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Source: http://news.therecord.com/Life/article/283131
Technician puts out-of-tune pianos back in action
December 15, 2007
COLIN HUNTER
RECORD STAFF
He strikes a chord.
And the chord strikes him.
"Listen to that," marvels the man at the piano, Mark Veenman. "It's so beautiful."
The chord in C-major -- "the purest key," he calls it -- resonates in perfect tune through the empty, sunlit chapel.
Moments later, after gently ratcheting the tension of several strings inside the grand piano, Veenman strikes another two-note chord.
This time his reaction is not so jubilant; something is amiss in the sound.
"Do you hear that -- the ma-ma-ma-ma sound?" he asks.
No.
"Ma-ma-ma-ma," he repeats, now singing. "Do you hear it now?"
Nope.
What Veenman hears intermingled with the chord -- and what the untrained ear does not -- is called beating, a kind of sonic interference between two tones that are almost, but not quite, in tune.
He is listening to the subtle, secondary frequencies of the notes, called overtones. They're quiet, but they are there.
If sound were visible, Veenman would see an entire rainbow spectrum where most others would see only white light. His hearing is no better than the average person's -- it's just better trained.
He makes some tiny adjustments to the piano's tuning pins, strikes the chord again, appears satisfied, then plays another chord and listens.
"It is baffling at first," he concedes, "but once you learn the basics of acoustic physics it becomes more clear."
Veenman is not a physicist, although his work does hinge on complex theories of resonance, fluctuation patterns, frequency ratios and equations that look like this: f(N) = 27.5*2^(N/12).
Veenman is a piano technician (don't call him a piano tuner, an understatement akin to calling War and Peace a novella).
Yes, he puts out-of-tune pianos back in tune. But he also utilizes ancient philosophies, cutting-edge technologies, centuries of music theory and his own finely honed senses to bring new life to old pianos.
What's more, he also brings old life to new pianos. He's fascinated by historical tuning styles -- of which there are dozens, if not hundreds -- and he can make a piano sound the way Bach or Beethoven would have wanted it to sound.
"I love the piano," says the affable 34-year-old owner of Apollo Piano, a Hawkesville company named for the Greek god of music.
"I feel this very real, very physical connection with a vibrating musical instrument. It's geometry and acoustic physics at work. It's gorgeous."
He delights in playing piano at home for his three young children, and rebuilding battered and neglected pianos in his workshop. Every second Sunday he plays the organ at Elora Canadian Reformed Church.
On this cold Saturday morning, however, Veenman is sitting at the Yamaha G2 grand piano inside the chapel at St John's-Kilmarnock school in Breslau.
Veenman and the piano are dappled with red and blue sunlight beaming through the chapel's stained glass windows.
The simple chords he strikes are periodically punctuated by loud creaks -- the wooden framework of the church expanding in the morning sun.
Only six months have passed since Veenman last worked on this piano, but a building with acoustics as fine as the chapel's deserves a finely maintained piano.
So Veenman is methodically working his way up the keyboard, testing notes from lowest to highest like a chiropractor manipulating successive vertebrae along a spine.
He places his laptop computer on the cast-iron framework inside the belly of the piano and fires up a program called Reyburn CyberTuner. A green, rotating bull's-eye shimmies left or right across the screen each time Veenman hits a note; left indicates the note is flat, right means sharp.
The computer measures differences in pitch as small as 1/1000th of a semitone -- "beyond the realm of human consciousness," Veenman says.
Such minute differences are imperceptible when notes are played alone, but an accomplished pianist does not play notes in isolation.
When a trained pianist plays a complicated piece -- as Veenman does at the conclusion of every job -- it is the overall sound of the music that matters. Just like a car won't run properly if a small but crucial part is missing, beautiful piano music relies on the balanced interplay of the instrument's many parts.
Top musicians know this instinctively, even if they don't have the foggiest idea about acoustic physics.
That's why Veenman has been commissioned by performers like Loreena McKennitt and Natalie McMaster to hone their pianos before concerts, and why The Beckett School in Kitchener entrusts him with tuning its two-dozen pianos.
For Veenman, the work is a labour of love. He has been fascinated by the piano since he begged his parents for lessons at age six (they also signed him up for drum lessons, which he hated).
His formal education is in languages, so he learned his craft as an apprentice under local technician Marg Elmslie and bought her business when she relocated to cottage country.
Everything about the piano -- its proportions, its tones, its possibilities -- inspired Veenman, and still does.
On this morning, he is experimenting with a historical tuning called a Kirnberger temperamant, named for 18th-century British musician and theorist Johann Philipp Kirnberger.
Once a student of Johann Sebastian Bach, Kirnberger developed tuning systems that, in theory, better captured the intended sounds of pieces composed by Bach and his contemporaries.
The note E in a Kirnberger temperament, for example, is 6/100ths of a semitone flat of an E in a typical tuning -- a tiny but important distinction, Veenman says.
But it's also a subject Veenman will have to ponder another time, since the chapel owners did not hire him to do a Kirnberger temperament. Rather, they want the most common and universally applicable tuning, known as equal temperament.
Nearly all of Veenman's clients ask for equal temperament -- it's the piano equivalent of a seasonal tune-up for a car, though the comparison is crude.
Essentially, equal temperament allows most pianists to sound good on most pianos most of the time.
So Veenman begins the tuning again, undoing the Kirnberger adjustments and putting the piano into equal temperament, one note at a time.
He must still listen for the overtones, the sounds-within-sounds that emerge according to the complicated laws of acoustic physics.
He uses the computer, but does not rely on it. After all, the computer is only listening for the tones he programmed into it, specific to this model of piano.
"I've trained the computer, but it's not a substitute," he says.
He eventually shuts down the computer and verifies his work with his ears and the oldest tool of his trade, a tuning fork. He checks and rechecks note by note, chord by chord.
Then, without segue, Veenman launches into a lively and dynamic concerto, his fingers dancing along nearly all of the 88 keys, his feet working the pedals.
It's an excerpt from Concerto Opus 7 No. 4 by British composer William Felton, and Veenman plays it without sheet music. During slower moments, he watches the interplay of hammers and strings inside the piano.
The performance lasts barely two minutes, and Veenman rests his hands on his lap and grins.
"That's a charming piece that's very representative of keyboard music of its era," he says. "It allows me to test the work that I've done."
He plays a different piece after nearly every tuning, though it's often a baroque piece -- hardly surprising for a guy whose license plate reads J BACH.
Performing at the end of every tuning reminds Veenman that a perfectly tuned piano is only a collection of wood and steel until a musician brings it to life.
"That's the moment of bliss, when the sounds are created," he says. "It's the final step, and it's magical."
chunter@therecord.com
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