My latest piano recording
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Thank you both for listening and for the nice compliments!!
@Rontuner said in My latest piano recording:
When was the last tuning? It really sounds nice -
thank you!! I'm so, so happy with this piano! And even though the recording sounds pretty good, it loses a lot of the richness or tonal color that you can hear in person. Which is telling.
When my tuner comes, I go and stand in the living room (under the vaulted, not flat, ceiling) and it just sounds amazing. After tuning, he always plays some hymns and things with big big chords, and you can just hear so much in the sound....
So re the last tuning... Funny story
... It was last tuned in July, so about 7 months ago. Since then, I have actually had him come twice, once around New Year's and once just last week, thinking I would have him tune it, but both times he's left without tuning! (Thank goodness, he lives in my neighborhood! I sent him home with a tip of course)When we've had these cold snaps, and the indoor RH drops to about 25% in the piano room, the piano gets "cranky" ... it sounds harsh and I think the hammers get hard and that makes some of the notes pop out in weird ways. So I was thinking it needed tuning, but when he came at New Year's, we were in the middle of this crazy cold snap, and he said "let's not tune because the tuning itself hasn't drifted, and the RH is so low, let's wait to tune when the RH goes up." So I made an appt for a month later.
Well, on the day before he was scheduled to come, I was playing and I thought "he's not going to tune. This piano sounds amazing." But it was like 9pm the day before he was scheduled to come at 10am, and I didn't want to cancel... But wouldn't you know it, he got here, played the piano for maybe 2-3 minutes, looked up at me and laughed.
Thank goodness he's retired and he says my appts aren't taking away from him visiting other clients... I think he likes coming here. Anyway, he played a little more and just raved about the piano. He said, and I quote, "this piano just has a delicious sound." (My heart might have been bursting about then....)
I wish I could capture that deliciousness in the recording, but ah well.
Pianos up here in Chicago are really struggling to stay in tune through all of the weather swings!
You know I have the dampp chaser, and also in the piano room, I have a smallish humidifier (evaporative). The humidifier is very "mild," as in, it doesn't spit out a ton of moisture.
But between the DC, the humidifier, and the Yamaha C2's natural disposition, the tuning is incredibly stable.
Also, this tuner is really, really good. I think I may have told you, he's retired from the music school here, he was the head tuner for probably 20-30 years before retiring. The music school has over 470 pianos, so his level of experience is just miles and miles above the last two people I had tune it. The first time I had him tune for me, I could tell immediately that the quality of the tuning was sooo soo good.
So it's definitely a combination of the piano, the tuner, and my humidity-adding efforts.
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That was lovely. I'm curious what the time signature is, the rhythm sounds complex. Agree about the piano, it sounds really nice. I'm surprised to hear "25% RH". When it's really cold here (near zero and below), mine gets down to around 30%. Above that it hovers between 35% and 40% in the dead of winter. I don't have a damp chaser but do have a Honeywell humidifier that needs filling with 5 quarts of water every day. I also have a air purifier that runs constantly, partly to clean the air and partly to circulate the air. My wood stove is also in the room.
I do notice a big difference in the tone of the piano when the humidity drops below 30%, which it does occasionally if it's really, really cold, the humidifier ran out of water, or something else.
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Thank you @Bernard!!
@Bernard said in My latest piano recording:
I'm curious what the time signature is, the rhythm sounds complex.
It's 5/4
I think that's one of the things I liked about it at first, it gives it a sort of hidden complexity Agree about the piano, it sounds really nice.
Thank you!!
I'm surprised to hear "25% RH".
Yeah, when my piano room gets down to 25% RH, my piano gets cranky. When it goes back up to 35% after a week at 25%, I notice it immediately. The piano sounds much better.
The thing that amazes me is that, despite those RH swings, it doesn't knock the tuning out.
The first acoustic piano I owned was a Yamaha U1 (in Japan) and that piano was also super consistent....
I have always had my piano tuned twice a year though (all the pianos I've owned), or maybe more like once every 5 months.... for personal preference, not because the pianos necessarily need it. I suspect that frequency helps of course, but there's something about these Yamahas. They have the reputation they do for a reason.
I've owned a Baldwin Hamilton upright and a Petrof upright, and they were nothing like this in terms of tuning stability.
The Petrof had a nice, distinctive sound, but it had not been cared for before I got it, and as a result was rickety.
But this Yamaha C2 is my pride and joy.
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@ShiroKuro said in My latest piano recording:
I wish I could capture that deliciousness in the recording, but ah well.
I'd say it was pretty delicious as is, more delicious would amaze me. I was happy to be able to watch you play and really enjoy the precision with which you handled that composition. Your tempo was ideal.
Big Al
Money seems to buy the most happiness when you give it away.
Why does everything have to be so complicated, all in the name of convenience. -ShiroKuro
A lifetime of experience will change a person. If it doesn't, then you're already dead inside. -MarkJ
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@Big_Al said in My latest piano recording:
I'd say it was pretty delicious as is, more delicious would amaze me. I was happy to be able to watch you play and really enjoy the precision with which you handled that composition. Your tempo was ideal.
Thank you Big Al!! I worked on the tempo a lot!
Also, I recently bought an iPhone stand that sits on the shelf next to the piano. The video here is that angle. If I put the stand on the piano lid, I can get a true overhead shot, but I'd have to keep the lid, so I went with the side shot.
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@Bernard said in My latest piano recording:
I do notice a big difference in the tone of the piano when the humidity drops below 30%, which it does occasionally if it's really, really cold, the humidifier ran out of water, or something else.
I also notice this.
