How A Piano Tuner Is A Barometer For Boston’s Battered Music Scene

Fred Mudge uses a tuning hammer to tune a Yamaha C7 piano at the Wellspring Studio in Acton. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)

Today we meet someone who’s something of a barometer for the battered live music industry in Boston. His name is Fred Mudge and he’s been a piano technician, fulltime, for about three decades.

“Three things throw a piano out of tune,” he explained. “Playing it. Temperature. And humidity.”

On the day we spoke Mudge was meticulously tweaking strings with his tuning hammer at Wellspring Sound Studio in Acton. A long strip of soft red felt muted the other tightly wound wires inside a black Yamaha grand until it was their turn for Mudge’s adjustments.

“As you can see it’s a circle of refinement,” he explained while slowly moving from the low keys on the board to the high. “You get it close and you can always make it better.”

Read the rest of the story at WBUR’s website.