How to care and clear an acoustic or digital piano?

How to clear piano keys, step by step

The keys accumulate finger fat, sweat and powder. A soft cleanup every one or two weeks, depending on how to use, is enough. Do so:

1. Wash your hands and, if it's a digital piano, turn it off and get it off.
2. Wear a light and white microfiber cloth: the color cloth can be dyed onto the white keys.
3. Fold it with water and scrape it very well. It should be wet and not wet. To stick dirt, add a drop of neutral soap to the water.
4. Clean every backkey, never from face to face: so do not push water or dirt into spaces between keys.
5. First clear and then black with another part of the cloth or with another cloth so as to avoid passing dyes or dirt from each other.
6. Dry up with a dry cloth in the same direction.

If your piano has ivory keys

Some old pianos have ivory keys with a fine sew and the surface of each white key made from two pieces. The ivory absorbs moisture and can be cracked or pitted, so it uses even less water. It's normal that yellowish with the years: the lemon, whiteners or toothpaste do not fix and do damage them.

Dust between the keys

Pass a soft and dry brush between the keys. Avoid compressed air: push the powder onto the mechanism or, at a digital, onto the sensors.

The furniture, cover and interior

The finish of a piano is delicate. The bright ones, as the classic black mirror, show every print and every rayon and the satin or matt are stained if they are fraked with products to give shine.

• Remove the powder with a soft or with dry microfiber without pressurization. Filling powder with an rough rag leaves those thin rayons in circles.
• For prints, use microfiber barely moist and dry right away. If you want a product, that's specific to piano finish and applied to the cloth, but not to the furniture.
• Do not use waxes or oils for Silicone furniture: they leave a greasy film and complicate any future retouching of the finish.
• Do not put pallet, matas, vessels, candles, carrier or mobile with vibration. A liquid shed into the piano is of the most expensive repairs that exist.
• If you want to cover up, use a breathing fabric cover, but not a plastic: the plastic catches moisture.

The inside (ropes, hammers, blackout and mechanism) does not clear at home. Do not touch the ropes with your fingers, because the skin's fat favours oxide. Check that pencils, clips or coins do not fall through the atril slot or cover: they can drill keys or produce buzzes. The inner powder will be removed by your technical during your visit.

Where to place it: moisture, sun and heat

A acoustic piano is above all a wood under tension. The harmonic board and a clamp (the piece with which the clamps of the ropes are attached) are inflamed with moisture and contrasted with dryness. That's why the sudden changes put them off and put them onto keys and, in extreme cases, they scattering the wood.

• To an inner wall, and to a wall that looks at the street, that's usually cold and damp.
• Far from the direct sun: lt bleeds the finish, heats up the wood and reseca. If there's a window nearby, wear curtain.
• Fitted with chimneys, electrical heaters, air conditioning grids, kitchens and toilets.
• On a firm and leveled ground, outside the area where people carry things or where they open doors.

To reference, many technicians recommend an intermediate relative moisture, about 40 to 60%, and especially stable. A small digital hygrometer about the piano tells you what's going on in your room. For humidifiers, dehumidifiers and other tricks, look at our guide about how to save instruments as climate in Colombia.

Watch out for hot ground in Bogotá

The piano itself wants different care depending on the city where I live.

On hot ground, air conditioning helps with moisture but light and turn it off every day also creates sudden changes: ideal is that the piano does not stand up to the grid. And if you move between climate, for instance from Bogotá to the coast, doesn't get about as soon as it gets there. Wait a few weeks for the wood to adapt and then call the tech and if you put it up before, the tuning will be moved again.

Filling and visit of the technical

An acoustic piano gets deafened even if nobody touches it, because the tension of its more than 200 strings changes with moisture and temperature. The general recommendation is to tuning it at least once a year and two if it's used daily, if it's at a place with strong climate changes or if it's new, because new strings continue to stretch.

Signs that you need the tech

• Notes that sound "wavy" or metal: at the medium and sharp log each key hits two or three strings and once they get them out of tune with each other, you hear that milkshake.
• Wagons that do not come up again, that are slow or that sound twice.
• A note that doesn't sound, that keeps ringing at his release or that buzzes.
• Fingers that would squeal, feel loose or no longer turn off the sound.
• Octaves and chords that sound bad in your pieces, though every note alone looks good.

A good tech doesn't just put them up to date: it also regulates the mechanism for the keys to respond to suit, checks hammers and blackout and warns you if there's moth in the felt. If the piano has been out of tune for years, you may need to put up tuning with more than a visit.

The digital piano never gets out of place. Unresponsive or a bad pedal are usually sensors, contacts or wires: that's what an electronic technical service, and not an interminer, can solve. If you still figure out what to have at home, we compare them both with how to choose your first piano or keyboard..

What you should never do to a piano

• Clean with alcohol, cleanliness, chlorine, disinfecting swabs or multi-use products.
• Rociate any liquid directly onto the keys or furniture.
• To put an aerosol lubricant into a paedal, hinges or mechanism. If something would snap, it's a technical's job.
• To try to tuning it with an internet-bought key: it's easy to break strings or damage clamps and tuning a piano requires training.
• To move them by dragging them onto their wheels. In many pianos they are about decorative and can have a foot or damage to their ground. To a scattering, they hire pianos transporters.
• Leave the digital piano connected during electrical storms or without voltage regulator.
• Use them as a table, as a table or as a desk.

And most important: play it. A piano that's been used is checked and checked and warns when something changes. If you're starting, at [piano classes]](/clases/piano) Your teacher will also teach you how to feel good about him and we will tell you about his [his best place at his piano].](/blog/posicion-correcta-de-las-manos-en-el-piano).

Frequently asked questions