The way things go, sometimes

It was another lost weekend for me. I got started cleaning and organizing my room and just really never got out of it. I spent a good amount of time practicing my modes of the melodic minor scales and a tune or two, and, well, that was it. We’re still dealing with a sick cat and after the late night coming back from the jazz concert in Birmingham on Friday, I wasn’t very energetic. I pulled out some Christmas lights and started planning this year’s display, messed around on Facebook some, and never worked on my piano for even a minute. I’m thinking that if I don’t finish it around Thanksgiving break, it will be Christmas before I do finish it. It rained Sunday, I drank absinthe for the first time, and there are no other excuses. The weekend just slowly passed me by.

Speaking of the concert, Poncho Sanchez and His Latin Jazz Orchestra was Friday night, and honestly, it sucked. Their music was uninspired, their set short, and they kept exhorting the crowd to dance by playing an endless series of nameless salsa tunes. They didn’t do any really big hits, they did only one encore and yeah, some of the rhythm riffs they did with some unusual instruments were mildly interesting, and the horn section was tight, but I couldn’t shake the feeling they were more or less sleepwalking through the evening. They just showed up, played a few tunes, and left. It was disappointing.

Going into the “season” of concerts in Birmingham, I was most excited about Poncho, somewhat enthused about Bill Frisell, and basically unenthusiastic for Pat Metheny. But when the concerts were all over, I liked Pat Metheny the best, Bill Frisell second, and Poncho finished dead last. Funny how that happened.

Lost weekend = boring blog entry. Sorry about that, but that’s the way things go, sometimes.

Bill Frisell Review

Last Friday Mrs. S and I drove down to Birmingham to hear Bill Frisell and his “Beautiful Dreamers” trio. With Frisell, one never really knows what to expect. Some of his work is way out there, and some isn’t. And while I consider myself a fan, I’m not what one would call a “big fan”, more of a casual fan. But I have to say, the Beautiful Dreamers music and trio (guitar, drums and viola) is very approachable. The songs are recognizable, the execution is original and exhilarating, and the musicianship on display is unsurpassed. Tea for Two was a knockout and for my money, Goin’ Out of My Head was just stunning. There were a couple of songs where Bill put a music box thingy against the strings of his guitar, getting some confusing but stimulating feedback and interference loop noise going, which they then proceeded to work into the foundation of whatever song they were playing next. In addition to working extensively with feedback and reverb from the guitar, viola and their various pedals and amplifiers, Bill also did a good job of playing bass and rhythm parts when support was needed for the viola. Another trademark of Frisell’s group was their use of repeated patterns – patterns that once they are set up, can be returned to or not, varied or not, transposed or not, soloed over or not, and then, you can go right back to it and it all sounds fine. I was actually more intrigued by that than anything else. (Let’s face it: holding a music box on the strings of a guitar just isn’t all that exciting for someone who’s only recently seen Pat Metheny’s Orchestrion concert.)

As far as I can tell, they played all or almost all of the songs off the Beautiful Dreamers CD, which kept the session short and sweet and got us home at a reasonable hour thanks to the 7:30 start time. There were big chunks of seats in the middle of the theater that were unused, so we got to move over and have a little better view too. (It was an intimate setting to begin with – just 300 seats – and very comfortable.)
Tonight is going to be a bit more dynamic and a lot later night, with Poncho Sanchez and his Latin Orchestra playing in the big hall and starting a half hour later than Frisell’s trio did. But I plan to absorb all the energy I can. You might not recognize me come Saturday.

Day 61 –Sunday, November 7 – Close call:

Goals: Continue restringing; get some felt work done..

Music: Dexter Gordon’s “Our Man In Paris” and “Go!”; John McLaughlin’s “Extrapolation”; theme and background music from Iron Man II.

On Saturday, I elected to take advantage of the weather to get some yard work done, and that pretty much kept me away from the piano. I was not, however, willing to let the work slide for a second weekend in a row, so on Sunday, I set myself to continue with the restringing. When I finished with the first size wire, I decided I had better make sure I had a clear delineation of the remaining wires so that if I had made a mistake in the first phase, it wouldn’t affect any of the later stages. I counted the wire gauges and quantities, counted the holes, lined everything up, and amazingly, everything matched. I was ready to continue with the stringing, and all I had to do was check one picture to see exactly where the strings run to on harp support frame.

It’s a good thing I decided to check the pictures, because not only did I notice I forgot to put in one piece of felt (which I corrected by loosening the wires and pushing the felt underneath), I also noticed that the “soft” board goes under the strings, and guess what? When I tried to fit it in, it doesn’t fit. I’m thinking it might be possible to run it below the strings through the hole where the hammers project, but that will be a pain and I’m not entirely sure it is even possible. So, that put an end to the restringing project until I can at least put the soft board in place.

Man, I shudder to think how crushed I would have been to finish the restringing only to find I left out the soft board and there was no way to insert. I’m sure I would have cried. (For real.)

No longer able to continue the stringing, I cut some felt pieces, punched some holes in one and finished reattaching felt to the key except for the backchecks. I’ve got a lot of the leather for the back checks cut, so I just have to replace a few pieces of felt and then glue the leather over them. It shouldn’t take long, and this week, I really am going to work on that when I watch TV during the evenings. I also have to cut the leather and felt for the soft board so I can put that back in and start stringing again.

I will say this: if I ever get depressed about my lack of progress on the piano or how not all the repair jobs are living up to my expectations, all I have to do is look at pictures of the piano from before I brought it home and as I started working on it. Seriously, it doesn’t even look like the same piano. When I finish, I’m going to post a bunch of before and after shots. Those will be one of the best sales tools for when I’m ready to part with the piano.

Next entry will be about the Bill Frisell concert last Friday. I’m not going to write an awful lot about the felt work…

Zombies Attack My Piano

After getting all psyched up and bragging about how I would work on my piano during some weeknights, not only did I not do any work during the week, but I skipped working on the piano this past weekend as well. My only two excuses were, my back was still sore from the stringing job the week before, and, I didn’t feel like it. I did, however, practice a good bit, as long as my back would let me sit on a piano bench, but the minor ii-V-I cadences are doing me in, so I didn’t practice nearly as much as I should have.

Then this morning, after a rugged night of passing out candy, and not enough sleep due to staying up to watch “The Walking Dead” and waking up early with a stomach ache because of too much licorice, my back is a throbbing ball of pain, and now I’m in worse shape than ever. So, I’m going to keep it simple this week:

·         Eat less (we passed out all the candy to the 98 trick-or-treaters we had, so that one’s easy)

·         Exercise every morning (expecting good temperatures for this as well)

·         Enjoy dinner and the Bill Frisell concert on Friday night

·         Work hard on my piano over the weekend, and

·         Practice

I’m targeting the Sunday after Thanksgiving to finish the piano. It must happen.

Days 59 and 60 – Saturday and Sunday, October 23 and 24 – Time to get a move on:

Goals: Fill gaps in mother-of-pearl inlay; start restringing.

Music: Terry Gibbs Dream Band’s “Flying Home”; Jimmy Giuffre’s “Free Fall”; Benny Goodman’s “1938 Carnegie Concert”. (I’m skipping Dizzy Gillespie and one of my Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band CD’s, because we have them in regular rotation on our “get ready to go to work in the morning” play set. I hear them a lot lately.)

When I took a look at the mother of pearl inlay, I had my doubts I would ever be able to get it to look like much of anything. I decided that since I still had some bare spots and still had some nice blanks, I could do with putting in a few more pieces, so that was what I did. Actually, I’ve gotten pretty good at it. You can almost tell which pieces I did first and which I did later just by looking at the quality of the work.

After putting in all the pieces I was going to put in, I grabbed my black inlay filler, and had at that. It was a mess going on, but after everything was dry, I was able to take a wet cloth and clean up the board quite nicely. When I took it out of the sun, it looked pretty good. Since I was on a bit of a roll, I decided to go ahead with the gold painting.

Fortunately for me, Mrs. S has been into oil painting lately, so she had a couple of very fine brushes that would work for the gold paint application. Unfortunately, the lines are so fine and require such a deft touch that I could hardly put any paint on the brush. Working outside in the sun, by the time I got the brush to the board, the paint had literally dried right on the brush. Putting enough paint on the brush to keep it wet long enough to get it to the board left a line that was too thick and clumsy looking. I had to give up on the painting. I’m going to have to come up with some other solution. (Gold marking pen, maybe?)

I spent the better part of the afternoon on Sunday working on the strings. My new, longer tuning pins arrived Saturday, along with some rubber baby buggy bumpers for the lid and a replacement lock also for the lid, so I didn’t have any excuse to put off that hard work any longer.

I tried a new method of stringing: I measure the two runs from pin to hole center, add four inches for winding around the pins, and cut the wire to length. Then I string the wire through one of the pins and drive it in. Then I do the other. Once I line up the wire and the felt, I tighten the outside pin until it has at least one coil of wire. Then I do the other pin. Check alignment, tighten, check alignment, tighten, and repeat until the wire is tight. Then I tap each wire and rough tune until they at least have the same tonality. This method turned out to be remarkably effective, as I have yet to end up with too much or too little wire. It still is brutally hard work, requiring concentration, strength, good eyes, patience, intuition, luck, and lots of bending. No wonder my back and neck are really feeling it today (especially my back – where’s my methocarbamol?)!

I’m finding out that in a lot of ways, pianos are designed to deter beginners from messing with them. For example, you have to start stringing from the toughest strings: the short, stiff, tinny sounding upper note wires. This is not to say that the bass strings are going to be any easier, but working with those short lengths of wire is tough. Now that I’ve got the majority of the high notes strung (something like an octave and three notes) I’m interested in seeing how the tuning pins and wires fare over time. Plus I can’t shake the feeling that I’m going something out of order and may have to start stringing all over again. (I just … don’t … know …)

Finally, I’m going to have to work on this sucker some evenings starting this week. This is dragging out too long and I’m afraid I won’t remember how to put everything back together. If I let it drag out much longer, I really will forget where everything goes and how to position it, and what not. Besides, I definitely need the keys back in to hear what the strings sound like.

It’s time to make a big push.

The learning process

Prior to jazz improv class on Monday night, I had a good look at the piano (Yamaha concert grand) and noticed how cleanly and how neatly the strings are wound around the tuning pins. They are even, precise and consistent, nothing at all like the eight pins I did on my piano. I also discovered that mine aren’t even wound in the right direction. (My wound coils are above the insertion point of the wire, not below it, like they are on the grand.) The only reason I strung the coils above the insertion point is because there didn’t seem to be enough room to do them below the wire. Then, all of a sudden, I remembered that we purchased a set of pins that was a quarter inch shorter than the pins that came out of the piano, and that when I drive the new pins in, it doesn’t leave enough room before the wire insertion hole to make two windings of wire without touching the harp and pressing down too hard on the bridges.

Damn. Here’s a shot of my predicament and my shoddy wire windings:

So, I’m going to have to buy the correct length pins. That gives me an opportunity, however, to get the plated ones that look fancier, which is what I really wanted in the first place, even though it leaves me out of pocket for the $68 I spent on the set of pins I’m not going to use (unless I undertake another piano renovation soon – and that’s not happening).

This has me thinking that the best way to complete the finishing work on the piano is just like I did this weekend: finish a small portion of the job as best I can, then check online, check my piano refurbishing book, and look around and think about it, then decide if that is the right way or not. Then I can undo the small portion of completed work rather easily and quickly if it is wrong, or, I can keep going with no progress lost in the meantime if I happen to guess right the first time around.

This has definitely been a learning process, but the piano is getting closer and closer to being finished. My realization of the wire situation even is likely to get me to work on the piano on a weeknight for the first time in a while.

Days 57 and 58 – Saturday and Sunday, October 16 and 17 – Back on the Job:

Goals: Work on the mother-of-pearl inlay; start restringing.

Music: Stan Getz’s “Focus”; Terry Gibbs’ “Dream Band”. (Focus is probably Stan Getz’s best work ever. It features him backed by a full orchestra, but due to the sudden death of his mother, the orchestra recording session went on without him. He recorded his tracks later and when his and the orchestra’s tracks were put together, magic!)

On both Saturday and Sunday, I worked on the inlay for about an hour and a half each day, without music, so I could concentrate on what I was doing. The result was quite good, but, I’ve decided I’m done inlaying. I’m going to paint the remaining gaps black and accent them with gold paint. Or, since I still have some blanks, maybe I’ll put just a few more pieces in, just to brighten it up a little bit. (I’m getting pretty good at it, but man, it is tedious work.)

Speaking of tedious work, after touching up the stain on the inside of the piano around the harp trim, I decided to start restringing. Holy crap, is that hard! I spent an hour and a half and finished four double strings. It is incredibly difficult to get the lengths of wire right and it is basically impossible to get clean spools of wire on the pins. The end result is it doesn’t look like much, but the strings are on and they make a semblance of tonal sound when struck. I’m not sure, but I’m thinking about redoing them. Probably I will just keep going, but if I reach the point where I can actually make the pins and strings look good, I will likely go back and make the first few crappy ones look more like the rest. That assumes of course that I will get some skill and actually become halfway talented at putting strings and tuning pins in, at some point, and hopefully before I get to the irreplaceable wound strings. (It would totally suck to break one of them like I broke the one that I tried to do slightly different to make a nice looking spiral. Enough about that, though.)

So, there is no way I’m going to finish the piano this month. There is just too much slow, hard work left. Thanksgiving is a realistic goal, but Christmas seems more likely. I definitely bit off more than I can chew with this project, but now there’s nothing to do but to keep eating until I finish the meal or start puking.