DIY piano tuning. Have you done it?

[ahinton]

Alfred Brendel could tune his own piano whnever he wanted to; he also has considerable skills as a piano technician, well above those of most pianists, in fact. A handful of pianists do involve themselves with this kind of work but only when they know how. If most pianists steer away from it and are content to leave it to the professionals, that's surely good enough advice for the rest of us!

[Anna]

When I had a piano it was tuned by the third generation of a family who had always sold and tuned pianos and I enjoyed it when he came as he'd stay and give a mini-concert but I later had a friend, registered blind but in fact partially sighted who was a trained tuner, sometimes I'd drive him to appointments if it was a weekend. When he was young he attended a college for the blind, I think in those days it was a quite usual to be trained as a tuner.

I didn't fare very well with piano learning so I gave up and sold the piano as it was a case of left hand not knowing what the right hand was up to!

[Pianorak]

Whilst I would also say "Desist" - IIRC various pianists such as Sviatoslav Richter, Paderewski and possibly even Vladimir Ashkenazy never travelled through the vast Russian regions without a tuning fork and a tuning hammer - just to be on the safe side, I suppose. How "safe" that was history doesn't reveal.

[oddoneout]

I have a memory of being told that it was something that blind people were trained in(this would be going back quite some time)? Many decades ago when I was a small child the first piano tuner I remember working on the family instrument was visually impaired, as I believe the current correct parlance has it, and was a source of considerable fascination.

[Serial_Apologist]

At the age of 10, we bought an ancient upright piano at the local village fete for ten bob, and got one of the masters to drive the school farm tractor and trailer in order to transport it to the unused storage room we christened "The Jazz Hole" and occupied when everyone else was attending compulsory sports or CCF. It - the piano - leaned over at one end and had twin candelabras on the front, which was covered with ornate marquetry. "Who knows how to tune a piano?" someone asked. "I do" I said. I then spent the whole of the next week, every afternoon, trying to tune the thing with a range of spanners borrowed from the head of the music department. In the end I gave up, but at least you all knew that this story would have a happy ending.

My father bought my mother a beautiful black lacquered Bluthner during WW2. When I was small a man called Mr Clapp came twice a year to tune it. He was in his 90s, and could remember Redcliffe Gardens as a child being a country lane, leading south from Earls Court Road. Recently I bought some early OS maps of London and discovered that this would have been accurate. Amazing to think that the year my Granddad was born (1875, same year as Ravel) Earls Court was still a village surrounded by countryside.

[Anna]

I have a memory of being told that it was something that blind people were trained in(this would be going back quite some time)? Many decades ago when I was a small child the first piano tuner I remember working on the family instrument was visually impaired, as I believe the current correct parlance has it, and was a source of considerable fascination.

It was the Royal National Blind College at Hereford where he trained (3 year residential course) but I see, after 135 years, their piano tuning/piano technology courses seem to have stopped in 2008 and now take place at Newark. The Hereford campus is now concentrated on paralympics and assistive technology it seems. There is a National Association of Blind Tuners and a quick google reveals that they were mainly trained at Hereford College. Perhaps Flay could see if any of them can come and tune his piano?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Why, tho', do you want to raise the whole piano to current 'concert pitch'? Is it bicoz you will be playing with other performers who are stuck with instruments at A = 440?

I think I'd rather be "stuck" with international concert pitch than be really stuck with something else.

[Flay]

Perhaps Flay could see if any of them can come and tune his piano?

I doubt if they could make it on public transport with the paucity of buses around here.

When I was a lad I recall a very pleasant and totally blind piano tuner who would come to our house in Crosby on the L3 bus. It was an incredible feat.

Realistically blind tuners could only manage in large towns or cities where there is good transport (or a friendly driver) and hopefully enough customers.

[MrGongGong]

I think I'd rather be "stuck" with international concert pitch than be really stuck with something else.

You mean A=442?

which is the pitch that most instruments are made in these days


(lets not go there though )

[Dave2002]

.... Crosby on the L3 bus. It was an incredible feat.

Ah - Ribble - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribble_Motor_Services

The section on Services gives a few details of the L3 route.

[Flay]

The section on Services gives a few details of the L3 route.

Yes, imagine a service like this nowadays:

The L3/L30 Liverpool, Bootle, Waterloo to Crosby stage carriage service was the most frequent in its class. Operating for nineteen hours a day, in the 1950s and 1960s a five-minute interval peak hour service with a duplicate or two thrown in as well

[Dave2002]

Yes, imagine a service like this nowadays:

Quite, though I don't remember it being that good. I didn't use it often, mostly preferring the trains.

I know a bit about bus services too, as I worked on them one summer. Some of the services were perhaps a bit like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlnUWcfve1c - well not exactly - but not run quite as one might expect or hope as a passenger.

There was a technical vocabulary, which included terms such as "scrawping".

[Flay]

The deed is done

You will all be pleased to know that I forked out and paid a professional tuner to pop out and do the deed (and get it up to a decent pitch!)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

<phew>

[MrGongGong]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLhJIFC8xkY