break down and buy an ETD (Electronic Tuning Device) and start using it, claiming things like, "Well it makes me more efficient." and blah blah blah.
But, the thing that has happened now is this method that I teach makes it easy for people to do an aural tuning.
For example, I will just give you one example…I'm going to tell you this because it has to do with stability, it totally has to do with stability.
People will take the ETD and they'll use it because they say, "I can see when the pitch changes a tiny bit."
What they're really saying is when you use a single string, and you're just tuning with a single string, you can't tell if you've moved the pitch, and that's true.
You can't tell until about 3 or 4 cents that the pitch has moved. But with the ETD, you see it move right away.
There's a lot of reasons why I tune the way I'm about to show you, but the one reason - that has to do with stability - is that we can tell when the pitch changes by a very small amount,as little as 0.3 cents.
I could show you this by using an ETD - which has numbers - and we could see when the pitch changes, but the way I am about to show you is actually more precise than the RPT exam criteria, which is for stability to get a hundred percent, the pitch has to not change by more than one cent after you hit it really hard three times. [Called test blows]
With the method I'm about to show you, you can tell the pitch changes in less than a cent - in fact, you can tell if it changes by half a cent!
You can get the feedback that a half-cent is too much because you can hear it.
We're not just talking math here, we're talking music!
7:30
Okay. So. What I'm doing here is I'm muting off - I'm going to - let's look at the D here. Let's use this D here. And I'm muting off the first string, okay?
I want to work on the third string which is the longest non-speaking length (NSL) which is the string from the tuning pin to the agraffe; the longest non-speaking length because I want to show you how this fails.
Knowing that the long non-speaking length behaves a certain way can help you decide which technique to use and also help you decide what technique to use if it doesn't work.
Using the two strings together helps us to hear when our technique doesn't work right away.
So, let's use the standard technique that everybody teaches: Put the hammer at 12:00, go sharp and ease it flat.
8:29 [Tuning]
There!
Now, that's the way that a lot of people are taught, but does it produce a stable string?
8:44 [3 Test Blows, then the note is played and sounds out-of-tune]
No. This has gone out of tune.
So, what do people say?
They say, "Ohhhhh. You should leave it sharp. Go sharp, ease it flat,
9:00 [Tuning the string sharp, and easing it flat, but leaving it a bit sharp.]
But leave it sharp and bang it in.
9:09 [3 Test Blows, then the note sounds cleaner]
That works, but, Ay Caramba!
First of all, it doesn't always work. You need to know the situation of the strings; why you would do that.
Secondly, my ear is in pain right now. I'm going to do that to the whole piano? No!
That technique works because you're using hard blows. #1) Hard blows are going to make you go deaf. Ok? Do you want to go deaf? No! Tune for 20 years, 30 years using hard blows and you're going to go deaf. You're going to lose your hearing by doing that with those hard blows.
Ok, you're going to put in earplugs? You can't hear as well.
So, what do people do?
It's like they have a death wish. It's like this Corona thing; people walking out with no mask, coming together and gathering in crowds on the beach. It's like they don't care. It's like, "I don't care."
Well you should care because there's something you can do about it.
I understand when people say, "I don't care" because there's nothing they can do about it, but you can do something about it; you don't have to use hard blows.
You're going to go deaf, you're going to have joint pain, wrist pain, banging away like that.
The piano is being worn excessively, and your customers; now this is true. People report that the customers are nervous. It makes them nervous when they see the piano technician banging away at their piano especially if they paid 20, 30, $40,000 for their piano. They don't want to see somebody banging away at it.
One technician told me that you need to bang just hard enough so that you almost break the hammer.
This is what people are telling other people out there! This was at a conference where a piano technician was explaining, "That's how we learn how hard to hit a piano to make it stable."
This is, this is the Dark Ages. I'm so…this is why I give these lessons out for free.
Okay. So, how can we do this and get a stable tuning without using hard blows?
11:24 [Tuning string with one slow pull]
Just pull it up to pitch…
11:30 [3 test blows and the unison is played]
…and it's stable.
Now, watch this very carefully.
I just told you, "Pull it up to pitch and you get a stable tuning."
If I left it at that, I would be no better than all the other people who are saying, "Just put it at 12:00, go sharp and ease flat. I'd be no better than them.
The reason why I teach this is because I don't teach what to do, I teach why it works and what to do when it doesn't work. Okay?
So, let's say we go to the other string, here. Let's take this note here, go to this string here and do the same thing.
12:10 [String is pulled up to pitch with one slow pull, then 3 test blows.]
That didn't work. Right? What's different? What's different?
Let's talk about what has to happen in order to have stability.
Well, the one thing we got right in the traditional sense is that we need to set the string. The only way to set the string in the traditional method is to whack it really hard.
No. We're not going to use that technique for the reasons I just mentioned but we do have to set the string.
So what does that mean? I will tell you what it means.
I've asked people in the past, professional technicians, what causes the string to go out of tune and nobody is able to answer the question. They can't answer that question.
If I say, "What causes a string to go out of tune?", nobody has ever been able to answer that question when I ask it to them, unless they have taken my course.
They give me all kinds of answers:
- You didn't put your Hammer at 12:00.
- You didn't go sharp and ease flat.
- You didn't set the pin.
Well, after I pulled the pitch up, I let it go. That's not setting the pin.
That pin is going to relax counter-clockwise, untwisting counter-clockwise and it's going to be untwisting and not set.
It's not set; the pin, but it was stable. How can I do that?
Well, I explain all of that in the Superior Stability Course.
It's 25 lessons but I will give you as much as I can in this video.
So the answer the question, "Why does the string go out of tune?" is "There's only one - ", and we have to go to the basic, you know, go to the guts of the matter. We can't be up in the air, floating around, saying, "The pin wasn't set.", because that's not the essence of the reason.
You can have the pin not sent and have stability, so that's not the essence of the reason. We need a description of why the string goes out of tune that is accurate 100% of the time, not 99% of the time. It's an actual description of what's happening.
So, why does the string go out of tune? Because the string slips in the agraffe, every time.
If you have a stability problem, the string will slip at the termination point, either at the bridge or the agraffe. If it doesn't slip, the pitch doesn't change. That's physics! Right?
Okay. So how can we stop the string from slipping?
There's a whole description using physics, but I just boil it down to the very basic, and that is: if you want the string not to slip, you have to leave the non-speaking length tension tight, okay? That's we have to do.
Think in your mind: "Leave it tight."
Now that's not a hundred percent description of what you need to do but it helps you get much, much better stability because you can think about it, right?
It's not just, "Try this. Try that. Try this. And if it doesn't work, well, try something else."
No. You think about it. You try this, and if it doesn't work, you change what you did to change the tensions in the non-speaking length when you're done, ok?
So, how do we get the non-speaking length-tension tight?
We don't. The tuning pin does it, all by itself! Okay?
How?
When we're tuning, we're bending and twisting the tuning pin and when we finish, the tuning pin will unbend and untwist, and it's the unbending and untwisting that makes the non-speaking length tension tight, or keeps the non-speaking length tight, okay?
So, in order to make the NSL tight or keep it tight, we need to know whether it's tight or loose.
When you go sharp and ease flat, the easing flat is causing the non-speaking length-tension to be loose and flabby because of the friction at the agraffe.
As you turn your pin counter-clockwise, the non-speaking length tension is getting flabby and then it starts slipping over the agraffe, through the agraffe, over the V-bar, but it's still flabby.
So, when you're done, the tuning pin needs to untwist and bend back, all on its own, and that's what tightens up the non-speaking length.
Now, let me show you.
We used this note here and we did a slow pull up,
17:48 [Slow pull up, then test blows]
and it wasn't stable.
But, we can do the go sharp ease flat and that will be stable, if we understand, for example, by going sharp and easing flat,
18:07 [String is raised sharp and then eased flat.]
like that.
18:12 [3 test blows]
it's not stable.
It wasn't as bad as the other long non-speaking length I used - this is a bit shorter - but it's still not stable.
So, what can we do?
Understand. This pitch changed because the string slipped, and which way did go? It went flat.
Why? Well, most of the time it goes flat. Very rarely does it go sharp.
That's another thing to understand. In the course there's all kinds of explanations of why that is, but you just need to know that it usually goes flat.
Okay. so if that went flat, it means that the non-speaking length was too loose.
So what do I do?
Remember, that the non-speaking — I'm not just going to pull it up and tighten up, no no no. The non-speaking length tension gets tight by the tuning pin. How does it turning pin do that? By the unbending and the untwisting after we're done.
So, at 12:00, there's bending side to side. That doesn't affecting the Non-Speaking Length, right? That's why people say, "Put your hammer at 12:00 because the bending doesn't affect the non-speaking length tension." Why is that a good thing? Sometimes we want that to happen.
So, let me show you how we're going to make this stable.
We need the pin to unbend more and tighten up that non-speaking length tension; it was too loose. How can we get the pin to unbend? By bending it.
If you think bending is bad then look up Dan Levitan who invented the C-lever to eliminate bending. On his website he says, "This C-lever allows you to eliminate bending, or it allows you to bend the pin on purpose."
Everyone who talks about the C-lever uses it as evidence that pin bending is bad because a piano technician invented a hammer to eliminate bending, but they never bother to read his website or watch him us it.
He says — and this guy is a very high-level technician. If you look up his book, The Craft of Piano Tuning, it's like over $100; he's no slouch.
20:30 [Demonstrating how Dan Levitan bends the pin]
So he has his hammer and he's just turning it like this, and this is the tuning pin. You're applying the force right beside the pin so it doesn't bend.
On this hammer, [pointing to traditional hammer] you apply the force above the tuning pin, so it's bending; when you pull and push it bends the pin.
But when we go right beside it, [moving right hand down beside left hand which represents the pin] it just twists it.
Well, when he uses it on his website he says you can use it to bend the pin on purpose, and when he's tuning, you see him lifting and pulling down.
20:57
Right here is the hammer. Here's the — it's on the pin [right hand]. Here's his hand [left hand], and he goes like this: he turns it, and then goes like this [moving left hand up and down]
He's bending it on purpose! Why? Because he's using the unbending to tighten up the non-speaking length.
So, let me show you how I do this.
I'm going to go sharp and ease flat, but on the east flat, I'm going to be pressing down.
Watch, watch is a press down on the hammer.
[21:33]
So, as I was pressing down and turning, when I got to the Target pitch, I let go, and the pin came back, raising the non-speaking length tension
[22:00 Three test blows, and then unison played. Still in tune.]
Stable.
You understand? People tell you put your Hammer 12:00, go sharp and ease flat. They're not telling you what's going on when you do that. When it works, it works because the unbending and the untwisting tightens up the non-speaking length tension enough.
But sometimes [the unbending/untwisting] doesn't [add enough tension], and when it doesn't, they don't tell you what to do!
If it goes flat, you need to add more bending while you're easing flat, okay?
So, the other thing you have to realize is that everything you do to the pin that causes a bending and twisting during the tuning, and results in the unbending in the untwisting after, all of that, doesn't work the same on all strings because of something called Hooke's Law.
On a short string, all of that unbending and untwisting causes a huge change in the non-speaking length tension. But on a long non-speaking length, it doesn't. That's Hooke's Law.
Long non-speaking lengths: not sensitive to the pin movement.
And that's why on a long non-speaking length, like this one, I can just pull it up and let go.
[23:23 Slow pull up and three test blows]
I really knocked the heck out of that, [play note] and it's still stable.
So, what happened?
Well, as I was pulling up, the non-speaking length tension is already tight. It's got to be tight to overcome the friction at the agraffe. It's tight, tight, tight.
And I want it to stay there!
Why does it stay there? At 12:00, pulling up, why does it stay there?
Well, the pin is not set. The pin is going to untwist counter-clockwise and that's going to cause the non-speaking length tension to drop.
Ok, well why was it stable then?
Because it didn't drop a lot. Why didn't it drop a lot? Because it's a long non-speaking length, and on long non-speaking lengths, the tension is not sensitive.
But then when I went over to this pin, it's a short non-speaking length, abd the Slow Pull didn't work
24:43 [Three test blows, unison goes out of tune]
That went out a little bit, not as much, but it did go out a little bit. and why?
The same thing happened with this pin as with this pin, the same thing.
I pulled it up, the non-speaking length tension was tight, when I let go the tuning pin untwisted and presumably by the same amount because the pin block is usually a uniform tightness.
So, the twist was the same, the tightness on the tuning pin was the same, the tuning pin was twisted the same, there's no bending changing pitch because it's at 12:00, so how come this didn't work but the long one did?
It doesn't have to do with the how much the pin untwisted, it has everything to do with how much the tension changed!
Now this is a shorter non-speaking length so it's more sensitive to the pin movement.
So, this pin untwisted the same amount as the long one, but the tension dropped more!
We need to keep the tension tight! So, that's why it didn't work.
So, again, what can we do? You can add a little [motions downward with hand near hammer] so that when you're pressing down, it's going to tighten it up [after you let go].
[26:00 Easing flat while pressing down on hammer]
Alright?
[26:04 Three test blows, unison may be a little out]
That might have gone sharp because I bent too much.
[26:12 Testing direction of instability]
Yeah. When I went down, I heard it go in [tune]. I heard it become pure. So it actually was too much [bend].
So, You can figure [things] out. You're getting constant feedback. And look; No ETD! Double string Unison, that's what I call this. Two strings; double string.
You get immediate feedback! You let your body do the great things that your body can do, and that is, with good feedback your body is able to quickly, quickly, quickly make decisions and make judgments, okay?
This is why the single string is no good for us, for humans, because we need immediate feedback.
And again, this is completely different. I tune the whole piano like this; a completely different way of tuning. It boggles my mind why people haven't been tuning pianos like this since the beginning. Really, it really does.
I think it partly has to do with the fact that, really, people don't really notice. You know, the average Joe doesn't notice if their piano's tuned well or not, and so, there's no real, you know, emphasis.
I mean if you're a brain surgeon and you're not using the best methods, your patients are dying. You are [then] being forced to go out there and figure out, "What the heck am I doing wrong? How can I do something better so that my patients are living?"
But here, you know, it's like, we don't have the same incentive, right?
Unless you have it within. It's like, "I want to learn how to do this better. I want to be the best there is. I want to find out what method gives me the best results.
And that's the method I teach. I called it the Go A.P.E. method. The Go A.P.E. Aural Piano Tuning System. A.P.E. for Accuracy, Precision, and Efficiency.
I just talked to you about the Double String Unison [which is] extremely precise [and gives] very, very strong feedback. I talked to you about the non-speaking length tension and how to keep it tight when you're tuning and that allows us to make small changes in pitch that are stable.
And the the third element is the beat speeds; how we listen to the beat speeds and make judgments.
We can hear when the beat speeds are close and when they're equal and when they're not equal. And what's more, there's this little window where we can't tell if they're the same or not. They could be a little different but to us they sound the same. We use that, that little window, to help us tune the piano and have very accurate criteria to determine what is the best size intervals for all pianos.
We use the same method to tune the piano but it tunes all different kinds of pianos the best for that particular inharmonicity of that piano.
So, I hope that gave you some insight into — I mean, there's whole bunch of other things I could talk about, but the main thing I wanted you to get from this, Joe, is that, we are trying to keep the string from slipping. We don't care if the pin is set or not if the unsetting of the pin doesn't cause the string to slip.
If we can have the pin unset and still have stability, we can be much more efficient in tuning our piano.
I also talked about the unbending and the untwisting of the tuning pin, leaving the non-speaking length-tension tight, and that's what we want.
The go sharp ease flat works because it leaves the non-speaking length tension tight.
If it doesn't work, it's because you didn't leave the non-speaking length tight, and how do you do that? You let the pin do it all by itself in the unbending and untwisting that happens when you let go of the hammer.
And the other thing that I wanted to mention was that we don't have to use hard blows. (There was something else I wanted to mention) We talked about the tuning pin unbending and untwisting all by itself, leaving the non-speaking tension [tight]. We talked about Hooke's Law, where all of that, that happens is more or less affecting the [non-speaking length] tension. [Example:] On a long non-speaking length, not very much effect.
That's why when I went sharp and eased it flat — see,
[30:40]
We'll go sharp here, we'll go sharp, ease flat, right?
[30:49 Mute is removed to reveal a sharp string]
Go sharp, ease flat sharp
[30:51 pitch is eased flat]
Everything's all flabby.
Yes, the tuning pin untwisted clockwise tightening the non-speaking length tension, but not enough! Because it's so long, right?
So, the only other thing I talked about was that the method, the technique that we use to get good stability, must explain why!
We cannot continue to go on teaching people how to get good stability by just telling, "Do this, do this. If it doesn't work, just tune a thousand pianos. You'll figure it out."
And, you know, there's truth to that. Right? There's a lot of piano tuners who have been tuning this way for decades and they're good. How come they're good? Something's going on in their brain to figure this stuff out, but they can't explain it to you because they're not figuring it out on the surface. They're just guessing and they just happen to be guessing right.
But there's still pianos that come along for those guys, and they don't understand how come the stability [doesn't work out]. That's why [we have the] Steinway upright [that] everyone hates. I don't care what piano I'm tuning. I can get the same stability on any piano because I know what's going on. A Steinway upright has very very high friction in the V-bar and the pressure bar. So you just deal with it, that way; by using that fact to help you leave the non speaking length tension tight.
Alright. That was longer than I expected. The reason why I'm doing this video — there's two reasons. One. If I can help you change course from fumbling to getting real results with this video, that makes me very happy.
The second reason is, I need to make a living. So, if you want to become a member of howtotunepianos.com, then reach out. Go to the website. There's all kinds of ways. You can buy books. You can become a lifetime member. [Not anymore] You can get weekly lessons. I give live weekly lessons but I know that you don't like that stuff, the online classes. You can watch classes that have already been videod.
So, there's no reason anymore. There's no excuse, no reason why, someone learning how to tune a piano cannot do a very, very high level job with just their ears. There's no reason why, with this method; with the Go A.P.E. Piano Tuning System.
If you have any questions at all about anything that I've discussed, please don't hesitate to reach out and let me know.
Alright. Have a good day."
