‘‘Tuning is an art form. You can learn to do the technique technically, then you spend the rest of your life perfecting it, as the more you do it, the more you refine it.’’
But he says it’s not only the tuning people have to learn how to do, they must also learn how to repair pianos.
‘‘Often you have to fix it, to tune it. It’s two technical skills rolled into one.’’ Mr Field began his career in the early 90s in Nelson.
At home, his father played and fixed pianos and electronic organs. As a teenager, Mr Field says he found his skills with a piano were soon in demand.
‘‘People started asking me as a 12 /13-year-old to come along with them to rate a piano before they bought it. ‘‘They thought if I liked it then it should be a good one.
‘‘I could pick a dud pretty quickly and it saved them money, so then I thought I would do better to find these good pianos, fix them up and then sell them myself. ‘‘I was paying a local tuner to tune them, but I decided to learn how to tune pianos myself.’’
Late in the 1990s, he sat his Guild exams to become an accredited tuner.
‘‘You were marked on both technical and tuning exams – you had to pass both.’’ He says there is a fraternity of tuners in the country, and like many other skills trades, they were experiencing a shortage of skilled workers today.
‘‘There are still thousands of pianos sitting in people's houses that all need to be tuned and maintained,’’he said. ‘‘Since Covid, we have seen a big growth in people wanting to learn the piano and an even bigger trend back to acoustic pianos over electronic organs.
Mr Field says while there is a place for electronic organs to help children learn music eventually people want a proper piano sound.
His work is varied, as he has even worked on pianos made in the mid-1800s.
A piano is made of wood, and the older they get, the more they are prone to problems, eventually many become uneconomic to repair, he said.
To mend a 120-year-old piano properly it could cost $20,000 to replace all the parts and rebuild it.
‘‘But many have a sentimental value to owners and I do what I can to help them preserve their piano.’’
Mr Field moved to North Canterbury 12 months ago and is still amazed at who he might find sitting behind him when he visits retirement homes to fix their pianos.
‘‘Often these wonderfully talented and musical people will come up and sit with you.’’
At music festivals, Mr Field may have to tune a piano three to four times a day to make it sound the way famous singers and musicians want it to.
‘‘It's made of wood, and if it’s wet outside or too hot under the lights then things move, sometimes between sessions, so I am always on hand to tune it.’’
His musical passion is Jazz, but he says he wants a piano to sound great for him, and ‘‘to do that you do need a good ear for it’’.
There are electronic visual aides to help tuners work, and while he uses them in noisy venues, he prefers to tune using his ears.
‘‘You don’t watch sound – you hear it.’’
