Wishing a good day to all who read this.
It is nearly a guarantee that at some point in a piano tuner’s career, someone has asked them “so how long have you been playing the piano?”
And it might surprise you to know, but a large percentage would say: “I don’t play”
Though musicians and piano tuners are brought together by their love of the instrument, the differences between a pianist and a piano tuner can be found even in their day to day vocabulary. Here are some examples of the differences in terminology between pianist and tuner:
Terminology:
Pianist: Bars, scores, tempo, melody and harmony, modes and keys and stigmata and legato
Tuners: beat rates, wide, narrow or poor, sense, tone and stretch
Terminology shared:
Scale, major and minor, intervals and all Chord types.
A piano tuner’s satisfaction is derived from hearing the musicians play. When the player sits down and lets their fingers work their magic, both the musician and the tuner’s combined effort makes the piano sound as intended.
However, this is not to say that piano tuners should not be able to play at all. All tuners should have a piece they can play to test the result of their work, as well as gauge the feel of the action and sound of the piano with low, mid and high frequencies sounding together.
So inevitably it comes to a point where professionals, studios and theatres come to an arrangement with piano tuners to come and tune at set intervals. And a professional relationship is established The relationship can become strong due to each piano being a complex piece of engineering that a tuner becomes familiar with over time. It might be that the player wants the piano tuned with a specific temperament or on a very specific frequency or amount of stretch in the octave range. There are other things such as voicing that affect the tone, after touch and a pretty long list of things that have to be accounted for and can be adjusted to perfection to fit the player’s desires. Thus, the reason we call ourselves tuner technicians.