Last March, our new music comp professor decided he thought it would be cute to present a concert in which one of the pieces used 6 pianos. Yet another piece on the program required two pianos, but noooooooo, they couldn't be two of the first 6. Time and space are limited in our 199-seat recital hall which doubles as a lecture hall a minimum of 4 hours every day (we actually had to label it as such just to get it included with the building). I was not able to pretune any of the six Baldwin 243s from our practice rooms which were used for the 6 piano piece, and I had roughly 7 hours available to tune all 8 pianos. At the time, I was strictly an aural tuner, but decided to borrow a friend's Sight-O-Tuner to try for this event (I'd had some experience with a Sight-O-Tuner years before). I got an F-stretch measurement on the first piano and used the same stretch for all six. Needless to say, most of the pianos got what amounted to a one pass pitch raise tuning. Some were done in the hall, some in the green room. I really did not have time to check each one note for note, and honestly, when I got done, I didn't think they would be close, but by that time really didn't care anymore. They may as well have all been aural tunings. I know they didn't end up where I aimed. I did NOT attend the shootout. I have heard nothing but raves about those 6 pianos being played together, and was as recently as two weeks ago complimented on it again. I really don't think they could tell if the pianos had been in tune with each other or not. Therefore, I'd tune each one to itself and be done with it. Two pianos, I might worry more about, but nobody but me around here notices when that's not quite perfect either. Jeff >I'll bet everyone can guess the next question: How would you tune these >pianos >to each other? Jeff Tanner Piano Technician School of Music University of South Carolina Columbia, SC 29208 (803)-777-4392 (phone)
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