A properly maintained piano should be tuned at least once a year. If humidity is not well controlled it may require two or more tunings. Pianos that are used for performances or recording sessions will usually be tuned before each event.

It will usually take somewhere around an hour and 15 minutes to an hour and a half to tune a well maintained piano that has been serviced on a regular basis. If a piano has been left for a number of years between tunings it may take an hour and a half to two hours to complete the tuning. A neglected piano takes more time because the tuner has to go back over the tuning a number of times to get the instrument to settle and have the tuning stay in place. There is also more time spent assessing the instrument, diagnosing problems and applying techniques to avoid string breakage which is often a problem with pianos that have been allowed to sit for years without tuning.

The piano is the most stable stringed instrument ever made but it is still a stringed instrument and all stringed instruments need to be tuned. Most stringed instruments like guitars and violins will need to be tuned every time they are played but a piano is made with a heavy wooden framework and a cast iron plate that make it far more stable than other stringed instruments. However, over time humidity fluctuations will cause the wooden soundboard, bridges and back posts to swell or shrink which will cause the string tension and pitch of strings to fluctuate with them causing the piano to go out of tune. A lot of heavy play can also cause the strings to slip in tension and go out. Even without play a piano will eventually go out of tune as string tension slowly drops allowing a piano to go flat.

A440 is the international standard for pitch for the tuning of musical instruments . The term A440 refers to the number of times per second that the A above middle C vibrates when tuned to concert pitch. The vast majority of musical instruments in the world are designed to be at concert pitch and almost all recorded music since the invention of recording devices has be recorded at concert pitch. (There are a few exceptions as some symphony orchestras may tune slightly higher to A442 and recently a small number of musicians have been promoting A432). If a piano has been neglected and left for years without tuning, string tension will have dropped and the instrument could be far below pitch making unable to be used for playing along with recorded music or other instruments that can't be tuned. Bringing a neglected piano back to concert pitch can often require more than one tuning.

Most people have heard that a piano will go out of tune if it is moved . It certainly may be true that pushing a piano up and down stairs, loading it onto at truck and shaking it up driving through traffic will leave it more out of tune at the other end than before the move. However, it is the change in humidity from one building to another that is the real reason that it may be wise to wait a few weeks before tuning. If the difference in humidity conditions from one location to another is wide then it may be best to wait for up to a month so the soundboard and bridges have had enough time to acclimatise to the new surroundings. Some examples of significant humidity differences might be found when moving a piano from a basement to the ground floor or moving from an air conditioned space to a space where there is no air conditioning. If, on the other hand your piano is moving to a new space where the humidity will be the same as it was before moving then there is no need for a waiting period before tuning.

Most customer requests for piano tuning can be met within a week to two weeks and often there are openings available within a few days depending on a customer's location and their own availability during those time slots. Fall is the busiest time for most tuners and schedules tend to get backed up as we get close to Christmas. It pays to plan ahead at that time of the year as most tuners will be booked up to the new year by mid November!