[pianotech] Stage Lighting & Tuning

[Barbara Richmond]

Hi Alex, 

When I had a regular concert gig, I used to ask the stage manager to "pre-heat" the piano for about an hour before I tuned it, that is, have the piano placed where it would be for the concert, open, and the lights set-up the same way they would be for the concert. It worked out pretty well--when he remembered to do it. Sometimes I had to settle for a twenty minute warm up, it worked fairly well. You do what you can... 

Barbara Richmond, RPT 
near Peoria, Illinois 

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Alexander Lass" <lasspiano at gmail.com> 
To: pianotech at ptg.org 
Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2009 9:15:06 PM GMT -06:00 US/Canada Central 
Subject: [pianotech] Stage Lighting & Tuning 

List, 

I am interested in your experiences/impressions/techniques in tuning 
for the concert stage or any situation where intense lighting is 
expected. I attended Steve Brady's class at the convention this past 
week and all he said about the issue was, "if the lights are off when 
I get there, I tune in the dark. If they're on, I tune with all the 
lights on. Otherwise I'm chasing the pitch around the piano." This 
makes sense but I'm wondering if there is anything one can do to 
compensate for the changes in pitch as the lights shine down. My 
observations are as follows: 

-Immediately after the lights go on there is a drop in pitch across 
the scale 
-As time goes on, the treble (notably octaves 6 and 7) continues to 
drop in pitch 
-After 5-10 minutes of exposure, the bass begins to come back to pitch 
and then beyond (even sharper) 
-Only after 90 minutes or so does the pitch stabilize, leaving the 
piano with a very narrow tuning 

Have others noticed similar changes (or different)? If so, do you do 
anything about it? 

Thanks in advance, 

Alex Lass 
Chicago 


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