Missouri Classical Music News and Notes

Ever since its invention over three centuries ago, the stringed keyboard instrument—the piano and its variants—has continued to inconvenience musicians and vex technicians with the complexity of its tuning procedure. Think about it for a moment. Other musicians tune their own instruments. A child’s first lesson on guitar invariably begins with instruction on how to tune it. A trumpet player can tune his instrument any time he desires in a matter of seconds by pulling on a tube, a clarinetist by adjusting the neck of his mouthpiece. For a pianist it involves scheduling a technician to come to his home twice a year or more and tune his piano, at present a tedious process. . . .

When the musician wants to tune his piano, he simply depresses the piano’s damper pedal and presses the “tune” button. Instantly all of the strings of the piano will begin to audibly sustain at once. During this sustaining, the control circuit polls the pickups, and each string’s frequency is determined. This value is compared with the “correct” one in the memory, and the current to the string is adjusted accordingly until all of the strings are in tune. These new current levels are now memorized and are maintained until the next tuning. The entire process takes less than twenty seconds.