[pianotech] Unisons

[Carl Teplitski]

Many years ago, Jim Coleman was in our town doing a workshop.
He talked about many things, but the one which impressed me
was his talk on tuning. He said that not many people could tell
if a pianos temperment was correct., but they could hear unisons 
if they were out. Soooo, he considered them the most important 
part of piano tuning. At this point in my life, I completely agree. 

I had a sometimes mentor, ( Bill Weiss ) who told me that he tuned
for Glen Gould, scheduled to play at our concert hall.  He said that
he tuned the piano ( 7' Yamaha grand ) 4 times in the week Gould was 
to play, and after rehersal on the friday , he tuned it again. Gould
did his best to try and knock out some unisons, by playing very hard, 
but wasn't successful, although after he left for the day, Bill checked
and tweaked several unisons which he thought might pose a problem. He
also said that these were so close that he doubted an average musician
would actually hear them. He , of course didn't want to take any chances,
because he felt his reputation might be at stake if someone of Goulds caliber
complained. Besides, Bill was very much a perfectionist, and expected 
everyone else to be, too. ( He was about 5'6", but acted like 6'5".) There 
were times when he would tell me about his tunings. He tuned for Liberace, 
Tony Bennett, Harry Belefonte, Nana Mouskourie, and anyone else who played in 
our concert hall, or with the symphony.

His opinion was same as Jim Colemans, about the unisons, and said he worked very 
hard to get them as solid as possible, but knew they would hold or not, depending
on how it was played. Jim told us that he was once written up in the newspaper,
because a unison had slipped during a concert.   ?????????

Carl / Winnipeg, Canada. 
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