Rock & Roll Tuning - The Report

[Farrell]

Thank you all for your input on my outdoor concert tuning yesterday. Actually an R&B tuning. It went without a hitch - or a sound - I couldn't hear a thing. I think I may have tuned it. I think it sounded better when I left than before I got there.

This was an event called Tropical Heatwave. It was held outside in an area about the size of a football field - maybe smaller. Four stages. 30 bands setting up. I managed to get my stage to quiet down, but then I realized the semi-truck-sized diesel generators were about 40 feet from the piano. And we could only intermittently get the other stages to quiet down. So it was pretty rough going. 

The piano was about 5 cents flat, so I raised the pitch in one pass, tuned it the best I could in the second pass, and started the third pass to improve unisons, when the stage dude came over and said "hey man, I gotta have you stop now - we gotta test these mics". I said sure. Bye! It wasn't going to get any better and I knew it. Wow, that's pretty rough going. No problem with sun, and it started to rain just when I was leaving. Maybe that will settle some of the dust on the piano - I'm going to have to clean my felt mutes after tuning that piano!

Oh, that piano (I'll be politically correct here - PSO - but you know what I really mean)! Someone on this list mentioned "wait until you see his piano". Yikes! You could have been a little more specific. Had I known, I might have packed my sledge hammer, torch, and duct tape in my tuning case! Did he find that thing at a Salvation Army or what? I think it started life sometime around WWII as a Yamaha G3. I have never seen a grand piano even 20% that beat up and still functioning - sorta. It looked like a 800 lb. mouse thought it was a piece of cheese. It was very noisy on the stage, but even when you would get a moment of relative quiet, I thought my ears were plugged up or something, because the piano seemed so quiet - except for the bass. I suspect the soundboard is DOA. Bad piano.

I didn't stay for the concert. I finished at 5 pm and the gig was at 11:30 pm. I would have liked to, but domestic responsibilities steered me home. I'll call my contact next week and see how it came off.

Thanks again.

Terry Farrell