My nemesis (yesterday, anyway)

Notes from the Berkshires, Day 40

Lenox Coffee, 7.05 a.m.

The sun is shining, the sky is blue, and an actual unqualified beautiful day is forecast. The plan at the grounds is to hit two of my pianos with a technical session sandwiched in-between, arranged by Steve, on some topic or topics of interest to the team. In otherwords, a fairly relaxed day, with beautiful weather as accompaniment. Not bad, not bad.

I slept well last night, for the first time this week it seems. Every so often I get into these patterns where rest eludes me; I have trouble falling asleep, or I wake up often, or just wake up feeling as if I haven’t slept at all. Hopefully this signals a return to healthy sleep patterns. No matter how much you like what you’re doing, if wake up tired it’s difficult to enjoy the day.

There appears to be a piano here that is my nemesis: a certain Boston 163 in a faculty home. I’ve visited it twice now, the first time for basic set-up and a first tuning; if I remember right I was a little rushed at that time. Yesterday was a call for tuning, and I discovered significant regulation issues needing to be dealt with. In both instances, after finishing the tuning I discovered notes that were, well, just plain sour and stinky. Bad enough that chords using them were noticeably out-of-tune. I’m still not sure where it happens, or what I’m missing, but it makes me second-guess my tunings: am I leaving other pianos in a similar state? Hopefully it’s just this one instrument, and there’s something about the stability that makes it easier to knock notes out of tune as you go along. At any rate, it was a frustration yesterday, but after going home and out for a nice run, I felt more at ease.

And speaking of my running: I am finally feeling like I’m approaching about-to-be-becoming in decent summer shape. The route hasn’t changed for a month, and it feels a little stronger and manageable each time. First time in a year that I’ve felt close to being on top of things physically. Good news for one who, like many, choose to dance underneath the sword of Damocles that is under- or un-insuredness.