The dying art of piano tuning, and a blind Seattle man who’s keeping the profession alive

Like blacksmithing and letter writing, the profession of piano tuner has been added to the list of dying arts. The average American piano tuner is between 55 and 60 years old.

Seattle’s 70-year-old Mike Gill has been tuning pianos for 45 years.

“A good ear, mechanical ability, those are the two things you need, really.”

His Greenwood business is called Blind Mike’s Piano Repair.

“I lost my sight when I was 17. I lost one eye when I was seven, got hit with a stick playing cowboys and Indians. I lost the other at 17 playing basketball.”

Without his vision, Mike has very finely tuned hearing, which is perfect for his profession, which he still does the old fashioned, analog way.

“I have electronic devices, I find it slow and cumbersome to use. When you can hear it, you hear it!”

Mike says it can be hard to get established as a new piano tuner, to build a clientele. He has been tuning the Westin Hotel’s piano since it opened in 1970 and local performance venues call him up when they need their piano tuned for a show.

“The Eagles, we did The Eagles. Paul Simon recently was down, we did him and Sting when they were in town. Bob Dylan, lots of artists.”

At 47, Joan Smith is amongst the industry’s youngsters. She studied the trade in 2008.

“I opted to go to the University of Western Ontario, in London, Ontario. They have a certificate program there. In order to get in, I submitted an application and then I had to go and audition,” says Joan. “They only take 14 students a year and they take them from all over the world. It’s a very intense program.”

She has her own ideas about why it’s a dying art.

“It’s the trades, you know. One hundred years ago, if your father was a cabinet maker, he probably brought you into the business and taught you how to make cabinets and you became a cabinet maker. That is kind of dying. You don’t really make money at that and you really have to enjoy it. With piano tuning, if your father was a piano tuner, your uncle, or your aunt or your mother, chances are you’re a little more interested in it. It takes a lot of work, it’s an art.”

So what’s the draw?

“I thought about everything that I like and I ended up with piano technician,” explains Joan. “Driving from place to place is kind of fun. Problem solving, there’s always a different problem. Every piano is completely different even though it’s exactly the same. And music! I get to play the piano when I’m done, which is fun.”

Mike may be blind, but watching him tune a piano, you’d never know it.

“There’s thousands of parts in a piano. More parts in a piano than in a car,” Mike says. “This piano here, each note has 26 parts. If you go to a grand, you got 32 parts that make that note play. You need to know it. There are a lot of little complications there.”

He agrees that his beloved trade is a dying art.

“You gotta have a heart for it. When I lost my sight, I knew that it was the right element for me. My niece and nephew were at the Seattle Center, they have this thing where you take this hearing test and it tells you about yourself. So I take the test, and I’m already a piano tuner, and it comes up, ‘You should be a piano tuner.’ That was incredible to me!”