It’s called reverse engineering…
Since I had work and no one to help me…I had to use my deductive powers to figure out exactly what the designer of the piano wanted. Many times the design of anything doesn’t quite make it out the other side of production intact.
I read and read and read on the design and construction of pianos. I tried to assimilate what the mechanical and acoustical design wisdom was. And it was collective. There weren’t too many difference from one piano to another and from one designer to another. Now, that is a generality. Of course what makes one piano feel and sound differently from another is design difference, but the differences aren’t major. One will find how one manufacturer feels about the scale design and how another feels about the action geometry and trigonometry. But I promise, the differences are more nuances than departures.
OK…here’s a pet peeve: there are those who like to hear themselves talk about “action geometry” to impress the class. Geometry is that branch of mathematics that deals with size, shape and position of two dimensional shapes and three dimensional figures. Trigonometry on the other hand depends on angle measurement and quantities determined by the measure of an angle. Of course, all of geometry depends on treating angles as quantities, but in the rest of geometry, angles aren’t measured, they’re just compared or added or subtracted.
I read the letterhead of a fellow rebuilder which stated that they made a certain type of soundboard and used a word to describe it that I had never heard before used in soundboards of pianos or anywhere in the study of acoustics. I won’t repeat the word here because I think it is still in use and it is an embarrassment. I had to ask what that meant. He told me he made the word up…YIKES how some people focus on the wrong things. I figure you focus on making great soundboards, not make believe ones. The saying goes: “if you can’t amaze them with your talent, you baffle them with your bull…”, or something like that.
My study of pianos led me down many paths; guitars, violins, and harps, anything that had strings, and a way to excite them and produce an amplified sound. That approach revealed many truths in the piano world which I used to learn the math and procedures to give that rebuilt piano the quality of touch and tone it deserved while staying true to the manufacturer’s intent and design…not an easy task.
Of course, all of this study, research, trial, and yes error did manage to hold up production in the beginning, but it all paid off in the end.
In reality though, there is no end. One strives for perfection but one never gets there. You never, never stop learning. A prospective client once asked if I could say something about my work that would prompt him to write a check for a rebuilding deposit. Without thinking, I offered the following, “My next rebuilding is always better than my last.” He wrote the check. That is still true today.
I teach my students that the progression of improvement in piano rebuilding goes something like this: the first one is awful, the second better, the third better, and the fourth awful. What happened on the fourth, “you get cocky and over confident”. You have to learn to leave your ego and over-confidence in the back seat, slow down and pay attention to the task at hand.
In the ensuing offerings, we will take that journey over again while we go through the piano and try to understand it better. I promise to mix in some stories, both funny and not so to keep things on the move.
In the meantime, if you have a piano, play it. Don’t just let it sit there. I know you don’t have time, you can’t play anymore; you wish your mother made you take lessons. I’ve heard all the excuses. It’s music, it’s culture, it’s beautiful, and as my friend Jim says, “there are no wrong notes”. It’s not called work the piano it’s called play. Go…play. Just fifteen minutes a day and you will be surprised how the consistency will bring improvement which brings joy and fun.
Remember, as adults we have diseases. The symptoms are the adult ear, we think we can run home and play something we’ve heard on the radio just because we have the music, and, we have responsibilities…mortgages, kids, work. Fifteen minutes a day…use it as your “me time”