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. One thing that really excites me is to see young people turned on to music making. Back in April, I was called to tune a 1930 Wurlitzer in Russell. On arrival I grabed my gear and walked to the porch and was about to ring the door bell when I heard the sounds of Bach wafting from the house. Inspite of the piano being terribly out of tune -- Bach almost had a "honkytonk" flavor -- I could sense a youthful enthusiasm for playing the piano and the notes and rhythms seemed to be in place. I rang the door bell and a tall-midde-school boy answered the door. I met the player. He was grinning as I complemented his playing. He said he could stay for an hour but then was off to his piano lesson.
The piano was in need of care. After tightening the pinblock bolts, vacuuming, adjusting the pedals, I tested to see where the pitch stood. The piano was consistingly -75 cents flat. After lubing the strings to ease the string movement and prevent string breakage I went to work. 2 1/2 hours later, with two complete passes on the piano, she was sounding like a different instrument. The young man had returned from his lesson and I could tell he was fascinated with the tuning process. I called him to the piano and engaged him in a conversation about his lesson. I learned that he played the trombone in band, auditioned and made District Honor Band, loved the piano, and wanted to be a band teacher!!! He wanted to be a music educator!! I asked him to set down and play something. He did, but in a few measures, he spontaneously stopped and exclamed, "Wow! This sounds great!" He had a huge smile on his face. I complimented him on the fact that he could hear the difference and took the opportunity to explain how important it is to play on a tuned instrument to develop his sense of pitch -- it is part of your ear training I explained. Well, I packed up and as I was leaving, I paused on the front porch to hear Bach on a Well-Tempered Clavier. If your piano seems a bit out of whack, don't panic. That is normal. Abrupt temperature chances effect the tuning in pianos. All summer we have kept the high school choral room at constant temperature. One week ago, someone decided to kick the air off. I go in yesterday and the pianos are all out of tune and consistently sharp. Normal. What can you do? Close the shades, keep the AC at a consistent temperature. If you can wait until you turn the heat on in the fall for a tuning -- super. If you use your piano a lot, you may not be able to stand it. I tuned a church sanctuary piano, a Yamaha C6, yesterday as there was a concert last night. This piano has been in a sanctuary with large fluctuations in temperature lately due to the AC going and a lengthy process of getting a new unit installed. Below are before and after files.
Yamaha C6 Before Tuning Yamaha C6 After Tuning
"Really, plan out my practice?" Yes, set down and plan your practice before you get to the practice room. What are you going to do first? What skills/drills do you need to work on? What are the tough passages you need to isolate and drill? Plan Plan. Videotape your practice -- study it -- reflect -- revise your plan and get back in the practice room. 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 tuned a Baldwin upright today that was in need of TLC. The client had the good fortune to have gotten the instrument free after I had inspected it. The piano is in great shape -- the former owner simply had not had it tuned in years. I found the piano over 1/2 flat. The piano was fairly dirty -- the hammers had a good deal of dust all over them. The tone was uneven and on the bright side. So, we cleaned her up, voiced the hammers, and performed a pitch raise. I hope to get back in a couple of months to assess again and tune. Baldwin Before Baldwin After Voicing and Tuning Below are some before and after photos. My introduction to piano temperaments (actual use) came about two years ago when the high school had the Steinway D rebuilt. Gary Telleen in conjunction with Piano's Unlimited in Hutchinson did fine work. The piano touch was fantastic, the tone was great, and the case looked like new. Gary did a great job. When they delivered the piano, I noticed all the above and there was something else. The piano had more color. There was something going on. When I asked, Gary informed me he tuned it to the Coleman 11 temperament. This temperament, developed in 1999, is classified as a Modern Well. The piano had such life!! Through out the year guests would come in to try the piano. Many comments were made regarding the richness and color of the tone. The piano is used as the primary rehearsal instruments for our choirs. As a choral conductor, I was interested in the effects, if any, on my choir. We work in our choral ensembles to cultivate color, tone, and emotion in our singing. My observation is that the tuning contributed in positive ways to developing and raising awareness of tonal color in our singing. Chords had an enhanced emotion to them -- we could hear it and the emotion of the music penetrated deeper in choir members thus enhancing the impact of the music. I believe we were able to emulate what we were hearing. Maybe I am making more of this than what was actually happening. The verdict is out. I don't have any data to support it. Just a feeling.
For more information on historical temperaments:
Lately, I have tuned pianos that have been negleted for years. On the one hand, it is a win win for me. No matter what I do, I leave the piano in better shape than when I found it. On the other hand, it is sad that we don't take better care of our instruments. This month, I tuned pianos that had not been tuned in years - moved, broken, forgotten. Some were as much as 1/4 step flat. Pianos were designed to be in tune at A=-440. The tunings that I enjoy are the ones that I have tuned within the last year. They are close to pitch A=440 and I can really focus on other aspects that make for a better functioning and sounding instrument. Just remember, it is recommended that pianos be tuned at least once per year. Depending on the use, the piano may need two times per year. I find that the pianos at the high school need to be tuned 4 times per year. Is not taking care of pianos a sign of our deposible culture? I dont' know. Pianos are an incrediblly complex and fasicinating instrument. Let me help you take care of them! This may crack your tacos! Pianos were not always tuned the way they are today. Meaning, if a composer lived pre-20th century, they heard and even envisioned their compositions sounding differently. The tuning of a piano begins by tuning one octave in the center of the piano. This is called the temperament. Then the tuner spreads that temperament throughout the entire piano. There are different kinds of temperaments. Check out the historical chart to the right where you can see the the history of temperaments from Meantone, to Well and it's variations, to what we tune pianos to today, the Equal temperament.
Enid Katahn says right at the beginning of her “Performer’s Perspective” in her Beethoven CD booklet: Most pianists learn how not to listen. Forced by circumstance to play on a wide range of instruments in varying sizes and stages of disrepair, pianists, if they really listened, might cease playing altogether. Accustomed as I was, therefore, to listening inwardly for emotional inspiration, I was amazed at the excitement generated by a well-tempered tuning. I could actually hear the contrast between the serenity of the more pure, calm chords and the wavering, pulsating activity of the more tempered ones. Do we need to tune our pianos differently to play Bach, Mozart, or Beethoven? We could and it might be "ear" opening. Be aware that there are options in tuning. There are temperament options that maintain a comfortable closeness to our current equal temperament tuning and add some "historical" spice producing a fuller tonal palette. |