The self-tuning piano has been a holy grail item for pianists since the pianoforte was born. Piano owners all know the heartbreak of a piano going out of tune. It's inevitable, even for the lovingly maintained piano. The process of detuning begins the moment the piano tuner lifts his wrench from the pin.

The obvious method would be some sort of motor to turn the pins. But, apparently that's not so easy. How do we know? No one has done it, at least commercially.

Don Gilmore, inventor of a self-tuning piano, has a different idea. He tunes the strings with heat. He passes an electrical current through the string. The resistance in the string causes it to heat. When the string heats, its pitch flattens. Electrical current provides the fine control needed; he claims a tuning accuracy within 1/1000th of a cent. The control circuitry is a dedicated box, able to analyze the pitch and adjust automatically. All that travels to each string is a wire to the pin, accessed from behind the soundboard. No need to squeeze in a bunch of mechanical apparatus. The basic design of the piano needs little modification.

(Incidentally, this is why you should not mute strings with your fingers. The heat from your body will change the pitch of the string! And it leaves fingerprints.)

The desired values are first determined by tuning the piano by hand. These are recorded, then used as the reference for the electrical tuning values. It's even possible to change temperaments easily, perhaps even between pieces in a performance.

The piano is intentionally tuned sharp (or, to be more precise, tuned true in an environment with a higher than average ambient temperature), so that a current must be present to be in tune. Therefore, the unit must be powered on any time the piano is played. Once switched off, the piano reverts to its detuned (sharp) state. The current required is pretty small, though. The system is capable of some significant correction, so it can continue to adjust as the base tuning degrades. It takes about a minute to prepare the piano for playing, per the video.

An observation that jumps to my mind is that the heating flattens the strings, so they must be detuned sharp for the system to have an effect. My piano reliably goes flat over time. I presume that eventually some strings will need to be pulled back to sharp so the self-tuning system can continue to work. Furthermore, the inharmonicity of the piano can change as the materials age. Piano tuners are quick to tell you that tuning to a table of values will give you a mediocre result, and I don't see this method entirely overcoming that. From time to time, I would expect that the reference tuning of each piano will need to be reevaluated for the best sound.

I think the system, which is in the prototype stage, has potential. It's relatively simple, with minimal change to the piano itself. Yeah, you have to plug in, but that may be a small price to pay for a piano that tunes on command.

Meet Marc Manceaux, owner of the oldest piano shop in Paris. He sells piano parts, mostly scavenged from disassembled old pianos. He seems to live life on a different channel from most of us. Immersed in his sea of pianos (title of the film, ha!), he dreams of boats. As long as he has "water, a candle, a hardback book and an old piano," he knows he is still "alive." From a piano tuning perspective, I find it interesting that he sells fewer piano parts each year. He figures he has about 8 to 10 years of business left. I wonder about the implications for the piano tuning and technician professions. There's still plenty of pianos out there to tune. However, the piano is no longer a must-have accessory for the middle class. The decline may be gradual, as old pianos take a long time to die, but a decline it is. Marc, at least, seems to be at peace with that.

La Mer de Pianos from Films & Things on Vimeo.

Recently we took a trip to the Stephen Foster Memorial on the University of Pittsburgh campus. The memorial is a rather impressive stone and stained glass building adjacent to the Cathedral of Learning. (It might be even more impressive if the massive cathedral were not there!) Within is a nice collection of Foster artifacts and memorabilia with well-done displays reviewing his life and career. (Admission is free, donations welcome.)

Among the items is Stephen Foster's piano (or so it is labeled.) It is a square piano with seven octaves. It is branded a "Dubois and Stodart, Manufacturers, No. 167 Broadway, New York." Not much more information about the piano was available in the Memorial. Subsequent research tells me that Dubois and Stodart manufactured pianos between about 1822 and 1837. Dubois was the manager, Stodart the craftsman, though they subcontracted work to other piano craftsmen in New York.

Stephen Foster lived from July 4, 1826 to January 13, 1864. He died in New York at the age of 37, nearly penniless. This was not necessarily a reflection of management skills. He kept meticulous records and negotiated deals where he could. However, modern music copyright and royalty structure simply did not exist. Were he writing today, his songs would be earning him millions.

I would have loved to see inside this historic piano, but the best I could manage was a glimpse of the ends of the strings emerging from the cabinetry. What struck me was the splicing, visible in the picture. The splicing looks homespun to my untrained eye. I have no way of knowing the travels of Foster's piano after his death, how much it was used--and repaired--over the years before arriving at its current resting place. But I have to wonder, did the penniless Foster tune and repair his own piano?

via WTSP Tampa Bay News 10

Here's a quick one from the Famous Piano Tuner files. Or, more correctly, notable people who were also piano tuners. The inventor of the View-Master, those little stereo picture viewers with the images on a rotating wheel, was William Gruber. Turns out Mr. Gruber was a piano tuner by trade. However, it was his hobby, stereo photography, that he drew on to invent the View-Master in 1938. The viewers are still popular, with over a billion sold. The View-Master is celebrating 65 years of production this year.