As your Piano Tuner Wilmington DE , I frequently find that piano owners are confused about the term, “voicing.” Sometimes voicing is confused with tuning, or at other times it is thought to be always done at the time of tuning. To explain, it is first necessary to explain what tuning is, so we can distinguish voicing from it.

Tuning a piano means that the tension and therefore the pitch of the strings is corrected. Tuning does not change the “tone” of the piano. Tone can be described as the softness or brightness of the sound. Tone is determined by the shape and density of the piano hammers, the element of the piano that strikes the piano string. Generally, it can be described as soft hammers hitting a string will result in a relatively soft tone, and a hard hammer hitting the string will result in a bright tune.

As a piano is used, some notes are played more often than others, resulting in those that are frequently used becoming compressed by the repeated striking of the piano strings. As a result, the notes that are played more often typically get a brighter and louder tone than the notes that are played less often. If some notes are louder than others, it is difficult to play a beautiful line of music, since some notes will jump out by being louder than others. When that occurs, it is time to soften those hammers in order to make the tone more even from note to note.

A second stage of the same problem, is when all the notes are brighter than you would like. Then all the hammers would be softened in order to make the tone of the instrument more pleasant to the ear. The opposite can also occur, but less often for the home piano. You may wish to have all the hammers brighter than they are. This usually occurs only in performance pianos.

To summarize, if you wish to have your piano voiced, you would want to tell the piano technician whether you simply want the tone more even, or do you wish to have it generally either brighter or more mellow. Our next blog will explain the processes that may be used to accomplish your desired voicing.

If you have any questions about pianos, please let us know. We are your piano tuning Wilmington DE experts. Kenneth Keith Piano Services also provides piano tuning Philadelphia, Eastern Shore MD and Southern NJ, and we are ready to serve you.