Guess who's back--/--/--Shady's back!

I have been away for a while.
I still have to get the new habit of blogging regularly. I have been working on the instrument, but not sitting down and recording it.

So, what have I done? (with pictures)


1)  I finally got my parts, so I reassembled the keyboard, with new felt punchings.

The keyboard still needs to be leveled, but before I do that, I have to deal with the broken key tops.  More of that later.

So, I put all the keys back, and reinstalled the Hammer Shank Rail, preparatory to reassembling the instrument, for a trial. Here is what it looked like before I put it back together.

 In the meantime, I have been working on my patio garden. Here are pictures:

   So, what I have to do now is make some key decisions about the keytops. (See what I did there? That's cause I am a writer!) I ordered so far, 14 ivories from International Piano Supply, at $4 a pop. Half of them are too white. I am going to write and see if I can send them back for some yellower ones. I am also considering swapping some of the extreme high and low keys, for the missing keys in the center of the keyboard, and then putting the replacements on the ends of the keyboard. Unfortunately, on this instrument almost half the white keys could use replacing. Certainly no fewer than 21 of the 55 white keys are visibly broken on the edges. There are two I could overlook, and three I have filed the small chips smooth, but maybe I should just put a set of plastic keytops on for the visual beauty. Ivory is nice if it is uniform, but that may be a problem. I dont know yet.

  Anyway, I put it back together, and now, for the first time on the internet, is the sound of 1867.  This is David Sonsara, my teacher, playing the Beethoven variations on a theme by Paisiello, just the sort of music appropriate to this instrument. Take it away, David!

 




As you can see, it plays very nicely. It needs key leveling, as I said before, and it needs regulation very badly, but the worst key, middle G, I think I fixed. The hammer back-check needed adjustment. It was impeding the rise of the hammer on the key strike. I bent the wire back a couple millimeters, and I think that solved that problem. But I won't know until I put it all back together again, and that won't be for a while, now.

 I am at a kind of standstill right now. I have to decide what to do with the keyboard, so I can level it, then I can regulate the mechanism, and refinish the hammers, and then I can put it back together to see how it works.

Then the strings!

Waiting for the Postman

I guess I should add an entry, for the benefit of my millions of readers. I just made a big order, felt and paper punchings to level the keyboard. And a bunch of miscellaneous pieces of felt, and another dozen ivory key tops. Now I will have 14. I counted 25 chipped keys, with about 11 of them very badly chipped. I guess I am committed to ivory.

I have finished polishing the 85 individual keys with 00 steel wool, and brushed out the flanges and pin holes. Some interesting finds. Two of them are signed. The 85th key is signed in pencil, on the side, "Dahlquist". And the first key is signed in pencil "Dahlquist", but in a different handwriting! What to make of that? Father and son? The foreman wrote Dahlquist's name on the job, and he signed it at the end? He had a stroke between key 1 and key 85??? Key No. 1 is also stamped with the name E. Larson, with a punch stamp. And the first set of keys has 5 and 3 punched on them in the vicinity of the action. Wish I knew what it all meant.

Of course, I haven't been able to play it for a month now. Don't know when I will be able to again. Probably in a couple months, when I get the action all regulated.

But I have been playing my Kawai, which I was badmouthing so bad in the first entry. I should apologize to my poor little upright. It's a very nice piano. I and preparing for piano club next Saturday. I will play Diabelli variation No. 2, which is a real devil, and the first movement of Sonata VIII by Friedrich Wilhelm Rust, my current favorite obscure composer.

Piano Club is a monthly social for about a dozen or two of us who like to play, but are not Paderewski, so we play for each other. It is a very diverse group of men and women, many quite proficient in various genres. About half are like me, slaves to the page, and half can improvise freely from a lead sheet, or ad libitum. I am so jealous, I wish I could do that. It is a mystery to me why I can sit here and type out my thoughts as words on this keyboard, but I can't type out my thoughts as music on the piano.

But having joined Piano Club has changed my entire outlook on practice. Now that I have the prospect of performing, I can't overlook my little glitches, like I did when I was just playing for myself. Now I focus on the mechanics of the finger fumble, and figure out where I got lost. When I was playing just for myself, I just ran the right stuff through my head, and ignored my actual performance. But you can't do that for other people. So I am still not Paderewski, but I am learning how to study for performance now, and making leaps and strides in my execution.

Yay. Also I get to share my obscure music with other people, which is even better. Next month I am doing Gottshchalk's "Morte: She is Dead", and after that Rossini's "Une Caresse a ma Femme". And I think after that, the Froberger Lamento for Ferdinand III.