4 posts tagged “piano”

Hit a swarm of bees driving home yesterday.  No kidding.  Plowed right into the middle of a cartoonish-looking black cloud in the middle of a four-lane road.  Then it sounded like heavy rain for a second.  Then silence and 79 (yes, I counted) splatters on my windshield.  And three honeybees stuck in the wiper blades.

Two more keys went out on the piano (:::shakes fist in the air:::), so I called our awesome piano guy who is going to pick my baby up on Friday for a complete lube job on the action.  He'd diagnosed that this may need to be done when he was at our house for the tuning, but wanted to wait to see it we had problems first.  I'ma be without her for a couple of days.  Unfortunately it's over this weekend, when Andy was going to be gone and I would've had the piano allll to myself.  Blast it all.

I lifted weights while watching the Biggest Loser finale.  Hated the lifting weights part, but loved that the winner of the show weighed something like 125 pounds, when she started at over 220 lbs!!  I know I didn't get her weight(s) exactly correct, but I really don't care enough to go look them up.

I observed that now that I've cut chips out (remember they were like 10 - 20% of my daily caloric intake??) and have subsequently replaced them with fruits and vegetables (hey, you know that pickles actually make a decent substitute for chips because they're salty and crunchy?  Once you get over the juiciness.  Someone should really dry those suckers down and make pickle chips.  Anyway...) I'm actually having trouble eating a sufficient amount of calories for the day.  Having trouble.  That has never happened before.  See, told you I wasn't really overeating on anything else...  Plus, my fiber count for the day has gone way up.  That's gotta count for something.

Got the piano tuned on Wednesday, after two and a half painstaking weeks of acclimation to our home's climate.  The thing was out of tune when we got it.  It grew shriller and more discordant as time grew on.  Oh, and the Middle C stopped working too.

Thus, my beauty became the beast.  So much so that it sat lonely in the foyer for days at a time without being played.  I'd sit down and try once in a while.  The Forrest Gump theme, my go-to, gave me a headache, most of the notes running around high in the upper register.  I wasn't able to really, really learn anything new because syncopations, funky rhythms, and, oh hell, just basic runs are clunky and awkward when you hit a key like Middle C and you don't get any sound in return.  I squeezed Lennon's "Imagine" for all it was worth, being a pretty simple and straightforward song in the lower register where the tuning had stayed fairly stable.  There's only so far you can go with one song, though.

I just about kissed the piano tuner when he showed up at our house Wednesday night.  Not that I don't love seeing the guy anyway.  He's about our age, and a total musician.  Restores pianos for a living.  Not too many 20-somethings in that field.  He gave the piano some much needed TLC and now it not only sounds phenomenal, but it's easier to play.  The keys don't take as much force to depress, and I'm making fewer mistakes than ever.

I've got a half day Friday today, so I'm going to head over to the music store and peruse.  I'm shopping for two different kinds of classics.  Classic piano-heavy songs that my friends would know - think Elton, Lennon, etc - and Classical.  Except I've never had to pick my own classical before.  I've always had it handed to me, so I've played it, but never by choice.  My mom always loved Chopin and she had some Tchaikovsky stuff too.  Hmm, maybe I'll have to commiserate with her.  Then there's Gershwin and the like, older than Classic, newer than Classical.  Anyway, should make for a good discussion with the Friday afternoon music store clerks and clientele.

Last night, I tried my hand at a Ben Folds (Reinhold Messner) book that Andy bought me once upon a time.  I've been too chicken to play anything out of it before.  I quickly remembered why.  The guy is a mad kind of piano genius.  He doesn't read music.  Nor does he write it, on paper that is.  He hears it and his hands translate it.  Hal Leonard, aka a sheet music company - for those who aren't familiar, gets a big fat Kudos from me for even attempting a theoretical translation of Ben's art.  Slides, trills, 64th notes that you need to hammer with two pointer fingers, triplets comprised of 32nd notes, key signatures were you play all black keys except one.  The repeated measures aren't even true repeats.  They have one set of notes in a measure and a second set of notes in parentheses contained in the same measure.  The idea is to play the parenthetical set of notes on the repeat.  This makes me want to tear my hair out.  That is NOT a repeat.  Anyhow, enough gibberish.  There are probably no non-piano players still attempting to read this paragraph of nonsensical jargon.  ;)

So I'm off to the music store.  Wish me luck!  And if you have any suggestions/requests - shout em out!

Last night was the first of two nights my husband and I had to get the house clean before his parents come on Friday.  Instead of cleaning, we took pretty much the entire night to visit the two pianos in my post below.  It was worth it.

First up was the Bauer.  A gorgeous piece.  So old that the thing had to have been completely stripped and repainted at some point, because the finish was absolutely pristine.  The keys were in great shape, and the inside looked great too.  The hammers were all aligned, had good tension, and had hardly any string indentations in them.  All in all, it looked great.  The instrument had been made in Germany and brought over to the U.S.  But the sound?  Oooooookay.  At best.  It was in bad need of tuning, which normally wouldn't have concerned me but this piano is 80 years old at least.  With an owner who didn't play it and hadn't ever tuned it, we had no way of knowing if the thing could maintain a tuning.  Andy also pointed out how bright the sound was in the treble keys.  The real bright sound isn't really my cup of tea, regardless of the tune.  We had our answer.

Not only that, but the family kind of gave us the skeeves.  The dad had two little girls, maybe 3 and 5, in tow.  He looked at the 3-year-old and said, "Did you cut your hair again?!" She said, "No" and pointed to her sister.  He scolded his older daughter.  Then, obviously frustrated, he said, "I'm going to let [3-year-old] cut your hair, how about that?"  I laughed, because I could understand the sentiment.  Except... they left us to go find a pair of scissors.  Andy and I weren't sure what to do.  We walked back and heard the guy talking angrily over the phone, probably to his wife.  Then I saw the 3-year-old walking back to her Dad with safety scissors saying, "Here, Dad!" 

Exit stage left.

Andy and I battled traffic all the way home, grabbed a quick something to eat, then headed off to a storage unit 1/2 block from our house to see the Samick.  We arrived at the self-storage place first, and the family selling the Samick arrived shortly after.  The wife popped out of the turquoise minivan, ran up to greet me, then waved at us to follow them back into the facility.  So we drove back.  She introduced us to her husband, and said she'd wait in the car with the kids while we took a look.  Andy and I went inside to see the piano.  Andy and the husband got the piano out of storage, and rolled it into the hallway.  "Pristine" doesn't really begin to cover this one.  It's brand freaking new.  They bought it new a couple of years ago, and their daughter decided she didn't want to play anymore.  We looked at it inside and out.

I played it.  Oh.  I am in love with how it sounds.  So beautiful.  I just played and played.  Andy played his three songs.  That was it.  We'd seen enough.  We had to talk about it of course, so we thanked them profusely for dragging their family out for us and we left.  We got in the car and Andy, who has been all 'you can't buy a piano on the spur of the moment, you have to pay your penance' broke into a grin and said, "Now that is a great piano."  Not only that, but the family is asking a quarter of what it's worth.  We talked about it all the (1/2 block) way home.  When we got in the door, Andy said, "I want to buy that piano for you."  Eeeeeeeeee!

There's a small detail to work out about an MIA bench, but it shouldn't take but a tiny negotiating to resolve.  Besides that, the deal is sealed.  We can't pick it up this weekend, because our in-laws are coming, but Andy's going to arrange to have her moved and tuned early next week while I'm up traveling in the northern tundra.  I couldn't hardly sleep last night I'm so excited.  Now today, I've gotta call my mom and have her send me my sheet music.  :)

The ol' brain is full today.  So many things knocking around in there.  Time to sort and organize.

Item #1.  We have discovered Craigslist, and it is consuming our lives.  Not only have we been tempted and fallen to the lure of tax-free, shipping-free, secondhand goods that you can actually test before forking over your hard-earned money, but people are eager to give you cash for your things too.  ...  I'm sure there's a warning in there somewhere, but I'm having trouble finding it.  We bought a (guitar) multi-effects processor for the husband this weekend.  We have been looking for a good deal on a secondhand piano.  To fund said piano, we have taken to SCOURING our home for things to hoc online.  It's gotten ugly.  Sincere questioning regarding the necessity for certain items has flown in both directions.  All of the sudden, what used to be sanctioned safely under "That was my grandmother's" and "I may use that to build something someday" has now become fair play.  Oh yeah, and we still want that piano.  We currently have two front runners:

The "Antique" Bauer:  I'm a-feared of how old this dude actually is.  They stopped making Bauer's in the 1930s, but if it's in half a good condition on the inside as it is on the outside, we may actually have a deal here.  Plus I may just owe these people something regardless because their picture makes me happy I don't have kids yet!

Bauer

The Samick:  Again, looks in great condition.  I love, nay lo-o-ove, the way Samick studios play.  And it's priced at 1/4 of what it should be.  It's just twice as much as the Bauer.  Eh, we'll play both and see what we think.

Samick

Item #2.  The in-laws are coming this weekend.  My brother and sister-in-law also live in Dallas, so we actually have a really nice setup going here.  One of us takes the parents.  One of us takes the 16-year-old brother.  Next time we switch.  My sister-in-law is quite the cruise director, and I think she quite frankly gets upset that the rest of us could care less about planning anything.  Truth be told, we've all taken her for granted, because she's traveling abroad this week and her plane doesn't land until a couple hours after the in-laws descend.  Crap.  Now this means that our house is Ground Zero.  I'm planning meals and creating a plan of attack as to how to get the house ready for guests in two days.  It's a two-tiered plan:  Day 1 - De-clutter.  Day 2 - Scrub down.  Somewhere in there, the dog needs to get a bath, grocery shopping needs to get done, and loads and LOADS of laundry need to be worked through. 

Side-thought:  I like to be clean.  My husband has more of a tolerance for filth.  A few months after we got married, I thought for sure that I could bring him up to my standards.  Silly, silly newlywed.  Instead, after several cleaning sessions where my husband would cheerfully participate by asking me "Okay, now what needs to be done?" after every. single. task." LOOK AROUND... can't you see what's dirty?!? I decided it would just be easier if I did things that needed to be done without asking for help.  Doesn't exactly take a genius to see where that's going.  Burnout and resentment.  Plan C involved me developing a tolerance for filth also.  Frighteningly, it's a lot easier to do than I'd once imagined.

Item #3.  Work is both more interesting and more challenging since I've gotten a new boss.  I actually have felt in the last couple of weeks that I haven't been able to spend as much time as I want to at work.  This new feeling is foreign and a little scary. 

And on that note, lunchtime's over.  Back to work!