The first time?

[Elian Degen J.]

Who doesn´t remember his first piano ?

Mine was a trauma, I was learning with my father, he told me I needed some
more practice, and when he went to tune for academies or schools, he would
take me and check the tunings, I was 16, but looked as 18. and thought I
already knew everything...

I remember that day, My father was called to tune in an Island near
Venezuela, they came and picked him up, and was coming back in three days. I
received a call from a night club where he used to tune and seeing my big
chance, I told them he was out, but I was going to do the tuning. Piece of
cake, I thought. I took my tools and went there. There it was, an old
Steinway M. I started the tuning. Then I realized, that my father gave me
the easiest pianos to tune, and probably was going to show me the worst
later. This one had sticky strings in the middle part, lose pins at the bass
and a lot of inharmonicity in the treble, after two hours, I was desperate
and panicking. It took me over an hour the mid section, and after I finished
I checked and found it worse than at the beginning... I was lucky nobody was
there to see me... They let me in and told me to pull leave the invoice and
pull the side door when leaving. I never had such a piano in my hands. Then
I had an Idea, I remembered a colleague who worked with my father, and gave
him a call, he noticed my despair in my voice and came to help me. Did a
beautiful job, told me not to worry and left. I shut the door and walked
trembling back home. He never charged me for that tuning, and I will always
be grateful for his help. For the piano bar I did an excellent job. After
that I finished my training without ever adventuring in that way again. I
will always remember that day.............

Elian
----- Original Message -----
From: <A440A@AOL.COM>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Wednesday, July 14, 1999 8:11 PM
Subject: The first time?


> Avery writes:
> >Ah, yes. The "first" piano. Been there, still remember that! :-)
>
> Greetings all,
>       Ah, me too.  After 6 months training, Bill Garlick sent me out to an
> emergency tuning at a small theater production somewhere in Cambridge. The
> opening night curtain was going up in 4 hours and they were still building
> stage sets.  I was so green that the shouting, hammers,  and 1/4" drills
> weren't even a distraction!
>      As I remember it,  I did a pitch raise without knowing it, and the
> bottom three or four strings I had to push with my finger to tell if the
> tension on them was even remotely like those above...........
> (1976, and it was the first $14 I had ever made from piano tuning,  I
walked
> home a wealthy man, that day!
> Regards to all,
> Ed Foote
> ( I may or may not be back online before the convention, but I am
certainly
> inviting all interested to invest 90 of those valuable minutes in the
> historical tuning class, which is going to be another first time for me,
and
> I certainly hope that those that aren't into it will still introduce
> themselves to me.  I got all these names associated with the opinions and
> viewpoints from the list, but for the life of me, I have no image of what
> anybody here looks like!  Well,  I suppose I have always imagined Newton
as
> having red hair !(:)}})
>