June has been busy at Matlock's Piano Service. Finding a home for some pianos, piano moving, shop work, and of course a lot of tuning!! And the best part is visiting with some wonderful people!!! Thank you for the tuning work and the opportunities to serve you.
I enjoyed my summer morning tremendously. It was a well-kept 1980 Baldwin R, which tuned up nicely. But what made it so special were the conversations with Jacob. This is Jacob's practice piano. A former Full Chord Press student of mine, a gradutate from TMP only a few weeks, and headed to KU in the fall to major in music education. He has prepared himself in voice, violin, and piano. I know he is going to make a fantastic teacher and will have a postivie influence on many young people!! I am very proud. Jacob explained that when he pressed the sostenuto pedal E6 would play E6 and F6 at the same time. So, I took the piano action out and realigned the E6 hammer by moving the E6 flange to the left a bit. After tweeking that a bit, taking the action in and out and testing the note, looking at the mating of the hammer to the string, the piano was ready for tuning or was it? I told Jacob the piano was pretty dirty and while we had the action out, if he was willing to help, we would clean it together. This is what made the tuning so special. Jacob was so very inquisitive about the workings of the piano. Sharing in the learning process with students is most enjoyable to me. That is what motivates me as a teacher. The best times are outside the classroom - like this experience. Not planned. No homework. No grades. Just a student, passionate about music, and curious about the instrument he had played on for years. With the piano back together I proceeded to tune the piano. Jacob continued to work on cleaning the plate and he didn't seem to mind the banging underneath the lid as I tuned...I hope his ears survived. The piano was only a few cents flat. I still did a pitch raise and did a second pass to fine tune. Very pleased witht het tuning. This Baldwin has such a rich tone!! I always look forward to tuning it. I tuned the piano to the Bremmer Equal Beating Victorian Temperment III (EBVT-III). I really like this temperment (I tune all my school pianos to this temperment) for its pure 5ths and flavor.. It just sounds so right! Click this link for a nice explanation of the Bremmer EVBT-III. An added plus was the nice view of the Kansas landscape from the piano bench (the picture to the right). It was so nice to have Jacob around. I couldn't resist asking him to take the Baldwin R for a test run. I had tuned this Kimball over year ago -- at that time I did a pitch raise. Today, A=440 was only 3.5 cents flat. The piano was in need of cleaning and I found a few treasures. Always interesting what one find in pianos. I need to go back and fix a couple of dampers that aren't doing their job around the middle C area. And you will notice that the C8 sticks after i get it tuned -- the fall board was too far back and the linkage was rubbing against the key. You will notice that the piano before tuning had a really un-even tone. As I tuned I was able to make a few adjustments that made it sound more unified. I had a great time in Quinter working on 3 pianos that were past due for care. This Gulbransen Grand, tuned last in the late 90's, had a build up of dust on the soundboard and strings as you can see from the photo. After about an hour of cleaning, she was breathing freely again. As you might suspect, the Key bed was equally dust ridden. After removing the action de-dusting with an air compressor set to about 40lbs., she was ready to tune. Testing several pitches revealed that the instrument was considerably flat -- not a surprise. We did a pitch raise which left the pitch close to A=440. The next tuning should stabilize the pitch and with future consistent care the client should have a nice instrument for many years.
Moral of the story: Keeping the piano clean and tuned are important to the life if the instrument. |