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Thursday January 29, 2026 at a very nice local high school. A lovely Boston grand piano was waiting to be tuned for chorus rehearsal. The location is close to the ocean so all the strings have more or less some rust. As usual, I turned the tuning pins counter clock wise to flatten each string until an obvious pitch change can be heard before pulling them sharp. As usual, I was scared as a rubbit afraid of any strings breaking. There had been 3 string splices on this piano. Yes, this was my first restringing job 10 years ago. I always wonder why Jude the boss trusted this naive short little thing to string this piano freshly graduated out of school. The piano has always been tuned to A4=440Hz so no singer would complain. Can't sing that high or low? That is your own problem. Happily tuning unisons in the middle section, a sharp snap sound sprang out followed by vibrations from the sound board. A string broke, G#3. All of a sudden, the world became black and white. The time stopped. The only thing one could hear was the over speed heartbeat. The sky was going to fall. The god of hell was going to send his troup to come grab me to one of his cells. This life was going to end. No no. Before I die, this string had to be fixed. A new piece of wire had to be spliced on. The singers have to sing their complicated songs. I dragged my rear end to the car in the nice -15C° air, grabbed the stringing tools, trying to cheer myself up. There could be worse things in life, as Ernie normally say. Going through the splicing procedure in my mind and saying it out load, I had three attemps to splice this string, the last one succeeded. Watching the original string getting cut shorter and shorter, my heart rate reached the danger line. When the repaired string was being tuned up, Abby the music teacher came in to say good morning. "Abby, I have to appologize." "What went wrong?" "A string snapped. I am so sorry." "That's ok. It is not you!" It was funny yet embarrassing that she had to comfort me, like a police soothing a criminal. But at least the string was repaired, Abby wasn't mad, and I didn't die. Here are two videos on how to splice piano wires: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GGg7SOTRgk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaaukozi44M When cutting new wires, out of panic, my hand slipped, a whole spool of wire unwound itself. The loose wire danced wildly on the floor like a celebration of devels. "Wire, wire, please behave. You are working now." I talked to the crazy wire while winding it back to the spool. Of course the newly repaired string was muted with a felt mute so the singers would not be horrified listening to the wild G#3. And of course I made sure that the mute didn't have my name on, as I usually do to claim they are Yun's property.
Back to the shop, I asked Jude what I might have done wrong restringing the piano years ago. He said maybe nothing. The Bostons are known for their extremely high string tention. He was not supprised that they kept breaking. Maybe it is time for the school to look for a better designed instrument. He might have tried to make me feel better. I will take it this time...only. The End. Comments are closed.
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