The Joy of Discovery

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2024-11-25 02:30:04

I got a piano about a year ago. Our neighbors were redoing their flooring and wanted to get rid of a beautiful, black upright. Pianos are a tricky instrument to own. They’re expensive, require yearly maintenance and tuning, and are wildly heavy and awkward to move. For most of us they become nothing more than expensive dust collectors once our initial interest wanes. It’s a lot cheaper to buy a treadmill for a better dollar to dust-collecting-surface-area value.

Either way, I bought the piano. My first thought after deciding to buy the thing was, “I’m sure me and my neighbor can move it.” I was wrong. I ended up paying professional movers just to get it from next door. I’m glad I did. It took three people to carefully maneuver the thing into my 1st floor office. Even just a couple stairs proved to be a challenge even with the right equipment.

I had to wait a couple weeks before tuning it. Pianos need time to settle into their new environments. My next thought was, “how hard could it be to tune? I know how to tune guitars, it’s probably the same basic idea.” I was wrong again. Turns out piano tuning is part skill and part art with lots of subtle nuance to it. It’s far from just turning knobs until the tuner goes green. Apparently you have to consider how the harmonics in the body affect other strings to avoid unintentional vibrations. You need to be carefully mentored and it can take years to get good at it. Wild.

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