I remember reading something Mark Twain wrote in his old age where he said that he loved being a river pilot more than any other profession he had ever undertaken, and, had the Civil War not closed the Mississippi River and put him out of work, he would gladly have spent his entire life on the river. Considering his future success as a writer, many would doubt the sincerity of his remarks, but, not me. When something gets into your blood, it's hard to shake off. In my case it is being a piano tuner/technician, a trade that goes back in our family to my grandfather. I've been at it for over forty years. I have often said that if God gave me the choice of either playing pianos, or, working on them, I'd rather work on them. Did I have other options? Sure. In the late sixties I worked for several major record companies as a studio and road musician, writer, arranger, and artist road manager. By the time my oldest daughter was two she had an English nanny and we lived in a penthouse overlooking the ocean with Johnny Cash as our neighbor. However, I still did piano work part time. (If you care to hear some recordings for which I wrote the songs, arranged the orchestrations, and played the piano, Google recording artist Janie Christina.) While still in my twenties, I was a highly paid consultant for Bell Labs and helped develop the musical note sequences used in the touch tone telephone system. Since it was my call, and I was still a piano technician, I set the dial tone at A440 so my tuning customers only had to hit the A note on their piano, while listening to the dial tone, to know if their instrument was in need of tuning. As a free lance writer and photographer I have published hundreds of articles and photographs in major National publications. Many editors offered me full time employment. A major Philadelphia radio station offered me a job as a talk show host. A large National corporation tried to make me their vice president of research and development. I was the personal secretary to an International multi billionaire banker. I get paid to do story telling and stand up comedy, an avocation I could easily pursue full time. Some of the preceding I may write about in future blogs, but, the point is, piano work was neither my only option, nor, was it the most lucrative, but, it was my addiction. Although I get to tune for many famous people, I actually enjoy the everyday people I meet much more. I love learning about their work, their hobbies, and their viewpoints on life. Bottom line, however, it's the instruments themselves. I remember taking the piano in our living room all apart and putting it back together whenever my parents were away for the evening. I was about ten or eleven years old. All these years later, I still do not claim to totally understand this complex instrument fully, because, pianos take on a life of their own. There is a weird phenomenon in physics where an object becomes greater than the sum of it's parts. Steam locomotives, ships,and even computers are like that. Likewise, is a piano. If it were not so, a concert artist would not test dozens of instruments of the same make and model to find the one that is just right. Each piano I work on has it's own personality and quirks. I'm never bored. Then there is the fact that in most jobs, be it a salesman, surgeon, or soldier, most days come down to "you win some, you lose some." At the end of my day I get to look back and know that every piano is better because I worked on it. That feels great!
