concert tuning

[Tvak@AOL.COM]

I did my first concert tuning yesterday.  The event was a concert celebrating 
the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chicago local of the American 
Federation of Musicians.  So not only were the people on stage musicians, but 
so was the entire audience!  (...just a LITTLE bit intimidating...)
    At least they gave me enough time to do my best.  I had 1 1/2 hours in 
the AM prior to rehearsal to tune the 6' Yamaha, and 1 1/2 hours after the 
rehearsal.  Midway through the AM tuning they opened the large garage-type 
door behind the stage to load in the tympani, music stands, etc., and the 
piano immediately went 5 cents sharp.  Using Cybertuner allowed me to keep an 
unchanging reference, and so I continued on, and when the door shut, the 
piano went right back to A440.  (Whew!)
    Although time was not a limitation, unfortunately, the piano was.  This 
house piano had false beats throughout the 7th octave, and some annoying slow 
ones in the 5th and 6th octaves.  I had trouble tuning the unisons in this 
area, so I viewed some of these individual strings in Cybertuner and found 
that some would go flat after the attack, others would go sharp.  I actually 
had to tune some of these unisons visually to get them to sound as best as 
they could. (I've never done this before---it worked really well!)  The 
attacks would be ugly, but the notes when sustaining would sound fine.  
    All in all, it was disappointing to represent my work to the best 
musicians in Chicago on this piano.  After the AM tuning, I went and tuned a 
Petrof 50" vertical at a client's house---oh, if only that piano was on stage 
at the concert.  It sounded absolutely beautiful.  My piano teacher used to 
say, "It's a poor carpenter who blames his tools."  Well, I did the best I 
could.
    Among the artists playing the concert were Johnny Frigo, Dennis DeYoung, 
Larry Combs, and Rachel Barton.  In the audience, God only knows.  (I hope 
that doesn't bring a spate of posts about religion.)
    I usually only post questions, so I thought I'd post something without 
asking for anything in return! 

    Thanks for reading,
    Tom Sivak
    Chicago Chapter PTG Associate