44 Cents Low

[Richard Moody]

When I was  kid my parents finally got an old piano and I started
taking lessons. In high school I asked the chorus director why I
could hit an F at night easier than in the day time.  She looked at
me like I was daffey. Now I am sure at least two or three of ye are
making snide remarks like "Ha, but she was right" but I will get on
with it. 
	I started copying songs off the record player.  I played "Like
Young"  "Like Blue"  and noticing they all in the black keys. I
played "In Crowd" in the black keys, but Ray Charles "What'd I Say"
was in the key of F.   So I learned to play blues in F and everything
else by ear, I played in C.  Then some kids with guitars came around
a couple of times and remarked that they had to tune their guitars
down to meet the E on my piano.  For a while there was a Wurlitzer
Electric piano we baby sat, but I never noticed the notes didn't
match. I never played them both at the same time. 
	 The music teacher lived right around the corner and I crammed for
lessons, and in ten minutes would be playing a Chopin prelude on her
piano.  I never noticed any difference. Our piano didn't sound 
horrible, or that different from the teacher's or the ones at school,
so my dad never called a tuner, execpt the time we moved it.  My aunt
would come and play, and she didn't complain.   Besides I quit taking
lessons when I was 16. 
	So about 8 years later when I was beginning to apprentice, the tuner
said, "Here is a  piano that is half a step low".  I was dumbfounded,
as I began to realize what had happened to our piano, and a lot of
curiosities I never understood all became answered in  that moment. 
What a stunning revelation to learn that all those songs as I was
growqing up, I copied off records were actually performed half a step
lower than I learned them.  Every thing I learned in F and Bb was
actually in A and E.   I never did learn to play in those keys, they
seem cumbersome and awkward.   In fact if I came to a song book and
it was in A or E  I would play it in F or Bb by ear, since my sight
reading was that terrible.  (If I could only blame that on the piano
being half a step low) 
	So I became a piano tuner instead of a piano player.  Maybe I can 
say I was lucky the piano wasn't 44 cents low instead of an exact 100
cents low. I mean how could I have copied anything off the records or
played along with them? 
	If only my chorus director with her masters in music had had just
one lecture on the tuning and care of pianos, she might have
recogized my problem.  In fact when ever I ask people with music
degrees if they were ever taught any thing about how a piano is
tuned, or how it works, they say no.    Hmm  maybe I ought to send a
resume as a guest lecturer to some schools of music. 

Richard Moody          


----------
> From: DGPEAKE <DGPEAKE@aol.com>
> To: pianotech@ptg.org
> Subject: Re: 44 Cents Low
> Date: Wednesday, January 28, 1998 12:31 AM
> 
> In a message dated 98-01-26 01:31:27 EST, you write:
> 
> << 
>  It wasn't fun lowering these pianos, especially the Kawai KG-2. I
felt like I
> was committing a mortal sin.