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To call them beautiful meant I could take them out any time I wished, exchange them with friends.
If a piano can bring to light the beauty that has become invisible to us, and give it audible form, then it is a miraculous instrument and I thrill to be its lowly servant.
Pianos want to be played. They are always open – to people and to music, ready to shine a helpful guiding light towards worldly beauty.
To tune the piano we manipulate the tension of the strings and adjust the hammers until they produce uniform vibrations of pure sound to link the instrument to the multiple musical sounds out in the wider atmosphere.
‘Knowing specific names of things so you can picture the details is more important than you might think.’
All piano tuners have it drummed into their heads to notice humidity levels, particularly in autumn and winter. If the humidity level gets too high, the wood expands. Screws loosen. Steel rusts. The tone will slip.
‘Bright, quiet, crystal-clear writing that evokes fond memories, that seems a touch sentimental yet is unsparing and deep, writing as lovely as a dream, yet as exact as reality.’
With brand-new hammers that are a little tinny in sound, piercing them gives a soft and richer tone.
‘Tomura, how old do you think I am, anyway? When the twins were young, so was I.’ ‘Oh!’
There is nothing more pitiable than a piano tuned by an incompetent technician.
Truthfully, though, if their phone rings, that can mess with the hertz as we tune.’
No, no, that’s no good either. Oh, maybe I should offer to carry Mr Itadori’s bag for him? And I’ll need a pen and pad to take notes.
But I knew full well that not giving up didn’t necessarily mean you would succeed.
But I didn’t find that particularly painful. It doesn’t hurt so much to lose out on things if you never hoped for them in the first place. What really hurts is having things right there in front of you, and wanting them, and not being able to reach them.
With the piano, moving the casters adds more power to the soundboard. Using this concise analogy of push-ups, Mr Itadori explained that as he moved the direction of the casters it would be like lifting the entire baseplate of the piano with his back. This alone was enough to alter the resonance dramatically.
The ideal sound is in harmony with the person who plays the instrument – a sound that allows the pianist’s own talents and personality to shine most brightly. No one thinks about the skill of the tuner. And that is perfectly fine.
‘Whenever he comes to Japan he calls for Itadori as his tuner. He developed a fondness for him back when Mr Itadori was training in Europe. He also accompanied him on concert tours of Europe, but unfortunately Mr Itadori hates flying.
Once he had returned to Japan, he would only travel by land. He waits in this unremarkable, out-of-the-way town for the pianists to come to him.’
Adjusting the fluctuation of sound waves and the pitch – that’s something anyone can master with practice.
Until the end of World War Two, A above middle C in Japan was set at 430 hertz. If you go back further in time to the Europe of Mozart’s day, it was 422 hertz. It’s gradually getting higher over the years. Nowadays it’s often set at 442 hertz.
think he also recommended lowering one’s centre of gravity to put more body weight behind the fingers so as to make the effect more resonant and distinct. In other words, not via tuning but through performance technique.’
I was still a beginner – but if you don’t make that your goal, you will never get there.
How wonderful that would be, I thought, to have a beautiful woman like this know everything about you, and to know everything about her in return.
‘When he couldn’t handle phones and billboards and that sort of thing, what did he do?’ ‘He’d go straight home to bed.’
It wasn’t a tool to help him avoid any horrors; it was the power to deal with them.
‘A really skilled chef must take great pains so that not only is the first bite delicious but also the dish continues to taste wonderful, right until the moment you’re scraping the plate. It’s exactly the same with the sound of the piano.
Take that a step further and it means you don’t truly know the word “waste”.’
There’s no shortcut through the forest. The only way forward is to keep honing your skills, little bit by little bit.
You tread that path with utmost care, which is why you leave footprints. At some point you’ll get confused and need those footprints to retrace your steps.
You will struggle mightily, remember with your ears and your body where and how you went wrong, but en route towards your chosen goal you can still listen to another person’s desires and make those wishes come true.
‘You see, talent will out if you really love something. A tenacity, a fight in you that keeps you in the fray no matter what. Something like that. That’s the way I’ve come to think of it.’ Mr Yanagi spoke in hushed tones.
‘I remember, Tomura, how you once said you couldn’t quite swallow the idea of adjusting the tuning according to the client, right?’
‘Personally, I like to adjust the action of the movement, so that when I play it has a more sensitive response. But with this sort of client I hold back and adjust the touch so it’s duller and less resonant. If you have limited play in the action of the keys, any weakness on the part of the pianist will be less detectable.
‘Whether it’s for a concert or a competition, the piano exists on behalf of the person playing it. It’s not the place of the tuner to butt in.’ ‘I’m not trying to butt in. I’m just saying there should be room for a goal we can all aim for.’
‘Also, the piano is not just for the person playing it,’ Mr Yanagi continued. ‘It’s for the people who will hear it, too – for everyone who loves music.’
When the client had issues, that didn’t necessarily mean the instrument did. But when the instrument had problems, that meant the client did too.
Music is there to help us enjoy life, not as a means to outdo everyone else. Even if you do compete and a winner is picked – the person who enjoys himself the most is always the real winner.
The joy of music resides in both, although the experience might be different. The glistening of the world as the morning sun rises, the glowing as it sets – who can say which is better? The morning sun and evening sun are the very same sun, yet the form of their beauty differs. That’s what I figure, in any case.
Bright, quiet, crystal-clear writing that evokes fond memories, that seems a touch sentimental yet is unsparing and deep, writing as lovely as a dream, yet as exact as reality.
Something I’d pushed away from my life had jumped right back into me. It felt as if the outline of the world had suddenly been thrown into sharper relief.
‘Playing the piano is not how I’ll make a living,’ Kazune said. ‘It’s how I’ll make a life.’
looked at Yuni’s solemn expression and thought: She isn’t giving up the piano at all. There are entrances to the forest all over. And there must be so many routes to walk through it.
To become a tuner. That, too, was surely one way of walking through the forest. A pianist and a tuner walk through the same forest even though they take different paths.
A few rare pianists are able to apply a slightly lighter pressure to the keys when playing a chord in order to control the clarity of its sound.
‘From the tiniest, most trivial-seeming of clues, you might discover how to draw out the most beautiful sounds from a piano. The conclusion could turn out to be wrong, or a red herring. But seeing whether it can be done or not is the mark of a tuner with flair.’
Someone who can put in hard graft without resentment is at a distinct advantage. If you find something difficult or boring, you’re more likely to want a major return on your investment of time and effort and then be dissatisfied with the outcome. But because Kazune was able to slog away at her practice and enjoy it, the possibilities before her were beyond imagining.
‘They say that if you put in ten thousand hours towards any goal, things will fall into place. If you’re going to worry, best to wait until after you’ve done your ten thousand hours and then see.’
There’s no such thing as an absolute best sound. No sound is absolute. It would have been better if I’d said it was, but I couldn’t. For a child being pushed to have an appreciation for the arts, hearing adults insist this was the absolute best possible sound was not going to help.
‘The number of constellations: eighty-eight. It’s the same number as the keys on a piano.’
As lovely as a dream, yet as exact as reality.
