Day 6 – Sunday, May 30:

Goals: Remove the pin block frame, whatever it is; finish repair of bench

Music: Bill Evans’ “Everybody Digs Bill Evans”

Finished with the bench. Installed my fabricated bottom, reattached the legs, tightened everything down, and now I have my little box to hold all the parts of the piano I strip off of it, not to mention somewhere to sit while working inside the piano.

More importantly, I finally got all the screws out of the pin block frame. It turns out that the one that was giving me all the trouble is actually an 8.5” long jobbie that connects the pin block frame to the bottom of the piano through the soundboard. It was pretty well rusted in place, but I scraped everything free at the top, banged on it a few times to shake it loose, hammer-and-chiseled at it with the small screwdrivers, and finally put everything I had into the big screwdriver and ever so slowly loosened it and got it out. I immediately cleaned it with WD-40, as I think it quite unlikely I’ll ever be able to find a replacement for that screw. Here's a shot of that screw next to the hole I removed it from.

Then, I found one more screw that I missed and after removing it, tried to lift the pin block frame, but it appears to me that the tuning pins attach to the soundboard through the pin block frame, meaning that I have to remove the strings in order to remove the pin block frame. Oh well. We’re back to having to do a complete refurbishment anyway, so in the evening, I started to remove the strings. I’ve managed to take off eight so far.

Thanks to the shortened square piano keyboard, only 77 more to go. Memorial Day 2010 will be more memorable than most for me, if I manage to extract the frame.

Day 5 – Saturday, May 29:

Goals: Remove the pin block/sound board, whatever it is; repair the bench

Music: The Teddy Charles Tentet; Wynton Marsalis Quartet’s “The Magic Hour”

I worked a little bit on taking the bench apart. Mostly spent the time finding a board to replace as the bottom and settled on peg board that I had out in the garage. I glued a sheet of textured brown paper to it to cover the holes. Tomorrow I’ll be able to put it in and reassemble the bench. After that, I won’t do any more work on it.

I spent a good portion of my time removing the trim that was in the way of removing the frame. It came up rather easily, as the glue was all dried out and the brads are all rusted. I even managed to remove all the pieces intact. Almost. The long six foot piece was coming right out when suddenly, one of the brads decided to grab just as I pulled. It sent a shock wave down the length of the piece and broke it in two places. After I get the wood in decent shape, I’ll glue it back together, but I may end up just replacing that trim with my own bits of fancy trim. (The big screw is the one just north of the screwdriver handle in this photo.)

The rest of the time on the piano, about three hours total, was spent pulling screws out of the cast iron frame. It was a bear. One screw broke off. Another turns but doesn’t come out. The large screw in the front with a special place in the frame wouldn’t budge, not an inch. I banged and dripped WD-40 into it, but it just won’t move. I wore myself out trying. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll get it.

Day 4 – Friday, May 28:

Goals: Continue trying to free the soundboard from the piano. Clean what can be cleaned. Tune it one time at the right pitch.

Music: The Crystal Method’s “Community Service”; Moby’s “Play”; The Crystal Method’s “Legion of Boom”

My tuning hammer arrived, and I was of a mind to see if I could tune the piano properly. Unfortunately, the mutes that were supposed to be in the “kit” did not arrive. I made an attempt to tune the piano without them, but it was decidedly more difficult than I anticipated. The smallest turn of the tuning pin can make a difference of three, four, or more notes. Without the mutes, I’m pretty sure it would be basically impossible to tune a piano unless one was an expert. At any rate, I didn’t have the patience last night, and since I’m taking the piano apart anyway, I gave up the tuning idea until after I figure out what to do with the old strings. (I don’t think they are salvageable.)

As a sort of warm up, I worked a little bit on the bench that came with the piano. I swear to God I pulled forty or fifty nails, staples and screws out of that sucker just to remove the sagging bottom that wasn’t holding anything anyway. I’m sure I’ve got a serviceable piece of wood somewhere that will make a better bottom when I reattach it. I oiled the wood to perfection and will attempt that simple repair at the next session.

For the rest of the evening, I grabbed up my big honking slotted magnetic screwdriver and had at the pin block (what I’ve been calling the soundboard), trying to remove the screws holding it down. I decided it would be a good idea to track those screws, since they might have something to do with the leveling of the pin block, so I also had to draw a pin diagram. Even with the big-ass screwdriver, I couldn’t get some of the screws to budge, so I tracked down my can of WD-40. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the little tube that goes in the nozzle allowing you to focus the spray and since I didn’t want WD-40 all over my piano, I got me a piece of foil and built a little collector/funnel and dripped a good amount of WD-40 over and around each of the screws. I also loosened all the strings, to allow me to get at all the screws, including the ones under the strings.

Just that took the majority of the evening, almost three full hours of work. I’ve got less than a quarter of the pin block’s screws removed, so that’s going to be my focus today (May 29).

Day 3 – Thursday, May 27

(Piano lesson on Wednesday, gave myself and the piano a break for a day)
Goals: Vacuum out the inside of the body; commission the fabrication of the missing damper arm; measure and record the diameter of all the strings; read through or test out any materials or tools that arrive today (not expecting many, but my tuning/refurbishing book is a good candidate, as is my Dremel tool).

Music: Chico Freeman’s “Destiny’s Dance”; The Crystal Method’s “Community Service II”

I gave the damper arms to “MB”, the guy at work who has his own woodshop. He’s going to see if he can buy some Brazilian rosewood from some place and then manufacture that missing damper arm.

I figured out how to remove the damper arm assembly and its cover, the cover having two small removable heads to hold it in place, with the damper assembly having only one hand-tightened nut to hold it into a frame. I swung up all the damper arms on the assembly, and after vacuuming it, revealed a bright red piece of felt padding. Exciting.

With the damper assembly gone, I was able to clean underneath and around the strings much more easily. Using an old rag and lemon oil, I could also wipe away a lot of the dust and give the soundboard wood a bit of luster back. The more I looked at the piano, the more I learned. Not only do I now understand the damper assembly, but I understand how the pedal raises up the damper assembly to allow the notes to sound continuously. I also found out how the soft pedal works (by shifting a board with felt and leather tabs between the hammers and the strings). While there are many delicate and time consuming jobs I am finding having to do with replacing felt, gluing parts in place and whatnot, I have yet to find any job that is going to be difficult, per se.

So, last night I started to look at how to get at the sound board. There is some decorative trim all around it, basically extending wherever it can attach to two pieces of wood at a 90-degree angle. There was one small piece of this wood, attached with long-since-gone-brittle glue and two rusted brads. I separated the glued edge with a screwdriver (slowly, since the wood is as brittle as the glue), and pulled the brads out. It looks to my untrained eyes that those pieces of trim are not native to the piano. I really think they were added later. Since I already commented on how I noticed the soundboard had been painted in faux brass, I started looking much more closely at the piano. Again, to my untrained eyes, it appears the mother-of-pearl inlay feature was also added at a later date. I think this is true because I had the idea to do an inlay in the “C. H. Stone & Co.” letters, but happened to notice that someone had already started to chip away at it. And they stopped.

In short, I’m pretty sure that somebody was trying to turn this piano into something else and they just gave up. This tells me two things. One: I have an opportunity to turn this piano into an "original classic" by restoring it and fixing up the added features. Two: I can do whatever sort of restoration work I want on this thing, because I haven't got as much to lose if I was working on, say, and all original Steinway. So I don’t have to worry about replacing obsolete hinges, or using the same wire, or anything like that. I can basically have at the thing, add high quality, modern, beautiful parts, and whatever I end up with, it should be fine. Right there, I’m going to be saving some money on custom made hinges. (I think long piano hinges look better anyways.)

The better part of the evening, after vacuuming, I spent wiping inside and out with lemon oil. The finish is definitely getting better and the piano is definitely looking better. I’m sure the moisture is a big positive. I started to try and tackle some of the screws holding down the soundboard, but they are these honking half-inch slotted monsters and I couldn’t generate enough torque with a regular screwdriver to even budge them. The next day I bought a driver at lunchtime that I think will allow me to do the job. I also picked up heavy duty wire cutters and a small screwdriver with a regular handle that I should be able to grind down into a super narrow, sharp head that I can use on any more tiny screws I find (and any I might use to put the piano back together).

I read my Dremel manual at lunch and I’m ready to go with that. I’ve got my piano refurbishing book. All I need now is my tuning kit, which could possibly be arriving today (May 28).

Memorial Day weekend will start off with me going to fire a gun for the first time in my life. The rest of the weekend is all about selling stuff on e-bay and working on my piano. (I need to give it a name pretty soon.)

A day off from refurbishing to give away free music

I took a day off from refurbishing the piano, but yesterday, I really went at it for a good three hours and I learned a lot that I'm looking forward to sharing with everybody. After I write that up, I'll be sure and post it.

In the meantime, here's a free MP3 from The Innkeeper's Gun, the new John Goldsby trio album that I recently reviewed. I promise you'll love it, and hey, it's free, so what have you got to lose? Check it out.

If you want the rest of the MP3 album, you can download The Innkeeper's Gun from amazon. It's good, I'm telling, ya. Would I lie to you?

Day 2 – Tuesday, May 25:

Goal: Remove the top.

Music:Wayne Shorter’s “Speak No Evil”; Herbie Hancock’s “Maiden Voyage”

I had a lunch meeting today that luckily enough was held within shouting distance of the local home improvement store.  And although it is a little early in the project, since I had already assessed the need for wood glue (for the dowel in the left front leg) and super glue (for the mother of pearl inlay), I went ahead and picked them up. (I also, riding on my recent, “I can do it myself” wave, replaced and installed our sprinkler system control panel. Five of six stations now work, with the fault on the sixth being in the underground wire, not something I could have fixed anyway.)

So today’s goal was basically to remove the top so that I can get inside and start cleaning and working on the piano. My original idea was to note and save the location of every single screw that I removed, but after realizing how much extra, probably needless, work that would be, I decided against it. It also sort of didn’t matter almost right away, as one of the screws disintegrated when I tried to remove it. Several of the hinges were bent, all of the screws were in pretty rough shape, so in short order, I decided that I would be replacing all of the hinges with new ones. I still kept the hinges and screws separated from each other, based on which of the top’s panels they held.

There was a big chunk of wax melted onto the center bottom of the middle panel which naturally left some portion of itself and some residue on the front panel. It’s hard to tell if that was by design to act as some kind of padding or if somebody unintelligently allowed a candle to drip into that gap and just more or less forgot about it. Long story short, I scraped it away as best I could. If I put anything there in its place when I reassemble the piano, it will likely be a felt pad or wooden plug of some kind.

There were several small felt pads on the front panel to support it above the front of the wood panel underneath the keyboard. I noted their size and position photographically.

While I was working on the front and mid-panel dismantling, I put some mayonnaise on the water rings, scratches, and other wear marks on the rear panel, as I read on the Internet that mayonnaise was good for that sort of thing and you had to let it sit for about an hour. Surprisingly, this really worked well in covering up some of the minor damage and restoring some luster to the other damaged spots. I then added a little lemon oil and rubbed real good and got that panel looking halfway respectable. It also helped clean the body of the piano, especially the back where the veneer is cracking because of warping and damage. (Not sure what, if anything, I can do about that. I have no plans to replace the veneer at this point.)

So the only other thing I have to note is that the small felt pads are 11” and 23” from the hinge side of back panel, on the underside, to keep that above the frame.

My tuner arrived yesterday and I messed with it just enough to learn that the piano is tuned an entire two notes above concert pitch. No wonder the strings are so tight. I’m going to learn how to use my tuner today at lunch. My tuning wrench and kit should be in my hands by Friday, as they shipped yesterday.

Newly assessed need in addition to the replacement hinges is a long-handled minus screwdriver with a thin head and a good pair of wire cutters that can handle very old, hard, and thick piano wire.

Next goal: Vacuum the hell out of the inside. I also removed the damper arms from either side of the one that was missing and plan to see if I can get that fabricated in the next week or so. I’ll have to go wool padding and felt shopping pretty soon, too.

Day 1 – Monday, May 24:

Goal(s): Assess overall condition; note major issues that will need time, money, or tools to repair; do basic cleaning, superficial cleaning.

Music: Horace Silver’s “A Song For My Father”

We picked up the piano today. By the time I arrived at the owner’s house around 5:15, Jason and his assistant already had the pedals removed, the piano wrapped tightly in blankets held with straps, and they were in the process of removing the legs. They positioned the piano so that two legs on the diagonal were up on blankets so they could remove the other two legs after putting the piano on its side on a moving dolly. They had it out the door and ready to go by about 5:30.

We drove to our house and decided the best way to get the piano into the house would be through the garage, since it had the fewest steps (four) and didn’t require driving over any grass. I had put down padding, an old rug, and a large heavy duty tarp in the dining room, and they moved it there in short order, negotiating the stairs with the use of a 7-foot metal reinforced plywood ramp. The legs were marked rather cryptically, making finding the right one to go in each corner a little difficult. One of the legs had a loose dowel and I was completely out of wood glue and regular Elmer’s. In order to get the piano sitting properly, we needed to get that dowel to stay still so it could be screwed in properly. I managed the trick with about three toothpicks acting as shims or bushings. That leg will have to be removed and repaired properly, once I have the piano sitting up on whatever it is I’m going to have it sitting up on while I work on the underside.

When we got the top open and I played a few notes, I was amazed and delighted to find that the piano had “fallen into” tune. It still needs tuning and is quite rough sounding, but all of a sudden, it actually was playable. There is one broken string, one removed and relocated damper arm, one missing damper arm, and at least two dead keys, but other than that, everything is appearing to be pretty sound. I took some brass polish to the sound board and ended up taking some of the surface finish off. (I think. I didn’t look at it real good, so I can’t tell if I’m removing the finishing or getting down to the patina or whatnot. I stopped doing that until I could get an informed opinion.)

I ordered a professional tuning kit, a book on piano tuning and refurbishing, plus I picked up some sticky felt and caster cups on the way home last night prior to going to pick up the piano. Next step is going to be to remove the top and vacuum the whole thing out. Once my tuning wrench arrives, I plan to loosen all the strings and let them sit for a day or two. I want to see if my book addresses the issue of dealing with rusty pins and strings before I attempt to clean them. I have to remove the felt and get some new felt strips. I have to get a Dremel to work on the inlay. I’ll have to order some mother of pearl to finish the inlay. Haven’t decided if I’m going to keep the casters or do away with them. Not sure about replacing the strings either. I think I will take the sound board out to see what the frame looks like underneath, maybe clean and oil that. If I can get the top off without any problem, I’m going to sand that whole thing down and refinish it.

I have lots of ideas, but I really need a plan.

Can't play it, but...

I bought a renovation project instead of a piano. I feel great!

Somebody tell me what I’m doing

On Tuesday, or maybe Wednesday, I discovered a Victorian square piano on Craigslist. Until that very moment, I’d only ever been vaguely aware of square pianos, but somehow, that piano seemed to be calling me. I called the owner to make an appointment to see it, and I was disappointed to learn that I was second in line to a guy who wanted to buy it as a decoration for his house. The owner, however, asked me a little about my intentions for the piano. She asked what I planned to do with it if I fixed it up (it’s in need of some minor repair, from what I gather), and I said quite frankly and truthfully, “I plan to keep it!”

Now, square pianos are quite rare. In many ways, they are like the AMC Gremlins of the auto world: there isn’t anything particularly bad (or good) about them, they were popular enough in their day, and now, they are pretty hard to find. My preliminary attempt to research square pianos on the web revealed that a good one, refurbished and fixed up, can get upwards of $30,000. The one I’m looking to buy costs $1900 and the owner tells me it will cost between $5K and $10K to fix it up. Okay. But if at the end of that, I’ve got a $25K piano (and I might), wouldn’t that be great?

So I did more and more research. Wikipedia has some excellent key action diagrams, and even the Wall Street Journal (no link because it's too old, but easy to find if you Google it) had contributed with a piece late last year about another person’s story with their square piano. (How I missed it the first time around, I’ll never know.) Suddenly, I found myself craving that piano. I mean, I felt like I really, really, really wanted to buy it.

I placed a couple phone calls and sent a few emails to people who I thought might be able to tell me something about square pianos. I gleaned some useful information, but in general, nobody is really familiar with these things. Still, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Last night, we got tied up at work and at 5:30 or so, the owner of the piano calls to ask if I can come earlier to look at the piano. She says she can’t get a hold of the guy who called about the piano before I did, and that she will sell it to me if I want it.

I have an appointment in less than five hours with a piano and its owner. I’ve basically already decided I’m going to buy the sucker. So does somebody want to tell me: what the hell am I doing?

Another night with my wife’s boyfriend

Some people would no doubt think one crazy to drive almost four hours both ways to hear a classical music concert. I hope some Alabamians are on board with me here in that, big stars don’t really come here, so we have to go to them. That’s why, when Mrs. S’s boyfriend, the virtuoso violinist Joshua Bell, scheduled a visit to play with the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, she bought the best tickets available, and that’s why, yesterday, I drove four hours to listen to classical music.

And amazingly, I think it was worth it, and then some. Joshua Bell is simply amazing. He does things with a violin you wouldn’t think possible, and his sound and stamina are just amazing. (I’ve said so before.)

Mrs. S has thirty five of his who knows how many recordings, and now, a fifth of them are signed. It turns out, Mr. Bell will be back in our extended neighborhood next January, and Mrs. S is already planning to get tickets. To fill out enough concerts for a subscriber’s season, we will probably go see Pat Metheny, Bill Frisell, and Poncho Sanchez. (We were both bitter to learn McCoy Tyner had been here earlier this year and we missed him.)

Anyway, here’s some of Mrs. S’s comments and recommendations if you are into jazz but want to explore some of Joshua Bell’s music:

"Joshua Bell’s repertoire is very wide-ranging. He’s recorded traditional classical musical pieces (Vivaldi, Beethoven, Sibelius, Shumann, Brahms, Bernstein, Gershwin), contemporary pieces (Maw, Corigliano), short violin pieces, film sound tracks (Red Violin, Defiance, Angels and Demons) and collaborated with Jazz musicians (Dave Grusin, Wynton Marsalis, Chris Botti) and bluegrass musicians (Edgar Myer, Bela Fleck) and each recording is powerful and unique in its own way. So, it’s hard to choose just a couple, but for the people who are more interested in jazz music, my recommendations are:

1. At Home with Friends
2. Gershwin Fantasy
3. Short Trip Home "


Here are my (Eric's) recommendations if you want to hear some great jazz guitar:
Have a Little Faith by Bill Frisell
Bright Size Life by Pat Metheny

A new approach

Since my jazz arranging kept me away from the piano for so long, I’ve found myself curiously unmotivated to sit down and play. Oh, I have sat down and played some, for sure, even making a fair go at a few tunes I remain familiar with and just enjoy hearing on occasion. But I have not done anything constructive to improve my playing in probably the last six months.

On a whim, and because it was cheap, I picked up Oscar Peterson Plays the Duke Ellington Songbook CD. And while I thought this was him soloing, it turns out to be two of Oscar’s trios playing twelve songs each. And it is simply wonderful. Now, I’ve had the Oscar Peterson Plays Duke Ellington transcriptions forever, and long since relegated it to the “when I’m concert pianist level, maybe I’ll pull this out” section of my music book library. But taking a look at it again while listening to my new CD yesterday, it didn’t look nearly as foreboding as I remember it. And while it does not appear that the transcriptions in the above-mentioned book are from any of the recordings in the above-mentioned CD, it looks like they might be similar enough that I’ll be able to get something put together by listening to the CD and then sitting at the piano.

At any rate, I’ve decided to take a new approach to learning piano over the summer, namely, I’m going to learn to play a few Ellington tunes in the style of OP. Wish me luck.

Shot by The Innkeeper’s Gun

Not too long ago, I mentioned my infatuation with Bombella, the latest work by Abdullah Ibrahim which also features the incredibly awesome WDR Big Band Cologne. As it happened, the bass player of the WDR, John Goldsby, read my review and emailed me a few nice comments. He said that if I would be interested in reviewing his trio album which was due out soon, that he would be glad to send me a gratis advanced copy. Of course, I told him I would be happy to oblige by listening to his music and writing a review.

Now, let me say (as a sort of disclaimer), when I accept stuff for free, like I do with the Amazon Vine Club, I am careful not to let the fact that I have no skin in the game affect my opinion of whatever it is I’m reviewing. If I don’t like it, I say so. If I like it, I say so. If I couldn’t care one way or the other, I say so. That is to say, I’m an honest reviewer and if anything, I tend towards being overly critical. So, I was a little nervous accepting Mr. Goldsby’s offer, because if I didn’t like his work, I was faced with the unenviable task of having to tell him that.

Surprisingly, and happily, even though Goldsby’s trio is a piano-less, sax-bass-drums band, I really liked his work. It’s called The Innkeeper’s Gun, and it is a sparse-sounding, but richly detailed work that swings. I won’t bother reprinting my whole five-star review here, so feel free to click on the link and read the review I posted to Amazon. You might even want to pick up or download your own copy of TIG while you’re there.

I’m glad I blog. Making friends and hearing new jazz is what it’s all about.

Core collection update

Long-time readers of this blog will know that I have been actively pursuing jazz music for just about three years now, using the eighth edition of the Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings’ core collection as my guide for purchasing music. There are 187 recordings listed in the core collection, and I recently acquired my 110th. Since for the purposes of the core collection, I don’t really try to discern beforehand if the recording is something that I’m going to like, I’ve ended up with a lot of recordings that, after I listen to once, I can almost never bring myself to listen to again. The most recent of these is Peter Brotzman’s Machine Gun. Christ on crutches, what a bunch of crap. I will contend to my dying day, that if you listen to a “song” and you can’t hum it afterward, it cannot even be considered music. This heretical opinion has gotten me into a lot of trouble with various jazz enthusiasts whose tastes run to the esoteric and avant-garde. I’m not going to belabor the argument here. Let me just say, I picked up Bix and Tram and Maxine Sullivan and Dick Hyman as well, and as dated as they sound, and as poor the recording technology and what have you, those are, to me, far more valuable and meaningful pieces of jazz than any well-regarded somebody blowing pointlessly into an instrument of any type, meant for blowing or not. Cast me out of the jazz world if you must, but you might want to at least listen to some of these recordings and see if you don’t agree with me.

Or, just read about them on my blog. Lots of reviews will be forthcoming as I get farther and farther into my recent purchases.

And by the way, now I’m a conductor

Here’s a little more about the “concert” where my 17-piece jazz arrangement was played.

Since I showed up first and most of the band had arrived and was ready to play, we decided to go ahead and start with my piece. The piano player hadn’t showed up, so my instructor asked me if I wanted to play on my piece. Simple fact of the matter was, I had spent so much time working on my arrangement, that I hadn’t played the piano in nearly two weeks, other than occasional relaxing plunking and a few notes here and there to work out arrangement parts. So, my instructor agreed to play the piano. The big band instructor asked if I wanted to conduct, but I told him I didn’t know how. It turned out, however, that the bass trombone player also hadn’t showed up and I needed the bass trombone, mainly for the foghorn accent sounds. So he said he would play, and I had no choice but to conduct. The instructor said, “Don’t worry. This band won’t look at you anyway.” So I explained the intricacies (?) of my piece, counted off, and away we went. It went surprisingly well. After we had played my piece twice, I gathered up the scores and sat down, but then the guitar player, who had to play on his piece and had also written piano and bass trombone parts, said, “We need you to conduct again.” Fortunately, I knew the piece pretty well from our in-class review, so I counted and pointed and away we went. Then we decided to read one of the instructor’s recently completed pieces, and of course, he wrote a fancy trombone part for himself, so I got to conduct his piece sight unseen. The first time through, he stood up and gave a few cues, but the second time through, when it came time for the cues, he was looking at me expectantly, so I gave them.

Really, it was no big deal, but at least now, I can say I have conducting experience without telling a lie.