SANTA BARBARA CHAPTER
November Meeting:
Date: Mon. 11/11/24
Time: 7:00 pm
Location:
The Piano Kitchen
430 Rose Ave., Santa Barbara
The Santa Barbara Chapter met on October 14. We primarily enjoyed an extended
technical discussion drawn from members' questions and experiences in the field.
Some of the topics we covered included:
Restringing: process or strategy for
lowering tension and cutting wire, i.e. lower tension evenly, then break
beckets.
Steinway: which years had weak agraffes, and if more than a couple
have ever been replaced, replace the whole set when restringing.
Voicing: not
effective unless a "concert prep" process is observed first, which includes
seating wire at hitch pins and bridges, leveling the strings, aligning hammers
ETDs: value of various features, such as spinner over needle, and ability to
adjust mic sensitivity
Smoke: how corrosive to piano parts? How should an
exposed piano be treated? We find that unless it’s heavy direct exposure, most
pianos are affected very minimally by smoke, and they can usually be
sufficiently decontaminated by a thorough cleaning/detailing process.
Mold:
more questions than answers here...some members had encountered mold before,
others had not. There was no strong consensus or opinion among us as to what
treatments might best kill/clean mold
Soundboards: if it has gone flat, is it
done for? We noted that flat under tension means there still is some crown,
whereas flat without tension means there'd be negative crown/downbearing when
under tension. We discussed a few ways to encourage more crown out of a tired
soundboard and noted that, often, even a little bit of crown is very good.
Tuning for Sustain: technique/concept that opens unisons up to sing longer,
avoids the use of test blows, and moves the perceived origin of the tone in the
space around the piano.
We will meet at 7:00 pm on November 11th at The Piano Kitchen in Santa Barbara. Our program will be on aural tuning skills with an emphasis on the RPT test. We will also plan our annual holiday gathering/dinner.