Big news! I’m happy to announce that I have accepted the position of chief piano technician for the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, starting this fall semester!

The new position and workload (roughly 110 pianos to care for, plus tuning for the Lied Center for Performing Arts) will necessitate a fairly sharp reduction in hours for ASB Piano Service, but not to worry! I still plan on reserving one day a week (as regularly as possible) for private clientele. Booking through my online system will be the easiest way to reserve a spot going forward.

I’m looking forward to the challenge that awaits me at UNL, and to joining the vibrant music community at UNL and in Lincoln!

You can now book my services online! Look at the top or bottom of the page for a the big blue button!

In an effort to provide more options and convenience to my clients in the payment process, ASB Piano Service is now able to accept credit and debit cards!

(via Square - http://www.squareup.com)

I like any job that requires the use of a piano tilter.  In this case, a client's old Story and Clark Spinet needed a new sustain pedal, as the original one was accidentally broken in the move into their home.  In most vertical pianos, replacing a pedal means you have to take the bottom board off.  Since you can't exactly access the bottom of the piano while the piano is standing upright, you need to flip the upright on it's back.  Rather than just lay the piano flat on the ground, using a piano tilter gives you a safe and easy way to put the piano on it's back while keeping it raised at a comfortable working height.

Seeing their piano in this position never fails to elicit an "oh, wow!" from the client.  Once the piano is in this position, it's a lot easier to unscrew the bottom board (which in the picture is already on the floor). 

Once there, it's just a matter of unscrewing one of the blocks that holds the pedal in, removing the old pedal, putting in the new one and reattaching it to the trapwork (the long wooden rails you see on the bottom board), reattaching the bottom board, and then (carefully!) flipping the piano back up onto its feet and regulating the pedals so they're functioning properly.

  Easy, peasy!

I arrived at a client's home to tune her piano, and her 6 year old daughter was extremely excited to have the piano tuned.  She looked on as I took off the case parts, and remarked with awe at how interesting the inside of the piano looked.  Once I got started tuning, she left me to my work, and was very careful to speak in a whisper if she needed to tell her mom something.  When I finish a tuning, I like to play a quick excerpt or two from a few pieces, both to check the tuning and as a little treat for the client.  When I finished my excerpt, the daughter came up to me, told me she wanted to give me a present, and handed me this:

It's a picture of a big heart playing the piano.  I usually don't get gifts for my tunings, but I was happy to accept this one!

I received a call last week asking if I could come take a look at an old Chickering that needs tuning.  I asked when it had last been tuned, and the customer said "well, I had a tuner here a week and a half ago, and he said it was untunable."

Uh oh.

I arrived yesterday to find a lovely little Chickering Quarter Grand.  The piano has been in the family for decades, and was made in the same year the customer's grandmother was born, so it had quite a bit of sentimental value.  For its age it looked quite nice - it had been partially rebuilt roughly 15 years ago - restrung, new hammers, new keytops and new damper felt.  A closer look, however, revealed some serious issues.  The dampers were in pretty rough shape - though they had new felt, the felt was misaligned in places, and the dampers themselves were very uneven - in some sections they were hardly touching the strings at all, or were tilted so only the front or back half of the dampers were contacting the strings.  In addition, there were several unisons where the left string was crossing over the middle string on the counterbearing felt. 

So the previous tech was indeed correct - in its current state, the piano was untunable.  While trying to isolate one note, all the strings that were not damped properly would be vibrating sympathetically, muddying up the sonic picture, and the overlapping strings would cause issues with tuning stability - tuning one would cause the other string to move slightly, too.  But, not one to turn down a challenge, I decided to pull the action out to see what the underlever system (what the dampers connect to) looked like.

which usually means spending a lot of crouching and bending to access the necessary parts.  These dampers were no exception, either.  The underlever system was not the most technician friendly setup either, with the tiny set screws for adjusting key timing!  But thankfully, after a couple hours work, the dampers were all functioning properly again, and the overlapping strings were realigned, making this piano tunable again.

Every day is an adventure!

Not too long ago I had the pleasure of servicing a new Mason & Hamlin piano - their glorious BB model - a 7' grand piano with a bright, clear sound and prodigious bass.  A brief picture from my vantage point while tuning:

The owner, a gifted pianist and teacher, loves the piano and its clarity, but found it a little too bright and uneven in the upper midrange and lower treble, and wanted that brightness tamed and evened out, without losing the clarity.  A brief note: though Mason & Hamlins are indeed beautifully crafted and supremely capable instruments, I must admit that, personally, I prefer a bit of a warmer tone than the typical Mason & Hamlin 'house sound.' 

That said, my job is not to make the piano sound the way I want it to, but the way the customer wants it to sound (within reason - if the customer wants a sound that would require ruining a set of hammers, I'm afraid I'll have to raise a few objections!).  After all, I'm not the one who lives with the piano daily! If I were given carte blanche to voice the piano to my preference, I might go quite a bit further than the customer's preferences.  And while I might find the end result to my liking, maybe even ideal, the customer might find it comparatively dull and too mellow.

So with this in mind I set to work.  Voicing is one of my favorite aspects of my job - lots of pianos can be tuned impeccably well but still sound unpolished or even unpleasant if the voicing is uneven.  Voicing, when done properly, gives the piano an even, predictable and expressive tone across the entire keyboard and at all dynamic levels.  In this piano's case, the extra brightness was clearly noticeable but not aggressively so, and so it called for a light hand to eliminate it.  Particularly when reducing brightness, it is important to not attempt too much as the first step - you don't want to go too far and then have to bring notes back up that are now too dull. 

As a preliminary step in any voicing job, I play up and down the keyboard, and mark with chalk the range of notes that need to be addressed, and then in particular any notes within that range that stick out more than others (letting me know quickly which notes need more work than the baseline).  After this, I choose a few representative baseline notes (not the ones that stick out the most), lightly needle the hammers and put the action back in and test the result.  In this case, just a couple well placed needles per hammer were enough to get rid of the extra brightness.  After treating the rest of the hammers in the same way and testing, the brightness was gone except for those notes that initially stuck out the most.  A couple more needles per hammer brought those back into line, and from there it was just a matter of double checking for evenness with the rest of the range, making any small modifications necessary from there, and wrapping up!  The end result was a tone that was clear and even across the keyboard, and a happy owner!

After a slow start in the first few months in Omaha, I'm thrilled to report that January has been the busiest month in ASB Piano Service's history (including a year and a half in Chicago) - by far!  Though there is still a long way to go, I'm so happy to see the business moving steadily in the right direction.

Hopefully by the end of the year I'll be able to report that January was also the slowest month of the year for ASB Piano Service.  Here's to a great future!

Just a quick update to let you know that ASB Piano Service is now on Yelp and Angie's List.  As a new small business in the Omaha area, positive reviews and word of mouth are a vital part of growing the business.  If you had your piano tuned by ASB Piano Service and were satisfied with the quality of service, any positive reviews left on either site (or both if the spirit moves you!) would be greatly appreciated!

So the holidays are upon us, and soon houses will be filling with family coming in from near and far to enjoy the time together, the wonderful holiday meals and, of course, the music!  What better time to have your piano tuned than before the house fills with friends and family, eager to gather around the piano and sing a few carols or just relax to some nice music as the tryptophan wears off?

And as a special offer, any tunings that ASB Piano Service gets from your referrals will net you a 10% off discount per referral (up to 50% off total) from your next tuning. Spread the word (and the holiday cheer)!