They called you to tune a piano for a concert at the last hour. The time available is ridiculously short, about half an hour, and to top it up is very noisy. What to do?

This is one of the tricky situations a piano tuner might encounter, when tuning at a concert.  Just imagine the situation; it’s terribly noisy as sound engineers and musicians are testing the sound. To make matters worst they ask you to hurry up as the concert will start in half an hour. How can you properly tune the piano in those circumstances? You complain, but the answer is a typical “sorry, we understand you but you have to make do with what you’ve got”.  

You feel like swearing at them and walk away. Why haven’t they call me with time in advance? you rightly think. Reality check: in the real world this kind of situations are far from rare. Tuning a piano for a concert, ideally should be done in the morning or early afternoon, just before the sound engineers and musicians arrive, alone and in silence. Anyway, cool down and don’t panic, above all DON’T RUN AWAY.

What to do then? As I say before, keep yourself cool. After all is not your fault they called you with such a short time notice. You are not responsible for the lack of foresight of the organizers. Well, as it is materially impossible to do a full standard piano tuning you will concentrate on the unisons, specially the middle ones, also the middle upper section if possible.

Why to concentrate specifically on the middle and upper section unisons? Because this is the most played part of the piano and therefore bound to be out of tune.  Also, a unison out of tune can be really very conspicuous. So if you manage to get them right, the piano, although not perfect will have improve quite a big deal.

So, you will produce a makeshift piano tuning which I personally refer to as “cowboy emergency tuning” !! Play a chromatic scale up and down the keyboard and try to identify the keys that are out of tune, or at least the keys that are worst, then write them down on a piece of paper or make a little sign on the keys so you don’t forget.

Make sure there isn’t any key in the bass or treble section wickedly out of tune. If there is one or two, tune them, if not, don’t waste time and move quickly to the middle section, more or less from A25 to C64. Tune those unisons the best you can. To finish the job, check again by doing another chromatic scale up and down the keyboard. The whole job wouldn’t take you more than 20 minutes (the time available).

Maybe this procedure doesn’t look very orthodox, but the purpose is not to execute a work of art piano tuning, but to overcome a particularly exceptional situation, just trying to do the best with what you’ve got. They can ask you to do your best, but nobody can compel you to produce miracles !.

©  copyright Juan Olalla 2010 

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I don’t consider myself a compulsive reader but every now and then I find the time to relax and read, even if it is only for a few minutes. Sometime ago while visiting a book-shop at my home town I found a book that catch my eye “The piano tuner” by Daniel Mason. Out of curiosity I bought it.

The story takes place  in Victorian England and is about a piano tuner living in  London that went to “do a job” to Birmania, in those days under the British Empire (I figure out, at that time probably was quite difficult to find a local piano tuner). The man had to leave his new wife and his peaceful existence in London to undergo an adventure that changed his live and indeed ended it.

 What surprised me about the book, apart from the good written story was the excellent documentation. The author describes the job of a piano tuner in quite a convincing manner describing things like the tools for tuning a piano, changing and replacing broken strings, the technique of tuning a piano, the terrible effect that the humid weather and the rain forest had on the piano and so on.

I also found quite interesting the reference to Erard pianos as that was the piano he had to mend. Erard pianos for those of you who don’t know was one of the biggest and most prestigious piano brands, mainly because they were the ones that invented and pioneer the repetion lever (the repetion lever has been one of the most important innovations in the history of piano building and at the time considered as a major breakthrough). I have tuned a handful of Erard pianos and found them very refined with a very pleasent and precise action Nowadays the modern piano is not too different from the one describe in “The piano tuner”

Looking the credits at the end of the book I found where Mr Mason got most of his  documentary material from. The book  “Piano tuning and allied arts”  by William Braid White. Incidentally that was the first piano tuning book I ever had, edition 1946 and although quite old and batter I still keep it. 

“The piano tuner”  by Daniel Mason  is highly recommended.  Quite interesting and pleasent to read, but just in case anybody had a job for tuning a piano in Birmania and think of me as a suitable candidate, please look in another direction, I am busy.

©  copyright Juan Olalla 2010

Has this article been helpful to you? Got some questions? Please leave a reply, your opinion and/or suggestions are highly appreciated. Thanks