What does a piano tuner do?
You tune around two hundred and thirty strings by ear to a system of deliberate compromises, and then make the mechanism work.
Also called: piano technician, tuner-technician, concert technician.
A day looks like
- 1You check the overall pitch first, because how far a piano has drifted decides the whole approach.
- 2You set the temperament across the middle octaves by ear, which is the hard part and the foundation.
- 3You tune the unisons — two or three strings per note, to absolute agreement, which is where the sound comes from.
- 4You regulate the action, because a perfectly tuned piano that plays badly is still a bad piano.
Hardest part
Equal temperament is a compromise — no interval is perfectly in tune, and setting it by ear means hearing beats between notes rather than pitches. It takes years and cannot be shortcut by a device.
Best part
A piano that was unplayable in the morning, singing in tune by the afternoon, with an action that responds to a pianist's finger.
How you actually become a piano tuner
- At schoolA good ear and patience; piano technology courses take people from scratch.
- TrainingA piano tuning and technology course of two or three years, then years of practice.
- How longTwo to three years of training, and about five to be genuinely quick and reliable.
- Your first jobTuner for a dealer or a school circuit, doing volume work.
Frequently asked questions
- Why is equal temperament a compromise?
- Because you cannot tune all intervals perfectly at once on a fixed-pitch instrument. Equal temperament spreads the imperfection evenly so that every key is equally usable, and tuners set it by listening to beat rates between notes.
- Why can't an app tune a piano?
- It can read pitch, but it cannot hear the beats between intervals or judge unisons and inharmonicity as an experienced ear does. Devices assist professional tuners; they do not replace the listening.
- What is regulation?
- Adjusting the mechanical action between the key and the string — dozens of settings per note — so the piano responds evenly and precisely. It is what a pianist feels, independently of whether the piano is in tune.
More from Arts & Media
Journalist
You find out what happened and publish it, and the whole job is the gap between what you have been told and what you can actually stand behind.
Fact Checker
You establish whether something is true before it reaches an audience — and the volume of things needing checked is growing faster than anything else in media.
Photojournalist
You have to be physically present at the moment something happens, and then decide what you are entitled to photograph.
Broadcast Engineer
You keep the signal going out, and when something breaks you have seconds rather than minutes to decide what to do about it.
Conservator
You look after objects that cannot be replaced, and most of your decisions are about doing less rather than more.
Audio Describer
You describe what is on screen or on stage for blind and partially sighted audiences, in the gaps between the dialogue, and the gaps are about three seconds long.
Stage Manager
You run the performance from the book — every lighting, sound and scene change happens because you said go.
Live Sound Engineer
You mix a performance live in a room whose acoustics change when the audience arrives, and there is no second take.
Sign Language Interpreter
You carry meaning between two languages live, in both directions, with no time to think and no way to go back.
Documentary Director
You film real people's lives and then decide, in an edit, what their story was — and they have to live with the version you chose.
Art Director
You decide what good looks like on a project, and then you have to be able to say why — to people who disagree and people who are paying.
Lighting Technician
You hang, cable and focus lanterns above people's heads, then build the states a show is seen in.
Camera Operator
You frame and move a camera in real time, and once the moment has happened your shot is either there or it is not.
Film Editor
You decide what the film is, out of everything that was shot, and the order and the timing are the performance.
Costume Maker
You make clothes for a specific body to perform in, which has to survive eight shows a week and come off in ninety seconds.
Scenic Carpenter
You build sets that have to look solid, be light enough to move, and come apart again in about an hour.
Luthier
You make and repair stringed instruments, judging wood by how it sounds when you tap it rather than by how it looks.