Top 5 Tips for Maintaining Your Piano

Tune Your Tabs

• A piano should typically be tuned between 2 and 4 times a year. Depending on the type of piano, as well as its age and the amount of use it gets, that number may vary.

• Pianos can be tuned by yourself, and many do indeed do it. However, it is a difficult and time-consuming process. It is often recommended to contact a professional piano tuner as they have the knowledge, expertise, tools, and the skills to create the best quality sound in your instrument without damaging it.

Strategize With The Seasons

• Even if you don’t like bringing in a professional to tune your piano often, it is required to maintain the best quality sound of your piano! And even though the notes sound well enough that you may not feel that the piano needs a tuning, it is constantly falling out of tune.

• Climate changes and season shifts can will particularly make your piano fall out of tune! Keep track of weather changes and tune your piano in time with them.

Control The Climate

• Changes in the climate can affect the tuning, can warp the wood which can cause even longer term damage, or even cause cracks in the instrument. Dryness can cause the glue to wear out. Repeated swings in humidity can cause the soundboard to crack.

• Ideally, you should keep your piano at a steady temperature in the low 70s and keep a humidity level of around 40%. You may be asking, how is that even possible?? And for most of us, it’s not.

• It is important to try to keep the room where your piano lives not too hot and not too cold. Don’t keep it in direct sunlight or too near air vents. Don’t leave the windows open in the room of the piano, as condensation and humidity can be absorbed by the wood of the piano and cause warping

Feather Your Fine Furniture

• To clean your piano, use a feather duster on the exterior. And, like other fine wood furniture, a light cloth with a light wood polish should be able to keep the exterior clean. Be sure to use a soft cloth, as you don’t want to damage or scratch your instrument.

Keep it Clear

• Don’t place anything on the piano! Even though they look like a great shelf, they are very susceptible to scratches, spills, and other accidents. Also, the piano is built very specifically and was not intended to hold up extra weight.

• Specifically, do not place any drinks or liquids on the piano! We’ve already talked about what some humidity in the air can do to your piano, you can imagine how much spilled drinks can warp it.