Cydonia

Here's what happens to the strings with different humidity levels :

What you could do is to buy yourself one of those electronic moisture meter for $12 and see what's the humidity level right now in your basement or future piano room. With a dehumidifier and keeping the piano far heat sources in the winter, you might be able to keep it in the ideal humidity range. Then, the piano stays in tune better since the critical wooden parts won't shrink/expand as much.

It's actually impossible to know before you have the instrument. Too many variables : - Quality of the piano and components (peg block, strings, etc.) - Used or new (a brand new piano needs a number of tunings before all the strings sit and stabilize). - Humidity fluctuations in the piano's new home. - The more and harsher you play, the faster the strings can go out of tune. - Dampp-Chaser equipped or not.

Yep, the harmonics produced by whatever piano string won't match the theoretical ones in the book - thus, you can't even tune octaves easily. Welcome to the wonders of inharmonicity ! So now, imagine 240 strings behaving this way - and you have to find a way to "mask" this problem the best you can. Hence the stretched tuning method. ------------- About humidity level to optimize piano's life and tunings, the generally accepted ok range is roughly between 35% and 65% (ideally 45% to 55%). If the humidity in your home goes outside of this range during the seasons and you want to invest in a good acoustic piano, you will need to buy a "Dampp-Chaser" type of thing. Temperature variations aren't as important - it's more about humidity (of course, both are often closely related). That's why you should never place your acoustic piano under direct sunlight, or too close of a radiator, fireplace (lethal enemy), window or outside door. If your house isn't well insulated, then it's also best to keep the piano far from exterior walls. It also depends where you live - certain climates are easier than other on pianos. Of course, despite all this, we must not get too paranoid. A Dampp-Chaser (humidifier/dehumidifier installed inside the piano) is very efficient and will take care of most of these problems.

Unless you have experience or a pro tuner guiding you, it's extremely difficult to tune a piano, as there are many complicated problems. On a guitar, you have six strings to tune, then you're done. You don't have to tune each fret afterwards : all the semi-tones are already ready and in place. On a piano, you have to tune all the semi-tones. And this is the main problem. There are no fixed frets or shortcuts - you have to make sure everything is right. Regardless what you use as a reference to start with, you will end up realizing that equal temperament (or any other temperament) involves tuning every note a tiny off the right "classical just" interval. Then you have to make sure all intervals makes sense with each other. Then, you often have two or three strings to tune for each key - some tuners tune them perfectly equal, and others prefer to leave a tiny "chorus like" difference between them. What should you do, and why? And then, after you're done with about 30 keys out of the 88, you realize that piano strings are inharmonic, which means they don't produce exactly the perfect harmonics needed with one another - something that would make the tuning much easier. This inharmonicity problem creates another headache : you have to "stretch" the octaves for the lower and upper registers, because this phenomenon gives the impression that you go out of tune as you go on the lower and upper ends of the keyboard. And of course, we haven't mentioned other facts, like the more you wait to tune a piano, the faster the instrument will "lose" its new tuning. And what do you do if a string breaks when you tune it? So again... Unless you have a crappy old upright that's falling apart to experiment, let a pro take care of this.

Yep, tuning a piano is just like tuning a guitar, except there are approximately 240 strings instead of 6. It's ok to experiment on an old piano that's already falling apart, but I would definitely not try this on a decent or good instrument. Proceed at your own risk.

It's a train wreck, but I can't turn away. please continue. Isn't it interesting that every politcal thread devolves into a religous debate? It's alright, until someone starts to talk about the Great Pumpkin. OK, I said it. The Great Pumpkin. :facepalm: And about religion... It doesn't matter really, because when the Large Hadron Collider will be fully operational in Early 2009, all religions will be condensed into a single black hole.

I hear he watches you masturbate. Probably best to be in his good books. He watchez everybody masterbatez. :cop:

For the record, I am an Apathist. It's my religion, I made it up. I believe in truly not giving a {censored}. I believe in Ceiling Cat.

Jeff Berlin Anthony Jackson Tony Levin