Tuesday, 15 September 2009

Yesterday was a bit of an adventure.

You may recall that I had gotten my rented piano installed into the apartment last Friday, but that it was out of tune to the point of unplayability. A tuner was (theoretically) supposed to come tune the piano yesterday, but I didn’t have any particular time to expect him, or any prearranged way for him to contact me. When I hadn’t heard anything by about 10:30, I decided to ask for our Fudan helper to make a phone call to the piano store, who should have set up the tuning to find out when to expect him, and to pass along the information of how to find his way to our apartment. She later reported that he was quite appreciative of the latter, as he was essentially wandering the street outside. He’d gotten close with what he’d been told, but wasn’t ever going to find his way here without help.

So he showed up around 11:30 and proceeded to “tune.” I’ve put that in scare quotes, because, although there was some superficial resemblance between his procedures and what a real tuner would have done, it quickly became clear to my ear that he wasn’t doing much more than making a modest, baby steps kind of improvement to the general tuning already done on the piano. In particular, for notes that have multiple strings (some have two, some have three) he was ensuring that those strings were at some common pitch. But he wasn’t particularly concerned just what that agreed upon pitch was. Sometimes it was higher than it should be, sometimes lower. There was no attempt eliminate the horrible dissonances between sets of notes (that ought to be consonant together) that are the inevitable consequence of his “method.”

He worked for about an hour. Then he made as though to leave. I signed that I wanted to try out the piano first. I played a bit of Mendelssohn (I chose this because there are relatively few intentional dissonances is his music). Many many growls were produced by the poor piano tuning. He was unmoved. I pointed out a few of the worst cross-tunings. No response. I got more insistent. I thought at that point that he had gotten the message. (In fact he hadn’t.)

I then got a brain wave. I remembered someone showing me an iPhone app called Cleartune that samples whatever could be picked up from the iPhone’s built in microphone and if it is a single tone, identifies the pitch.

I quickly purchased this from the app store (a few bucks well spent), fired it up, went back to the tuner, and quickly showed him how some notes were a bit under, some a bit over the correct pitch (assuming that A above middle C is at 440 Hz, the standard).

At this point he was clearly fed up with me. He got on his cell phone, and spoke a few words (to his boss, I suppose). He then handed me the phone. At the other end, whoever it was would speak a few syllables of English every so often mixed into a stream of Chinese. The upshot seemed to be that my tuner had no more time for me today, but could come back “in a few days.”
Hmm.

I’m ashamed to say that what happened next was that I got discouraged.

But I never stay that way for long. My mother didn’t raise me that way.

Nor will Miles ever let me pout for long. He always brings me around.

After we had a nice big lunch, I felt better. I first called the apartment rental agency helper who had helped me with my piano rental, and asked her to make another call back to the piano store to let them know I was not satisfied with their tuner. She reported that they would send one in the next couple of days. Then, I put plan B into motion. I went back to google translate and prepared a little “poem” that I could print and take with me that said (but in Chinese):

I’m sorry, I don’t speak Chinese.
Do you sell piano tuning wrenches?
I would like to buy one.

Armed with this, and a printed picture of just such a wrench) I set off for Jin Ling Road, where my piano store (and about a bizillion others) are clustered in Shanghai. After going into approximately half a bizillion of them, I finally found my way to one where I got an affirmative answer to the query on the middle line. Two minutes, and ¥128 (a bit less than $20) later, I was the proud owner of a piano tuning wrench. Not a particular noble instance of the breed, but one that looked eminently serviceable. I high-tailed it back to the apartment and the wrench and I together made a pass at the worst of the mess the tuner had left. In half an hour — and, please note, I am a total amateur as a tuner — I was happily playing my Mendelssohn and Miles didn’t complain or sigh.

In coming days, if the piano shop doesn’t actually send anybody, I’ll have a more thorough go at the piano with my trusty wrench. Enough baby steps and I’ll have that piano singing cantabile.

Postscript: Tuesday afternoon

The piano shop just sent out another tuner — and this one was much better. He did a real tuning. The piano sounds pretty darned good!