Top Ten Piano Tuning Myths

There's something odd about the way piano tuning is taught.

It's handed down as a list of rules nobody ever checked. Always put the hammer at 12:00. Never bend the pin. Hit every key hard or it won't hold. Do it long enough and you'll just "get it."

If you follow that advice and still fight the piano with unisons that won't sit, tunings that move, a technique that works Monday and fails Tuesday, you may have assumed the problem was you.

It isn't. It's the instruction. It's the half-truths that are the worst: when they fail, they make you doubt yourself and you're left wondering, "What do I do know?" So you end up searching and guessing.

If you always suspected the standard advice didn't add up, you were right. Here are ten places it's wrong. Click any one to see what's actually happening and what to do instead.

What everyone says to do,
and why it fails:

Click the blue phrase →

Myth #1 — What people say:
"A P4 beats once per second wide; a P5 beats narrow three times in five seconds."
THE TRUTH: P4 increase in speed just like M3's. So 1 bps is not accurate. And who knows what 1 second is exactly, anyway? No precision. We are humans, not machines.

Myth #2 — What people say:
"You need to hear tiny beat-speed differences and that's why tuning takes years to learn."
THE TRUTH: Yes you do have to hear small differences in beat speeds, but you're born with this skill.

Myth #3 — What people say:
"Never bend the pin. Ever."
THE TRUTH: Yes, you can damage the piano, but master piano technicians do it. The difference? They know how and when to do it so you don't damage the piano at all.

Myth #4 — What people say:
"Use the same hammer technique on every pin and you'll get the best stability."
THE TRUTH: Every pin/string situation is different, even within the same piano. Identical techniques that claim to guarantee stability will not work on all strings.

Myth #5 (and old Myth #10) — What people say:
"Always put your hammer at 12:00 for the best stability."
THE TRUTH: Then why does this technique fail, and often?

Myth #6 — What people say:
"Pound every key hard. Test blows are how you get a stable tuning."
THE TRUTH: Maybe, but hard blows can damage your hearing, your joints, and the piano. There is a safer way.

Myth #7 — What people say:
"The best temperament octave is the pure 4:2 (or the wide 4:2 / narrow 6:3)."
THE TRUTH: There's no single best octave. It depends on the piano.

Myth #8 — What people say:
"Pulling the hammer slowly gives you poor stability."
THE TRUTH: Slow pulling isn't the enemy. It's right more often than the rule admits and we show you the times it isn't.

Myth #9 — What people say:
"Always go sharp, then ease the pin back down."
THE TRUTH: Again, it works when it works, but nobody tells you what to do when it doesn't.

Myth #10 — What people say:
"An ETD tunes better than the ear."
THE TRUTH: The piano is an unstable system. No ETD can predict this behaviour. Only the human ear can deal with it. Sorry AI.