Welcome to the Domeny’s Piano Service Blog!

This blog is designed for anyone who has an interest in pianos. Whether you are a professional pianist, someone who plays the piano for fun, the parent of a child who is taking piano lessons, or a piano owner who hopes to gain a better understanding of this complex instrument that you are hoping someday to learn to play, I think you will find this blog to be fun, interesting, and informative.

First off, let me introduce myself. My name is Roger Domeny and I am a Registered Piano Technician member of the Piano Technicians Guild. I own and operate a full-time piano service business in the Inland Empire of Southern California. That said, my purpose in writing these articles is not “shameless self promotion.” Instead, my purpose is to share information that will help you understand how a professional piano technician can help you get the most from your piano.

So there you have it. That’s my agenda. And my bias too. I will have more to say about this in future articles, but I believe that when it comes to servicing your piano, it is vitally important that you hire a professional piano technician, someone whose competence has been tested and certified by the Piano Technicians Guild, a non-profit organization that is dedicated to the development of highly skilled craftsmen and women. You see, not everyone who tunes pianos is a professional piano technician.

Why is this so important?

The piano is one of the most complex instruments that you can own. Think about it: Violinists tune and maintain their own instruments. The same is true of flutists, oboists, horn players, trombonists, and just about every other kind of instrument that you can think of. But not so with the piano. With very few exceptions, pianists do not tune and maintain their own instruments.

The reason for this is fairly obvious. Rather than having four strings like a violin, a piano has an average of 230 strings. The action, the system of compressed levers that transforms the downward movement of your finger to the upward movement of a felt covered hammer that strikes and sets into motion a precisely tuned string, has between 9,000 and 14,000 parts. The exact number varies according on the manufacturer and exact model of piano. Getting a piano to function as it is supposed to function so that it is able to produce the beautiful, melodious sound it is supposed to produce depends on getting all these parts to work together exactly as they are supposed to. And believe me, this is no small task!

Given this extreme complexity, you can understand why it is so important to hire someone who really knows what he or she is doing. A novice poking around inside a piano can cause some really big problems in very short order.

So with this brief introduction, I hope you will join me as we learn together about the piano and its service needs. There is a lot that I look forward to sharing with you. And I think we’ll have some fun along the way. After all, that’s what the piano is all about: Having fun making music!