Tuning as flow...

One of my classmates at the University of Chicago Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote what's become an important book for behavioral scientists, organizational consultants and top athletes entitled Flow. As I perused Amazon books so I could remember how to spell his name it appears he's expanded recently on the original with another entitled Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (P.S.) I suspect he now lives what he so aptly describes through his books.

Though I knew him well before he wrote the book I remember talking about the idea in our small seminar of eight led by anthropologist Victor Turner. Turner had this notion that we human beings learn most and are at our best when we become caught in "in between" places which he referred to as "liminal space".

I think what Mihaly did was expand the idea by adding the notion of time ... that we can create for ourselves an ongoing experience of "best effort" when we become so focused in the moment that time no longer is relevant, i.e we are as the common phrase goes "in the flow of things."

In essence, flow is what we experience when we're so in love with what we're doing that effort become effortless and time no longer moves. It's a moment of transcendance when we are closest to who we really are.

Recently, I've begun to have this experience in the time I spend tuning Zelda and playing her keys afterward. And the feeling sometimes moves forward through my other daily activities. I'll look up in the sky and the silhouetted palm tree isn't just a tree; but a glowing being. It can happen anywhere, anytime; but it's grounded in an act of love.

Csikszentmihalyi describes what the experience is and by implication how we can create it. Once we love an activity enough -- writing, performing on stage, singing, painting bookmarks, tuning a piano, whatever it may be for each of us -- we are able to experience an echo of the great creative act that has given life to us all.

In these transcendant moments our hearts open, our spirits soar and our imaginations fly unfettered. In these moments we experience the essence of abundance -- we come to know who we are. I suspect it may be the closest any of us can get to God.

Received my first aural exam back...

I mailed the first tape for evaluation to the school on December 12th. A month went by. Then two. I'm a patient man; but this was clearly a case where, unlike the proverb, all things do not come to those who wait. Thinking that perhaps they had never even received the original tape, I emailed the school secretary this past Thursday asking whether they had received the tape, and offering to re-submit it as necessary.

Her reply was "we received it" and it's in the hands of the instructor; then gave me his personal e-mail. I sent him an inquiry and received an almost instant response "working on it right now." About two hours later there was a seven-page evaluation of the initial tuning I'd done.

While the instructor had fluffed it out a bit with some boiler plate, it was clear he really had evaluated the tape, note by note, and had some excellent suggestions regarding hammer technique.

Zelda is still the principal instrument I'm practicing on. And, perhaps because many of her strings are fatigued from a hundred years, it doesn't take much hammer movement to change a pitch dramatically. So he gave me some clues about a technique that isn't discussed in the text -- making the adjustment at the exact moment you're striking the key. That way not only the hammer movement but the key strike as well work together to alter the pitch. What I had done on my intial tape was to alter pitch after the strike...and with Zelda any movement creates a big change. Working on some strings was the aural equivalent of watching a pendulum swing back and forth; and never quite coming to rest. As a consequence, while not many, there are several strings that I just couldn't get an exact unison even though I could hear it was out of pitch.

The technique is make more blows, strike more frequently and make the adjustment at the moment of the blow. I tried it out this afternoon.

It works! I went back through the piano and reworked some octaves that hadn't been perfect before. Then searched for any unisons that were out -- even if it was only a half a beat off every couple seconds. I cleaned and cleaned.

Just when I thought Zelda's pitch couldn't get any better because of what I believed were stringing inharmonicities, I was proved wrong. She can give even more -- she just had to be coaxed the right way. I spent another two hours on her.

The results were great. Full, clean chords. Perfect octaves. And great unisons--even in that irritating upper treble. I'm guessing she can do even better as I become more adept. But I was so pleased with the results that I put my hammer and mutes away around 4:30. With only a break for dinner and a couple of phone calls, I've been playing non-stop ever since. She sounds so rich and full. The more I play her the more I realize how blessed I am to have this instrument in my life -- as both muse and musical companion.

Though it was a bit longer coming than I'd wished for, the feedback and suggestions were great. Interestingly, the suggestions came at a time when I could really put them to good use.

And oh, by the way, the instructor was very complimentary. He commented that while the initial tuning wasn't perfect (I knew that) that I really had nailed all the basics (sigh of relief).

This coming week I have several goals. Obviously, I'll keep practicing the basics, tape and send in the second aural exam. I've also lined up another piano to work on. It'll be important because it's an older spinet, which will pose a whole other set of tuning and repair challenges.

Until next time.

Another big step forward...

After the last two day's successful effort at giving Zelda a fine tuning, I decided I had to make my next fearful step forward today. Three keys have never played. So I made the decision I'd at least find out why even if I couldn't repair them at this point.

Gulp!!! That meant finally opening up the case in order to take out the action. In addition to reading everything Randy Potter has to say about this, I read Reblitz' book, watched YouTube videos and checked out several other piano repair web sites. And I'm glad I did. While all of them were basically giving the same information about removing a grand's action, each had different nuggets of "watch out for this". And following my credo of "do no harm" with Zelda, I took into account all the cautionary notes and finally did the deed around 3 PM today. It was a successful surgery...with nothing broken.

Since someone had previously be overzealous in screwing down the key stop rail which keeps the keys from falling out when you move a grand, it took a bit longer to expose the action and keys than I'd anticipated. I had to figure out a tool that would go deep enough into the hole they'd created and still remove the five posts that secure the rail without marring the rail and/or stripping the post screws.

While I was contemplating how to accomplish this task, I spent about an hour and cleaned the soundboard with a soundboard steel and cloth. That fine layer of dust accumulated over the years is pretty significant. When I was cleaning up after all was over this evening, the fresh vacuum cleaner bag was about a third full from the dust and debris that came out of Zelda's innards. And, of course, as long as they were fully exposed, I decided to clean the keytops, harp and keybed.

All the cleaning was delaying tactics, of course; but it came to me how to remove the key stop rail safely using two jewler's screwdrivers simultaneously. And finally, I was able to separate the action from the keys.

I'd been anticipating the worst for the three notes that wouldn't play; but as soon as I could see the keys, it was obvious what was going on. Somehow three balance rail pins had managed to pop out over the years and wander to another section of the piano (also probably accounting for that rattle around middle C). Fortunately, I found them all and was able to put them back in to their rightful home with new cloth punchings that came with the Randy Potter course materials. After putting the action and keys back together--presto, they worked.

Amazingly for a 100 year old instrument, there are no broken parts anywhere else. After I got the dust off everything, the action looked as if it could have come out of the factory only a year or so ago. Everything lines up, all the hammers are straight, backchecks all work, key tops are in incredible conditon, not a single broken wippen, dampers all seat well as does the sostenuto. Zelda is turning out to be in much better shape that I'd hoped.

Since my possible worst nightmare was turning into a dream, I had extra time so I decided to work on the hammers a bit. They're pretty hard with deep cut grooves so the sound is just a bit brittle to my ears. I don't have all the hammer shaping and voicing tools yet (nor enough knowledge) so, I decided just to take a wire brush to the hammer heads to soften them up a bit and get rid of the deep grooves.

Even that small correction makes an incredible difference. Zelda went from sounding tinny to having a lush warm voice -- especially in the base and mid-range. I can only imagine what she'll sound like once she's properly voiced.

I think next steps are just to enjoy playing her for a while as I continue working through the course materials. I'm exhausted; but it was a great day.

Wow, you should hear her now

Too much time has passed since my last entry. There have been intervening concerts, rehearsals, classes, productions, volunteer commitments, which have occupied most of my spare time beyond work. Consquently, I haven't been writing a lot about progress with Zelda. Nonetheless, I've continued reading about and practicing tuning. In the last month I've been working on understanding different approaches to temperament tuning -- there's the Coleman A-A, the Defebaugh F-F and the European A-A small. And, of course, my instructor Randy Potter has three different variations on his F-A temperament. So, I've worked with them all and finally found one that -- in the absence of having any fancy tuning machines to check me -- I can hear well.

So, over the last two evenings, I decided to take another leap of faith with Zelda.

You may remember that bringing her up to pitch a few weeks ago was a big step. Because the old girl hadn't really been even close to pitch for a number of years, it took several rough tunings for her to hold steady. Then the weather began to shift like crazy here in Key West. It's alternately been hot, humid, cold, rainy, windy or dry -- sometimes over the course of just a few days. Not the easiest time for any piano, much less an old girl who's trying to get back on her feet. As a consequence, in addition to my needing to read, practice and learn a great deal more about temperaments, I decided to hold off doing any more major adjustments during this period to prevent overstressing her.

Though the weather is still crazy I felt I'd expanded my knowledge base and my ability enough to take a chance to give her a fine tuning. Besides, all those "almost-but-not-quite" notes were driving me crazy. So I opened her up again two nights ago and went at it.

Since I'm learning, I'm slow and the process is a bit painful -- certainly, Ranger thinks so. While I was working through the new temperament, the poor kitty spent most of his time hiding as far away as he could under the bed. I have this vision of him under the blankets with his paws over his ears. It took me two hours the first evening just to set the temperament perfectly. But within that narrow F-A range every note played well with every other...finally. I'd done it!

Now, all I had to do was extend the temperament through all the other 72 notes and tune all the unisons for each string. That was last night's exercise.

After getting home from work and making a light supper, I started the process. Ranger headed back under the bed. I started with the mid range, then worked on the treble, which is the trickiest with Zelda. While I can hear the differences in intonation and the beats in the highest register her strings are so old and brittle that even a hammer turn of less than a sixteenth of an inch can make a half-pitch difference. As a result, getting the octaves to match those of the temperament was challenging to say the least. Once they were set, getting the unisons for each string was just as challenging. There were moments when I was wanting to join Ranger under the bed just to give my ears a rest. That process alone took two hours. Tuning the bass using Coleman's ghost tones went much faster. I finished the tuning around 10:30 PM.

I'd been running test interval sixths, octaves, tenths and seventeenths throughout the whole evening; but the big test, after I'd removed all the felt strips, was how well do test chords carry throughout the whole instrument.

Oh my gosh, I couldn't believe it. Zelda was a whole new instrument. Despite the continued problems with rusty strings and some cranky action, she was singing!

As I played Marianne McPartland's luxuriant version of "My Funny Valentine" for a test run, I could hear singing of another sort. Ranger was sitting purring at my feet, eyes locked on me in amazement. He stayed there for the entire ten-minute piece.

I think the jury is in -- I can do this! Now I just have to learn to tune in less than two days.