Year 1 is nearly finished

Hi all! It's hard to believe that not only has it been a year since I made a post here, but also it's been a year since I returned from Colorado and started my business. The good news is I have been way too busy to do any writing.

So what's happened? Well a lot of great experiences and important lessons in the first year, that's for sure. Overall I would say that I'm very happy with my results so far not just from an earnings perspective but overall for the business in terms of networking, business development and professional development. I've been fortunate that I've had to make some choices about where to devote my energies and have actually turned work down on a couple of occasions where I felt it was not the right thing for me at this time.

Hits:
- landing steady work with Merriam Pianos has been a blessing and I can't say enough about what a great bunch of people they are to work with. Very professional and personable, and I get to work on some nice new pianos.
- landing steady work with Steve Jackson pianos. Steve is also a great guy and has been extremely generous with his knowledge and time with me. I have learned a ton of stuff about rebuilding pianos with Steve and I'm grateful for the experience.
- the private clientele is developing well, although there have been a few gut wrenching dropouts in business from one month to the next. April was less than one tenth of March and the summer has been dead.
- I got my first rebuilding job! It's a beautiful Steinway A grand that was a thrill to work on. Here's a little slideshow of the project.


Misses:
- being in traffic a lot SUCKS. I could write a whole posting about the horrors of it but we all live with it every day. One of my long term goals is to reduce my on-the-road time to 50% and spend the other 50% in my shop. I'll earn less but it's worth it to me.
- working on a lot of really awful old pianos for some private clients is not that fun but there's always a lesson. I had one really awful old thing that I could hardly tune and then the owner/mom told me both of her girls got their RCM grade 9 on it. You can never judge. Other times the really beautiful pianos sit unplayed and unloved.
- I stink at bookkeeping.

Regrets:
- none.

Other observations:
- most people are really nice when they have you in their homes. I've been variously offered soup, dumplings, and tea (no sex though), and always enjoy being offered little slippers at the Chinese homes, usually three sizes too small. Some people are not so hospitable though. If you had someone in your house for 2-3 hours would you at least offer them a glass of water?
- most new pianos are bought by Chinese people. I would say 75% of my Merriam calls are to Chinese homes.
- my funniest moment came when I was distracted by some sort of commotion behind me while tuning a piano, and turned around to find my client's dog chewing on MY shoe!

So in all, it's been a very satisfying start and I am as keen as ever to push ahead. The priorities for year two will be to lessen dependence on retailers for work focusing on private in home work, and to develop my skills and clientele in the restoration work.

Talk to you again next year!

Launch!

Hello friends, family and colleagues

I am pleased to announce the launch of Paul Clement Piano Services.

As many of you know I have been away for a year studying at the University of Western Ontario and the Aspen Music Festival and School and am now open for business.

Paul Clement Piano Services provides a complete range of services including tuning, general repairs and maintenance, appraisals, and reconditioning to all makes and sizes of pianos.

I'm offering a special introductory rate on tuning services to get things rolling.

Please call, email or visit me on the web to learn more.

My new website is up

Check out my website when you get a moment:

Paul Clement Piano Services - www.clementpiano.com

I won't really be in business until September but as I've learned, most of the search engines need several weeks to list your site so I'm trying to get a jump on that.

Cheers!

I'm here

I made it to Colorado without a hitch a couple of weeks back and have been running around quite a bit since.




Random thoughts and observations:

• It's really beautiful here. I think heaven should be like this.
• Who turned off the air? Snowmass Village is at elevation 7,914 feet and the air is quite thin up here. It's taken me a couple of weeks to adjust and not huff and puff after climbing even small inclines.
• School/work is going great. There's a pretty interesting cast of characters here and tons of work to keep us busy. We are doing about 3-4 tunings per day on brand new, just out of the box pianos and frankly, they're a pain in the ass when they're new. But I can already feel my skills growing.
• At least half the students (out of 750) at the music school are Chinese, and they are awesome musicians. Teach your children to speak Mandarin.
• We can get lots of free tickets to just about any event here at the festival, so come on down and visit me! This weekend we're going to a couple of orchestra concerts featuring some Beethoven symphonies and on Saturday there's a jazz festival going on - we're going to check out the Brian Setzer Orchestra.
• Dale and Madeline are coming down next week and I can hardly wait!

I guess that's all for now.

Have a great summer everyone!

Phew

It's been a big day.

I got my Visa paperwork in the courier today, so everything is go for heading down to Aspen. This was a little scary for me with the last minute change to my sponsor company due to some screw ups and I honestly thought at one point last week I wasn't going to make it and would have to cancel the whole thing. This picture you see here is my actual route in Yahoo Maps - I'm going to spend one night in Davenport, Iowa, another in Sterling, Colorado and then it's off to Aspen.

I got my housing information for Aspen today too and it is suh-weet! It's real nice two bedroom condo in Snowmass Village which is just a few miles from Aspen and the Music School. Nice view too.

And, we finished off our term 2 project piano today. This was the 1906 Heintzman baby grand we worked on if you don't remember, and everything about it was a total pain in the ass, but I'll tell you something: when we finally got the new strings on and tuned it up it sounds really, really nice, so it was definitely all worth it.

So now, school ends for real in a few days and I can hardly believe it. It's going to be sad.

I hope that the next few posts you will see on here will be a little road journal of my long drive across 'Merka.

Cheers.

NEXT!

OK, so I'm the poster boy for blog-neglect. Report me.

I see that I have been away for quite a while now but between Spring (hell, Summer) arriving and closing off the main part of my course my time has been at a premium.

So, yes, the main part of the course is finished now; I wrote finals last week and I am told by my instructors that I will graduate "with distinction", and I do have just one more final exam on April 29 for my Jazz History elective, but that shouldn't pose any problems. I've been enjoying the last 7 days or so back in Mississauga chillin with the fam and charging up my batteries. I'll head back to London on the weekend and then it's another 4 weeks of an optional program specialized on piano rebuilding, whereas the previous curriculum has focused on maintenance and repair.

April was pretty exciting as well; we spent a week at Interlochen, which is a performing arts high school/piano torture chamber in the northern part of the lower peninsula of Michigan. It was really beautiful up there and we had a good few days of hard work and hard partying. Pictures here.

And of course the highlight was definitely the trip to New York City and Boston. We spent 3 days in NYC and just one in Boston. NY is really everything you would imagine it to be and I was kind of surprised by how much I felt like I already knew it, but I guess all those years of movies and television will do that. It was a really great trip personally and professionally, and for sure I would like to go back there some day with the girls. Boston was cool too but we only had a few free hours there one evening so it wasn't that rewarding.


Looking ahead, I have to get through these last 4 weeks of school and then I have another week off, and then I am away to Aspen for my ten week internship at the Aspen Music Festival and School. This is going to be really exciting and is like a slingshot for me into the future with my new profession. Me and another guy from class Damon Groves will be looking after the 200+ pianos that will be arriving at the festival for the summer activities. I'm told that if I can start my days early enough I can finish up at 1 or 2 pm and then enjoy the mountains for the rest of the day. Mmmm. I did have a bit of a scare last week getting my Visa in order. I need an internship Visa and was using a firm that acts on my behalf to make all the arrangements with the State Department or whatever it is. So, 4 weeks into the process they phone to inform me that their Visa program is only available to persons under 30 years of age and they can't help me. Gee, thanks for waiting 4 weeks to tell me that. So after a bit of a scramble I found another firm and we just might make it in time. It's only 5 1/2 weeks away.

And so, I will drive myself across the Great Plains; Michigan, Indiana, Illinois (and across the Mighty Mississippi), Iowa (didn't know so many "I" states were together), Nebraska and Colorado. I guess it's about the same distance as driving to the south of Florida, and I'm told having a car there is a great advantage but I might say screw it and just fly down. Not sure if I'm up for a 3 day drive, and I suppose it will really be coming home that will be worse.

Enjoy the beautiful Spring weather - been a long time coming.

I Must've Missed This One

Who's the man? Yeah, that's right.

Happy to let you all know that I have won the internship in Aspen and will be spending ten weeks of my summer in the Rocky Mountains! Sweet.

Details to follow.

My new #1 guy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dH3GSrCmzC8

Birdy num nums

Just a quick update.

Things went pretty well in my first paying gig this Thursday. It's pretty cheesy but as I was getting ready at home that morning I heard a bird singing outside - first time in 2008 I heard one - and took it as a good omen. The job went well and Mrs. X asked me back again this week to do some more work. While I was there I got a call from Merriam music and I went by there in the afternoon to do some tuning in their showroom and got paid a bit for that. And while I was there two people approached me in the showroom asking if I do private work. Well, duh.

Earlier in the week I met Madeline's new piano teacher and I think I can work a bunch of referrals out of that as well.

Feeling really good and off to a good start. While still in school even. I'm verklempt.


And, I'm going to go ahead and take the free baby grand piano I mentioned in an earlier post. I mean what the hell. It's hard to go wrong and I think I can put a couple thousand bucks into it and maybe make a thousand, plus have my first, low risk, rebuilding job. And if I like it enough I'll just keep the damn thing.

Must drink now.

I drink therefore I am

At the moment I'm enjoying a well deserved cocktail on Friday night after a busy week (thanks for the housewarming gift Nav), and I'm about to go off on another break from school for reading week, more popularly known as 'slack week'.

There's a fair bit to update on at the moment and some pretty cool stuff coming up, but despite it all, and despite the fact that it's an old fashioned cold, snowy winter, the middle of February still sucks the big one! There's just something about the dead of winter...

Next week will be a pretty busy one:

• tomorrow is Poonjambi at Nav's place, a fancy name for a good ol' drink up and all day jam session at Nav's place in Greensville. Haven't played with the boys for a couple of months so it should be fun
• laying a new hardwood floor in the family room at home. The old rug in there is disgusting and still bears the scars of our old cat Norman wiping his ass on it. Go figure that there are 5 or 6 rooms in the house with carpeting but he liked to regularly wipe off his cling-ons in the family room.
• I have my first customer next week! It's actually a referral from Anne (one of the instructors at UWO) and is an old wreck of a piano - can't wait! I guess I better get my shit together and figure out what my rates are...
  
• I'm supposed to work at Merriam for a half day or whatever next week but I haven't firmed anything up yet.
• I had two very promising interviews for the internships this summer but am just waiting to hear back from them.
• I have a line on a free grand piano! There is a lady in Guelph who's been trying to get UWO to take the piano into the course for a refurb like the ones we're doing this term, but for one reason and another Anne doesn't want it, and the owner can't afford to do the job privately, so it is kind of 'free to a good home' at this point. If it plays I'll take it, then if I don't get to it for a year or two so what. Squeezing it into the house will be another matter but that's a good problem to have. At this point I'm not sure I can do much more with the old upright we got last autumn, but it's filled its role of giving me something to practice on during weekends and gotten Maddy back into playing the piano and taking lessons.
• The class has scattered to the four corners, well sort of anyway. Joan is off to Wintergrass in Washington state, Michael is down to NC to visit with the missus, Ryan and Ian have gone to Florida to apply for a Master's Piano Technician program, and most of the others are either heading home or hanging in London.

And by the way, thanks to many of you for your comments by email, but remember you can also post your comments right here in the blog where others can see them too.

Cheers!

Holy crap nice weather

I'm writing to you from the lounge of the fabulous Festival Inn in Stratford Ontario. I was here doing some work on pianos at the Stratford Festival complex and due to some seriously strong winds and blowing snow, all the roads out of town are closed. In a way I'm relieved because I was driving out of town this afternoon and was really very nervous about the road conditions and poor visibility but would've felt like a wuss turning around. This way the police made the decision for me. Today I was actually standing on the stage in the picture you see here, where some of the world's greatest actors have stood. Didn't feel a thing.

Last week I had a couple of interviews for some internships this summer at the Tanglewood and Aspen summer music festivals. I kind of have mixed feelings about these - they will be 10 weeks across June, July and August and while they are a great opportunity to keep learning and basically get paid for going to school, it would also be another ten weeks away from the family and I'm worried about the load poor Dale is carrying, although the thought of spending the summer in the Rocky Mountains is pretty appealing. The interviews went well I thought; I'm pretty good at telling people what they want to hear by this point in life so I'm pretty optimistic about my chances. Aspen, Colorado seems to be the happening place compared to Tanglewood in western Massachusetts but it sure is a lot further away. Oh well, nice to think about the choices anyway.

I've got a bunch of new pics to upload but can't really manage that at the moment what with being unexpectedly stranded here and all. My kingdom for a toothbrush.

A little sample

Here's Joan showing off on Betty. It's kinda hard to tell on my crappy camera but you can sort of hear that the tone of this piano is a little nasty.

I really have to get me one of these...

http://www.metasonix.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=36&Itemid=67

Hello 26947

It's here! We've got a sweet 1906 Heintzman 6 foot grand piano as our 2nd term refurb project. 'We' is Joan and I - who will be my bench partner for this term - pictured here with 'Betty', so named after the fussy little old lady music teacher who owns her. Yes, it's a little old lady piano. Joan is a real hard worker and lots of fun to hang around with so I have high hopes for a successful project.

This little beauty is actually in really good shape, with a beautifully refinished cabinet and not a single structural flaw to speak of at 102 years of age. She sounds little strident and honky at the moment but we'll fix that with some new strings and hammers. I was especially taken with one item; it was customary for some makers to emboss some of their patents right on the plate of their pianos and in a little trick of coincidence this one happens to be my birthday! Of course there will be lots of updates throughout the term in this space and in my Facebook photos.

If you're not familiar with Heintzman they were the preeminent Canadian piano manufacturer, formed in 1886 and making pianos in Canada into the 80's I believe. There's kind of an interesting sequence of events in their ownership history, too lengthy to cover here, but at one point they were owned by Sklar-Peppler the furniture maker, and eventually went out of business, only to be resurrected by - wait for it - Chinese owners (and here) who have built a snazzy new factory and claim to be building pianos based on the original templates.

So we now have no less than 7 grands in our little shop but the jewel is a 9 foot Steinway concert grand from the 50's. This baby has been on its side in a box at the Royal Conservatory of Music for 10 years if you can believe it, and so it's been sent to us to see if we (that is, our profs) think it worthy of a full on restoration. One test that we do on the overall character of a piano is to pound on the soundboard (the soul of the piano) with the side of a fist with the dampers up and listen for the sound. This thing boomed like a crack of thunder and resonated for about 20 seconds. Oh yeah, lots of potential. I think I peed a little. We are all now quite taken with the instrument. I was playing it today and it is just creamy.

In a bit of other news, a few promising developments:
- I have a job interview next week! I had contacted Merriam Music in Oakville in December and they asked me to come in a few weeks later. Now, I don't really want a job per se but I'm not averse to taking something like this, even for shitty money, just to stay busy and keep my skills sharp while I build my own practice. I'd rather do that than go back to IT project work and get sucked back into that world, even though it would be easier financially. It was a bit scary to hear Merriam tell me 'we're always looking for technicians'. Hmm, they either chew them up and spit them out, or pay them shit, or both. But what the hell, I'm just getting started and Merriam is the kind of high end shop I'd like to align myself with.
- Don Stephenson has asked me and three of the other lads from class to go with him to the Stratford Festival to work on some of the pianos there for a day. It's quite flattering to be included in this group, and it's also nice because we'll get paid although the funds will be directed toward paying for our trip to NYC in April. It will just be real nice to feel as though I'm working instead of going to school.

2008 is off to a fine start indeed.

Farewell B2063943

Just like that.

It's all over.

Our project piano for term 1, B2063943, was gone when I got into the shop this morning. I worked my ass off on that thing.

It didn't even leave a note.

I feel so cheap.

Tomorrow we await the arrival of 7 grand pianos in our little workshop - 4 rickety old Heintzman's (also here) and 3 Yamahas.

Giddy up!

By the way, marks are in for term 1 and I'm pretty pleased overall, with a few 89's and 90's in some of the practical programs and a so-so 76 on the tuning. Room for improvement for sure.

Intermission

Here I am at the end of the first term, and I really feel as though the final week of class, including exams, couldn't have gone any better so I'm feeling really good heading into a 3 week break for Christmas.

I did have a laugh today as I reassembled our project piano for evaluation by Anne and contemplated taking an 'after' picture to go with the 'before' picture already on Facebook, but I'm afraid that after just over 3 months of non-stop work it looks exactly the same. She's not much to look at but she has a hell of a personality, an inner beauty. On reflection I feel that Amanda and I successfully tore apart, reconditioned and and reconstructed B2093843 but there is still some work to do on making it sound beautiful and I think we'll get a chance to do some that after the break. Right now it functions properly but it doesn't sparkle and that's what I really want to learn how to do, that magic.

Last time I was home for the weekend I did some field work with John Lillico, who's an old time tuner living in Oakville, with whom I've struck up a bit of a relationship. He's blind and everything; picture an old blind piano tuner in your mind and you've got him. We went to Sheridan College and tuned a bunch of Yamaha uprights not too different from my project piano, and of course I broke a string. Slightly embarrassing but John was really good about it and explained to me that it's a bit of a design issue with this particular model that leads to regular issues with strings breaking. Anyway, I did a half decent job on my tuning and John said that while I still have much to learn my work is good enough for a practice room piano, which was really great to hear. After 4 months I can do some work that will pass as professional. My point, and I do have one, is that I played my piano after tuning and it didn't sound retched, and then I played John's. His was sweet. As soon as I played a chord it was as though the piano lifted off the ground a few inches and that's just more of that magic that I want to learn.

But that will all wait for 3 weeks. Aside from tuning at home a bit and making some visits to retailers I will be off the pianos until Jan 7.

Happy Holidays everyone.

The Home Stretch

It's Sunday evening, and I'm sprawled out across the dining room table in London studying for the physics final exam, and enjoying a glass of well deserved wine. Funny but I've been off the booze pretty much since I started school which is the opposite of what I expected. Kind of hard to justify spending money on the stuff when Dale is at home clipping coupons...

The week is going to be pretty hectic, relatively speaking, in that I have final exams Wed, Thu and Fri. Well, the exams for the actual piano tech part of the course are more like what they call a practicum, in other words it's really just delivery of some work that is going to get looked over by the instructors. Nonetheless there's just a ton of stuff to go over and make sure everything is perfect, and on Friday we do actually have the major tuning test to close out the term. The tuning has been a little touch and go of late, and of course that's where I'll be making most of my money going forward so I'm very focused on it. I've got stuck on what particular area, and to be honest I can't tell if it's always been like this and I couldn't hear it before but now my ear has improved, or rather my work is actually deteriorating. Reminds me of fucking golf in a way. Physics I'm not too worried about; I've got about 75% average and the final counts for 40% of the total grade, so I figure I have a good margin for error and will comfortably pass but I'd still like to make a good go of it, for bragging rights if nothing else.

Our project piano is just about ready to go out the door, although I believe we'll give it a going over after the Christmas break and then send it off. Really looking forward to the grand pianos coming in for next term and getting started on those because we haven't really done much on grands other than tune them. And as I have learned a little about them I can see that in many ways they are much less complicated machines than upright pianos, which is probably not what many people, myself included, would expect.

So there is the last week of term 1 all laid out before me, then a 3 week break during which I will cuddle my kid on the couch as much as I possibly can, and I believe there's some talk of laying a new hardwood floor on the family room, and I will continue to work away on the piano at home. And I will also be spending some time visiting retailers and piano shops in my area and introducing myself. I've even made up some business cards whoop-de-doo.

I sure do miss my girls.

Tempus Fugit

It's hard to believe that there are just a few weeks left in the term; before I know it the whole thing will be over and I'll be out there trying to make a living at this, but I'm not going to let that scare me. Yet.
There have been a few ups and downs in recent days:

• We finished the refurb part of our project pianos and now we are putting them back together to see if the damn things will actually work. This will give me a huge sense of accomplishment if Amanda and I have actually managed to work with all 3,000+ parts, replace or repair, then reassemble them and the thing will actually sound like a musical instrument again. And of course there's making it work and then there's making it sweet. That's what will really turn my crank. When I think back to the first week of September, I can honestly hardly believe what we have learned and accomplished in so short a period of time. I suppose it may not seem like much to an outsider but we have literally bled to make this thing work and been immersed in detail to a level I have never been before. I feel really great about it and I can hardly wait until we get our grand pianos next term.
  
• I got an 85% on my freaking physics mid-term exam! Who's your daddy? This is really good because it takes a lot of pressure off the final exam which is in just a couple of weeks. I started off just wanting to pass the damn course but now I'd like to make a decent accounting of myself. Next term I have chosen something like Introduction to Jazz. Many of the other students in the class have music degrees and so are exempt from taking an elective next term. Bitches.
• Some asshole crashed into my parked car on Saturday and smashed in the rear driver's side door. Luckily I just changed to a zero deductible policy but it's just such a nuisance. On the upside I was out at a nice American Thanksgiving dinner. Still full.
  
• Today Don let us loose on the faculty pianos to tune them. So far we have only been working on a bunch of pianos that are specifically set aside for the piano tech students, but today we worked on the practice pianos the music students use. This is kind of a big deal because it tells me that even before the first term is done, Don is running out of stuff for us to do to our pianos. Actually he let the 'golden boy motherfuckers' (as I have affectionately nicknamed the top students in the class) tune the faculty pianos last week, and so this week he let the kind of middle of the pack tuners, of which I am one, have a go at them. It's petty, but I was so fucking relieved not to be in the last group, like being the kid who doesn't get picked at recess or something. We never really grow up do we? Anyway, I was so determined to do well, and while I did leave the piano in a much better state than I found it, my tuning actually sucked. Putrid. I was so disappointed. I said a bad word. I've been frustrated in recent days because I seem to have plateaued in my development, just as Don warned us we would, and I keep getting stuck at this one point in the process and I am going out of my mind trying to get through it. Still there was a feeling of accomplishment in a kind of milestone-y way, because I didn't just practice today. I worked. And even though it was literally a torment at times I still loved it. You really go into a kind of state where you block out everything else, including possibly someone playing violin or saxophone in the neighbouring practice room, and totally focus on a single task. Bend the fucking piano to your will. I have reflected on it at length. Right now it takes me about two hours to tune the entire piano; when was the last time you had two uninterrupted hours to focus on accomplishing a single task? I have a whole new perspective on work.

Don't look for too many posts over the next couple of weeks - home stretch baby!

Employee of the Month

Here's my boy Mike's (see my post about him below) former band in Scotland. Of course he's moved on now, but enjoy the tunes anyway.