This is a multipart message in MIME format ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment Barbara: I guess the funniest(?) voicing time I had was at a home where= they had a new Knabe grand in a living room with hard floors and= little stuffed furniture. It was loud. The wife was out= shopping, and the husband was the host. After I tuned the= piano, Bob (husband) asked me about the volume. I gently voiced= one note and asked him if that's more like what he wanted. I= got enthusiastic cheers! I went ahead and voiced the piano to= what Bob and I thought was really nice. Happy customer. Very= happy customer. Bob is an airline pilot. He leaves the house and heads for Los= Angles. Wife comes home and sits down at the piano. I get the= call "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY PIANO!!!!!!" I told her that Bob= liked it a lot! She was really mad. I told her that she and= Bob should decide how they want it and call me back and I'd= voice it however they want it. I've never heard from them= again. That was with approval! dave __________________________________________ David M. Porritt, RPT Meadows School of the Arts Southern Methodist University Dallas, TX 75275 dporritt@mail.smu.edu ----- Original message ----------------------------------------> From: Barbara Richmond <piano57@flash.net> To: <dporritt@mail.smu.edu>, Pianotech <pianotech@ptg.org> Received: Sun, 31 Oct 2004 14:58:48 -0600 Subject: Re: Voicing Hi Dave, Definitely with permission. But I don't wait for the customer to= say something--I'll bring up the subject. (Voicing is my= "thing"--perhaps because I'm a pianist. I'm no Andre, but deal= well with day to day stuff & did well on staff at a university.)= Depending on the situation, I may say: "Do you find it difficult to play softly on this piano?' or "Have you heard those old uprights that sound like tin?" (Your= piano can sound like that, too!) or "Can you hear how much brighter this section is compared to= others?" Of course, there's voicing up, too. But very often on the pianos= I see that is a power or regulation issue. A major voicing issue to me is, would I have trouble tuning the= piano with the way it sounds now. Perhaps I have delicate ears.= If there isn't a major voicing issue or just an overall= adjustment to be made, I will go ahead (without permission) and= even up some notes when I'm done tuning or do some string/hammer= mating while tuning. Of course, I'm not changing the character= of the tone-just smoothing things out. That has never come back= to "bite" me. I'll explain in whatever terms necessary to get the message= through--there are a multitude of angles. Either I'm fairly= good at communicating with folks or I'm really lucky, because= I've always been allowed to do the voicing I felt was necessary.= Maybe it's the way I get business (no ads, only referrals, I= just work part-time these days). Currently, I find myself doing= mostly institutional stuff and I've usually been told to do what= I think is best (my usual service call time on these pianos has= been 4-5 hours including a bunch of different stuff). Of course= it's true, sometimes just removing the action and tightening the= screws improves the sound by leaps and bounds--but that's not= the voicing I'm referring to. Well, it's time for me to go out and shred some leaves. Barbara Richmond ----- Original Message ----- From: David M. Porritt To: pianotech@ptg.org Sent: Sunday, October 31, 2004 6:37 AM Subject: Re: Voicing Barbara: Do you voice the piano with or without the owner's ideas? When I= was still doing in-home tuning, I never voiced a piano unless= the owner said something about the sound. On extreme pianos I'd= ask them if they like the sound and let the conversation go from= there, but just voicing without their saying anything usually= bit me in an inappropriate place! dave __________________________________________ David M. Porritt, RPT Meadows School of the Arts Southern Methodist University Dallas, TX 75275 dporritt@mail.smu.edu ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/03/d0/03/e5/attachment.htm ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment--
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