... and after the fortepiano was tuned the other day, it was time to get the French double manual harpsichord into shape. This one is tuned to 1/6 comma Werckmeister at A=415Hz which is something that one of my bosses used quite often in one of the ensembles that I played with quite regularly in Europe.

The harpsichord is quite a good deal easier to tune than the fortepiano due to the fact that all the notes a single strung (no unisons) which means that you are not fussing around quite so much with the fiddly details of getting those unisons just perfectly in tune. More to the point, you don't have to use dampers to stop the non-tuning strings... which gets crazily fiddly when you reach the triple strung notes!

However, the harpsichord does make up for this by having three separate registers that need to be tuned. Think of this as three completely different sets of "keyboards" that need to be all tuned to be sounding in unison together... and one of those is a 4-foot register that is an octave higher than the other two registers and it is quite difficult to tune due to the fact that the tiniest movement on the tuning pin makes the pitch vary quite wildly! Often, I neglect to tune that one if I run out of time.

... and this day, I only had a short amount of time to tune just the two regular registers before a student arrived. Meanwhile, there were quite a few keys that were either sticking, or failing to fall back so that the plectra was in playing position again. Sigh, I will have to eventually look at this... both the harpsichord and fortepiano are more temperamental to shifts in weather (humidity and temperature), and the change from one side of the world to the other has also taken its toll. They will both eventually settle... but meanwhile, there is a lot of little fiddling to be done... when I find time!

After the harpsichord was done, I had to return back to the fortepiano... this was the critical instrument as we have a concert coming up soon, and so the tuning does need to settle into the instrument... which does mean that we are doing daily touch-ups on the temperament.

Thankfully, we had a technician come in to have a look at the fortepiano action to fix up some of the key responses... after half a day of working on it, my wife was a good deal happier about the touch and response of the instrument, but it is clear that we will need to have both instruments properly regulated and touched up before they are both in peak performance condition, but for the moment, they are workable.

... speaking of which, I probably should give my violins a professional look over as well... ah well, when I have time!

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