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Piano Life Saver System:
Member:
* Prolongs the Life of your Piano
* Recommended by all Manufactures
* Helps Keep your Piano in Tune
* Factory Certified Installer
Highly Rated:
(703) 437-7117
Piano tuning is a mystery to most people. It is in fact totally based on the laws of physics, and in particular a branch of physics named acoustics. I use my knowledge of these sciences, along with the advanced computer technology created specifically for tuning and an over all understanding of the “theory of tuning” to tune a piano. This process utilizes extensively the factor of overtones and how they vary throughout the entire piano.
When I finish a tuning I often go back and check to be sure nothing has slipped. I do this while I am tuning too as I am dealing with 40,000 lbs. of tension and attempting to stabilize the 225+ strings in a piano to 1/10 of 1% of a half-step! As one tunes, the tension added or taken away from a single string can ever so slightly affect the entire tuning. All this is done to assure not just a good tuning, but also a stable tuning.
This approach of using science is 99.9% of tuning a piano, but there is in the end an overall musical sense that is important too. So I often play a short portion of a classical work written for the piano, just so I (and my clients) can sit back and listen to the piano “musically”. This allows me to hear the piano and the tuning in different ways. By playing a piece of music I can experience the piano in its totality, hearing its particular tonal qualities and overall sound. Many of my clients enjoy these short little extracts of classical works (I call them ditties) that I play and ask me to continue playing the entire work. I usually say I need to move on to my next job, which is often the case.
But in fact, I do not have the time anymore to practice the many hours necessary to perform advanced classical works, and thus I cannot play an entire work - or not play them very well. It is on the top of my retirement bucket list to go back to practicing many hours a day so I can hopefully play at the level I once did. I would love to relearn many works from when I was studying full time. And there are even more works I have on my “wish list” that I hope I might learn too. With time and hopefully good health I hope to achieve this retirement goal and I also may play recitals again! Time will tell if I am up to this task.
For those that have wanted to hear me play entire works I offer those when I was playing up to my fullest level - that I achieved while at the university when I was in my 20’s. I offer for your enjoyment a few recordings from my university days when I was a full time piano performance major. These recordings were on tape and the tape partly dried out or stretched out, after many decades. So, I sent these tapes to LegacyBox to have them repaired and put in electronic form.