I am not lucky enough to get to tune in concert venues, so my acoustic challenges come mostly from tuning in the music store. Such things as people playing on electronic keyboards, or electric guitars with fuzz tone in effect, or having them demonstrated, or people wanting to play in the exact key in which I am tuning are the usual for me. But, by far, the most challenging venue I have ever attempted to tune a piano was in 1989, when I was called to a person's house to tune an acrosonic from the early 50's. Not only was this piano almost a whole step flat, but she had (no exaggeration) 60 birds of all kinds in that house. The majority were either in the room where the piano was located, or in the next room, and, I think, they were all within ear shot of me. I almost didn't do the job, but I decided that, if I had tuned in a music store, I could do this. But this was very different; these bird chirpings and whistlings and screamings weren't musical , they were just plain noise. I did tune the piano to pitch, no strings broke, and it took a little over two hours. But maybe 15 or 20 minutes before I finished, one of those birds got tired of my being there and set up with one of the loudest piercing whistling screamings I think I have ever heard; it would do this every 3 or 4 minutes. I would have moved the piano, but quite honestly, there was nowhere to move it that there weren't birds. I told the owner that, whatever she did, not to tell a tuner about these birds before he came; otherwise, nobody would ever come. Hmm, I wonder why I have never called her back to tune that piano again. I do wonder what happened to it. I think I did a pretty good job considering the environment. Arnold Schmidt
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