Ru Lemer

University of Surrey - Department of Music & Sound Recording

TON201954386 - Philip Coleman
November 2017

The Acoustics of Piano Tuning

Abstract

Recent and historic research on the acoustic theories describing different aspects of
piano tuning are reviewed. A workflow of the tuning process is given, with
explanations of temperament, inharmonicity, phantom partials, the Railsback curve,
tuning unisons, string coupling and false beats. These phenomena are all relevant to
the tuner and if understood could aid enthusiasts in understanding the complex craft
of piano tuning. A brief summary of modern electronic tuning systems is given and
suggestions are made as to possible further research and continuations.

1. Introduction 2.0 The tuning process

T h e p i a n o f o r t e h a s p l a ye d a
prominent part in Western classical and
popular music since its invention in the
1700s. Contributions to its present design
have been made by numerous
manufacturers over the years, often through
empirical experiments, and without
assistance from scientists [Dolge 1911 p.
107]. As such, scientific discoveries are still
being made as to why certain design
decisions provide the most pleasing results to
pianists and listeners.
The process of tuning a piano is
unique to the instrument, and requires a
dedicated “piano tuner” who has typically
gone through at least 3 to 7 years of
dedicated training. As with the instrument’s
design, there is a rich history of different
techniques and workflows with regards to
tuning the instrument. Only recently has the
scientific community been able to quantify
and explain some of the more intricate
practices. The purpose of this paper is to
review historical and recent acoustic piano
theory and its relationship with existing
piano tuning techniques.
The generalised goal of the piano
tuner is to make the instrument sound as
“good” as possible. This is achieved by
maximising consonance in accordance with
human perception, while still making the
instrument versatile enough to be played in
all keys.
Whilst there are many discrepancies
between piano tuners as to exact workflow,
the process can be broken down into this
simplified order of events:
1. Choosing a pitch standard. (The
majority of modern music uses the
internationally agreed pitch standard of
A4 being 440Hz [Karp 1983 p. 407],
this is known as “concert pitch”.)
2. Tuning a single note using the pitch
standard as a reference.
3. “Setting the temperament” using the
tuned single note (see section 4).
4. Tuning the upper and lower ranges of
the piano to the temperament.

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 2.1 Partial theory
All vibrating things produce a series of
vibrational components. The first of these is
the fundamental, and all higher components
are known as overtones. If the overtones’
frequencies are integer multiples of the
fundamental frequency, then they follow the
harmonic series and are called harmonics
[Young 1952]. The fundamental and the
overtones together are known as partials.
3. Piano Strings
In order for piano manufacturers to
equalise tone over the range of the piano
within reasonable limitations, treble strings
are made of steel wire, and bass strings are
made of steel wire wrapped with a copper
or iron winding. This effectively decreases
the thickness of the bass strings whilst
maintaining their linear density, allowing
them to vibrate at low frequencies even
though they are disproportionately short.
The notes in the lower-mid register of
the piano have 2 strings each (“bichord”),
and the notes in the upper register have 3
strings each (“trichord”). If multiple strings
are tuned to the same pitch and struck, the
sound produced by one reinforces the others
and the combined tone is louder. This is
known as “constructive
interference” [Reblitz 1981 p. 16].
Once one string in a bichord or
trichord note is tuned to the right pitch, the
other string(s) are then tuned to the
frequency of the original string in a process
known as “tuning unisons” [Maneri, 2017].
4. Temperament and Tuning
Systems
Collins English Dictionary [2017]
defines a temperament as “a system of
adjustment of the intervals between the
tones of an instrument with fixed
intonation”.
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“Setting the temperament” refers to
tuning all notes within the tuner’s chosen
range to their exact theoretical pitch, so that
the rest of the piano may be tuned to it.
The range of the “temperament” varies
with the preference of the tuner, but
traditionally it is one octave between F3 and
F4.
Before the widespread standardisation
of the equally tempered scale,
temperaments were used that allowed
certain intervals to be pure. An interval is
classed as pure when it has a small-integer
frequency ratio. These temperaments were
known as just intonation [Johnston 2006
p.xiv].
The combination of a sine wave
whose fundamental is at 100Hz and a sine
wave whose fundamental is 200Hz will be
pure, this is because the ratio of the two
tones is exactly 2:1. This ratio is known as
an octave. The reason this sounds consonant
is because the partials of sine waves are
exact harmonics, so the partials of each
tone will precisely coincide, resulting in a
harmonically simple combined tone. It is
agreed across all mainstream historic and
modern tuning systems that the octave is the
purest interval of the 12-note scale and must
remain as pure as possible.
When tuning most other instruments,
the tuner relies on their own conception of
pitch for accuracy. Counterintuitively, pitch
cannot be used as a reference point for
piano tuning, it is merely a rude guide. Beat
rates are the primary cue for obtaining
absolute accuracy in pitch placement of
piano notes. For example, if one tone is
tuned to 100Hz and another to 102Hz, then
the resulting difference would produce an
audible amplitudinal “beat” of 2Hz.
Pythagorean tuning is a system of just
intonation based on the ratio of 3:2. This
ratio is known as the pure perfect fifth. A
piano tuned with this system will be very
consonant for specific intervals, but will
result in musically unusable dissonances in
other intervals.
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 Since the 17th century, the standard
tuning system for pianos has been to use an
equal temperament. This system puts
priority on the octave being the purest
interval, and the 12 fixed tones within the
octave are equidistant and impure. This
means that any chord will be as harmonious
and consonant in one key as in another in
spite of the general dissonance within the
harmonic structure.
Thus, the frequency ratio of 2
adjacent semitones can be represented by
fn+1 12
! = 2 ≈ 1.05946
fn
This ratio can also be expressed as 100
cents.
Equal temperament will result in all
intervals being equally impure, allowing the
pianist to modulate between keys freely
without the limits of a just temperament.
5. Inharmonicity
Under ideal theoretical conditions; a
string has modes of vibration whose
frequencies form partials in a harmonic
series. Therefore if the frequency of the
fundamental component is f! 01 ; then the nth
harmonic can be described as:
f! n = n f01
Where n is an integer.
Railsback found in 1937 that there
was a marked trend in the “stretching” of
octaves by expert piano tuners. Young
[1952] continued this research and proved
that the partials in piano strings deviate
from the harmonic series due to a number
of mechanical factors. This departure of
partials from the harmonic series is known
as inharmonicity.
When a piano string is struck, a rich
and complicated combination of waves are
produced that vary in wavelength and
amplitude. An ideal string would be
infinitely thin and flexible, and have rigid
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supports at either end so that every wave
behaves in the same way. In practise, the
thickness and tension of piano strings cause
a mechanical resistance whose effect
b e c o m e s m o re p ro n o u n c e d a s t h e
wavelength of the wave diminishes and
approaches the thickness of the string. A
rough descriptor of this effect is given by
f! n ≈ n f1 (1 + α n 2)
where α! is proportional to the Young’s
Modulus of the string, and the value of f! 1 is
higher than the value f! 01 found for the ideal
string. Whilst this equation is incomplete, it
can still be seen that there is a correlation
between the partial number and the
deviation of said partial from its associated
harmonic. Fletcher [1964] gives a more in-
depth mathematical explanation of string
behaviour.
A string under ideal conditions
vibrates periodically; this means that the
oscillations follow a regular pattern.
Inharmonicity causes strings to develop
complex vibrations that are not periodical,
and this significantly impacts the tone of the
instrument. Fletcher et al. [1962] stated that
inharmonicity is responsible for the
perceived warmth of a piano’s tone, and it is
this that gives the instrument its distinctive
“piano quality”. Namgyal [2014] quantified
this study and found that synthesised piano
tones without inharmonicity were perceived
as less ‘warm’ than inharmonic ones by a
control group of experienced listeners.
The human ability to detect
mistunings has been shown to diminish
progressively with both higher partial
numbers and increasing fundamental
frequency [Järveläinen et al. 1999]. Thus
inharmonicity becomes less perceivable and
less important to the tuner towards the
higher end of the piano where there is a
greater frequency gap between partials.
This is clearly visible in the spectra of
related piano tones. Figure 1 [Giordano,
2015] shows a comparison of treble notes
A5 and A6 on a standard equal tempered
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 Fig. 1 These notes can be seen to produce a far
more complex cluster of partials, most of
which are of a higher intensity than the
A5 fundamental. For A1, the fundamental is
barely discernible in comparison with the
power (arb. units)

partials, and it can be seen that there are

considerably more coinciding peaks between
the two notes.
The inharmonicity of piano strings
causes complications to arise when tuning to
A6 an equal temperament. As stated earlier, the
goal of the tuning process is to make the
instrument sound as ‘good’ and as
consonant as possible in its own right. Piano
players often play with a tessitura (range) of
500 1000 2000 5000 at least 3 octaves, so consonant
f (Hz) considerations must be made towards the
overlapping partials of wide-ranging
Fig. 2 intervals if the piano is to sound in tune
with itself. To use Figure 1 as an example; if
A5 is to sound in tune with A6, then the
second partial of A5 and the fundamental
A1 of A6 must be tuned to be beatless. As the
power (arb. units)

second partial of A5 is sharpened by

A2
25 50 100 200 500 1000 2000
f (Hz)
piano. It can be seen that the partials are
distinct and that they progressively dissipate
in energy. In this case the crucial overlap
that must be taken into consideration by the
piano tuner is between the second partial of
A5 and the fundamental of A6. This
relationship will define the sensory
dissonance between the two notes. The
fourth partial of A5 and the second partial
of A6 is of a considerably lower magnitude
and therefore much less relevant to the
consonance of the interval.
Contrast this with Figure 2, which
shows a spectra of bass notes A1 and A2.
inharmonicity, this will result in the
fundamental of A6 being slightly higher in
pitch than its theoretical value of 1720Hz.
When considering the consonance
between complex low tones like A1 and A2,
it is much more challenging to minimise
dissonance. This is due to the large amount
of overlapping partials within a given
bandwidth that all result in individual
beating patterns. While the first overlapping
partial (the second partial of A1 and the
fundamental of A2) still has to be
considered, the proceeding partials also
influence the ideal tuning between the notes.
Therefore, for lower notes, the first
overlapping partial sometimes must be
mistuned in order for the overall sound to
be consonant. Maximum consonance
between the notes will be achieved when
some function of the beat rates of multiple
partials is minimised. This function was
recently quantified by Giordano in 2015.
Studies have reliably shown than a
piano is more pleasing to the ear when
tuned with octave stretching in consonance

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with its own notes, rather than tuned
precisely to an equal temperament.
Listeners expect an octave to be roughly 10
cents greater than a 2:1 frequency ratio
[Burns and Ward, 1982] because of how
embedded the impacts of inharmonicity are
in Western piano music.
5.1 The Railsback Stretch
Railsback carried out a series of tests
in 1938 on a selection of well tuned pianos
tuned by various expert piano tuners. He
found that there was a universal deviation
from the equal tempered theoretical
placement of notes across all tested pianos.
Figure 3 shows his results against that of a
well tuned single piano.
The curve shows how inharmonicity is
increasing as the tested notes grow more
distant from the set temperament. High
piano strings are shorter but maintain the
same thickness as mid-range piano strings,
and low strings are thicker but maintain a
similar length. It can be seen in both cases
how string stiffness has more of an impact
on the tuning than in the mid-range strings.
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5.2 Phantom Partials
It can clearly be seen in Figure 2 that
there are more partials than one would
expect from a pure tone. The harmonic
series of A1 within the range of 25Hz to
2000Hz consists of 110Hz, 220Hz, 440Hz,
880Hz and 1720Hz. The interspersed peaks
between these frequencies in Figure 2 are
known as “phantom partials”.
Phantom partials (also known as
secondary partials) are the byproduct of
existing primary inharmonic partials, and
have been classified by Conklin [1997] as
either “even” or “odd”. “Even” phantom
partials appear in the harmonic series of
existing primary inharmonic partials, whilst
it is the sums of these partials that can
produce “odd” phantoms. It should be
noted that the exact occurrence and
intensity of phantom partials is individual to
the piano in question.
Fig. 3
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 6. Tuning unisons
In the case of the trichord
temperament octave; once the exact tuning
has been set for the first string of a note, the
other strings must then be tuned to a
unison. Typically the middle string is tuned
first, followed by the two outer strings
[Maneri 2017]. Hundley et al. [1956] have
shown that the complex phasing of partials
in the piano tone envelope is mainly due to
small differences in the tuning of
fundamentals between unison strings, so it is
clear that some difference is musically
desirable. Kirk [1959] quantified this by
performing a paired comparison preference
test with 123 subjects. He found that the
most preferred tuning condition for 3 unison
string groups are 1 and 2 cents maximum
deviation among strings, with a clear
preference against strings tuned to exactly
the same frequency.
A preference of some tuners is to tune
the leftmost strings of a trichord group
slightly flat, and the rightmost string slightly
sharp [Yamaha n.d.]. This author could find
no further research as to whether it is more
tonally pleasing having the strings tuned in
ascending pitch from left to right in a
trichord note, or whether this arrangement
is irrelevant.
6.1 String coupling
Martin [1977] suggested that the issue
of unison tuning is further complicated by
coupling between strings. He reported on
the sound amplitude from a piano note
dying away at two distinct rates, an initial
“fast” decay turning into a secondary “slow”
decay known as “aftersound”. The length of
the aftersound is dependant on the phase
relationship between multiple strings. If the
strings are in phase then the decay can last
three times the length of a note with the
three strings out of phase. Due to slight
differences in the strings, the phase
relationship will slowly change over the
course of the note [Weinreich, 1977]. His
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study shows that fine unison tuning is not so
much about setting the beats rate as it is
about regulating the amount of aftersound.
The aftersound also is very much
affected by irregularities in the head of the
hammer, this causes different strings within
notes to be struck slightly differently. It was
Weinreich’s conjecture that expert piano
tuners are able to adjust unisons to
compensate for hammer irregularities.
The Una Corda pedal (“soft pedal”) on
grand pianos is also relevant to tuning
unisons. The basic function of this pedal is
to shift all hammers to the right by one
string. The result of this is that when the
pianist plays a trichord note, only the two
rightmost strings will be struck. When a
bichord note is played, only a single string is
struck. Weinreich showed that the Una Corda
pedal had a considerable effect on the
aftersound of these notes. It would therefore
be logical for the tuner to be considerate of
the relationship and coupling between the
second and third string within a trichord
group.
6.2 False beats
“False beats” is a common term in
piano tuning terminology, Capleton [2014]
describes the phenomenon as an audible
beat pattern present in one or more partials
during the decay of a single string. As beat
patterns are a primary cue for determining
the exact tuning of a string in relation to
other strings, the interference from false
beats can be problematic for the tuner, as
well as being distracting for the player.
False beats can be effectively “hidden”
by utilising the other strings in a note to
cancel out problematic partials through very
fine adjustments. It is possible that one of
the relevant phenomenon in aiding the
diminution of false beats is string coupling.
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 7. Modern technology
The use of electronic tuning devices
has been increasing since their introduction
in the 1970s, and now are available in app
form on smart phones or tablets. This is an
area of much contention between tuners, as
it makes the act of piano tuning accessible
to anyone with a smart phone. The
principle of modern apps is that they will
measure the inharmonicity present in
individual pianos and adjust their
calibrations accordingly. These apps and
devices can deliver results that are very close
to ideal, but Woerd [2010] found that they
still fall short in areas such as hammer
inconsistencies and the complex optimal
tuning of bass fundamentals when
compared with an expert tuner working by
ear.
Buda [1991] designed the first
automated system for adjusting tuning pegs.
His system accounted for stretch tuning and
the slight, optimum detuning of unison
strings.
A system could be conceived that
would carry forward the research of
electronic tuning devices into Buda’s
automated tuning system. Such a system
could be fitted to concert grand pianos and
keep them perpetually in tune, thereby
removing the need for the piano tuning
profession and causing them all the start
working as gardeners.
8. Summary and discussion
For centuries piano tuners have tuned
pianos with no knowledge of some of the
acoustic topics covered above. The historic
expert tuner would have accounted for
inharmonicity naturally through ear
training and experience, this would have
i nvo l ve d “ t u n i n g o u t ” i n h a r m o n i c
overlapping partials between intervals. The
next step would be compensating for false
beats, as well as adjusting unisons to balance
our irregularities in hammer heads to
maximise the perceived warmth. It could be
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theorised that with a fundamental
understanding of these acoustic
phenomena, modern piano tuners could
apply these sciences to hastening their
training time.
For example, it would be fairly
straightforward to tune the temperament
using a standard guitar tuner, and then tune
the rest of the piano accordingly by
focussing on the inharmonic partials
relevant to the temperament octave. In
practise, there are complications to do with
irregularities in individual pianos, as can be
seen in Figure 3. On the single well tuned
reference piano that is compared with the
Railsback Curve, there is considerable
variation of individual notes from the
expected placement.
There has always been a shortage of
piano tuners compared with the amount of
active pianos. Reblitz [1981] estimated that
to tune every piano in the United States
only once a year it would take about 20
thousand technicians, and at the time there
were only 5,000 qualified working
technicians. Since then the number of piano
tuning training facilities has fallen, so it is
appropriate for home owners to be able to
perform basic maintenance and tunings on
their pianos with the aid of modern
technology.
Piano tuning is much more accessible
to the general population than it was even
fifty years ago through the development of
apps and the widespread knowledge of
theories through popular mediums like
Youtube.
It is still uncertain as to whether the
left-to-right arrangement of tuning trichord
notes has an impact on the tone, or whether
this is relevant when the Una Corda pedal is
in use. This is an area for further research.
Another area would be the potential
relationship between string coupling and the
elimination of false beats.
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 References
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Company).
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Deutsch, ed.).
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885.
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659.
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- Reblitz, Arthur A., 1981: Piano Servicing, Tuning, & Rebuillding For The Professional, The Student,
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