Three Sides to Same Thing (largely autobiographical)

[moment@pacbell.net]

List:

I had an experience eight years ago that instantly demonstrated the
relationship between tone and touch.  A few days after a severe Santa Ana
condition set in (very low humidity) I got an 'emergency' call from a local
department strore which features live Chriistmas music during the month of
December.  They had an older German gentleman playing a Steinway B.  He was in
a panic because the piano had been perfect but now 'it plays like a truck'.
While he was explaining this disaster to me I tickled the soft pedal while
playing middle C.  As he continued his panic I removed the fallboard and stuck
a business card between the key frame and the rest rail on the bass side,
opposite end from the shift return spring.  I stood up and offered the keys to
him.  He reluctantly sat down while telling me, 'No, no, you don't
understand...'.  Before he finished a measure he interrupted his flow with, 'I
can't believe it, it's back to normal!'  On parting I told him that when the
weather goes back to normal and the piano becomes difficult again to remove the
business card.  Apparently the rest cushion cloth and the key frame shrunk just
enough to shift the hammers out of their groove with the strings and softened
the sound, for which his brain attempted to compensate by playing harder,
fooling him into thinking the touch was actually heavier.  Just think of the
mess I could have gotten myself into had I started 'tinkering' with the
regulation.  TOUCH AND TONE ARE INSEPERABLE.

Dwight Keyes
Keyes Piano Tuning

PS  I will decide what to do with the Yamaha flange loops today and get back to
the list.  Thanks all.

Z! Reinhardt wrote:

> Tuning          Three procedures that can make/break
> Regulating      a piano in the minds of the customer.
> Voicing
>
> A seasoned concert technician I had the honor of working with early in my
> career once said that the closer a fine piano is to top-level working
> order, the more apparent tuning, regulating, and voicing are really 3 sides
> to the same thing.
>
> ""Hey -- how did you get the action to feel so much lighter?"  (Hadn't
> touched the action -- just brought up the tone in a couple of muddy
> sections.)
>
> When all is said and done, the more you want to refine your work in one
> procedure, the more you have to take into account the other  2 procedures,
> and refine your work in them as well.  This interrelationship is such that
> it is impossible to perform a procedure to perfection in isolation of the
> other two.
>
> Z! Reinhardt RPT
> Ann Arbor  MI
> diskladame@provide.net
>
> P.S.  Looks like I'll be resuming my job at the theatre.  Four years may
> have passed since I last worked there on a steady basis, but four years is
> also plenty of time in which to learn new procedures and to dream up new
> experiments.  I can hardly wait .........!