Tune

London, May 2025.

I had just emerged from the Eurostar tunnels into the St. Macras shopping centre. In the middle of the crowd, a highly focused man kept looking at his mobile phone. His hands were precisely searching the strings of the open piano to adjust them again. 88 keys to be treated, one by one, in an indescribable brouhaha. But how could he even hear the sound of the notes he was hitting with his ungloved hand?
I went closer to find out. On the screen, the keyboard of the upright piano was reproduced at the bottom and various inscriptions, including the one in the centre of the English writing of the notes: A6, B6, C6, followed in rapid succession. He does not listen to the sound he produces with a finger of his left hand (could he?), but associates the visual of the harmonics of the note on his phone with the sensation of the fingers of his right hand gloved on the string to tension or relax them.
It doesn’t really matter whether or not station piano amateurs play well, as long as the piano sounds just right.