My old Piano
I remember being carted up to East London somewhere on the Commercial
Road to a shop specialising in pianos. I must have been 15 or there
about. The place was full of them in all shapes and sizes with their
appropriate price tag neatly displayed. I wandered about the place
amazed; I had never seen so many in one place! My Dad must have
mentioned to the shop assistant a price range because he called me over
and we were then shown into the second hand dept. away from the
Steinways and Co.
It’s not that we didn’t have a piano at home. I grew up with a lovely instrument, a big upright black shiny one. Well, it will be always be 'big' and 'shiny' in my mind when every time we had visitors you’re placed on the piano stool with the keyboard above ones shoulders and animated to bang the keys with little clenched fists to the amusement of the grown-ups.
It was still the same one I started to learn to play when I reached 11 years old. This little shove in the direction of ‘active music’ and not just listening to it, came about when an Aunt taught me chopsticks and said I should have lessons. As my Mum could play by ear and my Dad could read those funny little tadpoles on telegraph lines, they thought it was a good idea and I was sent twice a week evenings to have private lessons.
So after a few years and a number of music exams behind me, there I was in a piano shop with my parents edging me on to pick another piano which in their eyes should be less Victorian, smaller and ‘modern’. I suspect the old one didn't ‘fit’ style wise in the front room. And as with Henry Ford and his Model T, 'you can have any colour as long as it’s black ', the choice I had was the one that my Dad was pointing at with a smile on his face which could turn instantly into a frown if things didn’t go as he had planned. I don’t really know why I was brought along in the first place. If I had had any choice in the matter I would have liked to have kept the old one, but you can’t argue with parents when they give you the impression that they are ‘doing something good 4u’.
If I remember rightly I don’t think I even tried it out before buying.
Well
after a couple of years and further exams I scraped through and got my
A.L.C.M. at 17. I was practicing so much at the end I didn’t have time
for other things musical or otherwise. After leaving school I started
working in a hospital lab and music became mostly passive. I saw music
as a hobby never as a possible profession as you have to be very good to
get anywhere in the business. When we moved to Germany due to my Dads
work, the piano went with us. Here the only picture I have of the piano,
plus in part the piano stool that my Dad built which one can open and
store music. I still have it. After they went back the piano followed me
to my first flat, and then onto the next. It finally found its
pre-finial resting place in our present house, location cellar, as there
was just no room anywhere else.
At the end it was constantly out of tune as the frame had become a hair line crack, which was no wonder when you think of the sojourn it had behind it. What sounded quite good, lets say 'original', was Ragtime. I had seen the film ‘The Sting’ and went out and bought all Scott Joplin’s music I could get. I was also getting interested in certain Avant Garde music at the time, where tuning isn’t ‘that’ important 😉. I used it to create sounds by playing directly on the strings or lodging all manner of objects between them, my very own ‘prepared piano’.
I even tried to tune it myself, and as my perfect pitch days from the time of my music exams were long gone, I
build a device to help with the tuning consisting of a microphone, an
oscillator where the note/octave was selectable, and a LED blinking as
the result of the interference between the piano string via the
microphone and the oscillator. When the LED stopped blinking the string
was tuned, but this took ages and the piano would not hold for long
anyway. If I had kept up the torture by continuing to ‘turning the
screws’, the static stress may have lead to implosion, or what ever
pianos do when they die.
In the end, I had to have the piano put down… no, that’s not quite right, let’s say ‘taken apart’ professionally with a sledge hammer. I had a few friends in to break it up. I couldn't look let alone help. Slightly macabre but I still have a part of the innards, the hammer mechanism (see right), also the brass foot pedals and the piano key for tuning. They are now ‘trophies’ for the wall when I find time to hang them up.
It’s not that we didn’t have a piano at home. I grew up with a lovely instrument, a big upright black shiny one. Well, it will be always be 'big' and 'shiny' in my mind when every time we had visitors you’re placed on the piano stool with the keyboard above ones shoulders and animated to bang the keys with little clenched fists to the amusement of the grown-ups.
It was still the same one I started to learn to play when I reached 11 years old. This little shove in the direction of ‘active music’ and not just listening to it, came about when an Aunt taught me chopsticks and said I should have lessons. As my Mum could play by ear and my Dad could read those funny little tadpoles on telegraph lines, they thought it was a good idea and I was sent twice a week evenings to have private lessons.
So after a few years and a number of music exams behind me, there I was in a piano shop with my parents edging me on to pick another piano which in their eyes should be less Victorian, smaller and ‘modern’. I suspect the old one didn't ‘fit’ style wise in the front room. And as with Henry Ford and his Model T, 'you can have any colour as long as it’s black ', the choice I had was the one that my Dad was pointing at with a smile on his face which could turn instantly into a frown if things didn’t go as he had planned. I don’t really know why I was brought along in the first place. If I had had any choice in the matter I would have liked to have kept the old one, but you can’t argue with parents when they give you the impression that they are ‘doing something good 4u’.
If I remember rightly I don’t think I even tried it out before buying.
Well
after a couple of years and further exams I scraped through and got my
A.L.C.M. at 17. I was practicing so much at the end I didn’t have time
for other things musical or otherwise. After leaving school I started
working in a hospital lab and music became mostly passive. I saw music
as a hobby never as a possible profession as you have to be very good to
get anywhere in the business. When we moved to Germany due to my Dads
work, the piano went with us. Here the only picture I have of the piano,
plus in part the piano stool that my Dad built which one can open and
store music. I still have it. After they went back the piano followed me
to my first flat, and then onto the next. It finally found its
pre-finial resting place in our present house, location cellar, as there
was just no room anywhere else.At the end it was constantly out of tune as the frame had become a hair line crack, which was no wonder when you think of the sojourn it had behind it. What sounded quite good, lets say 'original', was Ragtime. I had seen the film ‘The Sting’ and went out and bought all Scott Joplin’s music I could get. I was also getting interested in certain Avant Garde music at the time, where tuning isn’t ‘that’ important 😉. I used it to create sounds by playing directly on the strings or lodging all manner of objects between them, my very own ‘prepared piano’.
I even tried to tune it myself, and as my perfect pitch days from the time of my music exams were long gone, I
build a device to help with the tuning consisting of a microphone, an
oscillator where the note/octave was selectable, and a LED blinking as
the result of the interference between the piano string via the
microphone and the oscillator. When the LED stopped blinking the string
was tuned, but this took ages and the piano would not hold for long
anyway. If I had kept up the torture by continuing to ‘turning the
screws’, the static stress may have lead to implosion, or what ever
pianos do when they die.In the end, I had to have the piano put down… no, that’s not quite right, let’s say ‘taken apart’ professionally with a sledge hammer. I had a few friends in to break it up. I couldn't look let alone help. Slightly macabre but I still have a part of the innards, the hammer mechanism (see right), also the brass foot pedals and the piano key for tuning. They are now ‘trophies’ for the wall when I find time to hang them up.
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