Three Sides to Same Thing (largely autobiographical)

[Z! Reinhardt]

Dear List:

This post will be about observations, rather than loaded with
questions/answers.  Anyone who would like to take a crack at providing
explanations for the observations here is more than welcome to do so.

Tuning		Three procedures that can make/break 
Regulating	a piano in the minds of the customer.
Voicing

A seasoned concert technician I had the honor of working with early in my
career once said that the closer a fine piano is to top-level working
order, the more apparent tuning, regulating, and voicing are really 3 sides
to the same thing.

He then had me tune a piano in his shop.  I had the worst time bringing in
the unisons.  It wasn't so much that the piano was unstable or full of
false beats, it was more a matter that I could not find the "sweet spot"
that would nail those unisons.  Some quick voicing on his part revealed
that indeed I had done well by those unisons, after which they sounded
clean and strong with depth.

The more I worked on finer instruments, the more I realized how right that
concert technician was.  The first taste of this in my own work was on a
nice grand in a theatre that I serviced twice a week for 2 years.  (The job
ended only because the next show didn't use a real piano.)  It was exciting
to have a piano I could do experiments on, find out first hand what
influenced what, and to hear the comments from the pianist, soundmen, and
random people in the audience.  Other highlights:

"Oh this piano sounds PERFECT now -- nice crisp tone ... you must have
spent all day voicing it ..."  (No, I had only tuned it.  It had gone 15
cents flat very evenly so it didn't sound horribly out of tune.)

"Hey -- how did you get the action to feel so much lighter?"  (Hadn't
touched the action -- just brought up the tone in a couple of muddy
sections.)

"Is this really MY piano?  It's practically playing itself!"  (A thorough
tuning, toned down the harshest notes, barely touched the regulation.)

"This piano sounds so much richer (!) more powerful."  (Just a little basic
5' grand that I tuned and adjusted the glider studs on -- full regulation
was still forthcoming.)

"I think this is your best tuning job yet -- it sounds great!"  (Only
touched a few unisons, spent the bulk of the time toning down the harshness
of the tone.)

And, of course, the occassional black eye:

"I only wanted you to tune this piano, not voice it.  It sounds AWFUL now
when it used to have that nice mellow tone."  (Only tuned the piano to
pitch -- had been 40 cents flat.  I managed to sell her a voicing job by
explaining to her the perceived piano tone was simply following the laws of
physics as the strings were pulled to tension.)

I could never thank that concert technician enough for *alerting* me to
this.  Otherwise, I probably wouldn't have a clue about what was really
going on and would have spent hours going nowhere using the wrong procedure
for the problem at hand ... or giving away hours of work time trying to
correct a problem I thought had been my fault.

What does all this mean for those much-neglected mediocre-quality
instruments that are so common in today's living rooms?  Obviously, if it
is out of tune, tune it.  If there are problems controlling the action,
regulate it.  If the tone is objectionable, voice it.  But, as many of us
have been taught, voicing should not be attempted until the piano is fully
tuned and regulated ... but as the concert technician demonstrated early
on, sometimes problems in tuning are caused by the voicing.  Likewise,
voicing for power should be done only after the action has been fully
regulated ... but the action feels like a row of 2x4s because of voicing
problems.  And so on.  Yes, it can happen to these pianos too.

When all is said and done, the more you want to refine your work in one
procedure, the more you have to take into account the other  2 procedures,
and refine your work in them as well.  This interrelationship is such that
it is impossible to perform a procedure to perfection in isolation of the
other two.

Z! Reinhardt RPT
Ann Arbor  MI
diskladame@provide.net

P.S.  Looks like I'll be resuming my job at the theatre.  Four years may
have passed since I last worked there on a steady basis, but four years is
also plenty of time in which to learn new procedures and to dream up new
experiments.  I can hardly wait .........!