A whole new world

[Mark Graham]

I just wanted to mention a happy discovery from last week. I work at a
college 20 hours a week. There are 84 pianos in the music dept., plus
another 30 scattered around. So I don't have lots of time to experiment. I
have precisely two weeks during the summer when I can schedule
miscellaneous things; the rest of the time the schedule is pretty
rigorously mapped out.

We have two D's on the main performance stage. One is from 1927, and is OK
considering. The other one is a from the early 80's. I keep it in good
regulation and do some voicing on it. It gets tuned weekly or more. I've
been here five years, and I've never really been happy with it. A lot of
notes have false beats and bad tones. Termination points seem fine. Some
of the more sensitive pianists have complained, but I haven't been able to
solve it.

I have the Steinway manual, and have always read about levelling strings
but have never had time to get to it. I've seen a few of you mention it
recently, and I had a day to mess with the piano, so I tried it. I was
amazed to find, first, how many unisons were not level, and second, what a
dramatic improvement in sound resulted from correcting the situation. I
will never again underestimate the importance of this step. Some notes
which have been problems from the start, the problem just disappeared. I
can't wait for the faculty to get back and start playing on it. I finally
enjoy it. So now I'm a better technician, and I'm preaching the good news
to anybody who like me was unaware of how important this is. 

I love this list.
Mark Graham
Baldwin-Wallace Conservatory of Music