Piano tuning in Memorial, Hunters Creek and Piney Point
Memorial is a different kind of Houston: wooded lots along Buffalo Bayou, deep shade, big houses set back from the road, and the independent villages of Hunters Creek and Piney Point tucked inside it. The pianos here tend to live in large homes, often in a formal living room or a dedicated music room, sometimes with a second upright upstairs for the children.
A large house has several climates in it, and the piano’s room is often the one nobody sits in on a weekday. That is the single most common cause of the problems I see in Memorial, and the easiest to fix once you know it. I am a Registered Piano Technician, trained at Steinway & Sons and Yamaha, and I will tell you where your piano is happiest in your house before I tell you anything else.
Where the piano lives
Zoned air conditioning is a blessing for the family and a trap for the piano. If the music room’s zone is set back while the family lives in the kitchen and bedrooms, the piano spends its days in warmer, damper air and its evenings in cold, dry air every time someone turns the zone on. The soundboard moves with each cycle and the tuning goes with it.
The fix is not expensive. Keep the piano’s zone within a few degrees of the rest of the house, keep the instrument off exterior walls and away from vents and windows, and, in a shaded, humid Memorial lot, consider a humidity control system inside the piano. I evaluate, recommend and install these systems; which one fits depends on the instrument, so we confirm the details by phone. I will look at the room on the first visit and tell you exactly what applies.
Wooded lots and humidity
The trees that make Memorial beautiful also keep it humid. Shaded ground holds moisture, and the air around the house rarely dries out the way it does on an open lot. Pianos in these houses drift sharp more consistently than pianos in newer, sunnier subdivisions, and they benefit from a strict twice-a-year schedule: once after the summer, once after the winter heating.
Two pianos, one visit
Many Memorial homes have more than one instrument: a grand downstairs and an upright in the playroom, or a piano at home and one at a church or school nearby. I schedule them together, so you are not paying for two trips and not keeping two calendars. For homes that entertain, I also install self-playing piano systems (QRS PNOmation), which let a grand play itself for a dinner or a party. Read about self-playing piano systems →