Piano tuners are descended by lineage from harpsichord tuners who had to adapt to their times. That's why when clients have a real interest in the inner workings of their instrument, most piano tuners are more than happy to share what they know. Thus, one way we could estimate an answer to Fermi's question about how many piano tuners are in Chicago is to:estimate the size of the population estimate the number of households in the population estimate the total number of pianos in one's own class, family, street, church etc.

Piano tuners/technicians get excited when they attend guild meetings and conventions because they get a chance to talk to people that actually know what they do all day long and care about the little nitpicky details that make up their daily work. Piano tuners make very fine adjustments to the individual strings of a piano so that they vibrate at the correct pitch. Those who practice tuning will become sensitized to the sounds of out-of-tune pianos. Your understanding of what you can/cannot do with each of these pianos should be the first input into deciding what and how to play.

Tuning hammers and pins are sensitive to small motions, so no great cranking motions are necessary in either direction. The analogy works for the tuning pin, since the pin is actually a finely threaded screw set tight in wood. I was told that explanations could take it only so far, that learning the feel and control necessary to set the pins was something that only could be learned from tuning over and over again.

Pianos are typically owned by middle to upper class households, and are also found schools, churches, hotels, etc. Pianos are designed to be tuned to the international standard pitch of A-440Hz (cycles per second). Successive inventions had led to an increase in size and strength of pianos, leading in turn to an increasing ability on the part of the pianos to tolerate higher and higher tension and therefore higher pitches.

Musicians first started with intervals and tried to find a music scale with the minimum number of notes that would produce those intervals. There are occasional opportunities for employment, mainly in piano dealerships, repair shops, music colleges and the UK's only piano manufacturer, Kemble & Company Limited.

Piano tuners are poorly paid as it is and any piano may be properly tuned at a moderate sum. Things that until now were dedicated for piano tuners are now possible directly from the interface. The best piano tuners are near-expert piano players.