“Neighbors & Noise”

I just had to laugh when I saw this illustration. Keith and I bought our first piano while we were students at the University of Minnesota. We lived in a fifteenth floor apartment with an amazing view of downtown Minneapolis. It was on that pre-owned upright piano that Keith first practiced his piano tuning skills. We both enjoyed playing that piano – solos and duets. We tried to play quietly, which was not always an easy thing to do, but we wanted to respect our neighbors. We knew first-hand that the sound traveled through our walls because we could easily hear them.

Keith and I have some great neighbors now but one outshines them all. He doesn’t have a piano but he enjoys piano music, a fact proven by his voluntary attendance at the concert we sponsored two weeks ago. I would venture to say that he even looks forward to the musical sounds coming from our house. We often have amplified “music nights” complete with piano, drums, bass, guitars and vocalists. In addition to me practicing now and then, the PianoDisc System on our beautiful grand piano plays all kinds of wonderful music at any given moment.

We are blessed; but sharing music with the neighbors doesn’t work for everyone. Keith has clients that live in multi-family dwellings, apartments, retirement facilities, etc. Some of his clients like to play piano during the night while the rest of the family wants to sleep. So, what’s a person to do? Give up playing their piano? Get an electronic keyboard? Don’t despair; that’s not necessary! Keith has solutions that will temporarily quiet pianos without compromising the touch. Just this past week, he solved the “it’s too loud” problem for two of his clients and their neighbors are no longer listening “to good music . . . whether they like it or not.”

Life is Grand

Joann

By the way, we have a little French piano in the shop that has the candle holders like in the picture above.