Piano Tuna!

The piano is tuned! It sounds like music!

And Doug the Piano Tuner was able to find me some spare hammers to replace the two missing ones! And he put a third string on the top note, where it was missing!

He tells me it tuned up just fine. He played a jazz piece to test it out, and I have the vid to prove it!

The next effort will be for me to tune myself. I have to prevent all this success from making me regret the clack in the keys.

Hellsbells, Kate, Lester is 97 years old! You can’t really hear the clack unless you’re right on top of it. You've got nothing to complain about. So stop it! stop it! stop it!!

. . . This is my damned perfectionist streak creeping out. No, I'm not consistently perfectionistic. If things are generally awry, I let them go and don’t worry. In fact, I put up with and ignore all sorts of mess and chaos-- witness the scabby state of my woodwork the past four years. But if things are aaallllmost right, I want them to be right altogether, blast it.

Tough tuna. With a 1911-vintage upright piano, It. Ain’t. Happening.

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(If anyone is interested, the tuner's two visits, including time, parts, and labor, ran me under $100. It's money well spent.)

A440!

The piano tuner has come and gone, and guess what! He was able to bring my 1911 Lester piano up a whole tone to match concert pitch!

Or maybe not, not quite, not yet. He said, "I tuned it, but it won't sound like it's in tune. I still have to fine tune it. We'll let it settle, then I'll come back and do that."

He tried to explain to me how a piano can be in tune, yet sound like it's out. But I haven't a good enough grip of the science of harmonics to understand how that works. But I can hear it when I play it. A little jangly, ya know?

He'll return on Easter Monday, and do the fine tuning. Meanwhile, if I turn off my aural "Ouch" reflex, I can actually use my piano to learn choir music, without having to transpose a tone up!

Good news, good news! . . . On the other hand, the rattle I get when I strike the keys with any force-- I'm stuck with that. It's because Lester is old. He harmonizes well with my creaky elbows and knees!