Getting To Know You [was Re: tuning frequency]

[Ron Torrella]

I'm in the somewhat rare position of having almost uninterrupted access,
every morning during the week, to three "performance instruments." I spend
most of my time at one in particular, a 9' S&S, that lives in a theater
with virtually *no* humidity control (the windows sweat, profusely, in the
winter, though....go figure!).

The piano has occasionally drifted down to A=438 and more often up to
A=443, but rarely much more than that. The drifts usually happen between
Christmas and New Year's Day (the building is closed and the heat is
lowered slightly - a throwback to the days of enforced energy
conservation) and between May and August when the hall essentially goes
black. More and more, though, that hall is being used during the summer
for camps (U of M's Interlochen All-state program gradually moving from
the beautiful woods up near Traverse City to the U of M campus).

The 1-2 hours (it's up to me and what I think the piano needs) every
morning have become something of a ritual for me - my "quiet time" with
that piano. I'll usually start off by playing a few pieces to get a sense
of how the piano is sounding harmonically. It also gives me a chance to
listen, closely, to the voicing so I can pull out a few "stickers," get
rid of zings and pings, get rid of knocks and squeaks - the whole ball of
wax. The notion being that this piano should be ready to roll for an
audition, rehearsal, recital or recording session on short -- or no --
notice. It's never failed me.

For most of this year, I've become acquainted with a different instrument
because "my baby" (aka "519" for ser.#519035) was taken away from me and
moved into the more popular recital hall - my reward for having taken such
good care of the piano, I guess. (I was pretty depressed about it for a
while - the piano I took over probably felt unappreciated because I didn't
want to spend the time with it, at first, that I'd spent on the other
one.) This replacement instrument (#251427, ca.1926) is a chamber music
class instrument - the voice not as big as 519's. It's an intimate piano,
though, and I'd just started to appreciate that different quality when we
started noticing cracks developing in the soundboard....and the soundboard
starting to curl up and away from the ribs. We had a few days of
incredibly dry air (measured, for several days, in the 13-17% range!) that
seems to have hastened the deterioration of the board. The boss decided it
was time to replace the board rather than repair this one.

The upside of this being that I get 519 back next week.

How often do I tune the piano in my theater? Depends on what you call "a
tuning." Either every day or whenever the temperament is too far away from
being reasonably (comfortably?) recognized as ET.

My slant on things.

Ron Torrella, RPT
Piano Technician		"And like that...he's gone."
University of Michigan		     - Roger "Verbal" Kint (Kevin Spacey) 
School of Music			       The Usual Suspects
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