The Beginner's Ear Training Starter Kit: Hear the Piano Like a Pro Tuner

A free guide from Eathan Janney — PhD in Neuroscience, professional piano technician, and your instructor for 88 Lessons.

A Note From Eathan

My name is Eathan Janney. I hold a PhD in Neuroscience, and I’ve spent years working as a professional piano technician, educator, and founder of Piano Technician Masterclasses. I’ve trained dozens of technicians — and the single thing that separates a competent tuner from a great one is this: they actually listen.

Most beginners are surprised to learn that the ear can be trained. It’s not a gift you’re born with — it’s a skill you develop, step by step, through deliberate practice. That’s exactly what 88 Lessons is designed to do: one daily episode, one new concept, one step closer to tuning a piano completely by ear.

This Starter Kit gives you your very first exercise: learning to identify a pure unison — the foundational building block of all aural tuning. Master this single skill, and you’ve taken the first real step on the path every professional piano tuner has walked.

Let’s begin.

Lesson Zero: Hearing the Pure Unison

The pure unison is two strings vibrating at precisely the same frequency. When they match perfectly, something remarkable happens: the beating — that subtle wavering wobble you’ll soon learn to hear — disappears completely. The sound becomes still, clear, and unified.

This is where every piano tuning begins. Before temperament, before octaves, before anything else — you must be able to recognize when two strings are in perfect agreement.

Two concepts to understand before you start:

Beating — The wavering, pulsating sound produced when two strings are slightly out of tune with each other. You’ll hear it as a wah-wah-wah pulse in the tone. Faster beating means the strings are further from being in tune. Slower beating means you’re getting closer. Zero beats means you’ve found the pure unison.

Pure Interval — When two notes are perfectly aligned, the beating stops entirely. The sound feels locked in, solid, and resonant. This is your target state.

What You’ll Need

Any upright or grand piano (access to the strings is helpful but not essential)
A quiet room — background noise is the enemy of ear training
15 undistracted minutes
Headphones (optional, but they help focus your attention on subtle differences)

The Listening Drill: Finding Stillness in Sound

Work through each step slowly. There’s no rush — your ears need time to adjust.

Step 1: Find a mid-range A (A4)

Locate A4 — the A above middle C. Strike it gently and listen with your eyes closed. Let the sound decay fully. Notice its texture. Is it smooth? Slightly wobbly? Is there a subtle pulsing quality to it? This initial observation is your starting reference point.

Step 2: Isolate one string (using a mute)

If you have access to the strings (upright or grand with the top open), wedge a rubber mute or strip of felt between two of the three A4 strings. Strike the key again — now you’re hearing a single string. Notice how clean it sounds. No beating. No wavering. Just a pure, steady tone. This is your baseline — the sound you’re working toward when you tune a unison.

Don’t have access to the strings? Skip this step and go directly to Step 3 — you’ll still hear the effect.

Step 3: Release the mute and listen for beating

Remove the mute. Strike A4 again. Now two or three strings ring together. Listen for a wavering pulse — a gentle wah-wah-wah quality in the sustain of the note. This is beating. If the strings are already well-tuned to each other, you may hear almost none. If the strings are significantly out of unison, you’ll hear rapid, obvious beating. Either way — you’re training your ears to notice the difference.

Step 4: Train your ears to count the beats

Strike the key again and count: “one… two… three…” each time you hear the pulse cycle. Try to estimate how many beats per second you’re hearing:

4+ beats/second: Strings are noticeably out of unison
1–2 beats/second: Getting close, but not yet pure
Near zero: Almost in perfect unison
Zero beats: Pure unison — the target

Your goal today is not to fix anything. Your goal is simply to hear the difference between a beating sound and a pure sound. That distinction is everything.

Step 5: Rest, repeat, and reflect

Repeat this process with 4–5 different notes across the keyboard (try C4, E4, G4, and B4). Each time, ask yourself: Is there beating? Is it fast or slow? Does it disappear as the note fades?

Don’t try to tune anything. Don’t adjust any strings. Just listen. You’re building neural pathways — the same pathways every professional piano tuner has spent years developing. Ear training works through repetition over time, and you’ve just started Day One.

Tuning Vocabulary: Your Cheat Sheet

Keep these terms close during your first few lessons. You don’t need to memorize them all at once — return to this list whenever a term appears in an episode.

Unison Two or more strings vibrating at the exact same frequency. In a piano, most notes in the middle and upper registers have 2–3 strings that must be tuned in perfect unison with each other before any interval work begins.

Beating The audible pulsation caused by interference between two slightly different frequencies. Measured in beats per second (Hz). The closer to zero, the closer to pure.

Equal Temperament The modern tuning system dividing the octave into 12 equal semitones. Most intervals in equal temperament beat slightly — by design. But unisons are always tuned pure: zero beats, every time.

Aural Tuning Tuning entirely by ear — using trained listening to detect and eliminate beating, without relying on an electronic tuner. The gold standard of the craft. What you’re learning to do.

Partial (Harmonic) One of the overtones that makes up a musical tone. Advanced piano tuning works by listening to the beating between specific partials of different notes — not the notes themselves. You’ll explore this deeply in the series.

Temperament The mathematical system governing how intervals are distributed and tuned across the entire piano. Setting the temperament is the core skill you’ll develop across 88 lessons — it’s what separates a basic tuning from a truly musical one.

Mute (Rubber Wedge) A strip of felt or rubber wedged between strings to silence individual strings during tuning. Allows the tuner to isolate and address one string at a time. One of the basic tools of the trade.

Pitch The perceived frequency of a sound — how high or low it is. Standard concert pitch is A4 = 440 Hz, though some musicians and tuners work at slightly different reference pitches.

What Comes Next

What you just practiced is Lesson Zero.

The full 88 Lessons series takes you from here — recognizing a pure unison — all the way to tuning an entire piano by ear, from bass strings to treble, setting temperament, and solving the real-world challenges every piano technician faces in the field.

Each lesson is:

About 15 minutes long (free podcast episodes)
Released daily in sequence
Built on everything that came before it
Designed around how your brain actually learns new sensory skills

Free podcast listeners get:

Daily ear training exercises
The philosophy and history of piano tuning
Listening challenges and reflection prompts
Motivation for the long game

Premium members also receive:

Extended deep-dive episodes
Step-by-step tuning worksheets
Listening drill audio files
Quizzes and self-assessment tools
AI-assisted tutoring between lessons

If this Starter Kit gave you even a glimpse of what’s possible — the idea that your ears can actually be trained to hear things you’ve never noticed before — then you’re ready for Lesson 1.

Subscribe free at 88lessons.com to start receiving episodes the moment they launch.

No spam. Just 88 lessons that will change how you hear a piano forever.

Taught by a neuroscientist who tunes pianos for a living.