As a co-host of the on line radio show Weird Bird on Peach City Community Radio I am happy to announce that the second episode is now available. This show is focusing on piano music (and a few other keyboard instruments) in our regular genres of 20th century classical and experimental jazz . This show was recorded live in our makeshift radio studio (pictured below) at the Fort Whoop Up headquarters in Naramata. You can listen to the show streaming on peachcityradio.org.
A few days ago I tuned the miniature piano that is on tour with John Mellencamp (who has dropped the Cougar and apparently prefers to be addressed as Mr. Mellencamp). The piano was set up on the stage of the South Okanagan Events Centre in Penticton and I was scheduled to start tuning exactly one hour before the Cowboy Junkies hit the stage. As I was tuning, the 4300 members of the audience were pouring in and the sound system was blasting country tunes. The violinist from one of the bands knew that I was faced with a difficult task and offered a little electronic tuner which was no help with all the racket. After I was done tuning I played some Neil Young, but I am pretty sure no one could hear it. It was a great set up though: a 67 note amplified piano and a Hammond B3 organ with a Leslie speaker (and a digital synth of course).
On stage behind the curtain.
Peeking out at the audience.
I was at God’s Mountain Estate for my regular spring tuning and Sarah had a new instrument that she had recently added to her extensive antique collection, a Faventia hand crank street piano from Barcelona. I repaired some of the hammers and tuned it according to the instructions on the inside of the lid. It was the strangest piano I have tuned to date and most likely the only one that has been played by a monkey.
Here is a video of the Faventia before tuning…
and this is after tuning…
This is the barrel piano in it’s little cart.
I did some tuning in Crawford Bay and Grey Creek yesterday. Beautiful sunny spring drive with the snow capped mountains across the lake. I spent a few hours fixing up an old Heintzman at the Timbuktu farm and visited their donkeys. The piano had previously lived in a garage, but was in surprisingly good shape considering.
I spent the better part of a week doing a thorough cleaning, re-shaping, adjusting and regulating of Kristi Lind’s Yamaha grand. After years of practicing, teaching and recitals the piano had turned into an instrument that was a real workout to play and very difficult to control. My goal was to breath new life into the piano. A few simple things like reshaping the hammers, regulation and a good cleaning transformed the tone and created an action that was smooth and agile under the fingers.
For the most part my job is to visit a home or a venue and tune the piano for about an hour. But bringing pianos, or just the action into the shop and working on the instrument more in depth and is what I really love doing. There are so many different elements to these crazy wooden machines and it is satisfying to get the whole thing working in harmony with its self.
step 1: disassemble piano in the living room, enjoy the view
step 2: piano action in the van (it is easily removed and very portable)
step 3: shop work (hammers and wippens have been removed from the keybed)
I recently got back from my annual Toronto tour where I tuned for a lot of my musician friends. Spring had arrived a month early, I borrowed a bike and rode around the town visiting all sorts of interesting pianos and people. Here are a few.
This is Mark Segger in his Queen Street store front studio. A talented drummer and composer, Segger has just released The Beginning with his sextet.
I tuned this little guy in the home of Janet Morassutti (pictured here describing a mouse trap) and musician / author Dave Bidini. Janet plays guitar with The Billie Hollies and Dave has a new album out called In the Rock Hall.
This 77 key pianette is in the home of Julia Hambleton and Dave French, who are both very active and prolific musicians involved in too many bands and projects to list. Most notably Julia is in The Billie Hollies and The Woodshed Orchestra (great video in that link!) and Dave performs in Broken Social Scene and writes for his own quartet which released the fantastic album Dance of the Bees last year.
I started experimenting with some altered tuning for a potential music project / sound installation at the Shatford Centre. I am de-tuning an old upright piano approximately a 5th lower than your average piano which creates a very different timbre, closer to a steel drum than a piano. Just down the hall from my shop space there is a terrific stairwell which has wild reverb going on. I found the resonant frequency of the stairwell (201.37 Hz) and am tuning the piano to a just intonation scale based on that frequency. Once I have stabilized the tuning of the piano I will roll it into the stairwell and see what it sounds like. I am imagining a multitude of harmonics being activated, but who knows if it will work. I will keep you posted.
The Stairwell
The Bass Piano
Right after the holidays Deb McCann and Matt Arnott organized what many believe to be the first social gathering of the Piano Technicians from the Okanagan Valley. We had piano nerds from Kaleden to Kamloops to Revelstoke. These piano tuning parties always end up being a crazy collection of characters. One couple lives up in the woods beyond Vernon who not only do full piano rebuilds, but one of them is a luthier (guitar maker), they make sound boards from scratch (very rare) and harvest their own wood! Another fellow is a mildly autistic teenager who is currently apprenticing as a piano technician, is an antique piano and organ collector (he has more than 20) and is a self taught rock and blues piano player. We were treated with a little concert. But the winner is the grandfather of Okanagan piano tuning, Steve McCann who is in his 80’s, has two hearing aids and is still going strong in the tuning business!
I am currently doing some internal reconstructive surgery to the legs and pedal lyre of Justin Glibbery’s piano since the original mortise and tenon joints had separated. Normally this sort of job would be done by moving the piano to a shop, but in order to avoid that, I built some very sturdy supports. The Glibbery family is practicing on the piano jacked up like a trailer while the legs are being repaired.
I did a major overhaul of the Pen High 7 foot grand recently. Those teenagers really put that instrument through a lot. I spend about a week repairing bent hinges, broken prop-sticks, sheared off screws, cracked benches… you name it.
