Some Tunes


Friday, November 27, 2009

On the Road

My little 16 track recorder is mobile, but once I get everything hooked up, I dread the idea of moving it for any reason. However, I have a piano in another room in my house, so today was the day. Moving day. On the road again. It was tough, it took about 6 minutes to get set up and give it a try. Here's a picture of where I went.

I love my piano - a lot of memories for me. This was my grandmother's for as long as I can remember. I pretty much learned to play this in her living room. When she passed away a number of years ago, I asked to get it and my family was gracious enough to oblige. About 3 years or so ago, my wife and I had it refinished. It took about 7 months, but got it back and was just thrilled. I had it tuned last week and, for a 120 year-old, it is sounding great. It's a 6'4" Chickering and build tough.

I learned a lot from the piano tuner, who's been tuning for 45 years and is an absolute piano freak. He talked as if he knew Mr. Chickering personally (age was close). A downside to an older piano is that, at least this old, they were not tuned to the same frequency as they are today. An A is now at 440 BPS, but this is a little lower at around 435, which means after you record, you either have to adjust the pitch or tune your other instruments down to match. A small price to pay.

I don't know yet how much I'll use it to record, but I love writing, especially ballads on my old friend. More to come for sure.

2 comments:

  1. Hey, that's fascinating. I never would have known this about the old piano. Cool info.

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  2. I have yet another blog, in case you're running out of things to read. Actually, it's "random" photos. Sometimes of cool places I've been, other times, well, we will see. It's called Tapirgal's Daily Image. I'm still doing the other blogs. Hopefully someday I'll continue the main personal one. I take so many pix these days, it got harder to keep it up. I'm enjoying your blog. I hope you are, too.

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