Welcome to the best web page on how to tune a piano yourself since 2003!
This website began in April 2003. I had a piano, and it needed tuned. Being a do-it-yourselfer, and having a pretty good ear, I decided to explore the idea of tuning my own piano. I went to Internet to learn. I found very little of use. Some poorly designed web pages with not-very-helpful text were the best available; several pages were just trying to sell me a book without giving me any useful information; still others simply intoned that piano tuning should not be done by the amateur.
So, I decided to teach myself. I bought a lever, a tuning fork, and some mutes in a kit. I decided on these tools because that's what was in the available kit. I quickly learned that the tuning fork was not for me. Counting beats and determining cents were simply beyond me. I thought of an electronic guitar tuner that I saw my friends using, and the orchestral tuners that we used to use in band. To my delight, a very capable and inexpensive electronic tuner was available, the Korg CA-30 (which has since been discontinued by Korg; their current equivalent model is the CA-40).
With the tuner in hand, I was able to tune my first octave. Through trial and error, I learned that the tuner was not very useful beyond the first few octaves, but that my ear was more than adequate to match middle registers to outlying registers.
Armed with my new found knowledge, I decided to create web page on the subject, so that there would be at least ONE good resource, clearly written, for the beginner or the curious. Over the years, I have learned more about tuning, and about websites, and have been refining both.
The adventure of exploring piano tuning and operating this website on do-it-yourself tuning is ongoing. You can read more about both in our blog. It's the place for new information, expansions, tangents and commentary related to tuning one's own piano.
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