Weekly Update 11/08/16

Piano Tuning, Update

I haven’t abandoned this blog; I keep meaning to add to it, but over the last week or so it’s been the usual run of the mill piano tunings in the local area, so I haven’t had as much to write about.

Last Friday I had a tuning at a recording studio in the other side of Sheffield which was a new experience. The pianist who was recording an EP at the said studio was booked in for 2 PM so I had to work against the clock and finish the piano tuning within 90 minutes. I’ve had a few jobs where I’ve had to work against the clock and found it actually improves concentration and gets a good piano tuning done within a short space of time. However, I always to go over the piano afterwards and check if any strings have gone out of tune again during the piano tuning.

The day after I had two tuning jobs (Saturdays tend to be a popular day for bookings), then a gig at The Lockwood pub in Huddersfield with my progressive rock covers band Harmony of Spheres. This band is gaining momentum in the local area (particularly in Barnsley where the band originally formed) and I’m surprised at how many promoters have booked us in this last month (as much as I enjoy piano tuning & regulation, it’s always nice to be able to earn a bit of extra brass playing guitar in a group). We still practice in mainly in Barnsley but as three of the members are from Sheffield we’re on the look out for more gigs in this city (as well as others around Yorkshire/Derbyshire).

 

- Richard, Piano Tuner Sheffield.

Weekly Update 26/07/16

Availiability, Piano repairs, Update

Another busy couple of weeks, the most notable occurance being a job at the Cruicible Theater in Sheffield city centre, tuning and repairing a lovely modern upright piano last Saturday morning. With the usual problems of sticking keys (easily remedied with application of teflon powder to the key bushings) and horrible summer humidity causing the piano to go slightly flat of concert pitch, I was glad to get the piano tuned and in working order within 90 minutes, ready for the show starting at 12 PM.

Weekends tend to be busiest time for me, with more people at home on that day and looking to book a piano tuner. I’m fully booked this Saturday (30/07/16), but Sunday evening is still available to those who would like to book a piano tuning. In regard to booking a piano tuning at the last minute, this isn’t a problem for me. If you would like to book a piano tuning but would prefer it to be either on the day or the day after, please don’t hesitate to contact me as there’s a good chance I will be able to fit you in. If you live outside of Sheffield, you will have to bear in mind that the added travel time might make it more difficult for me to fit you in to my schedule, but this isn’t always the case (especially if you live relatively close: in towns such as Barnsley, Rotherham, Doncaster or Chesterfield).

- Richard, Piano Tuner Sheffield.

Weekly Update 13/07/16

Uncategorized, Update

It’s now July and it’s starting to feel like summer. I’ve had some lovely drives to piano tuning jobs outside of Sheffield, made more pleasant by the short patches of nice weather we’ve had. If you live in Rotherham, Doncaster, Barnsley, Chestefield, Dronfield, Hathersage, Bakewell, don’t hesitate to contact my about possible tunings. I have transport and a car journey is not a problem.

I was asked at a Rotherham piano tuning last week whether this is a good time of year to get the piano tuned. There’s no best time of year to tune a piano - the tuning is constantly fluctuating all year round with changes in humidity (which cause the strings to stretch and contract). As a general rule pianos tend to go sharp in summer and flat in the winter. This is why you should have your piano tuned twice a year. Not only is this crucial if you want your piano to be at concert pitch, but like a car, a piano requires periodic maintenance and piano tuners are the only people able to make these repairs and regulations.

Outside of piano tuning, my band Harmony of Spheres have started gigging, with our first gig on the 23rd of July at West Street Live in Sheffield, the night before the EU referendum result. At the moment we play 70s progressive rock covers (Pink Floyd, Genesis, Marillion, Rush, Jethro Tull and others) with a view to adding original material as we progress. There are a few videos on youtube of that gig, although I’m a bit embarrassed that I bent a string out of tune on of them (as a piano tuner has made my ear too sensitive to anything slightly out of tune). We’re playing in Dronfield on Friday night and at the White Lion pub on London Road, Sheffield on Saturday night, so çome a long if it sounds like something you might enjoy.

 

- Richard, Piano Tuner Sheffield.

Weekly update: 29/06/16

Uncategorized

A perfunctory weekly update. Aside from having some house work being done (a new kitchen), the week has seen the usual run of piano tunings across Sheffield, Rotherham and Doncaster (with one in Castleton and one in Barnsley). I also ordered a new tuning lever as my old one was starting to wear out and grip the pins less firmly than it should. Piano tuning tools are always quite expensive, but you’ve got to spend money to make money. It works like a charm and looks a lot like this:

I haven’t got any interesting stories to tell, but I thought I should keep this blog updated anyway. Hopefully, with a few more piano tuning bookings coming in, I’ll have something more to write about next week!

- Richard, Piano Tuner Sheffield.

Weekly Update: 09/07/16

Uncategorized

It’s been another busy week of piano tuning in Sheffield and South Yorkshire. Not only did I have another booking at the Cruicible Theater tuning their grand piano for the performance of Flowers In The Attic , I also have had more customers ringing me up from all over South Yorkshire (on one day I travelled from Rotherham to Sheffield to Doncaster for three seperate piano tuning sessions).

I’m raising my prices by £5 this week as although having such competitive prices has allowed me to find a lot more work (which was essential in my first year of tuning professionally), I’m now at the stage where these prices seem unfair to other Sheffield piano tuners and it seems the time is right to raise these prices slightly. A standard piano tuning will now cost £45 (with a £10 discount if it’s your first booking) which is still an absolute bargain as far as I’m concerned. If you’ve already got a booking with me as of today (09/07/16) the new prices won’t apply. The prices page has now been updated with the new prices added.

- Richard, Piano Tuner Sheffield.

Weekly Update: 26th of of May

Piano Actions, Piano Regulation, Piano repairs

The last two weeks have been busier than usual. Aside from the usual piano tuning jobs scattered across Sheffield, Rotherham, Doncaster and other parts of Yorkshire and Derbyshire, I’ve had six seperate bookings at the Lyceum and Cruicible Theaters to tune their pianos for rehearsals and for the premire of the play Flowers For Mrs Harris (a musical based on the novel by Paul Gallico). Yesterday evening I caught the bus into town to tune the grand piano in between performances. If anyone has seen the play on its current run, I hope the piano sounded lovely.

On Tuesday I purchased a whole new set of tools for replacing the centre pins (a job I’m required to perform for a Sheffield customer next week). Centre pins are the pins found inside the hammer flange that allows the hammer to move when a key is hit. The bushings holding the pins can become too loose or two tight, which can be remedied by adjusting the action parts (which is usually ill-advised as too much alteration will create an uneven touch across the piano - as a quick fix, however, minor adjustments can be made to the capstan screw, the let-off button or the back checks). In my two years of piano tuning professionally I have thus far been able to get by without replacing centre pins. I think this is mainly because in Sheffield (and the north of England generally) the cold and damp climate tends to swell the flange bushings (and the key bushings for that matter) making them grip the pin too firmly - when this is occurs, I apply some protek lubrication which loosens the grip (this has worked every time so far). In hotter climates the reverse is true: the dryness causes the bushings to loosen their grip. The good news is that I’m at the stage now where I’ve got all the tools I need for piano tuning and for the vast majority of repair and regulation work required on the job.

 

- Richard, Piano Tuner Sheffield.

Last minute bookings

Availiability, Rotherham Piano Tuning, Sheffield Piano Tuning

If you are in need of a piano tuner and live in Sheffield (or anywhere else in the South Yorkshire/Derbyshire area), there’s a good chance I can fit you in either on the day you contact me or the day after. I have been piano tuning (in the real world) for almost two years now (that’s five years of piano tuning when you include the three year piano tuning course at college), but I’m far from being fully booked. I generally get one to three bookings a day, seven days a week. There may be a slight issue is for piano tuning customers outside of Sheffield (in Rotherham, Doncaster, Chesterfield, Dronfield , Bakewell, Hathersage, Huddersfield, etc) as you’ll have to allow me a bit of time to get between piano tuning jobs (most of my work tends to be in Sheffield or Rotherham), but if you book early morning or late afternoon/evening this tends not to be a problem. Please don’t think I only book things weeks in advance, my schedule is not as busy as I’d like it to be! On the other hand, booking a piano tuning weeks or even months in advance is perfectly acceptable as well.

- Richard, Piano Tuner Sheffield.

May Update

Uncategorized

This is my first blog post in a few weeks. I still intend to update this blog at least once a week, but the last two weeks have been fairly uneventful, so I haven’t had much to write about! Last week I had a last minute booking at a local Theater in Sheffield, tuning an upright piano for rehearsals. I only had two hours to do a full tuning (a pitch & fine) and some voicing/repair work (making sure the keys were equal in touch and velocity) but managed to get the piano in tune and all the keys feeling much more smooth than they were before I arrived. If I had more time I would have spent more time on voicing as the keys still felt a little heavy to me, but rehearsals began at 9:30 AM and I had been there since 7:30 AM, and much of that time was spent on the tuning, so it was a matter of improving the piano as much as possible in that time, before leaving for another piano tuning on the other side of Sheffield.

 

- Richard, Piano Tuner Sheffield

April Update

Update

April has seen a steady increase in new piano tuning customers (mainly from Sheffield, but a few from Rotherham, Doncaster and Chesterfield and one from Hathersage which allowed me to have a nice day trip out there a few weeks ago). I’ve been piano tuning professionally for nearly two years now and I’m at the stage where I receive a new enquiry almost every day. Every now and then I will forget to keep take my mobile phone out with me (I’ve never been a phone person but I’m trying to be better) or I’ll leave it charging and in some instances I occasionally miss calls from potential customers. If this happens to you then I sincerely apologise; I will see the missed call status at some point during the day and will get back to you immediately. If you phone me and I’m out you could always try contacting me by email if you feel so inclined (I check my email inbox multiple times per day).

Aside from the piano tuning business, I had a trip to London last weekend for my Dad’s birthday. It was the first time I’d had a good trip away from Sheffield in a while, so I enjoyed the bustle of being in a different city. Lots of good food, visited some art galleries, walked through Camden market, and didn’t think about piano tuning for a change! I got back in Sheffield on Sunday night and prepared for band practice the next day, which was held in Barnsley.

- Richard, piano tuner Sheffield.

How Long Should You Wait Before Getting Your Piano Tuned After Delivery?

Piano Tuning, Sheffield Piano Tuning

A piano owner in Sheffield just emailed me, asking how long he should wait before getting his second-hand piano tuned after delivery. I replied with the following (edited slightly):

Piano dealers will often tell you to wait a while (usually a few weeks, but in this persons case 3 months) before getting your piano tuned to allow to it “settle into its new home”. Their view is that the piano will not hold its tuning very well until it has gotten used to the changes in humidity, which affect the soundboard and the inner workings of the piano. While this is true, changing temperature and humidity will subtly affect the tuning of the piano all year round, and in my experience, the extent to which these changes affect the stability of the tuning are often exaggerated. Speaking from experience, the extent to which the strings are tightened has a more drastic affect on how long the piano stays in tune than does the room’s atmospheric conditions. Leaving the piano months without a tuning will ensure that, when the piano tuner is finally booked, the whole piano is even more flat that it would have been. Then the piano tuner will have to stretch the strings even more than they would have done, putting more pressure on the soundboard resulting in a less stable tuning. For this very reason, piano tuners recommend that a piano is tuned at least once every six months. This way you will have a piano kept close to concert pitch and will stay in tune for longer after each tuning.

- Richard, Piano Tuner Sheffield.