From my youth I had a fascination with pianos, not just because I liked to play them but because I was impressed with the engineering and design that was evident when I took the front cover off. I had a closer look at the mechanics of a piano when at 15 years of age, with my parents away on vacation, something broke. I had been experimenting with some "aggressive" technique and I suppose I pressed a small part of the mechanical action beyond its design parameters. Panicking, I figured out how to remove the action from the piano to the kitchen table. I was thinking, "everything's made of wood, I'll just get some white glue and fix whatever's broken... how hard can it be?"
As it turns out, a brass tang had broken away from a rail of such tangs, each tang part of the mounting scheme of a piano hammer. I fashioned a repair from tin, which kind of worked (the note actually played, albeit, sloppily and noisily) and nobody seemed to notice. At some point a "real" piano technician did a proper repair.
I learned a little about tuning in my late teens from Herbie. He gave me a tuning lever and some mutes and did his best to explain the "temperament" octave and how the piano couldn't be tuned true or pure but was actually tuned sharp as you go further up the scale and flat as you go down. Otherwise the piano would sound horrible. My early experiments confirmed this. I limited my tuning to making a really badly out-of-tune piano just barely playable. That would consist of fixing up the worst notes around the middle three octaves, and then restricting my playing to that zone.
A quarter century and a lot of life experience later I was itching for a change. I had been playing, recording and working in and around the music and entertainment biz most of my life until that point. My superior at Westbury at the time told me a story of an old colleague of his who decided one day to take up piano tuning. This fellow enrolled in the piano technology program at George Brown College (the program has since moved to the University of Western Ontario). Twenty years later he is an in-demand, well-paid concert piano technician. The story inspired me to investigate. There were some great schools teaching piano technology, but none in my region. So I looked into a number of correspondence schools and found one which was overwhelmingly recommended by industry people in online forums and trade publications. I enrolled in the Randy Potter School of Piano Technology. Within months I was tuning pianos, not well, but I was actually doing it and getting paid for it. I was also doing minor repairs and adjusting (regulating) the mechanical parts.
Since that time I have been supplementing what I've learned with seminars, conferences, books, magazines and hands-on training from journeyman technicians at workshops and PTG (Piano Technicians Guild) chapter meetings. Although I am semi-retired I continue to tune and maintain pianos as my primary occupation.
I can tell you now that I wish I had pursued this field many years ago. It is a great occupation with a good income. I meet fine people all of the time and there is a wonderful camaraderie between technicians. I do a good bit of my work at home (in my small shop) and I enjoy the respect of my clients and fellow musicians.
If you're thinking of a career change, may I suggest that you don't overlook piano technology. I'm happy to try to answer any questions you may have.
Phil Manning - Piano Technician
Owner/Operator of Artist Piano Care
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