Tuning a Piano After Moving

Why a piano goes out of tune when you move it

People often assume it is the bumping and lifting that upsets a piano, and that is part of it. But the bigger cause is something quieter: the new room. A piano is roughly two hundred and thirty strings under enormous combined tension, all resting on a wooden soundboard that swells and shrinks as the air around it changes.

When you move a piano, several things change at once:

• A different room and climate. The new house has its own temperature and its own humidity. The soundboard reacts to that change, and as it moves, the pitch shifts with it.
• Central heating and drafts. A piano that sat by a cool wall may now be near a radiator, a south-facing window or an external door. Those hot and cold cycles are hard on tuning.
• The jolting of the move itself. Tilting, lifting and the vibration of the journey nudge the tuning pins and let a little tension go. On its own this is minor, but it adds to the drift.

None of this means anything is wrong. It is simply what pianos do. A tuning once it has settled puts everything right.

How long to wait before tuning

My advice is to wait two to four weeks after the move before booking a tuning. The piano needs that time to acclimatise, to take on the temperature and humidity of its new room and to stop moving.

Tuning it the same day, or the day after, is a waste of money. The piano is still settling, so it will drift again over the following weeks and you will need a second tuning sooner than you should. A short wait means the tuning I do actually holds.

One tuning or two? What to expect

For a piano that was tuned regularly before the move, one tuning after it settles is usually enough. I bring it back to concert pitch, fine-tune it, and it holds.

If the piano had already drifted a long way from pitch, or had not been tuned in years, it may need a pitch correction first, a rough tuning to bring the whole instrument back up to the right tension, followed by a fine tuning to make it accurate. A piano cannot jump a big pitch gap in one pass and stay stable, so this is a real step, not an upsell. I tell you plainly on the day which your piano needs and agree the price before I start.

Working with your movers

I do not move pianos myself, but I am glad to point you toward movers in Dublin who handle them properly, and to slot your tuning in for two to four weeks after your move date. The order that works best is simple: book the move, let the piano settle, then have it tuned. Where you place the piano matters too, so put it against an inside wall, away from radiators, fireplaces and direct sun, and it will hold its tuning far longer.