We Have a Real Piano Again.

Several years ago, my mother relocated to a smaller home and had to get rid of her piano. It is a piano that my father bought her back in the 70s. I still remember the day it was delivered from the store. I was probably four or five. Anyway, she was kind enough to give it to us and Mason and Amanda have been learning to play on it. The only problem is that it has probably been thirty years since it was properly tuned. We just learned to ignore how bad it sounded because we did not have much of a choice. It was only when the children would play on a tuned piano, like at church, that we would realize just how bad it was. In fact it was so bad, the children would sometimes be learning a new song and stop because what they were playing sounded so bad they thought they were wrong. Heidi had to assure them they were right and that it was the piano that was wrong.

Well, last year when our ward was split and the new Bishop was called, I was meeting with him and off handedly asked if he knew a good piano tuner (because his wife plays quite a bit). He laughed and said that piano tuning was a hobby of his and he would be glad to come by and tune it for us because it would be good practice.

So about 11 this morning, he called out of the blue and asked if he could come over and tune the thing for us. Of course we accepted his gracious offer. The piano was so out of tune that the computer tuner he uses could not even recognize what note was being played at first. He had to tune the entire keyboard up at least a whole step. Then he had to fine tune each middle string and then tune the outer two strings to the middle string. The whole process took about three hours of work. We are so grateful he took the time to come over because we know how busy a bishop can be.

So finally we have a real piano again. Now we just have to see how long it holds because it has been out of tune for so long that the strings are going to want to go back to where they were. He said he would come check on it around Christmas time and see where it was. So here are a couple of examples of our "new" piano.