Kathleen Mallery on finding the best piano:
“What’s the best piano out there?” I asked.
The piano tuner’s eyes sparkled. ”I always get asked this question. Everyone always wants to know — what’s the best piano. And I always say, the piano that’s in your living room.”
”It’s all about getting it tuned right, bringing out its own sound and then when you play, you play the piano that’s in front you, and you see what it can really do. That’s all there is really. Tuning it and then playing what you’ve got.”I was fascinated to find, when I learned how to tune an old, not-so-special cello, that I could feel when it was in tune. Not just hear it, but feel it. A complete surprise to me, a former non-string player. When you slow down to tune, it resonates in a way that’s unmistakable.
I’ve played timpani most of my life, and one of my favorite things about the instrument is tuning by singing into it. You put your face close to the drumhead and hum your desired pitch, and when you depress the pedal to the right tension the entire kettle sympathetically resonates. In a split second you go from hearing only the sound of your hum to being completely enveloped by the pitch—almost like the drum is humming with you.
