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.

By George, I think she's got it!

Notwithstanding the reference to My Fair Lady, for which I'm now in rehearsals, last evening with Zelda was a bit of success story. I was up with her (again) until 3 AM until there was a (nearly) perfectly tuned piano raised to A440 pitch. And when I returned to the keyboard this morning 95% of the tuning had held. She still couldn't pass herself off as Hungarian royalty as in the case of Eliza Doolittle; but now that you can hear what her potential is, it's pretty clear that her lineage is a cut above the ordinary. As I mentioned before -- good bones.

Since this was the third round of her pitch raising in less than a week, I'm relieved that I can just let her be for a few days while I learn a bit more about the the whole tuning process. (As I'm sure is Ranger, who heads for secure places out of earshot when I'm working on her. Yesterday I found him on a shelf tucked behind my camera case.) And given all the stress I've put her through it's probably better not to keep pushing the limits until she's had a little time to become accustomed to her new sound.

She is, after all, nearly a 100 years old. At 61 my bones ache and pop after each day's work. I can only imagine the tension I've added to her frame during this weeklong workout. There definitely was a bit of groaning in the process.

The first two pitch raisings were pretty rough -- just approximate. But yesterday, after I'd set my A47 to 440, I took the time to carefully reset the entire temperament, using the Defebaugh "F-F" temperament and the Potter "F-A" temperament with its tests as a double check. Because I didn't want to go through another huge marathon pitch raising, I managed to get every note in the temperament perfect before I spread it through the rest of the piano. When the mid-range is in tune like that, it becomes very easy to hear the extreme treble since you can test it against against any number of interval progressions to double check the accuracy of your work. And, I'm still in awe of how easy it becomes to tune the growly base through the use of partials.

The bottom line is that Zelda sounds pretty darn good at the moment. Treble, mid-range and bass are all clean -- she has more of crystalline sound now, if there is such a thing.

The downside of being in tune is that it's now more obvious where other problem areas lie. Though I'm not yet far enough along in my studies to diagnose all that ails her, it's pretty clear there are some strings that are overly rusted and have a brittle and/or tinny sound. I suspect I've just scratched the surface of her troubles. Nonetheless, it all appears -- so far -- to be relatively cosmetic -- a poor string here, some sticking keys, a broken action, hardened felts, etc. Hopefully, no major surgery will be required.

The other major milestone yesterday in my quest to become a registered piano technician was sending in my first taped exams. These were the "unison" tests. And, of course, I did them before the temperament was corrected. Probably not the smartest thing. Hopefully, it shouldn't be a major problem in evaluating how well I did. But a few of the notes I was tuning definitely had false beats in them creating a bit of a "wobble" regardless of how pure the unisons were. To be determined -- that's why I'm sending the tapes to the experts.

Raising the bar (and biting my nails)

Up to 2 AM this morning with Zelda. I'm biting the bullet and raising her (gently) to pitch. After 40-50 (who really knows) years of being tuned a half pitch low when she was tuned at all, she's groaning a bit. But for the most part holding. Thank goodness, good bones.

I finished all the tenor and treble sections yesterday. Today's my day off so before I run off to Marathon to help with their production of the Messiah this evening, I'm going to work on the bass this morning, then hopefully retune everything that's dropped during the day.

It may take three or four more adjustments before she can hold everything; so it's quite a process. But exciting to hear her come back alive.

The old girl has ghosts...

This will be just a short post; but two evenings ago I learned about Zelda's ghosts.

It's a good thing. I'm all jazzed up about it.

I've always wondered how tuners could hear how to tune the growly, rumbling bass strings. You can definitely hear when they are out of tune; but there's so much going on and so many overtones that -- at least for me -- it's hard to hear what exactly it is that you're tuning. That's where ghost tones come in.

Turns out that each bass string has a number of ghost tones -- more correctly, partials. When you strike a bass note you're hearing not only the fundamental note; but a series of partials embedded in the same string -- up to ten (ghost tones) partials to be exact; but primarily the next two octaves up (2nd & 4th partials) and a twelfth (3rd partial).

By holding the bass note down silently and striking the 2nd, 3rd & 4th partials independently, they will sound in the the unstruck bass string -- and, by isolating the partials you can hear whether or not the bass note is in tune. In essence, tune the partials correctly and you've tuned the fundamental sound.

I suppose that's old hat to those who've been tuning for a long time; but I was so excited about learning this that I went on a bass tuning rampage with Zelda. It's amazing. There are now crystal clear tones throughout the bass. Octaves sound perfectly together and the piano has a new depth. The rumble is gone.

That's the good news. The bad news is once the indeterminate growling vanished, it became clear there are a few notes that are of poor quality and out of character with the rest of piano. Most of the bass is rich and sonorous now. But some pop out as having a different "buzzing" quality without the depth. I suppose, in some ways, that's good news as well since I can now differentiate which notes need further attention.

On to the next step -- more reading and learning to discover possible causes -- and then make the necessary adjustments as I'm able.

But for now, I'm just happy to know about Zelda's ghosts.

Life Intervenes

The last post was shortly before I left Key West for a week away to visit my sister in Tennessee, view some fall color for the first time in years and come back to get settled into the cottage with Zelda (the piano) and Ranger(the cat).

Despite being attacked by bedbugs (40 plus bites) and having to leave the Days Inn on Interstate 75 in Atlanta at 4:30 AM with no sleep after being on the road 16 hours straight, I did make it to Eastern Tennessee Wednesday morning, Oct. 21. Lots of itching for the next three days (thank goodness I had a supply of Zyrtec on hand) but it didn't take away from a wonderful visit with my sis and her partner.

The autumn leaves were at their prime in the Smokies. We took two hikes plus a drive through Cades Cove with thousands of other leaf gawkers. Despite the traffic (when did that become part of getting out to enjoy nature?), we spotted wild turkey, bucks with their antlers full grown, and -- of course -- more of God's color spectacle than I could have hoped for. My absolute favorite was a golden grove of maples. Any direction you looked -- forest carpet, forest canopy or through the forest -- gold was everwhere. Simply breathtaking.

My sister also gave me the opportunity to hob nob with the Tennessee Volunteers athletic elite. As a donor to their athletic program, she was invited to a reception at Tennessee's Neyland stadium. The ostensible purpose was to say 'thanks' to donors and show off the new lounge for corporate big wigs; but, of course, the real purpose was to pluck a few more feathers from the assembled turkeys for the continued renovation of the stadium -- only one more phase to go before completion! When the words $225,000,000 and Mother Theresa glibly rolled off the development director's tongue in the same sentence, both my sister and I couldn't help but roll our eyes.

Still, they made a great picture of us at the stadium -- you'll probably never see me in that context again. The scale of the place is a bit overwhelming -- especially when you realize you could put the entire population of the Florida Keys there and still have empty seats everywhere.

The drive back was quiet and Zen like. I stopped in Orlando to see my friend Tom Dyer, publisher of the journal Watermark, for whom I was one the initial investors and writers fifteen years ago. It's still a great paper and he continues to keep it going through both tough times and good. More importantly, it was just great to renew our friendship.

Got back to Key West finally around 1 AM Tuesday, Nov 3rd. Spent the next two days re-connecting with Ranger and making the move to the cottage --- in time for my first house guests Joey & Aiden from Boston. Unfortunately, for me (and probably for them) I'd managed to come down with some version of the flu and spent most of the weekend they were here in bed breaking a fever. They were troopers and managed to navigate pretty well on their own. And, hopefully, I'll be able to renew the friendship under better circumstances at some point the future.

Despite the continued crud from the bout with flu, I'm slowly getting back into my regular schedule -- work, chorale, volunteering for MCC and, importantly, the piano studies. I'm hopeful I'll be able to send in my second exam by the weekend after Thanksgiving. Still some additional practice tunings to go before I send in the tape -- but my unisons are beginning to sound pretty good -- let's hope the instructor agrees. (BTW I did get 100% on my first exam.)

So, I'm not exactly as far along as I'd like to be with the piano studies but life has intervened with a few sidetracks. As a friend once told me, life is all about learning how to manage Plan B.