Inventions: The Piano That Tunes Itself

Really cool concept! I had a piano in my house when I grew up and it was always out of tune.

Noble effort, but like Mr. Webb of Steinway, I worry about long-term damage. A $50,000 piano is nothing to experiment with, other than musically, of course.
The first thing that came to my mind was the heating process. Anyone will tell you that by heating and cooling an object causes them to expand and contract. Although this is the point of the tuning process in Mr. Gilmore's invention, that expansion and contraction will inevitably weaken the strings and cause damage to them over a much shorter time than through normal wear-and-tear.
With today's software advances in frequency maintenance and the portable devices they could be installed on, such as laptops and tablets, I'd almost rather teach myself how to tune a piano than subject it to any electrical currents.

The median temperature of the Self-Tuning Piano is only about 95 F. The keys in your pocket are warmer than these strings. If you lay your hand on them, you can barely tell that they are warm. No metallurgical effects take place at such minuscule temperatures.

Yes, my device alters the tension of the strings, but then so does a human piano tuner. I use a little warmth; he uses a wrench. All stringed musical instruments must undergo expansion and contraction of their strings...that's how you tune them.

Don A. Gilmore
Kansas City

I want to record my mother in laws voice, then incorporate this device with an inversion tuning, then broadcast a anti canceling sound to block her speach, so when she visits I do not have to listen to her whine.;)

Gibson has the robo tuners already.

I'd question how many times a day does a person tune a piano exactly? Once a year?

jefro, depends on how often the piano is played. More importantly, how often the piano is moved.

Mr. Gilmore, expansion due to force is different from expansion due to temperature. An extreme example of this would be your local asphalt roads and the formation of potholes. I'll stick with the wrench.

Not trying to tell anybody how to do things, but I wonder if a more manual system might be easier to get going.

The sustainer/IR sensor concept is pretty interesting if it meets the accuracy requirements. Last I read, the tuners talked about 'cents' which were a hundreth of something -- frequency related, but I'm not sure if it was frequency in Hz/100.

So, what if a piano was equipped with sustainers and sensors ( or maybe just sensors) -- plus, some sort of display. Then the piano operator could wrench away in the traditional manner to correct any issues.

Don't know how dificult mechanical adjustment is, but maybe this could be made easier f it's currently difficult.

Note that this is all just speculation.

Justifying your purchase of a self-tuning piano based on how many times you would have had it tuned the old way is like justifying the purchase of a cell phone based on how many dimes you would have spent in a pay phone. You can now tune your piano every day, and if you think about $100 every time you press that button, it pays for itself quickly. Can you imagine if a guitarist had to hire someone to come tune his guitar...and only twice a year?

Don A. Gilmore
Kansas City

A video showing its operation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugAxXm2SAXw&feature=plcp

Could someone please explain how room size could possibly change a piano's tuning? Temperature and humidity, in my mind, are the two main factors.

First, think about what it takes to change the temperature in your living room and compare that to changing the temperature in your local Walmart Supercenter.
The difference is the volume of air and the mass of the objects inside.
The temperature of a smaller room will vary more quickly than a larger room simply because of the smaller air volume and mass. Larger rooms will tend to have multiple temperature zones and change temperatures more slowly, more graudually.

About 2 1/2 years ago PopSci had an article about the Evertune guitar bridge. Invented by Cosmo Lyles. Uses a spring and lever to keep string tension constant. I had one put on my Gibson SG, and it is absolutely phenomenal!!! I only have to tune when I change strings, and even then half the time as soon as you tighten a new string up it's already in tune! Having 200 springs and levers installed on a piano would be costly (particularly a retrofit) but it seems like it would be a much better way to go. No electricity, no heating and cooling (which I think would fatigue the metal after awhile.) And your piano would NEVER go out of tune. (You'd still need to regulate keys and so forth with wear, but we're talking about a looooong period of time, like decades, before you need that) I was a stage manager for awhile, and keeping the grand in tune when it was being rolled on and off stage all the time, etc. was a definite problem. With Evertune I can take my guitar out of the trunk in a blazing hot parking lot, and go into an air conditioned studio--it's still in PERFECT tune!

I'm guessing there's a PLC in that piano. Imagine that piano getting infected with Stuxnet when you update it. Then the piano wires heat up to the point where they snap loose. Then all the hot wires grab you and it looks like a scene from Hell Raiser.

I directed church choirs in Texas and Louisiana for thirty years. If you have the money to maintain the temperature and humidity in the sanctuary (auditorium) you have a chance with your grand piano or pipe organ.

Otherwise you might need to consider a V-Piano Grand: V-Piano® from Roland or a comparable Kurzweil and an electronic organ like a Rodgers.

That's the reality.

Mr. Gilmore, (or should I say, "eromlignod"..)

I've dabbled with piano tuning myself and have often thought about ways to create an auto-tuning piano. Your idea is awesome! Some of the commenters have pointed out potential issues, but of course every new invention will have its difficulties, and only time will tell what those really will be. I wish you luck!

Quick question: Wouldn't the piano still need to have some initial tuning, perhaps tuning it a tad sharp, so that the strings are "in the ballpark", close enough to the pitch they need to be at that the heating from the electric current can bring the pitch down to where it needs to be? And, over time, perhaps the piano might need a new real-person tuning, again, to put it back in the "ballpark" again... That might need to happen every once in a while, depending on the condition of the piano...?

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A comment for masada -- You'd be surprised how much the tuning on a piano varies just as a result of regular temperature and humidity changes in the room. I don't think the electric current will affect the string any more than it is already, as Gilmore has indicated.

Sounds like what I could do in the future if this had not been invented.

The piano is tuned at the factory while it is warmed up and this tuning is "stored" in memory. When it is switched off, it cools and the strings all contract and become sharp. Since the strings start sharp, flattening from warmth is always necessary for tuning.

Don A. Gilmore
Kansas City