WHO: Lane E. Miller, senior piano technician at SUNY Potsdam's Crane School of Music, whose job it is to tune and maintain the school's 142 Steinway & Sons pianos.
The Kokomo, Ind., native didn't consider music as a profession until he was a math student at Michigan State University and took a class in piano-tuning.
He worked at West Virginia University, the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, Rice University in Houston, the University of Southern California and McNeese State University in Louisiana before joining Crane in 2003.
HOW HAS YOUR JOB CHANGED SINCE CRANE BECAME AN ALL-STEINWAY SCHOOL LAST YEAR? "A lot of people would assume that because the pianos are all new, that would make my job easier, but they still need to be tuned more frequently.
"They come from the factory not necessarily exactly as Crane would like them. There's quite a bit of custom work to make them sound as the musicians here would prefer them to sound. It takes a long time to take a new piano and make it really sound as good as it can.
"With the new pianos, I do have some relief from replacing broken strings — so far there has only been one."
WHAT IS INVOLVED IN ADJUSTING A PIANO'S SOUND? "When most people think of piano technicians, they think of tuning. But tuning is the least interesting part of what I do.
"It's a matter of voicing, which is what we think of first when it comes to the sound. Lots of things go into that, but we're primarily concerned with the stiffness of the hammers and the felt pressed around the wooden molding, which we do various things with in order to get the sound you want.
"A piano technician has to understand what modifications you can make and what results you get from those modifications. It's not a one-dimensional thing. It's not so much a matter of judging pitches. It's both scientific and artistic."
WHAT ARE YOUR PRIORITIES AMONG THE SCHOOL'S 142 PIANOS? "The concert grand pianos take up a large portion of my time. We have seven pianos that are used for concerts, and these have to be refined to the highest degree. Musicians here expect them to be as good as you would find anyplace. It's my desire to give them that kind of piano.
"Say you have one note that's not quite right. In a classroom piano, you could ignore that for a long time. In a concert piano you can't ignore that. You have an audience with a couple hundred people. If there is one note that's not quite right, it's there to be heard and it must affect how you hear the music.
"There is a hierarchy of pianos, with the concert grands being most important. The faculty studio pianos are next. Others are less important in different respects. The practice room pianos are interesting, because they get more heavy use than any other instrument in the department."
IS THERE A DIFFERENCE WHEN WORKING WITH A STEINWAY COMPARED TO ANOTHER TYPE OF PIANO? "Steinways are hand-built instruments. Some other piano makers like Yamaha have perfected the assembly-line approach. Whether that's good or bad, it doesn't achieve the sound a Steinway does. With all the custom work that goes into building a Steinway, that also means that the piano technician ends up doing custom work as well — but the result is you have a better sound."
HOW DOES ONE BECOME A PIANO TECHNICIAN? IT DOESN'T SEEM LIKE SOMETHING YOU JUST GET INTO. "Well, actually it kind of is. This tends to be a business that most piano technicians do after having done other things. Most people don't start with formal training; they just start advertising themselves as piano technicians before they really know much about it."
WHAT QUALITIES DOES YOUR PROFESSION REQUIRE? "It takes a person capable of great attention to detail. People who can notice small details with the eye or ear are well-suited to this kind of work — so you can tell the difference between a piano that's merely good and a piano that's great.
"You have to have sufficient interest and desire to learn and of course you have to be good with your hands. I've been playing piano since I was 9 years old, but I wasn't good enough to do it as a profession.
"I loved music, though, so it's interesting that life took me in the position to be a part of the world of music without actually being a musician."
YOU HAVE A JOB THAT'S "BEHIND THE SCENES." WHAT IS THAT LIKE? "Most people — even musicians and some pianists — have little idea what it is a piano technician does. It's an obscure profession, and you hear at times that it's a dying art. Maybe it is."
BUT NOT FOR YOU? "Not for me. One of the interesting things about my job is the thing I'm working with doesn't change. I'm working on a piano that was designed 100 years ago, but there are always things to learn."
