Free Nine Fingers by Thom August Page B

part of it. As the
     strings get closer to harmony, the wood of the piano itself starts to resonate and I can feel the sound flowing into me, running
     up my spine, making me vibrate as if I’m part of the instrument. I always feel that while I’m tuning the piano, it’s tuning
     me. I always pass gas, I always get half-hard, I always stop grinding my teeth. When I’m done, I’m always in a very peaceful
     but focused state.
    A couple of years ago I stumbled into tuning pianos for money. Somebody saw me doing it before a gig and gave me a number
     to call and that led to other numbers. I liked it so much I had to quit: I lost all desire to play the damn things; it sucked
     all the initiative out of me. On this night it took me close to forty-five minutes, and I didn’t begrudge a second of it.
    When I got through with the piano, I started in on the sound system. Got the Uher out of my bag, set it down near the piano,
     popped in a closed-loop tape, hit RECORD, played some chords for about a minute or so, soft and then loud, soft and then loud,
     set it on top of the piano, turned it to PLAY, and set the volume at three. From there, it looped around and around. I turned
     to a mixing board that looked as if it belonged at NASA Mission Control, and pressed POWER. I walked around to each of the
     speakers, clockwise, putting my left ear about eight inches away, listened, and took some notes on a card. After I finished
     the last speaker, I went around in the opposite direction and did it again with my right ear, just to be sure, augmenting
     my written notes. Then I went back to the mixing board and started tweaking the equalization on each speaker.
    I’ve been in people’s houses and I’ve been in people’s cars, and let me tell you, when it comes to their sound systems, most
     people don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. So much money, so little knowledge. In houses, the bass is always set too high
     and it makes the overall sound all cloudy. In cars, the back speakers are set way too high. Why would you have the speakers
     in the backseat louder than the speakers right in front of you? To replicate the sound of standing with your back to the band? And generally, people tune all the speakers the same way, even if they have a sophisticated system that lets
     them EQ each one individually.
    But aren’t the speakers the same? Yeah, the speakers are the same but the speakers’ environments are different. This one’s against a flat wall and the sound is going to bounce—turn it down a notch and edge down the treble.
     That one’s against a curtain and next to a stuffed chair and the sound is going to get sucked up—crank it up a little but
     don’t overdo the bass.
    And that’s the final idiocy I see out there. The bass. People spend hours trying to find the perfect location for that kick-ass
     four-hundred-dollar subwoofer. They move furniture, they cut niches in the wall, they hide it inside of tables, they even
     hang it from the ceiling. They’re serious about it, spouting all kinds of theories, without having a fucking clue.
    But here’s the truth: it doesn’t matter where you put it. Put it on the floor, hang it from the ceiling; place it up front,
     hide it in the back; orient it portrait or landscape or diagonally, like some Dalí painting. Your ear is going to localize
     the sound as coming from the floor. Period.
    The subwoofers in the Marriott were up front and off to each side, because I don’t like them sitting on the plywood bandstand.
     Plywood is a shitty resonating medium, because it’s different kinds of woods glued together, so it doesn’t have one dynamic
     profile but dozens. So we moved the speakers onto the hardwood floor, which is maple, a great resonating medium. It’d be perfect
     for a rock band or an action movie with surround sound—turn them up and you can feel that bass all the way up your spine.
     Us, we play jazz. The jazz drummer Jo Jones always said that if you can