Tin Ears and Just Plain Noise ... Permit me to be blunt here. I have no sympathy for parents who assume that "anything's good enough for the little house pianist" when the pianist is in school when I come to service the piano. For every parent who makes that assumption, I hear from someone else's "little house pianist" that they are tired of their pianos sounding "different" from their teacher's. The dreadfully out-of-tune piano gets a pitch raise and then some, at the parents' expense, with virtually no room for negotiation. Of course I'm more than happy to explain to them the necessity for having a piano at pitch to make music study a meaningful experience for all involved. (Nobody has tried to stiff me yet.) There's always the question of whether or not the piano will ever be used to accompany other instruments. Well, maybe the parents don't play and don't have friends who will pull out their instruments and play while visiting them, but the little house pianist may have just such buddies who should be encouraged to come over and play music. [Ah, yes ... fond memories of those spontaneous jam sessions in my parents' living room when my friends brought over guitars in the late '60s ... how we worked at transcribing, or at least figuring out the chord changes to selected songs, the likes of which no teacher would ever want to hear played in her studio, but were fun to play everywhere else but.] Z! Reinhardt RPT Ann Arbor MI diskladame@provide.net ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joseph Garrett" <joegarrett@earthlink.net> To: <pianotech@ptg.org> Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2002 7:43 PM Subject: Pitch All, A comment was made, "I can see no justification for raising the pitch....." I will give ONE very strong reason: EAR TRAINING. If some continue to leave pianos "where they are", etc, for little Johnny to practice on, we will never get rid of the horrible phenomenon of "Tin Ears". Please consider this. Music is to be loved, enjoyed and to ease our day to day stresses. IMHO any piano that is out of tune or not at proper pitch does none of that. Respectfully, Joe Garrett, RPT, (Oregon)
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