Listening for the beats when tuning.

[iancollett6]

Hello, Ive just bought a tuning hammer and plan to start experimenting with this old piano I have out in my shed.
 Ive been reading about training your ear to listen to the beats, I havent actually managed to do this yet.
 One thing that concerns me is that I read somewhere that once you have trained yourself to recognize these beats, from then on the piano never sounds as good because you always hear these beats, even on a tuned piano. This therefore detracts from your enjoyment of the instrument.
 At the moment, I can tell that my old piano out in the shed is out of tune, but only by the pitch and not the beats. As I love playing and listening to the piano, should I keep it this way?
   

[faulty_damper]

The beats in equal temperament are fast enough as to not be noticeable so it's not really an issue. 

[hfmadopter]

Get an electronic tuning instrument that will read at least one octave. This will help you get that first octave correct. They are about $40 US. I agree that in equal, it's not so much of an issue but your ear will certainly get very selective about how out of tune a piano is, you hear the slightest drop within a unison real quickly. you will find yourself doing touch up tunings on your main piano soon enough. And really, that's a good thing, it never gets far out of tune so never requires a huge tuning adjustment. I'm mostly on my digital these days but with my grand I would touch it up every Sat afternoon and get it out of the way or it was going to drive me nuts to hear it ! And it might just be the slightest drop of a single sting here or there over the keyboard, but your ear is in tune. When the piano is in tune it's glorious sounding. One string dropped it out of tune though once you get into this. Forge ahead.

[indianajo]

I'm resistant to purchasing every electronic miracle from the overlords of oriental production because of the way they treat their workers, and the life test program (the quicker the product fails, the quicker they sell another one, yeah yip!).  So I still tune pianos remote from home using a tuning fork, made in Germany in the seventies when musical parts were still made by workers with decent wages and conditions. I use Craftsman tools instead of a tuning hammer for the same reason, although Steves brags about the origin of his tools; I may take him up on it some day.  
If you tune in straight fifths from the first note of the octave, the top octave comes out about 1/5 tone sharp. (forget cents, that is an artifact of electronic toys that had nothing to do with the Conn Strobotuner, the last electronic tuner produced in a decent shop).   So I tune a little flat as I go.  I never bothered to learn the number of beats, which saves me from having to suffer from counting them every note for the rest of my life when I should be enjoying the music.  You've tuned enough flat if your first octave comes out even, with no beats.  I count enough things obsessively, most recently mop strokes to dry out a flooded basement, counting obsessively is really a practice I try to keep under control so I can enjoy the finer things of life.  
I'm able to shut this level of tuning acuity off when I'm not actually tuning the piano, and enjoy the music even if the tuning is a little off on the upper octaves (which go flat first if the piano is tight). This allows me to enjoy the Steinway console four years between tunings.   However, beating unisons can annoy me, still.  
For final tune every couple of years, I use the fundamental flute drawbar of a Hammond H100 organ which use as a tuning reference the AC wall frequncy. The H100 seems to have stretch on the upper octave (not the B3 etc, which doesn't), H100's were made in Chicago 1966-74, cost about $50, and their only limitation as a tuning tool is that they weigh about 350 lb.  
Don't pull your piano up to pitch all at once, moving the pins that much can loosen the holes and possibly break strings.  Wear safety glasses and use a lot of light.  
Have fun and don't worry too much.  Moving your tuning pins all the time can't be good for them, anyway.  

[timothy42b]

Get an electronic tuning instrument that will read at least one octave. This will help you get that first octave correct.

This is on the right track, but go further.

Download Tunelab.  https://www.tunelab-world.com/

It's software that can hear the upper partials and calculate inharmonicity for your individual piano, and you can't get it in tune without knowing that.  There's a free demo that will get you started. 

Eventually you will learn to hear the beats but Tunelab or one of the other ETDs will get you in the right spot the first time. 

The real skill in tuning is setting the pin so it stays stable, and it takes as long to learn that as it does to play the piano.  Good luck. 

[justharmony]

Well, all I can tell you is my experience, which is that when i listen, I can focus on beats and hear them quite well.  It helps, at the beginning, to understand this phenomenon and know at what level you "should" be hearing beats.  Then you can really tune in. 

I have also been known to tolerate terribly out of tune instruments in the interest of making whatever beauty I can with what's in front of me.  In other words, I can turn off the focus on beats sometimes - maybe not entirely, but enough. Hearing beats does not have to be a slave's destiny.

As to your respect for older ways of doing things... i respect that.  If you can get your hands on the book "Tuning" by Owen Jorgensen, I'd recommend that (or there's a shorter one by him too).  It lays out all kinds of tuning schemes and how to tune them - by ear.  Yes, you might have to count beats.  But it might feel more "real" to you than comparing a pitch to a computer-generated sound.

Good luck!