Why to not drink while taking a piano apart

Because you might hit your hand with a hammer.

Yes, I did.

See it? Under the index finger connector knuckle. Frozen hamburgers, ibuprofen, and cold Diet Cokes kept it from being a lot worse.

Tomorrow it’s out to the garage. I’ve got a 5K race in the morning (before it hits 106 like it did today), but the rest of the day is for me to get intimate with my piano and my as yet unused Porter and Cable oscillating tool. I haven’t exactly figured out how I’m going to get the thing out to the garage, but I have some vague idea of using a graduated system of plastic totes from work to build progressively smaller stands until I can just set the piano on a rug and move it outside. It shouldn’t be too hard. We’ll see.

How your brain works

Yesterday and today, I tackled the removal of the sound board (and am still working on it). Although I pretty much expected it was glued into the frame, I sort of thought there might be some screws that secured portions of it to the frame. Because I have been removing a number of screws but the sound board is still firmly and securely attached to the piano, I’m beginning to suspect this is not the case. In fact, it seems to me that the purpose of any screws was probably to hold the wood together while the glue set. In any event, to make everything come apart as easily as possible, I’m removing the screws. In the space between the deck and the frame – a gap of about 6-8 inches – there are a number of screws in the bottom of the sound board. Their removal, as I detailed yesterday, requires a special short screw driver. It also requires a mirror and a flexible brain.

Pedal lyre, anyone? I hear they make great lamps...

See, in order to fit the tiny head of the screw driver into the slot, you need to see the slot and screw. My head, however, is not tiny and does not fit into that space, and even if it did, my 48-year old eyes could not possibly focus on anything so small in such a dark space, reading glasses, bifocals, regular glasses, or no. So, I borrowed one of Mrs. S’s compacts, shoved a flashlight into the cabinet, and tried to loosen the most accessible screw.

There are the levers that are operated by the pedals and move the stuff inside the piano. (Not anymore.)

Long story short: your brain is not equipped to do anything while looking in a mirror, other than brush your teeth, comb your hair, shave, or put on and take off make up. It took me a full five minutes to get the first screw out. “Righty tighty, lefty loosy” is critical when unscrewing 130 year old screws in a mirror. What your hands are doing, what your eyes are seeing, and what your brain interprets to be happening, are all three completely different things. Then, when the screw driver slips out, your brain has a predetermined approach for reinserting the driver in the screw slot, but again, the mirror tells a 180-degree lie, and your brain struggles. Eventually, you get it back in the slot. Then you do the “lefty loosy” drill again, then your brain fights, then the driver slips. But, after five minutes of repeating this, the screw comes out.

Now you move to the second screw. You make the mistake of trying to slot the driver looking straight on from under and in front of the piano, and your brain goes back to normal, and you struggle. You move the mirror, try again. Three minutes later, the screw is out. The third screw takes about a minute and twenty seconds. The next ten or fifteen screws take about five minutes total. Really, it’s amazing how quickly your brain adapts to the new requirements of screw removal in the dark narrow space with a mirror. After a half dozen or so, you can slot the screw by feel and don’t even need the mirror, and when you use the mirror to locate the next screw, your driver-grasping-hand goes straight to the hole with the screw. This morning, I feel like the single most dexterous person on the planet.

Possibly the serial number of my piano. Gotta admit: my freehand Sharpie work is pretty good!

Today, we’re doing carry-out Greek for dinner, so I’m expecting to have time to take lots of pictures and weigh parts, including the sound board, which I’m expecting to have enough time to completely remove tonight. And there’ve been no takers for the harp, so I think we need to find a scrap yard before the weekend, too. There isn’t much metal left in that behemoth any more. And, I still feel very wonderful about this project. Once I extract more of the wood and move the piano to the garage, I’ll feel even better.

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.

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.

Bill Evans makes everything better

I've decided that for my semester long jazz arranging project, I will try to write a big band score to Bill Evans' "Peri's Scope". Consequently, I've been using my piano lesson to work mainly on that song, develop some voicings and alternate or substitute chords, and look at other things to make the music come alive and be more interesting in a big band arrangement. Of course, I have a brilliant recording of that song played by the Bill Evans Trio from "Portrait in Jazz", and I'm also fortunate enough to have a transcription of the song as well, allowing a deeper analysis of Bill Evans' playing and another source for ideas for the score.

So at my lesson the other night, my instructor and I listened to Peri's Scope twice through: once while looking at the transcription, once without looking at the transcription. When it got done, we talked about it a little bit, then my instructor played through it a little bit, just to experiment. He whizzed through the song with some pretty remarkable voicings and phrases and then about halfway through the second time he stopped, turned to me and said, "Everything goes better if you listen to Bill Evans first. Everything goes better if you listen to Bill Evans first. Not just piano playing, but everything!" To which I said, "So, if you listen to Bill Evans before doing your laundry, your clothes will come out cleaner." He just exclaimed, "Exactly!"

So, having trouble assembling that computer desk? Worried that your version of your mother's recipe for sloppy joes won't taste the same? Got a personnel review coming up? Listen to Bill Evans before you start. You'll be surprised and pleased by the results. My piano instructor and I promise.

How jazz is affected by an "economic stimulus"

(The following is adapted from an email that's been making the rounds for a year or two now...)

Before I tell you how jazz will be affected by the "economic stimulus", it would be helpful to define, exactly, what an "economic stimulus" is. To do that, we have a simple discussion in Q&A format:

Q. What is an 'economic stimulus' payment?
A. It is money that the federal government will send to taxpayers.
Q. Where will the government get this money?
A. From taxpayers.
Q. So the government is giving us back our own money?
A. Only a little of it.
Q. What is the purpose of this payment?
A. The plan is for you to use the money to purchase a high-definition TV set to stimulate the economy.
Q. Won't that only stimulate China's economy?
A. Shut up.

In order to help the U.S. economy with the economic stimulus, remember, if you use your economic stimulus to:
-Buy something at Wal-Mart, the money will go to China or Sri Lanka.
-Buy gasoline, your money will go to the Arabs or Hugo Chavez.
-Buy a computer, it will go to India or China.
-Buy an appliance, it will go to South Korea.
-Buy fruit and vegetables, it will go to Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala.
-Buy an efficient car, it will go to Japan or Korea.
-Buy anything at Dollar General, it will go to Taiwan.
-Pay your credit card debt or buy stock, your money will go to "management bonuses" and "management" will hide the money offshore (probably in Belize).

So, what can the average American do to keep the "economic stimulus" money in America? Simple:
1) Spend it at yard sales, or
2) Go to jazz clubs, or
3) Spend it on prostitutes, or
4) Beer, or
5) Tattoos

These are the only American businesses still operating in the U.S.

Conclusion: Go to a jazz club with a tattooed prostitute that you met at a yard sale and drink beer all day!

Your fellow Americans appreciate your patriotism!

Another concert down

Our semester ending concert was last night on the UAH campus. It was a lightly attended affair, but the crowd was enthusiastic and very much into it by the end of the evening. Our band played the most songs and so we were able to show off our chops a little bit more than the other bands, as we also had a broader selection of songs. Our tempo was off on one or two of the songs, and we got desperately lost twice but made good recoveries both times. I acted as emcee for our band and I think if nothing else, I was the best emcee on the evening. It was fun.

Now, with that out of the way, I've got to concentrate on my jazz theory class and start studying up in that, making sure I understand every Aoelian, flat 2, sharp 5, pentatonic, harmonic, 13th, etc. I've already decided to take the test day off, and that should allow me to cram everything I'll need to get a decent grade on the test and hopefully pull myself up to a secure B, if not an A. I'm also going to jump start my critical listening project, which has been languishing these last few months. I picked up some new CD's which will have to be added to my database, so while I'm listening to them, I can also be advancing my CLP.

It's a delightful kind of euphoria when the concert is past, the obligation to practice is gone, and all that's left is the music and the memory of its performance. As tired as I am, I feel good about the whole thing. An hour before the concert, if you had asked me, I'd've told you that I'm not so sure this playing and performing jazz is a good thing. During and after the concert, I'd've told you there's no greater feeling in the world.

I still feel that way.

Saw on FB

According to one of my Facebook friends, Thelonious Sphere Monk would've been 92 this weekend. With the possible exception of Bill Evans, no other pianist has so defined the modern sound of the jazz piano. Here's a link for your enjoyment.

"Epistrophy"

Something worth reading

Today is the 54th anniversary of Erroll Garner's wonderful work, "Concert by the Sea". So, rather than write about it, I'll just direct my readers to help themselves to this wonderful Wall Street Journal article about Garner and that recording. I'm also going to pull down my own CD and have a listen later. Y'all might want to do the same.

New Orleans Travelogue - Part 5: One place to skip

The original title for this part of my travelogue was going to be: "Mardi gras museum and three-piece jazz band top stuffy servers and mediocre (and expensive) food at tourist trap Arnaud's," but that would have been too long and cumbersome. In a nutshell, however, that is really all you need to know.

Here are some details anyway:

We decided to eat at Arnaud's on our last night for a lot of the usual reasons. It's a famous, reputedly great restaurant. It's part of the New Orleans culinary scene. It was close to our hotel. And we'd never been there before. When I called for reservations, we found out there was the added bonus of sitting in the "less classy" room, where you could order off the same haute menu while listening to live jazz music (for only $4 per person more) and not have to dress to the nines. That was for us, so we signed on.

I won't detail all the things that went wrong at Arnaud's. Suffice to say when the guy gave me a wine list then asked if I was ready to order the wine before he'd so much as showed me a menu, I knew we were in trouble. When I ordered a wine off the "special" prix fixe menu and was told I could only order it if I ordered off that menu, regardless of price and regardless of the fact that our a la carte meal totalled about twice what the prix fixe menu did, I was flabbergasted. "This is, um, some kind of rule," the goofball said. "Just give me the wine I asked for, asshole, I'm the customer!" I wanted to say, but I didn't want to create any enmity right at the start of our last meal in New Orleans, so I ordered something else and bit my tongue.

And it was good I bit my tongue, because the meal was completely unimpressive and not something I wanted to taste too closely anyway. Baked oysters: spongy, lifeless and ordinary. Fish: bland and uninspired. Steak with crabmeat: Salted to death, cooked poorly, unoriginal, and freaking expensive. The wine was good, but that was because I picked it. Then came, "You want us to remove the wine label? We don't know how to do that. Here's a duffel bag to carry it home with."

Truly disappointing. I was glad when it came time to refuse dessert and I felt good giving them a tip that was even more mediocre than their service and food.


What was not disappointing was the live music. The trumpet, banjo, bass trio was nothing all that special, but they were professional and played quite well. They took requests and went table to table, and for lack of a better idea, I requested "C Jam Blues". The bass player was a cut-up. He immediately goes, "Yeah, C Jam Blues. Okay, what key?" But that request tipped them off that they were talking to one of their own, another jazz musician, and the bass player even invited me to sit in on his other band's rehearsal the next morning at 10:30. (I declined, as we would be well on our way home by then.) So, I enjoyed chatting with them, hearing some good music, and forgetting about the awfully average meal.

Mrs. S then informed me that the guide book we had told us not to miss the Mardi Gras exhibit, so that got us ushered through the hoity toity section of the restaurant (where I saw at least one bow tie and two white jackets, so yeah, keep them away from us riff-raff) and upstairs to the display. It was impressive enough to keep Mrs. S's camera continuously firing for the next twenty minutes.And I would say, if you do do Arnaud's, that yeah, don't miss the costume display. It's one of a kind, unlike the food.

I guess we can conclude the restaurant summary by simply saying, two out of three wasn't bad, and we had memorable experiences at all of them, so I would count that as a successful trip. I think Mrs. S agrees.

That’s that

So, on my way to the concert Friday night, I’m stopped at a yield sign waiting for traffic to let up enough for me to merge. The guy behind me decides it’s let up enough to go ahead and merge. Unfortunately, he completely forgot there was a car in front of him. Mine.

I suppose there are worse things than a traffic accident to take one’s mind off of things and help one lose some of one’s nervousness and settle down before performing in a concert. I calmly got out of the car and honestly, at first I couldn’t see any damage. We looked underneath and around, and all I could see were some vague scrapes where the dirt had some off my car. Me and the perp didn’t even bother to exchange info, as I simply couldn’t see anything wrong and wanted to go back to thinking about the concert.

The concert was standing room only. Literally. The audience was siting on the staircases at the top. I had about ten or twelve supporters of my own there, only one from where I work, the rest colleagues and former colleagues of Mrs. S. Our band played first and we led off with Splanky. I had the first solo and it was really the only time anyone was going to hear me. The rhythm section and I nailed the behind-the-beat opening, played our 24 bars, then I soloed. I dropped in a Pop Goes the Weasel lick halfway through, but otherwise stuck to an unadventurous but nice sounding blues-scale-based line. It received the usual lukewarm opening solo applause. (Later, somebody told me they thought I would be soloing a lot longer, which was why they didn’t clap.)

From that point on, I was home free. The pressure was off. The rest of the concert went well, even if it ended up being a little long.

Fourth ever jazz concert is done and gone. Back to practicing from The Jazz Piano Book and working on technique, plus I’m going to start a new, critical listening project which I will outline in some detail soon. Updates to Yoity Tot are also long overdue.

Another beginner’s revelation.

Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal published two articles about Marian McPartland. She hosts a radio show on NPR called “Piano Jazz”, which itself has been running for thirty years, where she interviews and plays with most (if not all) of the greatest jazz musicians of our time. She turns 90 years old tomorrow, March 20, and there’s going to be a big tribute concert or something in New York City. She was married to a famous jazz musician and has been playing jazz professionally for more than 60 years. Many of the best episodes of her “Piano Jazz” programs have been turned into CD’s. (I noticed for example the Bill Evans episode is #4,300 or so on amazon.com today, no doubt due to The Wall Street Journal articles and the buying power of its readers. I think I’ll wait until some of those readers sell theirs before I buy it.) And if you, like me, are truly new to jazz and you’ve never heard of her, you too will be surprised to learn how prolific she was. Something tells me the CD’s of her radio show are really worth pursuing. A sampling of interviewees: Bill Evans, Dave Brubeck, Chick Corea, Oscar Peterson, Bruce Hornsby, Keith Jarrett, Teddy Wilson, Ray Charles. (Not all are available on CD. Recent episodes can be listened to, and maybe even downloaded (I’m not sure), at )

When I was traveling recently, my rent-a-car had satellite radio, and I was tuned into a jazz channel, and as I faced a longish ride to the airport, I was perturbed when there was, not music, but some guy interviewing another guy, a drummer no less, of whom I knew very little. I don’t know who the interviewer was, but the interviewee was Max Roach. For lack of attractive alternatives, I listened to the interview. I found it completely fascinating. I was sort of shocked by how much I enjoyed the program. One thing I took away from that program was that drummers, or as Max said, “good” drummers, don’t tune their set to a song – they know how to hit the drum so that it sounds in key. I thought that was pretty interesting, and it certainly was something I’d never thought about. It made me understand that jazz musicians achieve the sound or effect they want through various different ways, and I’d never considered that before. It made me think about my music, about achieving a certain sound, or certain effect, or certain feeling (call it) by ways other than just hitting notes (like playing ahead of the beat, or behind the beat, or softening some phrases and accenting others, or any number of things). There were other, less noteworthy points I took away from the interview; please don’t think I was enamored of the jazz interview just because of that one nugget. If nothing else, I learned who Max Roach is and that he is famous.

The point is: interviews of jazz musicians are a valuable resource to learning jazz, so I believe that an octogenarian or nonagenarian who’s been playing jazz for sixty years conducting an interview of a famous, respected jazz musician probably has a “plus alpha” factor to its value for a beginning jazz musician like myself. And, to find out that there really is a 90-year old woman, still performing, still doing a radio show after 30 years, still considered by many to be a living legacy of 20th century jazz piano virtuosity, who meets with, performs with, interviews, and is esteemed by, virtually every major jazz musician of the last 50 years, and I had never even heard of her… well…

I still have a long way to go.