Brian Capleton

Approximately 6" X 9" / 15cm X 23cm - 680 pages

This is a comprehensive manual on the art and science of piano tuning. It is a repository of teaching substance and research from former lecturing at the Royal National College. It is suitable for anyone wishing to undertake a serious study of the subject, either vocationally or academically.

The current latest editions are
ISBN 9780992814106
and
ISBN 9780957362277.

Each edition is manufactured by a different printer and therefore there may be slight physical differences between them but the editions are otherwise the same.

Over 300 illustrations and tables.

Includes:

• Why we need skilled piano tuners
• Intonation and tone
• The distance between theory and the art
• Theory of sound Temperament theory
• Elementary “traditional” tuning and beat rate theory
• What contemporary acoustics reveals
• What attenuation is, and why it is so important
• Beyond the 19th century model – How “beating” and “beat rates” really work
• Beyond the 19th century model – How tempered intervals really behave in fine tuning
• False beat phenomenon and its influence
• The effects of bridge coupling
• How real tone- envelopes behave in fine tuning
• Inharmonicity and small piano syndrome
• What octave stretching is, why, and how it works
• Setting the pin – the theory behind it and how to practice it
• Scale plasticity, logic, and tuning technique
• Psychoacoustics and how to listen

Contents:
Acknowledgments
Piano tuning and this book

Part 1 –

• Background Theory The invisible art and science
• The essential ideas
• Sound
• Temperament Theory
• “Traditional” piano tuning theory and elementary practice
• The soundscape, spectrum and tone
• Partial decay patterns

Part 2 –

• Fine Tuning Practice
• Unison Tuning Tuning the Scale
• Octave tuning
• Setting the Pin
• Setting the pitch
• Small piano syndrome
• Hearing
• The Kirk Experiment

Part 3 –

• Advanced Theory
• The single piano string in one plane
• The Weinreich Model
• Two strings, two planes
• The Trichord
• Further comments on false partials
• Inharmonicity

Glossary of key concepts
Select bibliography