I've been waiting a long time for a spot to relate this little story... Having heard from other techs in my raw rookie days about difficult tuning situations, I decided to inoculate myself by practice tuning with the opera on full blast in my shop on Saturday afternoons. That little bit of silliness paid off handsomely later. I was once in a guy's house, tuning his piano in the living room while, at the same time, he was right around the corner from me in the kitchen, running a chain saw, cutting up his ceiling predatory to remodeling. I figured that if I could get through Verdi and Wagner and Der Rosenkavalier in one piece, a mere screaming two-stroke chainsaw motor would be easy. Well, maybe not exactly 'easy', but it was doable. And, like Jim, it was a decent tuning when all was done. A few years later, while working for a retail piano outfit, I had to crash tune a rented grand on a bandstand, while the band was warming up and a freight train was rumbling by not 50 feet away from me. Once again, it was the Texaco Metropolitan Opera to the rescue. We miss you, Milton Cross!!! Robin Blankenship ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jim Johnson" <jhjpiano at sbcglobal.net> To: "Pianotech List" <pianotech at ptg.org> Sent: Tuesday, January 16, 2007 11:26 AM Subject: Re: Another Tough Tuning Environment (2 tuners in same room) > That reminds me of an experience I had a number of years ago tuning > college practice room pianos. I finished a tuning at the same time that > my assistant finished his and we had one piano left to do. We were both > tired and neither one of wanted to do it, so we compromised. I tuned the > temperment, then I tuned to the top of the piano while he tuned to the > bottom, getting the piano done in half the time. We are both aural tuners > so you can imagine the challenge. It was actually fun and the piano > turned out to be very well tuned. However, once is enough--I've never > repeated the exercise. > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Ron Nossaman" <rnossaman at cox.net> > To: "Pianotech List" <pianotech at ptg.org> > Sent: Monday, January 15, 2007 9:52 PM > Subject: Re: Another Tough Tuning Environment > > >> >>> Well, I thought I would include another short sound clip from a tough >>> tuning location. >>> >>> NAMM show is this week! >>> >>> Don Mannino >> >> >> Ah, memories! A bunch of years back, we had a local "pianorama" sort of >> thing. I don't recall what it was actually called, but it aspired to >> somewhat greater class, and the participation of all the local dealers >> and factory representatives of the piano brands they dealt. The venue was >> a large hall with a killer echo and at least a half dozen folks tuning at >> any given time, or trying to, around not only each other, but the usual >> setup and shouted conversational noise we've all learned to love. I had >> already tuned six or seven for a couple of local dealers, and was more >> brain dead than usual, when I stopped by the Kawai booth to give Ray >> Chandler a hard time (which seemed like a worthy end in itself, at the >> time). He was looking at tuning a fair number of pianos in an impossible >> situation, and "generously" offered to hire me to tune a couple of his >> for him. Hey - never mind if the mule goes blind, just load the wagon. >> Sure, why not? My approach in these situations is to make marginally more >> noise tuning than the sum total of everyone else in the vicinity (which >> I'm told I can do well enough), and it seems to work as well as anything >> else I could do as an aural tooner. I whacked one out, and was coming >> down from the top, tuning unisons (strip mute), on the second when I >> realized that Ray was coming up from the middle and we were converging on >> the killer octave of two pianos from different directions. Ray was in >> another place by then - the tuner's fugue state, and hadn't seemed to >> have noticed this, so I stopped tuning a unison short and waited... When >> he got to where I had set the trap, I struck the note as he was in the >> middle of tuning the same note. It was cruel, I know, like an ice cube >> down your shorts, but I was pretty far gone by then and entirely too >> desperate for entertainment for decent considerations of propriety. It's >> the only defense I have. Take it or leave it. In any case, the result was >> as gratifying as anything I could have hoped for. He stood up straight >> suddenly (can't imagine why someone would stand to tune when he could >> sit - a mystery), looked at me, and said "You waited for me!". >> >> He forgave me, I think, seeing the humor in the situation. But that was >> years before I told the story to the world. I guess I'll have to see how >> it goes from here... >> >> Ron N >> >> > >
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