Tune up…

Two months since my last blog? We can’t have that now, can we? In the news at the Gaub house in Auburn today, we had our piano tuned.Now, you’d think there wouldn’t be much to say on such a topic, but for me, it was full of interest. The piano in question is a 44″ Howard studio style upright piano, made by Baldwin. It’s in my house not because I’m a collector who found an interesting piece at a fire sale, or because a local school of music was selling it’s teaching pianos. I have this piano because it was the same piano that my mother and her sisters learned on. It’s the family piano, and it’s now in the house of the only other person to tinker on such a thing very much. Oh yeah, and I was the only one who wanted it when my Aunt wanted to get rid of it. 🙂

Nikolas has begun to learn piano. This might have something to do with the fact that he knows I used to play a little, but he also likes banging on it, and learning new things. The instructor we found for Alex to keep him going with his saxophone is also a beginning piano teacher, and so we have him teach both boys when he comes down each week.

When I got the piano from Aunt Joan, she had it tuned once before it was moved, knowing that after so many years as a picture-holder-upper, it would need a serious tuning. After it acclimated to our house after the move, we planned to get it tuned again. Well, I’m no concert pianist, and am not picky at all. The notes were all “close enough” for me and Nikolas, and so we didn’t mind while we plinked away for fun. Now that Nikolas is taking lessons, it made more sense to get that final tuning. So, I did a quick Internet search and found a local piano tuner and technician, called him up and set an appointment. Today, he came over.

He took a quick look at the piano, and after I showed him that the action on some of the lower keys was pretty messed up, he decided to take a closer look. I was amazed as he took large panels off of the piano with no tools, and that it only took two screws to remove a piece that then allowed all the keys to be pulled up. He knew that it wasn’t going to be pretty even before he starting pulling keys out.

What did he find underneath those bass keys with poor action? Well, he probably expected it, but I was certainly surprised, by the MOUSE NEST. Seriously. The mouse was nowhere to be found, of course. There’s no telling how long it was there, but it was probably occupied at some point during the many dormant years the piano spent in my aunt’s house. The mouse had chewed the felt discs out from under the pivot points on the keys and fluffed them up for his nest. The mouse was kind enough to leave lots of little “presents” for us, as well as some of his stash of white rice in a section a little further up the keyboard.

Fortunately, the mouse didn’t ruin ALL the felt, but replacing it all at some point will probably be in the cards for us anyway. After we removed the nest and vacuumed up all the dust and detritus, he moved all the good felt to the center of the 88s, and shimmed the rest with special paper shims used to tune the action. While this will work fine for a long time, the action of those keys will be clackier/noisier, and so not as desireable. Also, if Nikolas progresses with his piano lessons, we’ll want to have a more complete overhaul done with new felt as well as new/repaired hammers, which have simply aged with use and time like the tires on a car. “Too much fun for her own good” was heard coming from the tuner’s lips more than once. 🙂

After the action was more or less “fixed” for the keys, he proceeded with the contracted duty of actually tuning the strings. This was interesting to me as well. I knew the basic mechanics of the process, but the funny thing was how he got started. Rather than whip out a fancy electronic doohickey to help him tune it, this guy was truly old school. He took out a single tuning fork and whacked it on his leg to get his A (440) tone. Since you need two hands to actually do the tuning, one to hit the key and the other to work the wrench, he held the tuning fork handle between his teeth. Even as the tuning fork was surely getting too quiet to hear next to an ear, I’m sure he could hear it quite well through bone conduction while he adjusted those strings. With the A 440 tuned in, he did the rest of the piano by ear to that key.

When he was done, he played a wonderful and beautiful rendition of “What Child Is This” (a Christmas song) from memory. We talked a little bit about what kind of work it could use in the future, and I paid him his well earned money. He didn’t even charge extra for fixing the action on the keys, which he certainly had the right to do, even if it wasn’t a re-felting.

Money well spent.