In building his client base for piano tuning, West used index cards, which he kept in tin boxes. “He, too, understood the balances of the intervals,” West says. Homer Craver, a local violinist and longtime tuner, also passed on some important tidbits for him. With every piano West tuned, he picked up something new. He went to work at the furniture plant, while tuning pianos on the side. He spent six months with Cline, learning nuances of the trade before returning to Lexington. West had seen Cline’s name in a trade magazine, talked to him by telephone, and Cline invited him down to his “school” for an extended stay.Ĭline, who was legally blind, later would ask West to run his shop, but West had other plans.
PIANO TUNER COLUMBIA SC MANUAL
He started studying on his own, reading every textbook and manual he could find, before contacting Robert Cline in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. West decided there might be a future for him in piano tuning. He started carrying tools with him, because every time the quartet performed at a church, West found the piano way out of tune. “It required rapid sight reading,” West recalls.ĭuring that time, West also was playing piano for a gospel quartet.
He became a newscaster, ripping off Associated Press reports from the teletype machine and reading it cold on the air five minutes before each hour. West graduated from Welcome High School in 1952, then because of his vocal talents - friends sometimes accused him of sounding like a Baptist preacher - he landed a job as a radio announcer with WBUY in Lexington.
The family moved to Lexington in 1951, when West was a junior in high school and his dad went to work for the new Link-Taylor furniture plant. In Virginia, West’s father worked for the Lane Co., making cedar chests. “Many today are over-priced baby-sitters.” “I don’t see many teachers today teaching music theory,” he adds. Over the years, he became equally interested in the mechanics behind the piano, and when he became a piano teacher himself much later in life, West tried to include in his instruction an understanding of the instrument. “It wasn’t one of my favorite things, but I toughed it out,” West says. When he was 8 or 9, his mother decided he should take piano lessons. “Every tuner develops his own methods for speed. “Now I’m giving away my trade secrets,” he says. He isolates notes or whole octaves and describes his approach as ironing out an imaginary wrinkle from the center to the left and right ends of the keyboard. When he tunes a piano, West works from the center out for each note on the scale, using mutes (pieces of rubber) to block off strings he doesn’t want to hear. While a new generation in his business depends more on electronic tuners, those devices can’t tell you when the blend is the way it should be for each piano, West says. “I tune for a lot of people who don’t hear the beats, but they know it’s out of tune,” West says.”If you can’t hear the beats, you can’t tune it.” He often is answered with blank expressions. He hits the keys and asks whether you hear the waves or beats and the difference in pitches. West will bring out a frequency counter, giving him a base read on the beats or waves, but from then on he relies mostly on his trained ears. They each have a different personality, and he likes to play and listen to them for several minutes before he starts his work. West says the pianos he tunes are like people. “He’s an institution really,” Banks Kluttz says. At last count, West had some 5,600 customers in his database, which he guards like Fort Knox. When he’s not at Kluttz, he’s tuning pianos in private homes, churches and schools. Today, West works for Kluttz as a private contractor, besides calling on his own regular and new customers. He still puts 30,000 miles a year on his Buick LeSabre, and since 1998, Kluttz Piano has relied on West for all of its local piano-tuning jobs. He “retired” in 2000 so he could cut back to 50 hours a week. West’s piano-tuning jobs take him regularly into Rowan, Cabarrus and Mecklenburg counties. He also has been a devoted ham operator since 1962. If this data is unavailable or inaccurate and you own or represent this business, click here for more information on how you may be able to correct it.He is a 33rd degree Mason obsessed with the history behind the fraternal organization.
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