[pianotech] Honky tonk tuning

Barbara Richmond piano57 at comcast.net
Tue Feb 22 20:05:28 MST 2011


Bruce Dornfeld wrote an interesting article for his chapter newsletter about this. You might contact him. 

Barbara Richmond, RPT 
near Peoria, Illinois 

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robin Stevens" <pianobee at bigpond.com> 
To: pianotech at ptg.org 
Sent: Tuesday, February 22, 2011 4:33:18 PM 
Subject: [pianotech] Honky tonk tuning 






Had a unusual request from a customer to tune his old German piano to the honky tonky sound. I was just tempted to tell him just play it how it is even though it was one step flat! It’s too old to raised due to not so tight pins and 100 year old strings. I remember about 40 years ago when Winifred Atwell was the queen of the honky tonk sound she came to Adelaide South Australia where I had the job of checking the tuning of her straight strung English piano plus the Steinway O she hired from the firm I worked for. I think that the method was to tune the piano normally and then let one string down for the vibration affect. With the advent of PDAs nowadays I am wondering how many cents sharp or flat the third string is changed? It would made it more even if I tune the piano first then change RCT setting for that detuned string to - +10 or whatever. I don’t think that the bass strings are detuned. Has anybody amongst the old timers on this list remember tuning for this artist? 

Thanks 

Robin Stevens ARPT 

South Australia 

PS A youtube search has many clips of Winifred Atwell playing.
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