Wisdom of the Senior Church Janitor?

[John Formsma]

I've tuned aurally with a vacuum cleaner in an adjoining room and the door open.

To clean a church sanctuary would take a long time, and I'd ask if
they could find something else to do instead of vacuum.

Just for the record, one can do much more than he realizes. With
extreme focus, it is possible to isolate the beat you're listening
for, and get darn close if not exactly where you want. For me, this is
primarily in the bass, and doesn't work as well in the treble. For
this reason, if there's excess noise in the room that can't be
stopped, I'll always work in the bass. When it gets quieter, I'll move
to the treble.

What is worse than a vacuum cleaner is a group of people talking
loudly as you're trying to tune. That always drives me bananas, and
I'd rather have a vacuum cleaner than that. I was tuning at a
university for a special event, and a group of workers came into the
room where I was working to enjoy what apparently was the end of a
lunch break. The piano was at one end of a 120 foot room. The rest of
the room provided equal and adequate standing room for the talkers. Do
you think they went there? Oh, no! I guess they figured I would like
to listen in on their conversations. You'd think as loudly as I was
playing, they would have gone away. But, nooooo....!  I didn't say
anything, and counted it as practice for a worse situation. ;-)

JF

On 5/6/07, Arbeau Piano <ArbeauPiano at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>
> Sent: Saturday, May 05, 2007 6:45 PM
> Subject: Wisdom of the Senior Church Janitor?
>
>
> This week while tuning a church sancturary piano, a young man dragging a
> large canister vacuum cleaner behind him entered the sancturary and
> paused noticing what I was doing. Without a word he left the room.
>
> A few minutes later an older janitor walked up behind me, looked over my
> shoulder very intently watching my tuning process, and then quickly exited
> to the hall without a word to converse with the younger one.
>
> The conversation to the younger was, "If he were tuning with one of those
> machines you could have gone ahead and vacuumed, but since he tunes by ear
> you'll just have to wait until he is done.'
>
> I'm so glad that I had just put away my verituner before I had started my
> fine tuning and aural checks!  Do you find that you can tune with a vacuum
> cleaner in the background with one of those "machines"?!
>
> Jerry Arbeau