People live with pianos for all kinds of reasons. The best reason , of course, is to enjoy live music. Many piano owners are avid pianists. Parents often want to expose their children to the idea of making music themselves and perhaps uncover hidden talent. For some it's worth the effort of keeping a piano just to gather around it a few times a year for special events or at the holidays. Often an inherited piano is kept for sentimental reasons or as part of an ongoing legacy. It may even be the sheer beauty of the case itself that is the deciding factor.
Most of us know how to care for the case but many neglect the inner workings of these large heavy housemates. The fact is that even if you care for the exterior of your piano scrupulously an un-tuned piano can be quietly losing its value day by day. That's a shame because eventually, whether the piano is to be played, passed along or sold, it's value becomes an issue for most owners at some stage.
The cheapest, quickest and easiest way to maintain an instrument's value is to give it regular tunings. Pianos have literally thousands of moving parts in addition to the strings, which are really just wires under precise tension. Incorrect tension on one or more of those strings can wreak havoc on delicate parts throughout the piano.
Most of us know how to care for the case but many neglect the inner workings of these large heavy housemates. The fact is that even if you care for the exterior of your piano scrupulously an un-tuned piano can be quietly losing its value day by day. That's a shame because eventually, whether the piano is to be played, passed along or sold, it's value becomes an issue for most owners at some stage.
The cheapest, quickest and easiest way to maintain an instrument's value is to give it regular tunings. Pianos have literally thousands of moving parts in addition to the strings, which are really just wires under precise tension. Incorrect tension on one or more of those strings can wreak havoc on delicate parts throughout the piano.
But it's not just about what you can hear! The truth is that pianos are very sensitive to weather and humidity changes. Long before you can hear it subtle changes in tension are happening to the over 200 strings inside the piano. By the time the average person can hear that a piano is out of tune the inside of that piano could be heading for trouble. String tension is then so far out of balance that those thousands of moving parts - parts which can be very expensive to fix - are out of sync and beginning to damage each other. This goes beyond normal wear and tear which happens over time to all moving parts.
The good news is that once you can hear your piano's cries for help there's no debate - it's time for a tuning!