ClassicPiano Gayle's Blog

26 January 2007: A Testimonial to the Old Upright
6 February 2007: Considerations When Choosing a Piano Tuner.
(For those who have not had experience with pianos and their maintenance)
22February 2007: Thanks Be To The Piano Or How I learned to love my work while tuning pianos.
28 May 2007: Feng Shui and Your Piano
17 December 2007 : Tuning Pianos in December

25 February 2008: Other People’s Pianos and Pets

A piano tuner, once ensconced at the piano in a home, becomes a bit like the proverbial fly on the wall. The work of a piano technician is continuously fascinating but I find the home piano setting particularly interesting.

Almost daily I enter houses that are these unique domestic entities teaming with energy coming from a myriad of life forms. Each one is another world with the commonality of a piano.

Upon my arrival the human client usually greets and leads the way to the piano where I will set up shop and go about my business for the next hour or so. Most people don’t want to stick around much past the first strike of the initial pitch. Who but the piano tuner wants to listen to that??

Enter the friendly cat or dog who will sit at my feet making sure this stranger behaves. I am fine with this as animals are always my friends. At home I have a pack of dogs who lie at my feet during piano playing time so it seems only natural to have animals present wherever and whenever. My dogs don’t seem interested in music but they are always there while I play the piano. I guess I could say that about any activity I do – my dogs are there.

A while back I entered a home that had the piano in the midst of a bird sanctuary. I couldn’t count all the birds living in this large meandering space but they clearly had a good life. Birds are musical beings so I was interested to observe how they would take to my tuning in their midst. Mostly large parrots were closest to the piano’s space. They never took their eyes off of me but stayed relatively quiet throughout the process. One came over and sat on the bench after a bit of coaxing – a thrill it was for me.

Long ago I had a tuning client in New Jersey who had two big parrots who sat at the piano with her as she practiced. She taught them songs and they could sing in unison (sort of) entire pieces of music. This example has become my standard for what birds can learn and perform in the human realm of music. They sang, “I left my heart, in San Francisco. High on a hill, it calls to me…..etc.” Sigh…..I do miss visiting Pedro and Sasha and their piano.

Much of the story about the ‘bird sanctuary’ was not gleaned on that first visit (for reasons of no interest to anyone but me), however, the next tuning will certainly shed more light on this ‘new’ other world with a piano. The piano needs work, as most old uprights do, so I look forward to returning to this interesting realm. I’ll have to set up shop and spend a few hours cleaning and regulating the piano. During that time I hope to become more acquainted with the bird residents.

As I said, continuously fascinating.